archaeology

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/12/2021
  

  Was Stonehenge a ‘Secondhand’ Monument?

  An archaeology paper recently published points to an excavated circle of stones in Wales as the possible original site of Stonehenge. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/6/2021
  

  In Beleaguered Babylon, Doing Battle Against Time, Water and Modern Civilization

  The ancient city of Babylon is a World Heritage Site, but it faces threats old and new. As some of its walls crumble, preservationists are fighting to preserve the past.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/31/2021
  

  Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Really Looks Like

  by Annalee Newitz

  "Having spent the past several years researching a book about ancient abandoned cities, I’ve come to realize that urban collapse is a modern-day version of an apocalypse prophecy: It’s always lurking just around the corner, seductive and terrifying, but it never quite happens."

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  1/21/2021
  

  Archaeologists Unearth Egyptian Queen’s Tomb, 13-Foot ‘Book of the Dead’ Scroll

  For the first time, archaeologists at the Saqqara necropolis have excavated coffins, estimated at 3,000 years old. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/9/2020
  

  Lockdown Gardening in Britain Leads to Archaeological Discoveries

  Locked-down Britons have unearthed many potentially valuable objects both modern and ancient, prompting consideration of expanding a law that would enable museums to claim such objects after compensating the finder.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/30/2020
  

  Campaigners Launch Legal Challenge Over Stonehenge Road Tunnel

  A plan to tunnel underneath the site of Stonehenge to expand a British highway is controversial and reflects different understandings of preservation. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/25/2020
  

  Grave Is Found at Site of Historic Black Church in Colonial Williamsburg

  The excavation may have discovered the remains of a Baptist congregation dating to the late 18th century, and may prompt a rethinking of the place of African American history in the open museum of Colonial Williamsburg.

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• SOURCE: CBS News
  11/29/2020
  

  Finding the Last Ship Known to have Brought Enslaved Africans to America and the Descendants of its Survivors

  "The Clotilda was burned and sunk in an Alabama River after bringing 110 imprisoned people across the Atlantic in 1860. Two years ago, its remains were found."

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• SOURCE: Discover
  11/29/2020
  

  The Complicated History of Religion and Archaeology

  Modern archaeology has largely succeeded in instituting professionalization and historical rigor to the study of sites of theological significance, but the discipline has a long and continuing historical entanglement with efforts to find proof of religious doctrines.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/15/2020
  

  Egypt Unearths New Mummies Dating Back 2,500 Years

  A recent excavation has produced the largest discovery of artifacts of the year at the Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/4/2020
  

  How Do You Know When Society Is About to Fall Apart?

  "Contemporary society has built-in vulnerabilities that could allow things to go very badly indeed — probably not right now, maybe not for a few decades still, but possibly sooner."

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• SOURCE: Smithsonian
  10/28/2020
  

  Maryland Archaeologists Unearth Jesuit Plantation’s 18th-Century Slave Quarters

  “The Jesuits were prolific in their record keeping, but very little survived on the enslaved African Americans who worked the fields and served the Catholic Church,” says Julie Schablitsky, the highway administration’s chief archaeologist, in the statement.

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• SOURCE: ABC News
  9/9/2020
  

  Black Scuba Divers Document Slave Shipwrecks Forgotten For Generations

  Columbia University professor Christopher Brown says the number of slave shipwrecks that researchers have been able to confirm are the absolute minimum, and that the true number of shipwrecked slave ships are likely much higher. The work of a Florida diving group hopes to change that. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/24/2020
  

  1,100-Year-Old Treasure Is Unearthed by Teenagers in Israel

  The discovery offers clues to the relations between different empires that controlled the region centuries ago.

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• SOURCE: Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
  8/17/2020
  

  ‘The Mystery Is Over’: Researchers Say They Know What Happened To ‘Lost Colony’

  “You’re robbing an entire nation of people of their history by pretending Croatoan is a mystery on a tree,” said Scott Dawson.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/25/2020
  

  Ancient Teeth Show History of Epidemics is Much Older than we Thought

  Scientists and archaeologists now believe that the plague bacteria, which caused the medieval Black Death, infected humans roughly 5,000 years ago in the Stone Age.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/13/2020
  

  A Century After a Race Massacre, Tulsa Finally Digs for Suspected Mass Graves

  The excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery, delayed for months by the pandemic, begins Monday morning.

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  6/29/2020
  

  In Search of King David’s Lost Empire

  The evidence of David’s life is sparse. Was he an emperor? A local king? Or, as Biblical archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims, a Bedouin sheikh?

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• 6/7/2020
  

  Contagion and Recovery in the Hittite Empire

  by Eva von Dassow

  The progress of an ancient plague shows that when faith--in gods or medical research--fails, it's a long road to safety.

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• SOURCE: DCist
  5/19/2020
  

  The Bible Museum Has Another Epic Issue With One Of Its Artifacts

  Federal prosecutors in New York filed a civil action to forfeit one of the museum's clay tablets containing an excerpt of the "Epic of Gilgamesh."