Pupils from Haresfield Primary School recently joined up with amateur archaeologists to research undetected archaeological features in the Stroud countryside. A class of Year 5 children used a resitivity meter to measure the resistance of the ground at Haresfield Beacon. When uploaded onto a computer this data will help to show the formation of the ground, which may show up ancient earthworks, burial mounds and habitation sites, roadways or even civil war emplacements.Restivity Surveying is one of a number of activities carried out by volunteers at Gloucester and District Archaeological Research Group, which has just been awarded a grant under the Lottery Awards for All scheme. This has enabled the group to go ahead with a major new project to discover and research undetected archaeological features. [...]

A new exhibition on Cleopatra is coming to Philadelphia next June, and it will be a worldwide premiere."Cleopatra, The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt" is coming to the Franklin Institute in June 2010, brought by the same people behind the King Tut exhibit that wowed thousands in 2007. Troy Collins is senior vice president of marketing, programs, and business development for the Franklin Institute.  He says the exhibit's artifacts will come from two exciting sources: "Land sources from the famous explorer Zahi Hawass [above right], as well as some new outstanding and visually stunning objects that have been recovered from under the Bay of Alexandria by explorer Franck Goddio [top photo]." The exhibition will center on the search for Cleopatra's tomb, which is still going on. The exhibit will be at the Franklin Institute through New Year's week, 2011. [...]

An exceptional fortification structure surrounding the ancient city of Vergina, located in northern Greece, was recently discovered by archaeologists from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. [...] The architectural elements of the enclosure indicate that it dates back to the reign of Cassander, in the early third century BC, a period when Macedonia was plagued by major turmoil, including civil wars and attacks from the outside.The finding, according to the publication, is of remarkable importance because the wall is preserved in perfect condition. In addition to the structure, the university’s archaeological team also discovered a large number of artefacts, charred seeds and food, dating to the second and first centuries BC. Vergina is a small town in northern Greece, located in the prefecture of Imathia, Central Macedonia. The town became internationally famous in 1977, when Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos unearthed what he claimed was the burial site of the kings of Macedon, including the tomb of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. The finds established the site as the ancient Aigai, which was once the royal capital of ancient Macedon, ruled by the Argead dynasty from about 650 BC onwards. [...]

he specially trained dogs that will search the waterfront for evidence of bones and other archaeological Native American remains beginning today won't set paw on the abandoned Rayonier Inc. pulp mill property, the former site of the ancient and densely populated Klallam village of Y'Innis. Rayonier denied the city of Port Angeles access to the 75-acre waterfront site, which is two miles east of downtown, said Derek Beery, the city's archaeologist. "It's private property owned by a private firm," Beery said. "We don't, without permission, have the ability to be on that site."Rayonier Inc. company lawyer Don Schwendiman of Silverdale would not comment last week, saying he was not authorized to do so. Rayonier officials were not available for comment. Tank project: The refusal means that the city has one less tool to determine the extent of archaeological remains on the site if and when a 5-million-gallon Rayonier tank is made available to accommodate the city's sewer overflow, Beery said. That project would involve laying pipe connected to the tank. The discovery of artifacts and remains during site development could prompt extensive studies and delays under state and federal regulations.Though much of the Rayonier property is covered with concrete, making what lies beneath undetectable by the dogs, the importance of them sniffing around there "was tied to the combined sewer overflow project," Beery said last week. [...]

Five years ago, Kathryn Bard made a remarkable discovery in the Egyptian desert. While digging with an archaeological team along the Red Sea coast, she reached into the opening of a wall — and felt nothing. Further excavation revealed an ancient man-made cave containing a mud brick, a small grinding stone, shell beads, and part of a box. Days later, the team, led by Bard, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of archaeology, and Italian colleague Rodolfo Fattovich, uncovered the entrance to a second cave. Inside they found a network of larger rooms filled with dozens of nautical artifacts: limestone anchors, 80 coils of knotted rope, pottery fragments, ship timbers, and two curved cedar planks that likely are steering oars from a 70-foot-long ship. According to hieroglyphic inscriptions, the ship was dispatched to the southern Red Sea port of Punt by Queen Hatshepsut during the 15th century B.C.“It just gave me chills to stumble across such a frozen moment in time,” Bard recalls. “The ropes were perfectly preserved. They looked as if they’d been coiled yesterday.”The team discovered seven caves at Wadi Gawasis containing relics dating back 4,000 years. The first pieces ever recovered from Egyptian seagoing vessels, they offer a tantalizing glimpse into an elaborate network of Red Sea trade. [...]

The Col. Abner Gaines House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, but recent archaeological work could prompt an expansion of the site boundary. Next month in Frankfort, the Kentucky Historic Preservation Review Board is scheduled to consider a nomination drafted by local archeologist Jeannine Kreinbrink to incorporate the remaining acreage of the original Gaines farm. If the board approves the nomination, it would be forwarded to the National Park Service for final consideration The existing National Register boundary covers 4½-acres of the property on Old Nicholson Road. The nomination proposes expanding the boundary to almost seven acres.The Federal-style brick house dates to at least the 1810s and once served as a stagecoach stop and tavern along the Lexington-Covington Turnpike. The remaining acreage within the proposed boundary is north of the historic house. "The 6.96-acre site has the potential to provide significant information about the use history of the site and cultural context, including taverns and commerce, and settlement patterns and historical development of Boone County," the nomination reads. [...]

Dredged up from the murky depths of the Rhône River, beneath a heap of wrecked cars, rotting tires and more than 20 centuries of silt, the statue’s white marble visage was plain as day.“My God, it’s Caesar!” Luc Long remembers shouting after his team of archaeologists and divers discovered the statue in 2007.The Roman appears with little hair, a wrinkled forehead, a prominent Adam’s apple and features that, for Mr. Long, “seem carved in human flesh.” But Mr. Long did not realize at the time that he had discovered what he said was “the first portrait made of Caesar when he was alive.” The bust, which France’s Culture Ministry now dates from 46 B.C., is thought to be the only known surviving statue of Julius Caesar carved during his lifetime.Historians say images of a contemporaneous Caesar are rare — they are generally idealized versions, produced after his assassination two years later, in 44 B.C. — so the sudden news of the bust’s emergence led some of them to question its authenticity. Christian Goudineau, a French historian who lectures on Julius Caesar at the prestigious Collège de France in Paris, was caught off guard when Mr. Long told him of the discovery. “I was bewildered,” he recalled. [...]

After the successful launch of a historical atlas of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in digital format, the French Institute of Pondicherry(IFP), in association with four universities in southern states, has moved to the next phase to prepare a similar atlas of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The digital atlas is the first of its kind in India, which presents archaeological, historical, cultural, economic and social data on south India with geographical information system functionalities. It gives complete information on historical places, textual and photographic records collected from field surveys, archaeological reports, inscriptions, and literature in chronological order from prehistoric times to the 17th century. The IFP, in association with the Tamil University of Thanjavur, Mahatma Gandhi University of Kottayam, Mangalore University and Hyderabad University, undertook the novel project and has completed a pilot project to prepare a digital atlas of the next phase on selected locations - Shimoga in Karnataka and Telangana in Andhra Pradesh. Ford Foundation funded the ambitious project.

Iran has asked the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to protect the remains of a vanished Persian army of the Achaemenid empire in Egypt. The request was made through a letter by Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) on Sunday. "Egypt's chief archeologist Zahi Hawass has recently rejected the discovery of the army in his personal weblog due to political pressure," ICHTO Spokesman, Hassan Mohseni, told Fars news agency. Earlier reports announced that the remains of the army led by the Persian King, Cambyses II, had been discovered by the famous archeologists, the two Castiglioni brothers, in a small oasis not far from Siwa. "I need to inform the public that recent reports published in newspapers, news agencies and TV news announcing that twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni have unearthed the remains of the Persian army of Cambyses, are unfounded and misleading," Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, had written in his personal blog. [...]

Thousands of years of human activity along the Upper Peninsula's Lake Superior shoreline have come into sharper focus after three years of research. Scientists from Northern Michigan University's geography department recently completed a project at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore that located 23 new archaeological sites. The researchers also helped define the shoreline as it existed 4,500 years ago. Department head John Anderton said the National Park Service-backed effort was designed to find cultural resources so they can be protected during future road building and other developments. "In the first year of the project, satellite imagery was used to identify distinct land forms, notches, ridges and barriers created by wave action, to map the older shorelines," Northern Michigan spokeswoman Kristi Evans wrote on the school's Web site. "They found that the water was 30-40 feet higher than it is today." Anderton said today, the federally protected land isn't very habitable. "But if you go back a while, there were nice places for people to live," he said. "There were embayments, or shallow water lagoons, that had a variety of fish and plants , everything a hunter-gatherer would need." In the second year of the project, colleague Robert Legg carried out modeling of archaeological sites, using known sites to help find new ones with similar features. [...]