archaeology

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/11/2021
  

  It’s a Golden Age for Chinese Archaeology — And the West is Ignoring It

  by Rowan K. Flad

  Recent discoveries in Egypt have overshadowed more significant finds in China. This may reflect the romanticized popular culture image of colonial-era tomb-raiders, or the prevalent sense that Western civilization is derived from the Mediterranean world. It's time for a broader view of why the ancient world matters. 

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• 5/9/2021
  

  Mudlarking: Searching for Lost Treasure – and History – on the Banks of the Thames

  by Jason Sandy and Nick Stevens

  The Thames River's silty bottom and tidal patterns make its banks a repository of historical artifacts. Today's "mudlarks" have turned the old tradition of scavenging the banks for subsistence into a public archaeology project. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/24/2021
  

  What Doomed a Sprawling City Near St. Louis 1,000 Years Ago?

  New research shows little evidence that the civilization centered around Cahokia in the Mississippi valley caused its own demise by environmental mismanagement, indicating that perhaps "stories of great civilizations seemingly laid low by ecological hubris may say more about our current anxieties and assumptions than the archaeological record."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/20/2021
  

  What Should Museums Do With the Bones of the Enslaved?

  The Smithsonian is considering how to deal with its natural history collection of human remains, including those of enslaved people. Secretary Lonnie Bunch III suggests that the museum must be guided by the imperative "to honor and remember."

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/20/2021
  

  Harriet Tubman's Lost Maryland Home Found, Say Archaeologists

  State archaeologists discovered remains of a cabin that evidence suggests belonged to Ben Ross, and where the woman who would be known as Harriet Tubman lived for a period of time as a child. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/16/2021
  

  Israel Reveals Newly Discovered Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls

  These are the first new parchment fragments unearthed in Judea in 60 years. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/11/2021
  

  She Was Buried With a Silver Crown. Was She the One Who Held Power?

  The double burial at La Almoloya and other Argaric graves are making archaeologists reconsider life in ancient Iberia. Was she the one wielding the power?

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/25/2021
  

  Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past

  Annalee Newitz's book on lost cities debunks the idea of sudden, catastrophic collapse. But the death of cities does show that humanity is vulnerable to change that makes centuries-old ways of life untenable. 

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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. 

• 
• 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.