Archaeology Weekly Roundup! 3-22-13

Egyptian blue, the world’s oldest artificial pigment, could be put to a range of modern uses from medical imaging devices to remote controls for televisions, newly-published research says.

Research by Hendrik Bruins suggests people in the Negev highlands practiced agriculture as long ago as 5000 B.C.E. This is thousands of years earlier than researchers previously thought.

Stone tools unearthed at a Brazilian rock-shelter may date to as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery has contributed to the debate about whether ancient people reached the Americas long before the famed Clovis hunters 13,000 years ago.

If there are 60,000 – 70,000 – dead in Syria, with gas and power shortages in shattered cities, “what does heritage matter in the face of such tragic desolation”?

During the 2013 season of the Valley of the Kings Project carried out by University of Basel, Prof. Susanne Bickel’s team have found a number of exciting artifacts including what they suspect to be one of the oldest portable sundials in the area between tombs KV 29 and 61.

Workers digging a new railway line in London have uncovered what they believe is a burial ground containing victims of the Black Death — a plague that wiped out as much as half of London’s inhabitants when it swept the city in the mid-14th century.

Divers returning to the site of an ancient wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera have found artifacts scattered over a wide area of the steep, rocky sea floor. The team believes that hundreds more items could be buried in the sediment nearby.

Crete is pushing for Knossos to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is now preparing a new folder titled Minoan civilization, which will include the most important monuments on the island, such as Phaistos, Zakros and the archaeological site of Malia, with Knossos dominating the list.

Important new discoveries at the Tel Habuwa dig east of the Suez Canal shed light on the campaign by Ahmose I (c.1550–1525 BC) against the Hyksos invaders.

A restored bronze, Roman cockerel figurine is the best result from a Cirencester dig in decades, archaeologists have said, as the figurine has finished being conserved.

Polish archaeologists said this week that they had identified the remains of three leaders of the Teutonic Knights, an armed religious order that ruled swathes of the country centuries ago.

Explorers claim they have evidence of a 2,500-year-old planned city—complete with water reservoirs, roads, seals and coins—buried in Chhattisgarh, India, a discovery that is being billed as the nation’s biggest archaeological find in at least half a century.

A three year examination of astronomical alignments found in the buildings of Mesoamerican cities has demonstrated the basis of some pre-Columbian rituals.

Another 500 year-old recipe video! It’s nice to see all the historic cooking vessels they use.

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