Archaeologists Just Found Another British Noble Buried Under a Parking Lot

By Adam Clark Estes.

There's a sad lesson about urban planning in the trend of major archaeological finds turning up under parking lots in the United Kingdom. Or maybe it's a happy lesson. It's hard to tell.

Archaeologists just announced the discovery of headstone bearing the marks of nobility at the site of a new building being constructed in Edinburgh. Though they've yet to analyze the remains, they believe the knight was buried sometime in the 13th century. "This find has the potential to be one of the most significant and exciting archaeological discoveries in the city for many years, providing us with yet more clues as to what life was like in medieval Edinburgh," said Richard Lewis, a member of the City of Edinburgh Council, in a statement.

Funnily enough, the site of the discovery is a parking lot once used by the University of Edinburgh's archaeology department. This is even funnier when you consider the fact that the long lost remains of King Richard III showed up underneath a parking lot in Leicester. On one hand, the tandem discoveries show that the Brits paved over a lot of important piece of land to build parking lots. On the other hand, the fact that these remains were well preserved and untouched in modern times also suggests that parking lots work as pretty good shields from earth movers. 

It turns out that a lot of great archaeological treasures are found under parking lots. They are, after all, both plentiful and protective. And the recent discovery also shows that the Brits are giving due diligence to having archaeologists on hand when they break ground. While not everybody is thrilled about what historian Edward Tenner refers to as an "exhumation craze," it's encouraging to see workers take care to treat the ground beneath historical locations gingerly.

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Archaeologists believe Stonehenge may have been a burial site.

by: Shane McGlaun

One of the great mysteries in archaeology for decades has been exactly what Stonehenge was used for. Archaeologists and scientists have also attempted over the decades to figure out exactly how prehistoric humans could have constructed such an elaborate site using massive and incredibly heavy stones. Over the weekend, archaeologists offered up a new theory on what I Stonehenge might’ve been used for.

The archaeologists believe that centuries before the first massive sarsen stone was put in place at Stonehenge, the monument could’ve been a giant burial ground. The archaeologists report that they’ve discovered over 50,000 cremated bone fragments from 63 different individuals. These bone fragments were excavated and studied for the first time by a group of archaeologists headed by Professor Mike Parker Pearson.

Pearson has been working with Stonehenge and nearby monuments for decades. According to Pearson, he believes the earliest burials of the site are much older than the monument itself in its current form. According to Pearson, the smaller standing stones were carried to the site from Wales and placed as grave markers at approximately 3000 BC.

He believes that the site remained as a graveyard for at least 200 years with sporadic burials after that time. The archaeologists and his team used new techniques and were able to determine the first time that the burials at the location were not only of adult men. According to the new investigation there are almost equal numbers of men and women including children. The archaeologists discovered artifacts such as an incense bowl leading them to believe that the people buried at the site could’ve been religious and political leaders along with their immediate family.

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Giant camel fossil unearthed in the Arctic.

by: Erin Wayman.

The long-lost cousins of today's camels once roamed the high Arctic, browsing open forests in regions that are near-barren landscapes today. That's the conclusion from an analysis of the fragmentary remains of an ancient leg bone unearthed on Canada's Ellesmere Island, which lies just west of northern Greenland. The find also adds to the tantalizing clues about how these moose-sized, presumably shaggy progenitors fit into the camel family tree—a lineage that today boasts only two species of true camels but includes plenty of South American relatives such as llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas.

Today, camels inhabit arid regions stretching from northern Africa to the interior of Asia. But ancestors of the creatures first evolved in North America about 45 million years ago, says Natalia Rybczynski, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Some of these animals crossed a land bridge from what is today Alaska to eastern Siberia—and that meant they were living, even thriving, at latitudes where few mammals can now subsist.

The fossils, dug up by Rybczynski and her colleagues in recent field seasons, came from a gravel-rich layer of sediments laid down more than 3.4 million years ago. The 30 or so bits of bone, none more than 7 centimeters long, have suffered much since they were entombed: Ice sheets have scoured Ellesmere Island several times in the past few million years, and today's freeze-thaw cycles continue to splinter fossils into ever-smaller fragments, Rybczynski says. The sizes and shapes of the bone bits suggest that they came from a tibia (a lower leg bone), but from those clues alone it's impossible to identify the species or group of mammal the fossils came from. However, some bone features clearly indicate that the creature was an artiodactyl, a broad group that today includes deer, cows, and camels.

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SWISS DOLMEN REVEALS RITUALS OF THE NEOLITHIC

Source: www.pasthorizonspr.com

A sensational archaeological discovery has been made in the region of  Bern, Switzerland, consisting of a communal dolmen grave dating back to over 5,000 years, containing 30 bodies and Neolithic artefacts. It represents the first intact burial chamber to be found north of the Alps.

Unexpected discovery

In October 2011, specialists from the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern began investigation of the large granite slab weighing in at 7 tonnes. The glacial erratic measured 3 metres long, 2 metres wide and was nearly 1 metre thick – what they did not realise at first was that it still covered a grave belonging to a Neolithic community.

The site was originally found when a farmer decided to try and remove the glacial boulder that he had to mow around when cutting grass in his field.

The boulder is from the last glacial maximum – some 20,000 years ago – and used by the early farmers during the 4th millennium BCE for burial purposes.

According to a report in the Berner Zeitung, Roman and medieval artefacts were found directly overlying the Neolithic layers and show the dolmen was a visible feature in the landscape until at least the 13th century CE. Most of the sediments that cover the site are flood deposits from the nearby river.

Like winning the lottery

The site director of the Oberbipp dolmen excavation, Marco Amstutz comments, “What we found here is like winning the lottery. “

An intact Neolithic communal burial is slowly coming to light, after fears the grave may have been ransacked in the past. The uprights are slightly tilted due to constant flooding from the nearby river, but despite this, the site is reasonably intact.

The excavation of the burial chamber has revealed over 30 individuals as well as what must represent grave goods from the period, including flint arrowheads pendants made of animal teeth and one bead, probably of limestone.

DNA testing of the occupants as well as sophisticated analysis of their teeth will be taking place over the next two years.

Italian Archaeologists discovered the temple of Jupiter Stator in Rome

The Temple of Jupiter Stator was first vowed, according to ancient tradition, by Romulus after a battle with the Sabines. The city of Rome was hardly more than a settlement on the Palatine Hill, and the battle was taking place in the valley, in the Forum Romanum. The Romans were forced to retreat up hill by the Via Sacra, but at the Porta Mugonia they managed to regroup and hold their ground against the Sabines, who were eventually defeated.

Romulus consecrated a templum to Jupiter Stator, "The Stayer", at the spot, just outside the Porta Mugonia. The sanctuary was not an aedes, more likely it was an altar enclosed by a low wall or fence.

In 294 BCE Marcus Atilius Reguilus made a similar vow in a similar situation, when the Romans were losing a battle against the Samnites, but then miraculously turned around, regrouped and held their ground against the enemy. Afterwards he had an aedes, a temple building, constructed on the site of the archaic altar.

On November 8, 63 BCE consul M. Tullius Cicero convened the senate to a meeting in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, where he held his famous first oration against Catiline, denouncing an attack on the state, which he then ruthlessly suppressed.

The location of the Temple of Jupiter Stator is not known with absolute certainty. The written sources give some hints, such as near or just outside the Porta Mugonia (but it is not known where that was), on the higher end of the Via Sacra or just on the Palatine.

There is a fair amount of consensus on a location just besides the Arch of Titus on the N. slope of the Palatine Hill. When a medieval tower was demolished in 1827, the ruins of an ancient building appeared, and these remains are frequently identified as the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter Stator.

The Italian archaeologist Filippo Coarelli places the Temple of Jupiter Stator closer to the forum, between the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the Basilica of Maxentius, where the so-called Temple of Romulus  stand. His line of reasoning is based on the course of the Via Sacra before the construction of the Basilica of Maxentius, the known borders of the ancient administrative regions of the city and literary sources listing the monuments in each region. The location near the Arch of Titus does not fit, since it is in the wrong administrative region and not in the right position relative to the other buildings listed by ancient writers, but the Temple of Romulus on the Via Sacra is a perfect match.

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Archaeologist says bones found in Turkey are probably those of Cleopatra’s half-sister.

By John Bordsen.

Long-buried bones and a missing monarch. Add some historical notoriety and modern technology and you have a heck of a captivating, science-driven story.

Just this month, it was announced that bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England, belonged to King Richard III. DNA evidence, according to the lead archaeologist at the excavation, proved this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

For Hilke Thur, a Vienna-based archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a similar quest awaits empirical closure. The locale is more exotic – western Turkey – and the evidence is much more difficult to analyze: The bones in question are a bit more than 2,000 years old.

Thur will cover this and other aspects of her work in a March 1 lecture at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh.

The title: “Who Murdered Cleopatra’s Sister? And Other Tales from Ephesus.”

In a recent interview, Thur discussed…

What took her to Ephesus

“I’m an architect as well as an archaeologist, and Ephesus – a large and important city on the coast of Asia Minor centuries before it became part of the Roman Empire – has long been one of the biggest archaeological sites. It is the main excavation of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

“I was a student when I started working there in 1975, and have based a great deal of my career around the site. From 1997 to 2005 I was assistant director of the Ephesus excavations.

“An English engineer directed the first archaeological digs there in 1869. But since 1895 only Austrian-led projects have permission to do that, though Turks sometimes have excavations. I’d like to add that it’s quite an international team there, with researchers from all over the world.

“My specialty is interpreting buildings and monuments. The excavations of one monument, The Octagon, began in 1904. In 1926, a grave chamber was found inside The Octagon. The skeleton inside it has been interpreted to be that of a young woman about age 20.”

What thickened the plot

“When I was working with the architecture of The Octagon and the building next to it, it wasn’t known whose skeleton was inside. Then I found some ancient writers telling us that in the year 41 B.C., Arsinoe IV – the half-sister of Cleopatra – was murdered in Ephesus by Cleopatra and her Roman lover, Marc Antony. Because the building is dated by its type and decoration to the second half of the first century B.C., this fits quite well.

“I put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

The eight-sided clues

“In antiquity, ordinary people were not buried within the city. That privilege was only for special people – those with an aristocratic background, or people who did special things for their city. So the body must have belonged to a special person. Also, the skeleton was of a woman.

“Then there is the shape of the building. While The Octagon exists only as ruins today, its pieces have been photographed. The images were digitized and ‘virtually rebuilt’ on a computer. The shape of the building, an imperial grave monument, resembles the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The lighthouse, destroyed centuries ago, was built at Alexandria, on the Egyptian coast, by the Ptolemy dynasty from which Cleopatra and Arsinoe IV were descended.

“The center portion of the lighthouse tower was octagonal, which was quite unusual at the time.”

Forensic evidence

“The site of The Octagon has a grave chamber. It was opened in 1926, but the opening was very small, and no one entered it until later on.

“The skull had been removed for tests; it disappeared in Germany during World War II. But there are photos of the skull, and notes written down by those who examined it.

“In 1985 the back side of the chamber became accessible and I re-found the skeleton – the bones were in two niches. The body was removed and examined. The bones were found to be those of a woman younger than 20 – 15 or 16, perhaps.

“The revised age was used for arguments against my theory of the body belonging to Arsinoe IV, but those arguments didn’t find anything to disprove my theory.

“This academic questioning is normal. It happens. It’s a kind of jealousy.”

What would prove her theory

“They tried to make a DNA test, but testing didn’t work well because the skeleton had been moved and the bones had been held by a lot of people. It didn’t bring the results we hoped to find.

“I don’t know if there are possibilities to do more of this testing. Forensic material is not my field.

“One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there currently is no other method to really determine more. But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is hope.”

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Archaeologists discover mammoth burial site.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Serbia say they have discovered a rare mammoth field containing the remains of at least five of the giant beasts that lived here tens of thousands of years ago.

The discovery last week at the Kostolac coal mine, east of the Serbian capital of Belgrade, is the first of its kind in the region. It could offer important insight into the ice age in the Balkans, said Miomir Korac from Serbia's Archaeology Institute.

"There are millions of mammoth fragments in the world, but they are rarely so accessible for exploration," he told The Associated Press.

"A mammoth field can offer incredible information and shed light on what life looked like in these areas during the ice age."

The remains were found during coal excavation about 20 metres below ground. Mr Korac said the mammoth field stretches over some eight hectares of sandy terrain.

In 2009, a well-preserved skeleton of a much older mammoth was found at the same site. Vika - as the female skeleton was dubbed - is up to one million years old and belonged to the furless, so-called southern mammoth.

The bones discovered last month probably belong to the so-called woolly mammoth, which disappeared some 10,000 years ago, said Sanja Alaburic, a mammoth expert from Serbia's Museum of Natural History.

Ms Alaburic explained that "this discovery is interesting because, unusually, there are many bones in one place," probably brought there by torrential waters.

Mr Korac said Serbian archaeologists already have contacted colleagues in France and Germany for consultation. He said at least six months of work will be needed before all the bones are unearthed.

Another mammoth skeleton was discovered in northern Serbia in 1996. It belonged to a female mammoth that lived about 500,000 years ago and is now on display in the town of Kikinda, near the Hungarian border.

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