TIM O'BRIEN

AN BORD Pleanála yesterday reopened a two-year-old oral hearing into proposals for a major regional landfill on a 600-acre site at Nevitt in north Co Dublin.

The board said the re-opening was in response to concerns from academics that the site may be the location of a pre-Christian, "large-ditched enclosure of the Tara or Navan kind".

Read the rest on the IrishTimes.

High in Peru’s Andes, the skeletons of people buried at the famous Inca site of Machu Picchu tell a tale of displacement and devoted service. A new chemical analysis of these bones supports the previously postulated idea that Inca kings used members of a special class of royal retainers from disparate parts of the empire to maintain and operate the site, which served as a royal estate.

Read the rest here.

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
Read the rest on Discovery.com.

REMAINS of a Saxon settlement could hold up the construction of a budget supermarket on land at Kingsteignton.

German supermarket chain Lidl, submitted pans to Teignbridge Council to build a 1,000 square metre supermarket on the old Wilcocks agricultural site at Newton Road.

Officers have recommended outline planning permission for the store, which could provide up to 30 jobs, be turned down.

Read the rest here.

Wonderful news from my editor today. After two weeks, The Heretic Queen has gone back for its second printing! Big celebrations in my house tonight - and maybe even a glass of Piper Heidsieck ;]

And here is another photo from my book signing in Pasadena. It was sent to me by my former student Ashley Williams, whose mother celebrated her birthday with us at the event. What an honor!

By Jonathan Gottschall

NEARLY 3,000 YEARS after the death of the Greek poet Homer, his epic tales of the war for Troy and its aftermath remain deeply woven into the fabric of our culture. These stories of pride and rage, massacre and homecoming have been translated and republished over millennia. Even people who have never read a word of "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey" know the phrases they have bequeathed to us - the Trojan horse, the Achilles heel, the face that launched a thousand ships.

Read the rest on the Boston Globe.

The Associated Press

A couple in central Kentucky will soon have scientific proof of whether their yard is the final resting place of hundreds of civil war dead.

Ben Breeding, owner of the old Jack Arnold House in Washington County, already has all the evidence he needs though.

Read the rest here.

(ANSA) - Oristano, September 25 - Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage.

Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins.

Read the rest here.

I had an amazing time last night at the book launch of my novel The Heretic Queen. We sold out every book in the store, and there were still people left wanting to purchase some! I also had the chance to meet some truly wonderful people there. The parents of ex-students, the web designer of an amazing Egyptian forum, and the authors Karen Essex (whose hair I have an unnatural envy of), Robin Maxwell (whose upcoming book, Signora Da Vinci is the best book I've read in a very long time) plus the hilarious and charming Christopher Gortner (who has a new book on Catherine Medici which I can't wait to get my hands on).

So here is the only photo of the night (if anyone sends me others, I'll post them). Yes, that's a Christmas tree. And yes, my big yap is open and flapping. In fact, it flapped for about thirty-five minutes on the topics of ancient Egypt, Nefertari and Ramesses the Great. We also debuted my book trailer for Cleopatra's Daughter (which I promise to upload here sometime soon).

AP: JERUSALEM — A quest is under way on four continents to find the missing pages of one of the world's most important holy texts, the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known as the Crown of Aleppo.

Crusaders held it for ransom, fire almost destroyed it and it was reputedly smuggled across Mideast borders hidden in a washing machine. But in 1958, when it finally reached Israel, 196 pages were missing — about 40 percent of the total — and for some Old Testament scholars they have become a kind of holy grail.

Read the rest on FoxNews.

Bird's team recently published a study on "fire stick farming," a traditional method of ecosystem management still used by aborigines in Australia's Western Desert. By burning old-growth spinifex grass, making it easier to hunt lizards; cookpot-friendly kangaroos and emus fatten themselves on grasses flourishing on newly cleared lands.

Read the rest on Wired.

An ancient solid silver ingot found in Stagsden is stealing the limelight at Bedford Museum.

The Viking coin is the first of its kind discovered in the county and dates from AD 850-1000.

It was found by treasure hunters in the north Bedfordshire village last year, but has only just been bought by the museum following lengthy examination and valuation at the British Museum in London.

Read the rest here.

Egyptian archaeologists located the pink, granite monument at a site in Tell Basta, once the capital of the ancient state 50 miles north of Cairo.

The great king's nose had been broken and his beard was missing, said Zahi Hawass, the head of the country's supreme council of antiquities.

Ramses, also known by his Greek name Ozymandias, commanded a mighty empire during Egypt's new kingdom from 1279-1213 BC.

Read the rest on The Telegraph.

The Romans gave us roads, plumbing, wine and irrigation and now it seems they may have also introduced Wales' unofficial icon - the garden leek.

The National Museum of Wales says the Romans probably planted domesticated varieties to flavour their stews.

The museum has recreated a Roman-design garden at the National Roman Legion Museum in Caerleon, near Newport.

The garden aims to show how troops posted to the edge of the empire created their own home-from-home.

"We've used archaeological remains and research to interpret a Roman garden," said Andrew Dixey, Estate Manager for National Museum Wales.

"The Romans invaded Britain in 43 AD and brought their garden designs with them.

Read the rest on the BBC.

Neanderthals clubbed seals and ate dolphins and other seafood to survive in what was thought to be their last holdout before they were driven to extinction.

The evidence that they had more sophisticated tastes than their caveman image, dining on seafood, suggests comes from Gibraltar, from Vanguard Cave and Gorham's Cave, where the last group ended up some 26,000 years ago.

	Harp seal: Neanderthals had more sophisticated diets than previously thought

This was the last of a mighty Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) empire that once stretched from Asia to Western Europe from as much as 300,000 years ago, thriving on the cold of ice ages in woodlands where they hunted with heavy spears.

Read the rest on the Telegraph.

This is an ancient rock temple found in an unreachable jungle area of Deegalla, located seven kilometers from Mathugama.

There is an old statue of Buddha in sleeping posture inside the rock cave.

Read the rest here.

Annick Benoist

Agence France Presse

ALEPPO: The majestic citadel atop Syria's ancient city of Aleppo, the Masyaf Fortress of the sinister order of the Assassins and the castle of Arab conqueror Salah al-Din (Saladdin) have all been given a new lease on life as part of a project by the Agha Khan to promote Islamic sites.

"We don't do enough to illustrate to the peoples of our world the greatness of Islamic civilizations," the 71-year-old billionaire spiritual leader of the world's 15 million Shia Ismailis told AFP in an interview.

The Agha Khan, who last year celebrated 50 years as head of his community, said at a recent ceremony capping work in Aleppo that his goal is to educate the world on the wealth of Muslim culture.

Read the rest on the DailyStar.

University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins (center) handed up a device to a co-worker for measuring temperature at the Paisley Caves outside Paisley, Ore. (Jeff Barnard/ Associated Press)

PAISLEY, Ore. - For some 85 years, homesteaders, pot hunters, and archaeologists have been digging at Paisley Caves, a string of shallow depressions washed out of an ancient lava flow by the waves of a lake that comes and goes with the changing climate.

Until now, they have found nothing conclusive - arrowheads, baskets, animal bones, and sandals made by people who lived thousands of years ago on the shores of what was then a 40-mile-long lake, but is now a sage brush desert on the northern edge of the Great Basin.

But a few years ago, University of Oregon archaeologist Dennis Jenkins and his students started digging where no one had dug before. What the team discovered in an alcove used as a latrine and trash dump has elevated the caves to the site of the oldest radiocarbon dated human remains in North America.

Read the rest on Boston Globe.

Stonehenge has a new age — and a new purpose.

It's long been understood that the Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain in southern England was an observatory tuned to the summer solstice and the positions of the stars.

But new excavations led by a pair of British archaeologists show that it was also a healing center, a sort of pagan Lourdes for chronically ill and crippled pilgrims from across western Europe.

Read the rest here.

AP: MOSCOW — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.

Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital.

By law Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said. The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.

Read the rest here.

AP: Vienna, Austria — Austrian authorities say a small earthquake set off a large World War II-era bomb in the garden of a Vienna home. No one was injured in the explosion.

Investigators think the bomb weighed up to half a ton. It lay buried for decades in the garden, and no one knew it was there.

Read the rest here.

FORT MORGAN, Ala. , Texas — When the waves from Hurricane Ike receded, they left behind a mystery — a ragged shipwreck that archeologists say could be a two-masted Civil War schooner that ran aground in 1862 or another ship from some 70 years later.

The wreck, about six miles from Fort Morgan, had already been partially uncovered when Hurricane Camille cleared away sand in 1969.

Researchers at the time identified it as the Monticello, a battleship that partially burned when it crashed trying to get past the U.S. Navy and into Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

Read the rest here.

By Jusuf Ramadanovic for Southeast European Times in Sarajevo

Bosnian explorer and archaeological enthusiast Semir Osmanagic points at excavated stone fragments discovered on Mt. Visocica in BiH. Osmanagic, a business owner in the United States, has spent tens of thousands of euros seeking Europe's first pyramids. [Getty Images]

Summer excavations at Bosnia and Herzegovina's Mt. Visocica yielded results, but not the kind an entrepreneur turned amateur archaeologist was looking for. Semir Osmanagic, a US businessman of BiH origin, has invested large amounts of his own money in a personal quest to unearth what he says are Europe's first pyramids.

His claims have not yet been corroborated. Instead, an archeological team said over the summer that it has unearthed significant artefacts from a more recent era. These include eight pieces of Gothic architectural carvings and parts of glass vials dating back to the 14th and 15th centuries, imported from Venice and principalities of today's Germany, as well as numerous pieces of ceramic. They have also found 20 silver objects dating from the 15th-century.

Read the rest here.

A small Roman rural cemetery containing six skeletons has been discovered at an archaeological dig in Enderby.

The human burials were found during an excavation at the new park and ride site alongside Iron Age, Roman and medieval finds including pottery, a denarius - a type of Roman silver coin, and a number of brooches.

Analysis of the skeletons, found close to the line of the former Fosse Way Roman road, will now take place to identify the gender, age at death, health and life style of the individuals they represent.

As the area has been cultivated since medieval times, the skeletons are in relatively poor condition.

Read the rest here.

Read the rest on the TimesOnline.

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Statues of Serapis, Osiris and Isis found in the Mediterranean Sea which will house Egypt's first underwater museum

The history of a city caught in a time-warp when it was submerged by the sea while it was part of a unique civilisation that once held sway over much of the ancient world will, in the near future, be accessible and visible to all visitors to Alexandria. The International Scientific Advisory Committee is meeting in October to discuss plans for Egypt's first offshore underwater museum.

On the seabed of Alexandria's Eastern Harbour lie the royal quarters of the Ptolemaic dynasty complete with temples, palaces and streets. Queen Cleopatra's Palace and Antirhodos Island, now near the centre of the harbour between Qait Bay fortress to the north, Silsila on the east and Mahattat Al-Raml to the south, were in the same position.

These magnificent monuments were hidden beneath the waves after sinking in antiquity until 1996, when a joint mission by the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), with sponsorship from the Hilti Foundation of Liechtenstein, began scientific and archaeological studies in the Eastern Harbour.

Read the rest here.

In this 2008 photo provided by the Queensland Museum is a white topped coral crab collected from dead coral head off Australia's Heron Island. Marine scientists have discovered hundreds of new animal species on reefs in Australian waters, including brilliant soft corals and tiny crustaceans. (AP Photo/Gary Cranitch, Queensland Museum)

See more photos here.

David Vincent / AP: A previously unknown piece of music by Mozart is displayed, discovered by a library as staff were going through its archives, Thursday, Sept. 18, in Nantes, western France.

PARIS - A French museum has found a previously unknown piece of music handwritten by Mozart, a researcher said Thursday. The 18th century melody sketch is missing the harmony and instrumentation but was described as an important find.

Read the rest here.

A settlement dating back to Early Bronze Age, and remains of a building dating to Hittite era were recovered during excavations in Aslantepe, Malatya, professor Marcella Frangipane, the head of the excavations and a lecturer at the Italian La Spienza University, told AA correspondent.

Aslantepe was a city from 5000 BC to 712 BC, until the Assyrian invasion, and was later abandoned for a long time. It then became a Roman village from 500 to 600 AD, and later the Byzantine necropolis.

The first palace in the world was built in Aslantepe in 3350 BC. There are storage chambers, a corridor, a courtyard and a temple in the palace.

"We are trying to find two layers in Aslantepe dating back to Early Bronze Ages, and we have unearthed a part of a city walls dating to 2,900-2,800 BC. This city wall is like an acropolis," Frangipane said.

Frangipane said the excavation team had also uncovered houses and cookers on the hills, which might indicate that there was a settlement during 3,000-2,500 BC.

Read the rest here.

The world is fascinated by Cleopatra. Cleopatra (Cleopatra VII to be exact) was the last pharaoh of Egypt — and has inspired books, plays, movies and 32 operas.

Most of us are not experts in Egyptology, but we all think that we know a few things about Cleopatra — something along the lines that this Egyptian woman was stunningly beautiful, and committed suicide by getting a small snake, an asp, to bite her.

The only correct belief in all of that is that she was a woman.

First, Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Macedonian.

Read the rest on ABC.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CNN) -- When Susana Trimarco's daughter Marita Veron was 23, she vanished from their hometown in Argentina, a suspected victim of a human trafficking and prostitution ring with links throughout Latin America and Europe.

Read the rest on CNN.

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

During the Viking Age from the late eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries, Scandinavians tore across Europe attacking, robbing and terrorizing locals. According to a new study, the young warriors were driven to seek their fortunes to better their chances of finding wives.

The odd twist to the story, said researcher James Barrett, is that it was the selective killing of female newborns that led to a shortage of Scandinavian women in the first place, resulting later in intense competition over eligible women.

"Selective female infanticide was recorded as part of pagan Scandinavian practice in later medieval sources, such as the Icelandic sagas," Barrett, who is deputy director of Cambridge University's McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News.

Read the rest on Discovery.

Cairo - An Egyptian archaeological team has unearthed a temple and parts of a statue belonging to one of Egypt's most famous pharaohs, in a rare find inside the capital, the official Mena agency reported on Monday.

A temple built for 19th-dynasty King Ramses II was found in east Cairo, Mena said.

Read the rest here.

Interview by Catherine Hickley

The remains of two outsized earthenware pots, a ditch and evidence of a gate dating back more than 3,000 years are changing scholars' perceptions about the city of Troy at the time Homer's ``Iliad'' was set.

The discoveries this year show that Troy's lower town was much bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, according to Ernst Pernicka, the University of Tubingen professor leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey.

His team has uncovered a trench 1.4 kilometers long, 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep. The full length of the trench, which probably encircled the city and served a defensive purpose, may be as much as 2.5 kilometers, Pernicka said in an interview in his office in Mannheim, Germany. Troy may have been as big as 40 hectares, with a population as high as 10,000, he estimates.

Read the rest on Bloomberg.com.

by David Braun

Meet Wilma—named for the redheaded Flintstones character—the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.

Artists and scientists created Wilma (shown in a photo released yesterday) using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalized. Announced in October 2007, the findings had suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin, and possibly freckles.

Created for an October 2008 National Geographic magazine article, Wilma has a skeleton made from replicas of pelvis and skull bones from Neanderthal females. Copies of male Neanderthal bones—resized to female dimensions—filled in the gaps.

Read the rest on National Geographic.

Read the rest on the Timesonline.co.uk

A newly-discovered Roman skeleton could be one of the earliest British victims of tuberculosis, experts believe.

Archaeologists hope the discovery will reveal clues about how the deadly disease spread across Britain.

The man's remains - which date from the fourth century AD - were found on a construction site at York University.

The first known case of TB in Britain is from the Iron Age - but finding cases from Roman times is still rare, especially in the north.

Most finds have been confined to the southern half of England.

Read the rest on the BBC.

Works by Pietro Psaier have appeared at sales all over the world, including several held by Christie's, Sotheby's and Bonhams, attracting prices of up to £14,000.

They were given added kudos by the claim that Psaier worked in Warhol's studio, the Factory, and that the pair were friends who collaborated on several pieces.

However, officials at the Andy Warhol Foundation have come forward to say they have never heard of Psaier, and suggested that the whole relationship may have been a hoax.

Read the rest here.

Augusta Way was 'Tess Durbeyfield' of the novel. In the book, Tess was the eldest daughter in a poor, rural working family - a fresh, pretty country girl with a good heart and a sensitive soul.

The middle-aged woman pictured below with her husband, was just 18 when Hardy spotted her milking a cow on a Wessex farm.

Historic character: Augusta Way with her husband Arthur Bugler. Years before this picture was taken, Augusta helped inspire Thomas Hardy to pen Tess of the D'urbervilles when she was spotted milking a cow on a Wessex farm

He was so attracted to the beautiful teenager that he had her in mind three years later when he wrote his famous novel in 1891.

Read the rest on DailyMail.

Today is the release of my second novel The Heretic Queen! As many of my blog readers know, the journey from finished product to publication often takes a year, so after a long year's wait I can finally say that the book is in a store near you!!!!

I am so grateful to the many, many people who helped The Heretic Queen on its journey, from my editor, to my wonderful team at Crown Publishers, to the amazing bloggers who agreed to read early copies and post their reviews. One particular review that almost stopped my breath was Julianne Douglas's of Writing the Renaissance. Julianne is a writer herself with an eye for detail that would put Sherlock Holmes to shame.

I am also so thankful to the many, many bloggers who interviewed me, such as Kailana of The Written World who is running Michelle Moran Week at Historical Tapestry. Yes, you read that right. I am in possession of my very own week! The incredibly generous bloggers at Historical Tapestry offered it to me and they'll be running a series of reviews, an interview, and a guest post based on The Heretic Queen. When Kailana first mentioned the opportunity, I ran around my house shouting to my husband, "Look, I have a week!" He wanted to know what I had a week for. "No, I have my own week," I told him. Well, he was properly impressed. As was I.

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped along the way, and I hope you enjoy The Heretic Queen as much as I enjoyed writing it! There are quite a few bloggers giving away free copies in honor of the release day. Although the wonderful Books 'N Border Collies contest is over, you can enter another contest on the blog Favorite PASTimes as well as Historical Tapestry! Just leave a comment for a chance to win!

Eighty skeletons and stockpiles of textiles found in caves near the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu may shed light on the role that the so-called Lost City of the Inca played as a regional center of trade and power, scientists say.

Researchers found the artifacts and remains at two sites within the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park in southeastern Peru, said Fernando Astete, head of the park (see map of Peru).

The remains, most of which were found in May 2008 at a site called Salapunku, probably date to 500 to 550 years ago, said Francisco Huarcaya, the site's lead researcher.

Due to extensive looting, however, as much as 75 percent of the fabrics found wrapped around the remains are in "bad shape," Huarcaya said.

So far only the heads and shoulders of most of the bodies have been uncovered, Astete added.

Read the rest on National Geographic.

In 1970, writing in CA 21, architect-turned archaeologist Chris Musson estimated that there were perhaps 200 roundhouses known in archaeological literature. The result of recent work is that now, 30 years after Musson’s estimate, we can suggest that the number of excavated roundhouses in Britain must be rapidly approaching 4,000 – a staggering 20-fold increase in archaeological data. What can it tell us?

To start at the beginning, the roundhouse is found first in the later 3rd millennium BC in South-West Scotland. Attracted to the easily tilled soils, early Bronze Age people settled in upland landscapes and often built houses on platforms levelled into the hillside. By the end of the Bronze Age, house size had increased (to c.10m in diameter): the implication is that more people were, by that time, living together. The number of houses being built increased substantially after c.400 BC – as shown in recent work by John Thomas of University of Leicester Archaeological Services – and we currently think that this indicates population increase. River-valley landscapes, in particular, saw much greater use, linked to new innovations in farming at this time.

Read the rest on archaeology.co.uk.

By Andy Mead

DAVID STEPHENSON: Johnny Faulkner, left, and Ronnie Hazlett demonstrated the art of making arrowheads and spear points at the Gladie Cultural-Environmental Learning Center. Photo by David Stephenson

Because he had done this many times before, the man knew just where to hit the flint to produce a strong, thin point that could easily pierce an animal's hide and sink into a vital organ.

The scene could have taken place on the same spot thousands of years ago, but it happened last week.

The man was wearing a T-shirt, green Forest Service uniform pants, and, in a radical meeting of ancient and modern technologies, a microphone that sent signals to a high-definition digital video camera.

Read the rest here.

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through county courts or the country's High Court, a part of its Supreme Court system.

Read the rest here.

Secret to Long Life?

by Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

The elixir of life may be a concoction of honey, cherries and secret herbs infused in a full Chianti wine, according to a centuries-old recipe discovered in one of Italy's oldest pharmacies.

The 18th century-old recipe was discovered in an old manuscript found among the shelves of a pharmacy in Asciano near Sienna dating back to 1715.

Read the rest on Discovery.

MIAMI - Three years ago, an elderly Italian man pulled his van into a South Florida park to sell some rare, 2,500-year-old emeralds plundered from a South American tomb. But Ugo Bagnato, an archaeologist, didn't know his potential customer was a federal agent.

Bagnato flashed the green gems, which were as large as dominoes, and explained to the immigration and customs agent that he had bribed South American authorities and used fake paperwork to smuggle the highly illegal goods into the United States.

Read the rest on Yahoo.

ScienceDaily: In a paper published in Science, Steve Brusatte and Professor Mike Benton challenge the general consensus among scientists that there must have been something special about dinosaurs that helped them rise to prominence.

Dinosaurs epitomize both success and failure. Failure because they went extinct suddenly 65 million years ago; success because they dominated terrestrial ecosystems for well over 100 million years evolving into a wide array of species that reached tremendous sizes.

Read the rest on ScienceDaily.

The jawbone was uncovered last month near the village of Khowm in the Palmyra region, about 150 miles northeast of the capital, Damascus, said Heba al-Sakhel, one of the leaders of the team of Syrian and Swiss archaeologists.

Read the rest here.

A team of archaeologists in Leicestershire has uncovered several ancient bodies at the site of a new park-and-ride development.

Excavations are continuing in Enderby after the discovery of what is thought to be a small Roman rural cemetery.

The skeletons were found close to the former Fosse Way Roman road.

Archaeologists have also found bodies from the Iron Age at the same site, a silver Roman coin as well as items from the medieval period.

Read the rest on the BBC.

A prehistoric predator that looked like a big crocodile paddled around the Antarctic region 240 million years ago, sporting sizable fangs not only along the edge of its mouth but also halfway down the roof of its mouth.

The newly described freshwater species, Kryostega collinsoni, is a temnospondyl, a once-diverse but extinct group of amphibians that lived during the Triassic period, when dinosaurs first showed up. Temnospondyls are extinct cousins of modern salamanders and frogs.

This one was probably about 15 feet in length with a long and wide skull even flatter than a crocodile's.

Read the rest on FoxNews.

DISCOVERED: Archaeologists and personnel from RAF Lakenheath look at the graves which have been discovered

Some 450 graves have been found in Lakenheath after a discovery during recent roadworks.
The find of three Saxon graves has helped to define the size of one of the largest burial grounds in Suffolk, which has been part of a 10-year study by the archaeological services at Suffolk County Council.

During the last six to nine months, Jo Caruth, senior project officer for Archaeological Services, said the team have been monitoring roadworks taking place in RAF Lakenheath as the area was known for its ancient discoveries.

Read the rest here.

By Ryan Kisiel

It would be more than 100 years at least until Alexander the Great led the forces of Macedonia to conquer the Hellenistic world.

But, even in its early days, the Greek kingdom's warriors were already an imposing sight on the battlefield.

A dig in an ancient burial ground in Alexander's birthplace of Pella, northern Greece, has unearthed the graves of 20 warriors in battle dress, a find which archaeologists say sheds fresh light on the development of Macedonian culture.

The warriors, whose remains have been dated to the late Archaic period, between 580BC and 460BC, were among 43 graves excavated in the latest dig, with the other bodies ranging from 650BC to 279BC.

Some of the warriors were buried in bronze helmets alongside iron swords and knives.

Their eyes, mouths and chests were covered in gold foil richly decorated with drawings of lions and other animals symbolising royal power.

Gold jewellery was found in a woman's grave at the ancient cemetery

Other finds included gold jewellery and pottery.

Read the rest on DailyMail.

ATHENS (AFP) — Archaeologists in Greece have unearthed more than 1,400 ancient graves and tombs during excavation work for a new metro in the northern city of Salonika, the culture ministry said on Thursday.

The graves and tombs spanned an 800-year period from the fourth century BC to Roman times in the fourth century AD.

The finds range from humble pits and altar tombs of stone to marble sarcophagi, the ministry said.

Read the rest here.

by Christopher Joyce

Correction: In the broadcast version of this story, an archeological site in the lower Jordan Valley was incorrectly identified as being in Israel. The site is in the occupied West Bank.

All Things Considered, June 2, 2006 · The discovery of figs in an 11,400-year-old house near the ancient city of Jericho may be evidence that cultivated crops came centuries before the first farmers planted cereal grains.

Archeologists in Israel discovered the figs in an excavated house in a village called Gilgal 1. The fruits were mutant figs -- growing on a rare kind of tree that isn't pollinated by insects and won't reproduce unless someone takes a cutting and plants it.

Read the rest on NPR.

ATHENS (Reuters) - Archaeologists have unearthed gold jewellery, weapons and pottery at an ancient burial site near Pella in northern Greece, the birthplace of Alexander the Great, the culture ministry said on Thursday.

The excavations at the vast cemetery uncovered 43 graves dating from 650-279 BC which shed light on the early development of the Macedonian kingdom, which had an empire that stretched as far as India under Alexander's conquests.

Read the rest here.

A painting kept in an attic for 30 years because the owner did not like it has turned out to be the work of Sir Winston Churchill.

The wartime Prime Minister painted Windlesham Moor in Surrey around 1934. The house was later the first home of the Queen and Prince Philip.

The oil painting is expected to fetch up to £150,000 when it is sold later this month at John Dickins Auctioneers in Buckinghamshire.

Hidden treasure: Churchill's painting of Windlesham Moor was lost in an attic for 30 years and now might sell at auction for £150,000

The oil painting was passed on to Churchill's wartime director of Home Intelligence, Baron Stephen Taylor, who later gave it to his secretary as a gift.

Read the rest on the DailyMail.

SYDNEY, Australia — A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia's tropical north, researchers said Thursday.

The 1.5 inch-long Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state.

But two months ago, a doctoral student at James Cook University in Townsville conducting research on another frog species in Queensland stumbled across what appeared to be several Armoured Mistfrogs in a creek, said professor Ross Alford, head of a research team on threatened frogs at the university.

Read the rest here.

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Together, the findings call into question how such a sophisticated group apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth around 30,000 years ago.

The new evidence displays the strengths and weaknesses of Neanderthals, suggesting they were skilled hunters but not as brainy and efficient as modern humans, who eventually took over Neanderthal territories.

Read the rest on Discovery.

So many things to remember today. My father's birthday. My father's death (yes, 64 years later). And of course, the deaths of many, many others.

By Angelika Franz

Experts with the United States military expend enormous resources to search for the bodies of missing soldiers. A team is currently at work in the northern Eifel Mountains region of western Germany, where tens of thousands of Americans died during World War II.

"We can make French fries for lunch out of those," jokes archeologist Denise To, pointing to three rows of potato plants on the edge of a field. The leaves have shriveled and turned brown, and a few potatoes sticking out of the ground have already turned green -- high time for the potato harvest.

Nearby, in a field of wheat stubble, the driver of a small excavator is carefully digging a trench into the soil. It looks like a miniature version of a much larger machine visible in the distance as it eats its way through brown coal. The field, which borders the northern Eifel Mountains in western Germany, is where To and her team work. They believe that it harbors the gravesite of an American who crash-landed his burning P-38 "Lightning" during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest.

Read the rest on Der Spiegel.

Source: CCTV.com, Yang Jie

As the faces of old buildings are restored at Mount Lushan, the original structure of an ancient mausoleum located in Henan Province is being slowly revealed. Excavations are nearly complete. Archaeologists already know it is an ancient site. Relics taken from the complex reveal it dates to the Period of Warring States, about 2500 years ago.

As the faces of old buildings are restored at Mount Lushan, the original structure of an ancient mausoleum located in Henan Province is being slowly revealed.

Read the rest here.

by ÉIBHIR MULQUEEN

THE PARTIAL remains of a young person, probably female, which could date back to between 2500-2000 BC, have been uncovered during an archaeological dig in the Burren, Co Clare.

The prehistoric remains were found in the passageway to the central burial chamber of Caherconnell Cashel, a well-preserved stone fort, during the dig which began a fortnight ago.

A significant factor of the discovery is that the body had been allowed to decompose elsewhere before some of the skeleton was placed where it was found, according to archaeologist, Graham Hull.

Mr Hull, who runs a private archaeological company TVAS at Crusheen, Co Clare, said the remains were "disarticulated", meaning that it was not a full skeleton.

Read the rest on the IrishTimes.com.

BODRUM - Ruins of the Temple of Athena have been found in the popular resort town of Bodrum in western Turkey.

In an interview with the A.A, Profesor Adnan Diler, who leads the archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Pedasa, said, "we found the Temple of Athena, one of the most important works of arts in Anatolia, in Konacik hamlet in Bodrum.

Read the rest here.

HE was killed by a barrage of spear thrusts and an axe blow to the head - a payback punishment.

That is how Sydney's oldest known ex-resident - Narrabeen Man - died at the hands of his own tribeScientists have revealed that bones found under a beachside bus shelter three years ago have now been carbon dated at more than 4000 years old.

The bones give a rare insight into the punishment rituals of Aborigines before the arrival of Europeans.

Since the skeleton was found during excavation work in Narrabeen on the Northern Beaches in January, 2005, Sydney pathologist Denise Donlon and Canberra archaeologist Jo McDonald have pieced together the how, where and, possibly, why he was killed.

Estimated to be between 30 and 40 years old and 183cm tall - unusually big for an Aborigine of the time - Narrabeen Man died after being axed in the head and speared three times in the stomach and back. Researchers found 17 small stone flakes, including three embedded in his spine.

Read the rest here.

The brand's top executive admitted his nerves were aflutter despite the tight security he lined up for the operation.

"I don't want to be the president who loses the recipe," KFC President Roger Eaton said. "Imagine how terrifying that would be."

Read the rest here.

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

"I studied one of the mummies, the larger one, back in 1979 [and] determined the blood group data from this baby mummy and compared it with my 1969 blood grouping of Tutankhamun.

"The results confirmed that this larger fetus could indeed be the daughter of Tutankhamen," said Robert Connolly, senior lecturer in physical anthropology from the University of Liverpool's Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology.

The fetuses have been stored at the Cairo University's Faculty of Medicine since archaeologist Howard Carter first discovered them in Tutankhamun's tomb on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt in 1922.

Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife.

Never publicly displayed, the two fetuses will soon undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh, and possibly "identify the fetuses' mother," Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement.

Read the rest on Discovery.com.

by Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent

The UN is threatening to put the Tower of London on its list of world heritage sites in danger after its experts accused the UK of damaging globally significant sites such as Stonehenge, the old town of Edinburgh and the Georgian centre of Bath, the Guardian has learned.

Unesco, the UN's cultural agency, has told ministers in London and Edinburgh that it wants urgent action to protect seven world heritage sites which it claims are in danger from building developments, and said in some cases the UK is ignoring its legal obligations to protect them.

Their complaints range from decisions to approve new tower blocks in central London, such as the 66-storey "shard of glass" at London Bridge, to the failure to relocate the A344 beside Stonehenge despite promising action for 22 years, to a proposed wind farm which threatens neolithic sites on Orkney.

Read the rest on The Guardian.

Enamelled bronzes from Roman Britain have turned up all over the Roman world. This poses an interesting question: were Celtic artists making tourist knick knacks for Roman soldiers to take back home? Leading expert Ernst Künzl puts a British ‘souvenir’ into context.

Ancient public opinion regarded Britain as an island of metal. ‘Britain produces gold, silver, and other metals,’ declared Tacitus around AD 100. Philostratus, in the 3rd century AD, specifically referred to enamelled metalwork, reporting that it was a typical product of the people near Oceanus – that is, the north-west coasts of the empire, including the British Isles.

Read the rest here.

MORE than 40 people gathered in the field behind St Peter’s Church in Minshull Vernon to take part in a community archaeological dig.

They unearthed a cross-section of the surface of a Roman road running from Whitchurch to Middlewich.

It turned out to be in fine condition, probably because this particular stretch had not been ploughed in modern times.

And the surface was so well preserved that it seems to have been accumulating water in the soil above it.

Read the rest here.

Archaeologists have unearthed the mysterious remains of what first appears to be a couple buried together arm in arm more than 1,000 years ago.

The amazing discovery shows the "couple" laying side by side in the grave with one's arm across the other.

But the discovery has left experts with a 1,000-year-old mystery.

Remains of what is thought to be two brothers in arms, thought to date back to the Saxon period between 410AD and 1066AD

They know that the body pictured on the right is that of a man, over 6ft tall but they believe that the body on the left is also that of a man as well.

First they thought the couple were a man and wife united in death. But now they believe they could be two men who were 'brothers in arms', possibly warriors, who died together and were buried in the one grave.

The unusual burial is thought to be from the Saxon period between 410AD and 1066AD.

Now they are waiting for forensic tests to be carried out to determine the sex of the pair and exactly when they were buried.

Read the rest on the DailyMail.

Writing is like being a juggler. There always seem to be three flaming torches in the air at once (sometimes more!). So while I'm preparing for The Heretic Queen's debut September 16th, I'm also preparing to edit my third novel, Cleopatra's Daughter, and deciding what new additions will need to be made to my website to reflect this new Roman direction my books will be taking.

One of the most exciting additions is going to be a book trailer for Cleopatra's Daughter. I don't just mean any type of book trailer, but an action-packed, filmed in the studio with beautiful graphics and wonderful actors type of trailer. The amazing and seriously talented Brady Hall will be making it, and if you're an author who hasn't considered hiring Brady to make a book trailer for yourself, what in the world are you waiting for??!!!! I discovered Brady on GalleyCat, and when I saw what he did for James Rollins, I knew immediately that I wanted him to film something for Cleo's Daughter.

Now, here's a sneak peak from the filming. This is a shot of Selene (Cleopatra's daughter) standing with her love interest in the novel (and in real life).


When the trailer is finished, I'll post it here!! Of course, this is all very much ahead of schedule, given that there isn't even a book cover for Cleopatra's Daughter yet (and there probably won't be for months). This means that the trailer will have to be made with a "stand-in" cover, but with everything there is to do - editing book three, marketing book two, and writing - early is much better than late!

ScienceDaily: In a surprising reversal of conventional wisdom, a DNA-based study has revealed that the last of the woolly mammoths—which lived between 40,000 and 4,000 years ago—had roots that were exclusively North American.

The research, which appears in the September issue of Current Biology, is expected to cause some controversy within the paleontological community.

Read the rest on ScienceDaily.

A 17-year-old Pakistani girl forced to marry a 45-year-old when she was only nine was reportedly killed by her parents, according to the Weekend Australian.

The murder has intensified despair among human rights workers in Pakistan over a recent spate of "honor killings," in which two women and three teenage school girls were buried alive in Baluchistan Province because they wanted to marry the men of their choice.

Read the rest here.

Experts believe the remains of a Roman villa could be unearthed if a housing development in Northampton is allowed to be built. The London-based Paddington Churches Housing Association has applied to build 108 new homes on wasteland in Booth Rise, Boothville.

In documents submitted with the group's plans for the land, experts from the Museum of London Archaeology service have said further evidence of a villa originally found during the 1930s could be unearthed.

The group's report said: "A Roman villa has been identified directly to the south of the site along with a potentially related settlement to the north.

"As such there is high potential for the survival of Roman remains on the site.

Read the rest here.

Prehistoric graves with an unusual abundance of phallic figurines and oddly arranged human remains have been found in Israel, archaeologists announced recently.

Near Nazerat (Nazareth), the Stone Age site, called Kfar HaHoresh, dates to between 8,500 and 6,750 B.C.

The site was uninhabited and probably served surrounding villages as a centralized burial and cult center, said excavation leader Nigel Goring-Morris of Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology.

Archaeologists have primarily found female symbolic figurines in other burials of this time period.

Read the rest on National Geographic.

BERN (AFP) — Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows.

The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

So far, 300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic or New Stone Age -- about 4,000 BC in Europe -- to the later Bronze and Iron Ages and the Medieval era have been found in the site's former icefields.

"We know now that the discoveries on Schnidejoch are the oldest of this kind ever made in the Alps," said Albert Hafner, an expert with the archaeology service in Bern canton.

They have allowed researchers not only to piece together snapshots of life way back when, but also to shed light on climate fluctuations in the past 6,500 years -- and hopefully shed light on what is happening now.

Read the rest here.

Ethiopia is celebrating the unveiling of the reassembled Axum obelisk, one of the country's greatest treasures.

The obelisk, at least 1,700 years old, was looted by Italian troops in the 1930s and returned to Ethiopia in 2005.

A giant Ethiopian flag was removed from the obelisk in front of what organisers said was a crowd of tens of thousands in the ancient northern town of Axum.

The ceremony is the last big event of Ethiopia's millennium year, the year 2000 by the country's Coptic calendar.

Read the rest on the BBC.

By Mohammed Zaatari

SIDON: The British Museum's excavation team in Sidon on Wednesday declared the end of its mission for 2008 at the "Freres" excavation site near the southern port city's fortress.

"Sidon is a remarkable archaeological city where we have found that economics and religion are closely related," archaeology expert and field supervisor Claude Doumet Serhal told The Daily Star. "And for the first time, we have discovered ways of burying the dead during the Canaanite period i.e. 3, 0000 years B.C. and the accompanying ceremonial religious rituals."

According to Serhal, excavation works have lasted more than two months this year. "We have expanded our work for a better understanding of the historic era that goes back to 3,000 years B.C.," she added.

Serhal expressed her gratitude to the General Directorate of Antiquities and Sidon's archaeology office for providing "all what had been necessary for the team to accomplish its mission successfully."

"Our discoveries included eight rooms and 25 warehouses containing pottery and burnt wheat," she said.

"But what surprised us," she added, "was the discovery of melted bronze material which indicated that the old Bronze Age existed before the Canaanite period."

Read the rest here.

Archaeologist Steve Sherlock holds a gold Saxon bracteate, unearthed in fields on the coast, near Loftus.

By Graeme Hetherington

AN archaeologist has uncovered the foundations for a Roman settlement on the picturesque east Cleveland coast.

Steve Sherlock, whose painstaking work in a farmer's fields near Loftus uncovered evidence of Anglo-Saxon royalty last year, has returned to the site - and been able to go even further back in time in the latest dig.

Mr Sherlock, who has been helped by volunteers from Teesside Archaeological Society, was thrilled and surprised by the look-out station, discovered just inches below the surface.

Read the rest here.

Yesterday the archaeology department of China's Chongqing Municipality announced a remarkable discovery: a Qing Dynasty tomb of an almost unique style, made out of more than 2,000 qing hua ci (blue and white porcelain) bowls.

The Chongqing Economic Times quoted archaeologists as saying that this kind of tomb is very rare and had probably been constructed by migrants to the area.

Read the rest here.

Researchers found that people who live in lands conquered by the Roman army have less protection against HIV than those in countries they never reached

They say a gene which helps make people less susceptible to HIV occurs in greater frequency in areas of Europe that the Roman Empire did not stretch to.

The gene lacks certain DNA elements, which means HIV cannot bind to it as easily and is less able to infect cells.

People with the mutation have some resistance to HIV infection and also take longer to develop AIDS, reports New Scientist.

A study of almost 19,000 DNA samples from across Europe showed the gene variant seemed to dwindle in regions conquered by the Romans.

Read the rest here.

Ancient musical instruments can now be heard for the first time in hundreds of years, due to a new computer modelling project. ASTRA (Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application) has recreated the sounds of the harp-like Epigonion musical instrument from Ancient Greece and has performed one of the oldest known musical scores dating back to the Middle Ages. To achieve this it used the advanced GÉANT2 and EUMEDCONNECT research networks to link high capacity computers together, sharing information to enable the computer-intensive modelling of musical sounds.

Knowledge of the Epigonion musical instrument, dating back from the Ancient Greek era, is based on archaeological findings, historical pictures and literature. Using this archaeological data as an input, it was then transformed by a complex digital audio rendering technique to model the actual sound of the instrument. This advanced physical modelling synthesis creates a virtual model of the instrument and reproduces the sound that the instrument might have made by simulating its behaviour as a mechanical system. The Epigonion is a wooden string instrument that musicians have likened the sound to something similar to a modern harp or a harpsichord. The ASTRA team have compiled the sounds of four Epigonion instruments to recreate a medieval musical piece, making this the first time that these instruments have been heard performing together. Samples of the Epigonion and the musical piece can be accessed at http://www.astraproject.org/examples/dufay.mp3

Read the rest here.

REMAINS of a long dead house mouse have been found in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship. That makes it the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of how house mice spread around the world.

Archaeologist Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from a ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey.

The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold - including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti - indicates it was a royal vessel. Because the cargo carried artefacts from many cultures, its nationality and route is hotly debated, but the mouse's jaw may provide answers. Cucchi's analysis confirms it belonged to Mus musculus domesticus, the only species known to live in close quarters with humans (Journal of Archaeological Science, vol 35, p 2953). The shape of the molars suggests the mouse came from the northern Levantine coast, as they are similar to those of modern house mice in Syria, near Cyprus.

Read the rest on the New Scientist or in issue 2672.

The remains of the southern wall of Jerusalem that was built by the Hasmonean kings during the time of the Second Temple have been uncovered on Mount Zion, the Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday.

The site of the dig on Mount Zion. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority

The 2,100-year-old wall, which was destroyed during the Great Revolt against the Romans that began in 66 CE, is located just outside the present-day walls of the Old City and abuts the Catholic cemetery built in the last century where Righteous Gentile Oskar Schindler is buried.

The sturdy wall, which is believed to have run 6 km. around Jerusalem, was previously exposed by an American archeologist at the end of the 19th century, the state run archeological body said.

Read the rest here.

Deep inside an underwater cave in Mexico, archaeologists may have discovered the oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas.

Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton—along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula—could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated.

The remains have been excavated over the past four years near the town of Tulum, about 80 miles southwest of Cancún, by a team of scientists led by Arturo González, director of the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Mexico.

Read the rest on National Geographic.

Is finding the world's oldest gecko so easy a caveman could do it?

Sadly for fans of the Geico insurance company characters, the answer is: Probably not, as scientists say they were "very fortunate" to unearth in Myanmar (Burma) a piece of fossilized tree sap known as amber containing parts of a hundred-million-year-old gecko.

A foot, toes, and part of the tail (seen above at left) are all that remain of the recently found reptile, which the researchers say is a new species that is 40 million years older than the previous record holder.

Read the rest on National Geographic.

Normand Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent Read the rest on the Times.

Fabulous travel author Rebecca Ramsey of the blog Wonders Never Cease is celebrating her 115th post (as well as her birthday!! Happy birthday!). In celebration, I am picking a wonderful wonder of the world I would be sad without. My wonder?

The remains of a 30-year-old woman were found today at an archeological excavation in Pinczow, in the Swietokrzyska region, southern Poland.

The body, identified as female, dates back 6,500 years.

The director of the dig, Przemyslaw Duleba, from the Institute of Archeology at the University of Warsaw, stated that this is the oldest discovery every to be found in this region. "The skeleton of the young woman is perfectly preserved and laid on her left side in an
embryonic position."

Read the rest here.

by Leo Lewis Read the rest on the Times.

AFP

Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to new research showing their stone tools were as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.

The findings by a team of scientists at British and U.S. universities challenge the assumption that the ancestors of people living today drove Neanderthals into extinction by producing better tools.

The research could lead to a fresh search for explanations about why Neanderthals vanished from Europe around 28,000 years ago, after living alongside modern humans for some 10,000 years.

Read the rest on Discovery.

By Monise Durrani

What do Johann Sebastian Bach, Saint Nicholas, and the firstborn son of Pharaoh Rameses II all have in common?

The answer? All their faces have been reconstructed using cutting-edge computer technology.

Dr Caroline Wilkinson is a forensic anthropologist, recreating faces from human remains for archaeological and police investigations - bringing the past to life.

Her workshop at the University of Dundee is covered in model heads, created using traditional methods of layering clay on top of a plaster-cast skull. Sharing the space is a large computer system.

"Today we can use information from 3D surface scans or CT scans of the skull, import them, and use 3D modelling or 'virtual sculpture' to create the same muscles that we would create in real clay" said Dr Wilkinson.

Read the rest on the BBC.

By Edward Sozanski

CASTELLAMMARE DI STABIA, Italy - Over several centuries, millions of tourists have visited Pompeii to acquaint themselves with the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that began on Aug. 24, 79 A.D. But while it's the most famous eruption site, the ancient Roman city 15 miles south of Naples isn't the best place to gauge the volcano's awesome destructive power.

For that, one should visit lesser-known Herculaneum, which is closer to Vesuvius, or Oplontis and Stabiae, two sites more recently uncovered and still relatively unknown to tourists. In these places, several of which are still being excavated, the eruption's consequences are more visible.

The reason is simple. Pompeii was buried over a period of hours by a prolonged shower of rock, ash and pumice, and then only up to the height of several stories. Nothing was ever built on top of the ruins (the modern city is nearby), which meant that eventually most of the city could be uncovered without superhuman effort.

Today, about 80 percent of Pompeii is open to the sky; it looks like an abandoned city, not a buried one. From many points one can barely see the volcano that put paid to its existence.

Read the rest on Philly.com

EGYPTIAN archaeologists have uncovered the burial chamber and coffin of King Senusret II who was believed to have ruled Egypt from 1897 BC to 1878 BC, it was reported today.

The burial chamber was found in Al Lahun, the town built by Senusret which became Egypt's political capital during the 12th and 13th dynasties, and where the king built his pyramid.

Read the rest here.