The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism in the central province of Ha Tinh and the Vietnam History Museum began a third excavation December 29 of the Phoi Phoi - Bai Coi archeological site in Nghi Xuan District. Archeologists will carry out work on the 200-square-meter area until next April in hopes of learning more about two prehistoric cultures known as Dong Son and Sa Huynh. The Phoi Phoi - Bai Coi archeological site was first discovered in 1974 by the History Faculty of the General University in Hanoi. [...]

Native American artifacts believed to date back thousands of years have been recovered from the planned site of a new industrial plant in southwest Ohio. SunCoke Energy Inc. found some items as it prepared to build a plant to help supply coke for AK Steel's Middletown Works. The Knoxville, Tenn.-based company hired an archaeological firm to excavate two sites near a creek. Officials say several hundred prehistoric artifacts were recovered, mostly fragments from arrowheads, spearheads, and evidence of stone tool making. They are believed to be from the era between 8000 B.C. and 1200 A.D. [...]

A 700-year-old stone cross discovered at a medieval settlement may have been an early "advert" reminding Christians to attend church, experts said today.
Archaeologists found the artefact in a remote part of Dartmoor as part of a student field exercise. The cross was first thought to be a gatepost, but after some research experts found it probably served as a Christian signpost or boundary stone. The team, led by Win Scutt and Ross Dean of City College Plymouth, stumbled on the object when surveying the ruins of a medieval settlement on the slopes of Gutter Tor. No longer upright, the 13th century cross was not identified until the last day of the survey. Mr Scutt said: "We had assumed it was a gatepost until examining the shape of the stone and the incisions. We were bowled over when we realised what it actually was. "They are found variously around Devon and Cornwall and have different functions. Some go back to Saxon times and are signposts to church. "They are reminders to Christians in the more remote parts of the parish, so people are reminded to go to church. It is almost like an advert. A constant reminder." Parishioners would already know the way to church so the cross was probably there to keep worship in people's minds. [...]

Somewhere in the Sierra Nevada, a granite terrace the size of a football field holds hundreds of mysterious stone basins representing what geologists believe is one of the earliest known "factories" created and used by ancient Miwok Indians to make tons of salt to trade with tribes up and down California. James G. Moore, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, learned of the strangely pitted terrace from detailed maps made more than a century ago and hiked the region in May to study what he determined were clearly hand-hewn objects. He examined 369 of the circular artifacts only a few yards from two streams of saltwater fed by a nearby spring and a lake that was equally salty. Moore and his colleague at the USGS, Michael F. Diggles, believe the circular basins were handmade by the Miwok people in an impressive display of early technology. They have published a detailed account of their findings in an official Geological Survey report, but because the area is now an "archaeologically sensitive" site and its location protected by law, Moore is permitted only to say that the basins are in a canyon somewhere within the Stanislaus National Forest. [...]

The National Trust is appealing for information about a human tooth that has turned up alongside Jacobean furniture and old masters during the annual winter cleaning of a stately pile. The badly decayed molar, still with small scraps of flesh attached, was found in an attic cabinet at Blickling Hall, former home of the Boleyn family whose most famous member, Anne, lost her head in 1536 on the orders of King Henry VIII. The tooth is thought to be much more recent than Anne's Tudor days, prompting the trust's hopes that its former owner, or a relative, may have information about home dentistry or possibly a fight at the mansion in Norfolk. The trust's regional archaeologist, Angus Wainwright, said today: "Perhaps there was a servants' brawl or maybe an airman lost a tooth when the RAF took the hall over during the second world war." The tooth's owner was a stranger to modern dentistry, with a large hole in one side of the molar and a honeycomb of small cavities throughout. Wainwright said: "They would have suffered a huge amount of pain, which lends some weight to the extraction theory." Air force dentists attended staff billeted at Blickling, although the cheap alternative of tying a loose tooth to a doorknob and slamming the door was a common remedy in the 1940s. Wainwright said: "The tooth is in a very bad condition indeed. We've found lots of interesting things in the Blickling attics before now but this has to got to be the weirdest." [...]

Experts are studying the first Mayan hieroglyphic script dealing with the life of a high priest, his blood sacrifices and acts of penance, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said. The text consists of 260 glyphs carved into a series of seashell earrings and manta ray stingers found inside a burial urn. The urn, which also contained the remains of an important Maya priest, wrapped in bright red cloth, was uncovered during excavations 11 years ago in Comalcalco, in southeastern Tabasco state, the institute said in a statement. "It is the longest Maya hieroglyphic script ever found to date in Tabasco" and the first relating a high priest, instead of a Maya ruler and his wives, INAH said. The text covers 14 years in the life of a Maya priest who lived in the eighth century A.D. It includes references to blood sacrifices and acts of penance preceding the spring solstice. Maya priests used manta ray stingers to pierce their earlobes, tongue, forehead, penis and other parts of the anatomy, in painful, bloodletting sacrifices to induce a hallucinogenic state in which they believed they could talk to their gods, INAH said. [...]

Archaeologists have found a whisk known as molinillo in a plastic container inside the storerooms at St. Augustines Government House in the US, which suggests that chocolate may have been made and eaten in St. Augustine in the 1500s. According to a report in the St. Augustine Record, the whisk is a slender wooden stick with a carved knob on one end. It shows a probable connection to Mexico or Central America that St. Augustine had, said City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt. Its evidence for the presence of the chocolate drink (in St. Augustine), he added. The cacao bean, the basis for chocolate, was originally grown from rainforest trees and used in Central America and Mexico as currency. For thousands of years, chocolate was known as a drink rather than as candy. Archaeologists found the molinillo in a well during a dig on the south side of St. Augustine. Halbirt said that the finding of the molinillo as well as pits of oyster, clam shells and animal bone shows the area may be associated with street vendors or a feasting place. That well and the water in it are the reason the wooden stirrer survived. [...]

OCTOBER's moorland fires have uncovered a mysterious monument in Goathland which could be more than 4,500 years old. The image featured with this story was taken by aerial surveyors from English Heritage who recently flew two military aircraft over moorland near Goathland to snap the prehistoric stone enclosure and multiple stone cairns. [...]

Ces traces d'activités humaines, les plus vieilles en Europe occidentale, remonteraient à près de 1,6 million d'années.Comme souvent en archéologie, la découverte a été fortuite. C'est en se promenant dans la carrière de basalte de Lézignan-la-Cèbe (Hérault) qu'un habitant de ce village ramasse, dans un «trou», de nombreux ossements. Il les porte à des archéologues qui vont très vite s'apercevoir que cette cavité recèle des fossiles d'os et de dents appartenant à de nombreux vertébrés : bovidés, cervidés, équidés, rhinocérotidés, proboscidiens (sans doute un Mammuthus meridionalis), oiseaux et reptiles. Cette faune est représentative d'une époque allant de - 1,8 million d'années à - 780 000 ans. Et la chance des archéologues est que la coulée de basalte qui recouvre le site, due à une éruption du volcan des Baumes, a pu être datée de - 1,57 million d'années. Ce qu'il y a dessous est donc forcément plus vieux. Cerise sur le gâteau, des fouilles récentes ont mis au jour un cortège d'objets fabriqués par l'homme. Il s'agit donc des plus ­anciennes traces d'activité humaine ­jamais découvertes en Europe occidentale, selon la note d'Yves Coppens dans les Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences. [...]

Un nouveau site archéologique vient d’être découvert par des citoyens dans la commune d’Aghbalou, à 60 km au nord-est de Bouira, au lieudit Agulmim, qui signifie en kabyle « plage » ou « rive ».Il s’agit d’un cimetière situé dans la propriété de Belmiloud Mohamed Chérif, un descendant de la famille de Fatma n’Soumer, précise-t-on. Ainsi, lors d’un terrassement effectué pour la construction d’une habitation, ce citoyen a eu la surprise de découvrir un tas d’ossements humains. Plus d’une trentaine, à une profondeur de 3 m et même des traces de cercueils. « J’ai découvert de nombreux squelettes. Parmi eux, une femme tenant un enfant dans ses bras. Une fois j’ai mesuré l’un de ces squelettes, il faisait plus de 2,55 m. Je crois que c’étaient des géants, surtout avec ces grandes dimensions. » Interrogé sur les positions et l’emplacement de ces squelettes, notre interlocuteur nous dit : « Ils étaient différents, chaque squelette avec une position, accroupis, allongés, en position fœtale… avec des dents intactes. » Ce qui écarte toute relation avec l’époque islamique. Les ossements en question ont été amassés dans des sacs et enfouis de nouveau. Nous apprenons de la même source qu’une tablette écrite a même été découverte sur les lieux et a fait l’objet d’un vol il y a longtemps. [...]