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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Not a week after we flagged up the archaeological site of Birne as the place to visit during Scottish Archaeology Month, its been announced that the remains of another Iron Age roundhouse have been discovered there. Archaeologists have speculated that the erstwhile multi-storey structure these days reduced to just a hard floor and rotting timber beams may once been the very centre of what was a Celtic power base in the north east of Scotland some 2,000 years ago. 20 roundhouses have been found at Birnie so far five in the last year alone. But this one, located at Dykeside…
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One of the ‘most important, but least understood, Roman sites in Britain’ is how the University of Nottingham has described the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk. Excavation work began at the site at the end of August, as mentioned in this previous blog, but the archaeologists working there had little idea of the mysterious discovery they were about to make. In the past few days a highly unusual burial has come to light, with a Roman-era skeleton interred in a shallow grave and placed in an unconventional pose. It could be that they were…
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Nazi Egyptology is a complex subject. As Professor Thomas Schneider said, there is no uniform ‘Nazi Egyptology’ discipline. Instead there are a number of German Egyptologists who were thrown into the academic hole of the Third Reich – who each reacted to it in their own way. An interesting story that I didnt put into the article The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology, forbrevity reasons, is that of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Bissing was a professor at Munich. He is perhaps most noted for his work at Abu Ghurab, done at the turn of the century, where he excavated the…
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Tiny flax fibres aged 34,000 years old the earliest examples of their type ever seen have been discovered by archaeologists in a cave in the Caucasus mountains of the Republic of Georgia. Theyre so tiny theyre not visible to the naked eye the team responsible for the find, from Harvard University, only spotted the minute artefacts while examining clay samples from the cave under a microscope. The flax was probably used to make linen or thread, and was collected raw from the wild, rather than being farmed. It could have been put to all sorts of uses from making warm…
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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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Got a metal detector? Into archaeology? Lost your, ahem, manhood? Then the Manhood Search and Recovery Society is for you a newly-formed body promoting conscientious metal detecting in the West Sussex area of England, as well as the important role it can play in archaeology and, with it, local history. In the long term, the society aims to swell its ranks to the point where it can assistant in major archaeological digs. Responsible metal detectorists play a big part in our understanding of the region and our place, organisation founder Steve Lawrence told the Midhurst and Petworth Observer. Our first…
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If you want to keep up with celebrity news a Toronto newspaper is a good place to get it. The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing, with its long list of celebrities and accompanying red carpet antics. But theres one story in particular that might be of interest to archaeology fans out there. Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame) is out with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. He held a 45 minute press conference in Toronto to publicize it and hes given a number of media interviews about his ideas. The movie, from what Ive read,…
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Three Roman-era figurines of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, have been unearthed at an archaeological site east of the sea of Galilee in Israel. Sussita, known as Hippos to the Greeks on account of the horse’s head-shaped hill on which it was built, was a Greco-Roman town that became one of the 10 cities (the Decapolis) in Coele-Syria that were granted some independence when Pompey conquered in 63 BC. (Other Decapolis cities include Qanawat and Jerash.) It is thought that the figurines, measuring 23cm high, date from the fourth century AD a time when Constantine the Great laid out the…
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One of the most impressive and startling structures in the world is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, yet the construction of it remains the subject of much debate and discussion to this very day. Dr Mark Lehner, an archaeologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and Harvard Semitic Museum, has given an exclusive video interview to Heritage Key in which he explains what he and his team are doing in their latest excavation. Dr Lehner wants to know the answer to a question that rarely gets asked – Where and how did the workers who…