Exciting connections emerging between conservation of one of the world’s largest caves and archaeological relics of the ancient Maya civilization will be revealed when noted Maya archaeologist Dr. Jaime Awe speaks at the McClung Museum on the University of Tennessee campus on March 23 at 7 p.m. Titled "Ancient Maya Cave Use and the Conservation of Subterranean Sites in Western Belize,” his talk is sponsored by The Nature Conservancy’s Tennessee Chapter, the University of Tennessee’s Archaeology Research Lab and the East Tennessee Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America.As an international conservation organization, The Nature Conservancy has been active in the protection of the forests and caves of Belize where Dr. Awe investigates ancient Maya archaeological sites. Caves were sacred places to Native American cultures. For the Maya civilization, caves were portals to the underworld, representing both creation and death to the Maya. Staff from the organization’s Tennessee Chapter have recently traveled to Belize to assist local officials in conservation planning and consulting there. Protecting the country’s natural resources is resulting in protection for cultural resources as well, such as Maya relics that remain in the forests and caves of Belize. Nature Conservancy staff discovered this connection when they made the acquaintance of Dr. Awe in Belize in the course of their work there. [...]

The Pack Rat (Neotoma albigula), also known as the White-throated wood rat, has been in this region for at least 50,000 years. And it has been collecting things. Pat rats are troublesome around one’s home because they will eat insulation from automobile wires and get into the walls of a house. However, their habits have made them good desert archaeologists.The pack rat measures 8 inches long, head and body, and the tail is another 5- to 7 inches. The tail is covered by loose skin which can be shed to escape a predator. Pack rats are usually solitary. A pack rat nest is a loose conglomeration of twigs and grass, fortified against predators with cactus parts, especially cholla. The nest consists of tunnels and chambers with separate areas for food storage, sleeping, nursery, and waste products. There are often many insects in the nest feeding on collected plant material. Kissing bugs also inhabit the nest and feed on pack rat blood. Currently, the pat rat obtains nourishment and water mainly from feeding on prickly pear cactus. Its kidneys have evolved to deal with and excrete oxalic acid derived from the cactus. It is one of the few animals that can do this. (See my blog: Can you get potable water from a cactus for an explanation of oxalic acid.) That ability and its habit of collecting things is what makes the pack rat a good desert archaeologist. [...]

THE work of the team which led to the rescue of the Staffordshire Hoard has landed a top archaeology award. The independent charity The Art Fund has congratulated the Staffordshire Hoard team for winning the Best Rescue Dig of 2010, from readers of the magazine Current Archaeology. Dr Kevin Leahy, the national adviser for early medieval metalwork, who catalogued the find with his wife Dianne, accepted the award from Professor Brian Fagan, of the University of California, at the British Museum. Containing more than 1,500 Anglo-Saxon pieces, the hoard is valued at £3.3 million. Campaigners want to keep it in the Midlands. Fund-raisers – led by the Art Fund – have until April 17 to raise the cash to acquire it and have so far raised more than £1 million. [...]

Mise à jour | Update

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to allot more time to trying to reach an understanding with the residents of Silwan regarding the archaeological park project. Netanyahu clarified to Barkat that he does not intend to intervene in running the city's affairs, nor in the jurisdiction of the enforcement, building, and planning bodies. However, the prime minister asked that Barkat be considerate of the existence of figures in the world who seek to present a distorted reality in Jerusalem. [...]

Findings at the White Bend site will be highlighted in a program Sunday at the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum in Carthage. The program begins at 1 p.m. at the museum at 306 Walnut, one block south of U.S. 136 and across the street from the Historic Carthage Jail. Featured speaker Dave Nolan, an archaeologist with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois, will highlight discoveries by the team that searched for evidence of pre-Columbian life on the banks of the LaMoine River east of Carthage. After his presentation, Nolan will remain at the museum until 4 p.m. to discuss ongoing research, answer questions and identify artifacts attendees may have in their personal collections. "I encourage people to bring things in, especially items of interest," Nolan said. "It's a whole different perspective on what's out there when you see long-term collections. A lot of information can be had from local collections." There is no charge to have artifacts identified or to attend the program. [...]

The annual spectacle that is The Cambridge Science Festival takes place at venues across the city this March. Over 150 activities are planned for the two weeks of the festival, from 8 to 21 March 2010. Most of the events are free. On offer is everything from the highbrow to the downright ridiculous. The festival's highlight is its family day, on Saturday 13 March, when both the innovative and the explosive take centre-stage. With the Darwin Festival and the Cambridge 800 celebrations tucked firmly under its belt, the University of Cambridge is getting ready for its first big event of 2010. The Cambridge Science Festival has grown in stature and popularity to such a degree that it's even spawned a little sister - The Festival of Ideas - which specialises in popular culture and the humanities, and takes place in September.This year's Science Festival kicks off on Monday 8 March and offers a packed programme - two weeks of talks, drop-in sessions, themed walks, hands-on events and activities to suit everyone from curious toddlers to serious scientists. Science on Saturdays, Saturday 13 March and Saturday 20 March are designated as family days, packed full of events taking place at venues across the city. [...]

I was having a really productive day before I stumbled across a blog called the Hardcore Archaeologist. Then things got significantly more time-wastey. The blog isn't anything more than a bunch of pictures of bands, T-shirts, and record covers from the days of hardcore past, but curator Jeremy Dean has a good eye and 80s hardcore still gives off a super intense vibe—both of which make it hard to stop scrolling. [...]

A team of paleontologists has discovered a new dinosaur species they're calling Abydosaurus, which belongs to the group of gigantic, long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus.In a rare twist, they recovered four heads - two still fully intact - from a quarry in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Complete skulls have been recovered for only eight of more than 120 known varieties of sauropod. "Their heads are built lighter than mammal skulls because they sit way out at the end of very long necks," said Brooks Britt, a paleontologist at Brigham Young University. "Instead of thick bones fused together, sauropod skulls are made of thin bones bound together by soft tissue. Usually it falls apart quickly after death and disintegrates." Britt is a co-author on the discovery paper scheduled to appear in the journal Naturwissenshaften.The lead author is Daniel Chure, a paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument, who has no trouble boiling down the significance of the discovery. "We've got skulls!" he shouted with sweeping hand gestures during a recent visit to the site. BYU geology students and faculty resorted to jackhammers and concrete saws to cut through the hardened 105-million-year-old sandstone containing the bones. At one point the National Park Service called in a crew to blast away the overlying rock with explosives. [...]

The exploits of China's first emperor, Qui Shihauangdi, are richly documented in 2,000-year-old records of his conquests across eastern China. His reign was indeed noteworthy - he is responsible for initiating construction of the Great Wall, and the discovery of life-size terracotta soldiers that guard his tomb in central China has generated worldwide attention.But as the saying goes, history is written by the winners. Ancient texts can contain inaccuracies favorable to a strong ruler's legacy. That's why two Field Museum scientists and their Chinese collaborator have integrated textual information with archaeological research in order to further understand the impact of Shihauangdi's reign. The scientists are Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas - husband and wife anthropologists who, since 1996, have spent four to six weeks each year walking across fields in rural China looking for pottery sherds and other artifacts with colleagues including Fang Hui of the School of History and Culture at Shandong University. They compared ancient written records to archaeological evidence and the result of their work is a more holistic view of China's first emperor and his influence on the eastern province of Shandong. A report of their research will be published in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of February 22, 2010. Shihuangdi first unified China in 221 BC but scholars have few details of his distant conquests or how they changed the path of local histories. Records show that in 219 BC the emperor visited Langya Mountain on the southeastern Shandong coast. Written accounts from that time say the area "delighted" him and he stayed for three months. Afterwards, he ordered 30,000 households (about 150,000 people) to colonize the area with the promise that new immigrants would be free from tax and labor obligations for 12 years. [...]

The remains of an extraordinary fossil unearthed in 67-million-year-old sediments from Gujarat, western India provide a rare glimpse at an unusual feeding behavior in ancient snakes.An international paleontological team led by the University of Michigan's Jeff Wilson and the Geological Survey of India's Dhananjay Mohabey will publish their discovery online March 2 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology. The remains of a nearly complete snake were found preserved in the nest of a sauropod dinosaur, adults of which are the largest animals known to have walked the earth. The snake was coiled around a recently hatched egg adjacent to a hatchling sauropod. Remains of other snake individuals associated with egg clutches at the same site indicate that the newly described snake made its living feeding on young dinosaurs."It was such a thrill to discover such a portentous moment frozen in time," said Mohabey, who made the initial discovery in the early 1980s. Working with the sediment-covered and inscrutable specimen in 1987, Mohabey recognized dinosaur eggshell and limb bones but was unable to fully interpret the specimen. In 2001, Wilson visited Mohabey at his office at the Geological Survey of India and was astonished when he examined the specimen. [...]