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One of the most dramatic archaeological monuments in Jordan -- an admittedly Jewish one -- has been repeatedly misidentified. French historian Ernest Will called it the "Finest Hellenistic monument in the Near East" and considered it a chateau. The structure is known locally as Qasr al-Abd, or "Castle of the Slave (or Servant)." It is part of a 75-acre estate called Airaq al-Amir (also spelled 'Iraq el-Emir), lying 12 miles southwest of the Jordanian capital, Amman. The site was entered via a monumental gateway, much of which remains in a ruined state and hidden by undergrowth. The glory of the...

A massive block of limestone in France contains what scientists believe are the earliest known engravings of wall art dating back some 37,000 years, according to a study published Monday. The 1.5 metric ton ceiling piece was first discovered in 2007 at Abri Castanet, a well known archeological site in southwestern France which holds some of the earliest forms of artwork, beads and pierced shells. According to New York University anthropology professor Randall White, lead author of the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the art was likely meant to adorn the interior of a shelter...

The head statuary of Easter Island is instantly recognizable to people all over the world, but who would have guessed that, lurking beneath the soil, these famous mugs also had bodies? The Easter Island Statue Project Conservation Initiative, which is funded by the Archaeological Institute of America, has been excavating two of the enormous figures for the last several years, and have found unique petroglyphs carved on their backs that had been conserved in the soil. Their research has also yielded evidence of how the carvers were paid with food such as tuna and lobster, as well as clues to...

JERUSALEM -- Archaeologists have unearthed a trove of artifacts dating back to the time of the biblical King David that they say closely correspond to the description of Solomon’s Temple found in the Book of Kings. Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel said the find “is extraordinary” first because it marks the first time that shrines from the time of the early Israelite kings were found. In addition, two small, well-preserved models discovered in the excavations closely resemble elements described in the Bible. The multiyear excavations took place at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem, adjacent...

The ruins of the site rest atop a sandstone hill, hugging the far northern coast of the current State of Israel near the border with Lebanon. One can see later-period standing structures that provide the backdrop for what is now a national park and beach resort. But below the surface, and beneath the ocean waves, lie the remains of an ancient harbor town that reach back in history to as long ago as Chalcolithic times (4500 -3200 BC)... Known today as Tel Achziv, its remnants have been explored and excavated before, by Moshe Prausnitz from 1963 through 1964 and, in...

An international team led by the University of Toronto and Hebrew University has identified the earliest known evidence of the use of fire by human ancestors. Microscopic traces of wood ash, alongside animal bones and stone tools, were found in a layer dated to one million years ago at the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa. "The analysis pushes the timing for the human use of fire back by 300,000 years, suggesting that human ancestors as early as Homo erectus may have begun using fire as part of their way of life," said U of T anthropologist Michael Chazan, co-director of...

Although paleontologists have greatly increase the pterosaur diversity in the last decades, particularly due to discoveries made in western Liaoning, China, very little is known regarding pterosaur biogeography. An international team led by Dr. WANG Xiaolin, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, described a new pterosaur, Guidraco venator gen. et sp. nov., from the Early Creataceous Jiufotang Formation, western Lianing, China, adding significantly to our knowledge of pterosaur distribution and enhancing the diversity of cranial anatomy found in those volant creatures, researchers report in the April 2012 issue of the journal of Naturwissenschaften. The specimen, skull...

Date Set for James Ossuary Verdict Biblical Archaeology Society Staff • 03/05/2012 The James Ossuary verdict will be announced on Wednesday, March 14th. As events unfold, check in with Bible History Daily for exclusive reporting and commentary.

Faces of Civil War sailors from sunken USS Monitor reconstructed in hopes of identifying them Faces of 2 USS Monitor crewmembers reconstructed Recovery: The turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor is lifted out of the ocean off the coast of Hatteras, N.C. on August 5, 2002 RICHMOND, Va. — When the turret of the Civil War ironclad Monitor was raised from the ocean bottom, two skeletons and the tattered remnants of their uniforms were discovered in the rusted hulk of the Union Civil War ironclad, mute and nameless witnesses to the cost of war. A rubber comb was...

DALLAS (BP) -- The seminary professor who surprised the academic world by saying a first-century fragment of Mark's Gospel had been found has released new information along with two new claims -- an early sermon on Hebrews and the earliest-known manuscripts of Paul's letters also have been discovered. Details about the finds will be published in an academic book in 2013, says Dallas Theological Seminary's Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament professor. Wallace started the buzz on Feb. 1 when, during a debate with author and skeptic Bart Ehrman, he made the claim about the Mark fragment, which would be...

Dallas Theological Seminary professor Daniel B. Wallace has said that newly discovered fragments from the Gospel of Mark could be the oldest New Testament artifacts ever found and date from the first century A.D., or during the time of eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection. Wallace announced his findings at UNC Chapel Hill on Feb. 1, 2012, during a debate in front of 1,000 people, where he unveiled that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered – six of them he said were probably from the second century, and one of them, the Gospel of Mark, probably from the first. The...

(CBS News) A gruesome mass grave found in southern England may be the final resting place of some of the most feared marauders of the 11th century. Archeologists say the remains may belong to Viking mercenaries, who were buried in a burial pit in what now is the English town of Dorset. Isotope testing on the men's teeth links their origin to Scandinavia. That's where the easy clues end.

The remains of a 300-year-old warship are to be raised from the sea bed, according to reports. The wreck of HMS Victory, a predecessor of Nelson's famous flagship, was found near the Channel Islands in 2008. The British warship, which went down in a storm in 1744 killing more than 1,000 sailors, could contain gold coins worth an estimated £500m. The Sunday Times says the Maritime Heritage Foundation is set to manage the wreck's raising.

<p>Five shipwrecks dating from the 1500s to the 1700s have been found during renovation work on a quay in central Stockholm, the Swedish Maritime Museum said on Monday.</p> <p>"Five shipwrecks ... from the 1500s to 1700s have been found in connection with the renovation of Stroemkajen," the museum said.</p>

In 2010, the Hong Kong organization Noah’s Ark Ministries International or NAMI announced they had discovered the legendary vessel on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey and were subsequently accused of perpetrating a hoax. Now, a professional archaeologist states there is significant merit to their discovery. Harvard University educated archaeologist and director of the Paleontological Research Corporation, Dr. Joel Klenck, surveyed the site, analyzed the archaeological remains and completed a comparative study. “The site is remarkable”, states Klenck, “and comprises a large all-wood structure with an archaeological assemblage that appears to be mostly from the Late Epipaleolithic Period.” These assemblages at...

Mexico - The Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History have admitted that they have a second reference to the date 2012 as "end of the world" on a carved fragment found at an archaeological site in southern Mexico. Salt Lake Tribune reports that archaeologists have long acknowledged that reference to date 2012 as "end of the world" is found on a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. But on Thursday, the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History announced that there is what appears another reference to the same date in an...

His burial at sea in full armour and in a lead casket was designed to ensure that no one – but especially the Spanish – would find his body. Now, more than 400 years after Sir Francis Drake's death in the Caribbean, the great seafarer's watery grave may be close to being discovered. A team of treasure hunters led by an American former basketball team owner claims to have discovered two ships from Drake's fleet lying on the seabed off the coast of Panama. The 195-ton Elizabeth and 50-ton Delight were scuttled shortly after the naval hero's death from dysentery,...

Rome's Lateran Baptistery. Credit: Anthony Majanlahti (CC BY 2.0) Rome, Italy, Oct 3, 2011 / 07:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A remarkable Vatican-Swedish project is providing a new 3-D insight into Christian Rome’s architectural history. “It’s what we call building archaeology,” Olof Brandt of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology explained to CNA. He is currently working on a 3-D study of Rome’s Lateran Baptistery, situated next to the Cathedral of St. John Lateran. “That’s the archeology of existing structures, which is about reading the traces of the past in the existing walls of a building.” Brandt points out the...

New excavation work in the ancient city of Tlos in MuÄŸlaÂ’s Fethiye district has unearthed several ancient sculptures of Roman emperors. The archaeological team found sculptures of Roman emperors Hadrian; Antonius Pius and his daughter Faistinaminor; Mareus Aurellus as well as the Goddess Issis, according to Taner Korkut, who is leading the dig.

HE has flown warplanes, shot at tigers and ridden bare-chested on horseback, but Russia's macho prime minister Vladimir Putin is now preparing for his next challenge - diving for Russia's version of Atlantis. Putin, 58, traveled to the Taman Peninsula in the southwest of the country to publicise archaeological work at the ancient Greek city of Phanagoria, Ria Novosti news agency reported. Putin was expected to put on diving gear and head to the bottom of Taman Bay, part of the Kerch Strait leading into the northern edge of the vast Black Sea. Phanagoria was a major Greek colony in...

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of the Philistines in Israel. They are providing scholars with new clues to the Bible's bad guys. The digging in the city of Gath is helping flesh out the picture of the group. Since 1996, digging happens each year in Gath, and this year, over 100 scholars gathered to began excavating the remains of the ancient metropolis whose most famous resident was Goliath. This year, the diggers have unearthed ancient jugs that are more than 3,000 years old, and the decorations on them hint at the Greek origins of the Philistines. How amazing that these...

Heard of bobowler, baffies, bishybarnabee, tittermatorter? Well, these are some of the weirdest words used in Britain. For the first time, the British Library is keeping track of the nation's regional words and has developed a word bank of around 4,000 entries. The words were submitted by visitors to the British Library in central London or to a series of events at provincial libraries as part of its Evolving English exhibition. According to experts, many local dialects died off in recent decades, squeezed out by the increasing standardisation of the language thanks to population mobility as well as the influence...

MEXICO CITY—Archaeologists said Thursday they have found 10 sets of skeletal remains that may belong to U.S. soldiers who died during a battle in the 1846-48 Mexican-American war. The government experts said the shape of the skulls and bone measurements suggest the skeletons belonged to Americans who were killed in the battle of Monterrey on Sept. 21-23, 1846. Archaeologist Araceli Rivera said the height of the skeletons—between 5 feet, 7 inches (175 centimeters) and 5 feet, 9 inches—and "Caucasian" skull features indicated they were Americans.

People are discovering antique fishing tackle all the time, in closets and at garage sales, but none of that compares to discoveries made recently by archaeologists at two of the Channel Islands off Southern California. Looking for signs of ancient human settlement, they unearthed meticulously-crafted spearheads and other tools (see photo at right) that date back 12,000 years and provide insight into the lives of a seafaring culture that obtained bounty from the ocean. The astonishing discoveries, at three sites on Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands west of Santa Barbara, strongly support the theory that during an era when...

People are discovering antique fishing tackle all the time, in closets and at garage sales, but none of that compares to discoveries made recently by archaeologists at two of the Channel Islands off Southern California. Looking for signs of ancient human settlement, they unearthed meticulously-crafted spearheads and other tools (see photo at right) that date back 12,000 years and provide insight into the lives of a seafaring culture that obtained bounty from the ocean. The astonishing discoveries, at three sites on Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands west of Santa Barbara, strongly support the theory that during an era...

On the menu for the earliest colonizers of the Americas: seabirds, seals and sardines That's according to findings from three new archaeological digs on the Channel Islands off Southern California. The sites have yielded dozens of delicate stone tools and thousands of bone and shell fragments from meals more than 11,000 years old, researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science. The finds reveal more about how early Americans lived and ate, said study researcher Torben Rick, a curator of North American archaeology at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The tools found also link the seafaring people...

Ancient stone faces carved into the walls of a well-known limestone cave in East Timor have been discovered by a team searching for fossils of extinct giant rats.The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists were working in Lene Hara Cave on the northeast tip of East Timor. “Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin said. “I shone the torch around and saw a whole panel of engraved prehistoric human faces on the wall of the cave. “The local landowners...

* The 15ft-high road ran from London to Exeter It was a route once trod by legionnaires as they marched across a conquered land. But, eventually, the Romans left Britain and the magnificent highway they created was reclaimed by nature and seemingly lost for ever. Now, some 2,000 years after it was built, it has been uncovered in the depths of a forest in Dorset. And, remarkably, it shows no sign of the potholes that blight our modern roads.

It looked to be a routine excavation of what was thought to be a burial mound. But beneath the mound, archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Museum of Natura History and Archaeology found something more: unusual Bronze Age petroglyphs. "We believe these are very special in a Norwegian context," says museum researcher and project manager Anne Haug. The excavation in Stjørdal, just north of Trondheim, was necessitated by the expansion of a necessitated by the expansion of a gravel pit. Given that project archaeologists didn't anticipate that the dig would be very complicated the museum researchers dedicated...

Israeli archaeologists presented a newly uncovered 1,500-year-old church in the Judean hills on Wednesday, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks...

Turkey: 'Seventh Church' of the Apocalypse is Found "Church in Laodicea" has been located with underground radar signals -- The structure is in its basic and original state. Ankara (kath.net/KAP) Archeologists have found the so-called "Seventh Church of Asia" from the biblical testimony of St. John. Turkish Minister of Culture, Ertugrul Gunay said for the Turkish press service [Tuesday] upon a visit to the excavation. The antique city Ladoicea [Laodikeia on Lykos today's Cürüksu Cayi] in the city of Phrygia mentioned in the cryptic Apocalypse at the end of the New Testament mentioned as the place of the seventh Christian...

Enlarge Image Preserved. Climate changes recorded in tree rings correlate with important events in European history, such as the Black Death. Credit: Wikimedia When empires rise and fall and plagues sweep over the land, people have traditionally cursed the stars. But perhaps they should blame the weather. A new analysis of European tree-ring samples suggests that mild summers may have been the key to the rise of the Roman Empire—and that prolonged droughts, cold snaps, and other climate changes might have played a part in historical upheavals, from the barbarian invasions that brought about Rome's collapse to the Black...

Police arrest tomb raider loading part of 2.5 metre statue into lorry near Lake Nemi, south of Rome, where Caligula had a villa. The lost tomb of Caligula has been found, according to Italian police, after the arrest of a man trying to smuggle abroad a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site After reportedly sleeping with his sisters, killing for pleasure and seeking to appoint his horse a consul during his rule from AD37 to 41, Caligula was described by contemporaries as insane With many of Caligula's monuments destroyed after he was killed by his Praetorian...

Archaeologists today dubbed the discovery 'sensational', claiming it is one of the most significant historic footprint finds the country has seen... Mysterious footprints have been found in the area since the 1950s but the latest finds also shows that deer, six foot cattle and birds from the Bronze Age once roamed the area... The first person to take an active role in studying the footprints was ex-Harrington Road resident Gordon Roberts back in 1989. Now 81-years-old, the former head of languages at Formby High, devised his own system of monitoring and tracking the prints by location... He said: "Formby prides...

LA JOLLA — The existence of King Solomon has been a topic of debate and intrigue for countless treasure-seekers and researchers, and an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) has uncovered evidence suggesting that the ancient king’s splendid, copper- and gold-adorned palaces — as described in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) — may very well have existed. Thomas Levy, a UCSD professor of anthropology and Judaic studies, has pioneered three highly sophisticated digging excavations in an area called Khirbat en-Nahas, located in southern Jordan, attracting the attention of NOVA/National Geographic Television, which sent a crew to Jordan...

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brea tar pits. After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth. Since the team’s arrival in mid-October,...

A Chinese company digging an unexploited copper mine in Afghanistan has unearthed ancient statues of Buddha in a sprawling 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery. Archaeologists are rushing to salvage what they can from a major 7th century B.C. religious site along the famed Silk Road connecting Asia and the Middle East.

A house in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii has collapsed, raising concerns about Italy's state support for its archaeological heritage. --------------------- Video at the link

New Kerala A new research has revealed that our ancestors from 5,000 years ago painted their homes to brighten up their places too. They used red, yellow and orange pigments from ground-up minerals and bound it with animal fat and eggs to make their paint, the new study from a Stone Age settlement on the island of Orkney revealed. Several stones used to form the buildings painted and decorated by the locals in about 3,000 BC, most probably to to enhance important buildings and may have been found in entranceways or areas of the building, which had particular significance. "We...

Archaeologists in Zurich have unearthed a 5,000-year-old door that may be one of the oldest ever found in Europe. The ancient poplar wood door is "solid and elegant" with well-preserved hinges and a "remarkable" design for holding the boards together, archaeologist Niels Bleicher said today.

Lima, Peru: Peruvian archaeologists have unearthed four perfectly preserved mummies at an ancient burial site in the capital city, Lima. The mummies are more than 1000 years old and were found at the Huaca Pucllana - a pre Inca temple.

Once thought of as near total carnivores, early humans ate ground flour 20,000 years before the dawn of agriculture. Flour residues recovered from 30,000-year-old grinding stones found in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic point to widespread processing and consumption of plant grain, according to a paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. "It's another nail in the coffin of the idea that hunter–gatherers didn't use plants for food," says Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study. Work in recent years has also...

MOSCOW (AFP) – Traces of a previously unknown Bronze Age civilization have been discovered in the peaks of Russia's Caucasus Mountains thanks to aerial photographs taken 40 years ago, researchers said Monday. "We have discovered a civilization dating from the 16th to the 14th centuries BC, high in the mountains south of Kislovodsk," in Russia's North Caucasus region, Andrei Belinsky, the head of a joint Russian-German expedition that has been investigating the region for five years, told AFP.

It seems that Newnham College has been hiding several skeletons in its back gardens, providing a group of Sixth Formers with the perfect opportunity to get a rare taste of a hands-on archaeological dig. While digging at Newnham, the group of 20 girls from schools in Peterborough, London and Birmingham uncovered evidence that the college was once the site of a significant Roman settlement, as well as the location of a farmhouse from the 16th or 17th century. The dig was organised as part of an access programme, funded by Newnham and the Higher Education Field Academy, to offer Sixth...

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti. Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art. Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity's lost...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by descendants of the Apache warrior Geronimo, who claimed some of his remains were stolen in 1918 by a Yale University secret society. The lawsuit was filed last year in Washington by 20 descendants who want to rebury Geronimo near his New Mexico birthplace......

Bar Ilan University archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a Philistine temple in the ancient city of Gath, home of the Biblical Goliath, buried in one of the largest tels (ancient ruin mounds) in Israel. The temple and a number of ritual items dating back to the 10th century BCE were discovered at Tel Tsafit (Tell es-Safit/Gath) by Professor Aren Maeir of BIU's Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology and his international team. The tel is located about halfway between Ashkelon and Jerusalem, near Kiryat Gat along the southern coastal plain. “Interestingly, the architectural design of...

Muslims Dig Under Temple Mount, Don't Want Jews Digging Nearby By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief February 16, 2007 Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Amid an ongoing storm over an Israeli archeological excavation near Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a top Islamic official declared Thursday that all digging in the city should be stopped - but an Israeli archeologist pointed out that the biggest excavation in the entire area has been carried out by Muslims, unauthorized, underneath the Mount itself. Reacting to an Israeli dig near the Temple Mount, Islamic and Arab leaders have accused Israel of carrying out work that would endanger...

The team was very excited when I was there by this black and white image. It's a scan of an existing barrow and in this image the archaeological team see a segmented ditch and 24 deep pits which they say would probably have been dug for timbers and a wooden structure. A wooden henge. The diagram on the right shows this more clearly.

Among various important discoveries, the 2010 Kinneret Regional Project discovered an ancient synagogue, in use at around 400 AD. This year's archeological focus is the first systematic excavation on Horvat Kur, a village inhabited from the Early Roman through the Early Medieval periods located on a gentle hill two kilometers west of the Lake of Galilee. Thirty volunteers -- mostly students of theology, religious studies, and archeology -- and staff from the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Romania, Belgium, Spain, Israel, and Germany explore the material remains of the village life in Galilee, a region that features very prominently in Early Christian...