Archaeology Weekly Roundup! 6-7-13

The ivory carvings and plaques found at the 8th century BCE Phoenician city of Arslan Tash — “Stone Lion” — may appear as flat monochrome objects when viewed in museums today, but once they shone with brilliant blue, red and several other colors as well as glittering with real gold paint.

The ancient town of Sebastia is one of the major archaeological sites of the Holy Land, with its overlapping layers of history dating back nearly 3,000 years. But today the hilltop capital of biblical kings, later ruled by Roman conquerors, Crusaders and Ottomans, is marred with weeds, graffiti and garbage.

A towering “rain control” site, where shamans would have asked the gods to open up the skies centuries ago, has been discovered in South Africa.

A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.

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