If seems that Britain (the Hoard made it to ‘most viewed’ on the BBC website today) – and Heritage Key (mine is definitely not the first blogpost on the topic) – can’t get enough of the Mercian Treasure baptised ‘the Staffordshire Hoard’. Realising what an incredible find this is – or standard archaeological procedure? – Birmingham University Archaeology published the actual unearthing of the collection of Anglo-Saxon hoarded wealth, at that point still looking more like little stones than the actual gems they are. In the video you see the archaeologists carefully searching the sand, digging up the precious artefacts… but…
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The archaeological excavations at the royal palace in the ancient city of Qatna, north east of the Syrian city of Homs, have once again unfolded a remarkable archaeological discovery. The summer excavations, due to end on the 25th September 2009, located a rock tomb-cellar underneath the palace containing hundreds of artefacts as well as human bones from the period 1600-1400 BC. Qatna was one of the most important kingships during Syria’s Bronze Age. It reached the height of its prosperity between 1800 and 1600 BC (Middle Bronze Age) and was then among one of the most powerful states in the…
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Penn Museums world-renowned Mesopotamian Collection from Ur is the centrepiece of a new long-term exhibition exploring Iraqs Ancient Cultural Heritage that opens October 25th.The exhibition will contain field notes of previous expeditions to the region, photographs, archival documents as well as more than 220 extraordinary ancient artefacts unearthed at the excavation. Famous artefacts such as the Ram-Caught-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre with a gold and lapis lazuli bull’s head, and Queen Puabi’s jewelry, as well as her headdress and other treasures, will be on display at ‘Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery‘. In 1922 – the same year that Howard…
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BRITISH WRITER DISCOVERS THE PHARAOHS LOST UNDERGROUND Wednesday, 16 September 2009 A British writer has staked claim to finally finding the lost underground of the Pharaohs which has been rumoured to exist since the construction of the Great Pyramid nearly 5,000 years ago, creating a stir that is set to rock the Egyptological world. Armed only with the forgotten memoirs of a nineteenth century British engineer, history and science writer Andre Coolings, tracked down the entrance to this forgotten tunnel system and was the first to explore it in modern times. Is it possible that Coolings has beaten the Egyptologists…
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Andrew Collins’ book ‘Beneath the Pyramids’ in which he claims to have (re)discovered the Lost Underworld of the Pharaohs starts with the assumption that the cave complex was last explorered in 1817 by Henry Salt and sadly forgotton or ignored after this; only an obscure reference in Salt’s memories references to the ‘catacombs’, which might even be the mythical Hall of Records. Dr. Zahi Hawass – Secretary General of the SCA – did already issue a statement saying the tomb’s location is well known to the SCA (thus the opposite of ‘lost’) and that there is no underground cave complex…
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About 30 kilometres directly south of Haifa, Israel, lies a very large tel (an earth mound containing ancient architectural and artefact remains) that tells a story crossing at least eight civilizations. It is there – at Tel Dor – that a rare and surprising archaeological discovery has been made:an engraved gemstone carrying a portrait of Alexander the Great was uncovered at an excavation area in the southwestern part of Tel Dor. It is surprising that a work of art such as this would be found in Israel, on the periphery of the Hellenistic world. It is generally assumed that the…
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As if Stonehenge itself wasn’t impressive enough yet – the sarcen stones vary in weight from 20 to 50 tonnes – we are being told over and over it’s part of a bigger whole, a ‘ritual landscape’ including the Avenue, the Durrington Walls, the Stonehenge Cursus, and Woodhenge. Using LiDAR – airborne 3D scanning – data Tom Goskar for Wessex Archaeology has created a stunning 3D animation of Stonehenge’s current day landscape, showing the Winterbourne Stoke Barrows and that the Avenue is still clearly visible today. Add to that a virtual reconstruction of the Amesbury Archer’s skull and a 3D visualisation of…
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There are nearly 1,000 prehistoric stone circles in Britain and Rupert Soskin – together with producer Michael Bott – has visited over 100 of them, making an astonishing documentary about these magnificent Neolithic and Bronze monuments, focussing on a lot of the lesser known prehistoric stone monuments from megalithic Britain. Barrows, henges, borrows, cists, thrilitons and solitary megaliths, Soskin covers them all. ‘Standing with Stones’ wants to take the viewer beyond Stonehenge – that all-too familiar icon of Stone Age Britain – on an incredible journey of discovery that reveals the true wealth and extent of Neolithic and Bronze Age…
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The Brooklyn Museum holds 7 human and over 60 animal mummies in their collection. We know already quite a lot about their human mummies, but now Lisa Bruno tells us more about the animal mummy research project at the Museum in an informal presentation for the Museum’s ‘1stfans’. The Brooklyn Museum’s conservator Lisa Bruno talks about what an object conservator exactly is (and how to become one), the travelling exhibition ‘To Live Forever’ which is coming to the Brooklyn Museum February 2010 and the research the Getty Institute did on the ‘red mummy’ Demetrios – once thought to be a…
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Andrew Collins promised the world that soon he’ll unravel Egypt’s best kept secret in ‘Beneath the Pyramids: Egypt’s Greatest Secret Uncovered’, but it seems that Dr. Zahi Hawass has beaten Collins to this, stating that the so-called cave-complex is nothing but a rock cut tomb, already thoroughly explored and examined. Dr. Hawass says in a statement on his website: “This story shows how people who do not have a background in archaeology use the media and the Internet to make headlines.Unfortunately, when people make statements without knowing the history of the subject, they may mislead the public.For example, if a…