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Archaeological discoveries, breakthroughs and theories

a good article, takes in many angles


The 190-year-old bridge was closed on Oct. 5 because engineers deemed it unsafe. The city of Newark had plans to replace the original bridge, but the unexpected closure forced a change in plans — installing the temporary bridge to get traffic flowing again as construction begins on a nearby new bridge and roadway expected to open in 2025.

Before any site preparation or construction could begin on the new bridge, roadway realignment and roundabout, an archaeological survey was performed. Starting in early 2018, a team of archaeologists from Lawhon & Associates were hired to do the survey.

What they’ve found is shedding new light on the lives and culture of the Hopewell Native Americans who once lived in the area.

Their survey was required by the National Historic Preservation Act, which mandates surveying such a construction site to determine whether it has historic and/or cultural structures that otherwise would be affected by regulations guiding projects involving federal funding. In this case, it did.
 
Couple unearth one of world’s greatest fossil finds in mid-Wales
Mon 1 May 2023
Many people discovered new interests closer to home as a result of Covid-19 lockdowns. For Dr Joseph Botting and Dr Lucy Muir, it was a 10-metre-wide quarry in a sheep field near to their home in Llandrindod, central Wales, which appeared to be teeming with tiny fossils.

Now researchers believe the site could help plug gaps in scientific understanding of how evolution proceeded after the Cambrian explosion – the period when the ancestors of most modern animals are believed to have evolved. It could even prove to be as important as the Burgess Shale in Canada that preserves one of the world’s first complex marine ecosystems, experts say.

The Welsh site, known as Castle Bank, dates from the Middle Ordovician period, about 460m-70m years ago. It represents a community of diverse and mostly diminutive (1mm to 5mm in body length) marine organisms that existed at a time when ocean covered what is now mid-Wales.
 
one more western buddha

What makes the item special is that it was excavated on a small island in Sweden just west of Stockholm.


 
:snarl:


But a darker side has surfaced recently amid the glamour, when a state archaeologist who had been documenting building violations on the island was mysteriously attacked. The civil servant, Manolis Psarros, 53, was left unconscious with a broken nose, broken ribs and black eyes in a beating that sent shock waves across Greece.

Nowhere has the reaction been fiercer than on Mykonos, where a tight-knit coterie of locals have long whispered about illicit and sometimes assertive activity by deep-pocketed developers, and a lax enforcement system that they say enables anyone with enough money to operate above the law. The Greek government has carried out a swift crackdown.
 
Fy7EXIUWYAADNPG
 
A "vast" cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds has been discovered on a chalk hillside near Harnham on the outskirts of Salisbury, Wiltshire, less than 10 miles from Stonehenge.

The newfound barrows range in size, with the smallest measuring about 33 feet (10 meters) across and the largest spanning 165 feet (50 m). But most of the barrows are between 65 and 100 feet (20 and 30 m) across.

Vast cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds unearthed near Stonehenge
 
if ive understood right this is hte first and only wooden iron age shield that has been found (in 2015)
some amazing work has gone in to understand and reverse engineer its highly skilled construction
 
25 Mesolithic pits have been discovered in Linmere, Bedfordshire.

The pits could offer extraordinary new insights. They are in alignments and clustered around former stream channels, suggesting a spiritual significance.

Such is the scale of this site that it has more such pits in a single area than anywhere else in England and Wales, including Stonehenge. Radiocarbon dating revealed they are from 7,700 to 8,500 years ago.

Archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola), who are conducting the research, said: “This date makes the site incredibly significant because there are very few Mesolithic sites in the UK that are this substantial. Evidence from this period is often slim”

Prof Joshua Pollard... described the discovery as very exciting.

He said: “While we know of other large and enigmatic pits dug by hunter-gatherers from elsewhere in Britain, including at Stonehenge, the Linmere pits are striking because of their number and the wide area they cover.”

Digging such vast pits would have been an extraordinary feat. Measuring up to 5 metres (16.4ft) wide and 1.85 metres deep, each one is round with steep sides, some flaring out into a wider base.

three pits in alignment at the dig site


Discovery of up to 25 Mesolithic pits in Bedfordshire astounds archaeologists
 

that's a remarkable discovery.
I have a quibble with the article though.

third paragraph :
"The pits could offer extraordinary new insights. They are in alignments and clustered around former stream channels, suggesting a spiritual significance."

last sentence:
"Wolframm-Murray said: “This work will reveal the environment these people lived in, and hopefully answer the question ‘what were these pits for?’” "

we'll wait for the final report, but lemme guess ... large pools by a stream... fishponds to provide a controlled supply of food? ... catchments for flooding? ... reservoirs for irrigation? ... some or all of these?
... you know, something material?
 
that's a remarkable discovery.
I have a quibble with the article though.

third paragraph :
"The pits could offer extraordinary new insights. They are in alignments and clustered around former stream channels, suggesting a spiritual significance."

last sentence:
"Wolframm-Murray said: “This work will reveal the environment these people lived in, and hopefully answer the question ‘what were these pits for?’” "

we'll wait for the final report, but lemme guess ... large pools by a stream... fishponds to provide a controlled supply of food? ... catchments for flooding? ... reservoirs for irrigation? ... some or all of these?
... you know, something material?
Good point.
 
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