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A group of archaeologists excavating the doomed city of Pompeii found quite the surprise earlier this week: a banquet hall complete with paintings inspired by the Trojan War. The discovery was announced earlier this week, The Associated Press noted. The banquet hall and its mosaic floor were uncovered during a project to help prevent further demise of the ruins of Pompeii.

Marine archaeologists have identified 10 shipwrecks, including one from the Roman era, in the waters around a Greek island in the Mediterranean. The finds came to light during a multiyear project carried out by a team in collaboration with Greece's National Hellenic Research Foundation and the country's Ministry of Culture. The project has been surveying an area around the island of Kasos, which lies in the Aegean Sea, a portion of the Mediterranean between the Greek peninsula to the west and Turkey's Anatolia peninsula to the east. "This research was conducted to shed light on the maritime history of the...

Archaeologists working in China recently revealed a series of extensive underground tunnels believed to be thousands of years old. Researchers working at the ancient stone city of Houchengzui, northern China (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), uncovered the extensive network of tunnels thought to be at least 4,300 years old, according to Heritage Daily. The oval-shaped Neolithic city is roughly 341 acres across and home to ancient transportation and defensive networks. Only six underground tunnel passages have been discovered so far, each between 1.5 and 6 meters depth... They’re also around 1 to 2 meters high, and 1.5 meters wide. Extensive tunnel...

Erosion along Daytona Beach, Florida, caused mainly by two hurricanes last fall, exposed a shipwreck last week that archeologists hope to learn more about, according to reports. FOX 35 in Orlando reported that researchers planned to examine the wreckage Monday, though it is not clear whether inclement weather deterred those plans. The wreck was exposed near Daytona Beach Shores because of beach erosion allegedly caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022 and high tides. Aerial footage captured by the station’s SkyFox drone depicts wreckage in the shape of a hull, estimated to be 25 to 30 feet long. FOX...

Archaeologists working in the buried Roman city of Pompeii say they have uncovered a "sorcerer's treasure trove" of artefacts, including good-luck charms, mirrors and glass beads. A room with the bodies of 10 victims, including women and children, was excavated in the same house. Pompeii was engulfed by a volcanic eruption from Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. The fatal eruption froze the city and its residents in time, making it a rich source for archaeologists. The trove was found in what remained of a wooden box. The wood itself had decomposed and only the bronze hinges remained, preserved by the...

Some of the most enigmatic human-made objects from Europe's late Stone Age — intricately carved balls of stone, each about the size of a baseball — continue to baffle archaeologists more than 200 years after they were first discovered. More than 500 of the enigmatic objects have now been found, most of them in northeast Scotland, but also in the Orkney Islands, England, Ireland and one in Norway. Archaeologists still don't know the original purpose or meaning of the Neolithic stone balls, which are recognized as some of the finest examples of Neolithic art found anywhere in the world. But...

A group of archaeologists has discovered the remains of more than 50 children who were ritually sacrificed by the pre-Columbian Chimu culture on the northern coast of what is now Peru. The site is located a close to another where evidence of the biggest-ever sacrifice of children was found, with more than 140 youngsters were slain. But the most recent discovery may be even bigger. “So far we have found the remains of 56 children who were sacrificed by the Chimu culture,” archaeologist Gabriel Prieto told AFP. “At this new site, we can easily double the number of remains we...

PALPA, Peru, May 28 (Reuters) - Archaeologists using drones have discovered more than 25 geoglyphs etched into a swath of coastal desert in southern Peru near the Nazca Lines, a culture ministry official said Monday. Most of the newly found geoglyphs, which include figures of a killer whale and a woman dancing, appear to have been made by the Paracas culture more than 2,000 years ago, hundreds of years before the Nazca people created similar giant drawings nearby, said Johny Isla, an archaeologist who heads the culture ministry's conservation efforts in the region. An additional 25 geoglyphs that had previously...

"New technology that allows scientists to remove the glue from the masks of mummies without damaging the ink on the paper used to make the mask has yielded an exciting discovery: a piece of papyrus that may contain the oldest known copy of one of the gospels. The finding, a fragment of the Gospel of Mark, which dates back to the year 90, is one of several fascinating texts that archaeologists are discovering in the masks of mummies. This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn...

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,750-year-old temple along with a cache of sacred artifacts, providing rare insight into religious practices at the time, the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday. The temple was uncovered west of Jerusalem, at the Tel Motza archaeological site, in preparation for work on Highway 1. Among the finds are pottery figurines, fragments of chalices and decorated pedestals, which indicate the site was the stomping ground of a ritual cult. "The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the...

Archaeologists have discovered a rare gold bell with a small loop at its end. The finding was made during an archaeological excavation in the City of David National Park (near the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem) by the Israel Antiquities Authority in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Ir David Foundation. The directors of the excavation on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, archaeologists Eli Shukron and Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University, said after the finding, “The bell looked as if it was sewn on the garment worn by a man of high authority...

Archaeologists believe they have found the first pre-Roman planned town discovered in Britain.It has been unearthed beneath the Roman town of Silchester or Calleva Atrebatum near modern Reading. The Romans are often credited with bringing civilisation to Britain - including town planning. But excavations have shown evidence of an Iron Age town built on a grid and signs inhabitants had access to imported wine and olive oil. Prof Mike Fulford, an archaeologist at the University of Reading, said the people of Iron Age Silchester appear to have adopted an urbanised 'Roman' way of living, long before the Romans arrived. "It...

A suspected Iron Age road, made of timber and preserved in peat for 2,000 years, has been uncovered by archaeologists in East Anglia. The site, excavated in June, may have been part of a route across the River Waveney and surrounding wetland at Geldeston in Norfolk, say experts. Causeways were first found in the area in 2006, during flood defence work at the nearby Suffolk village of Beccles. It is thought the road is pre-Roman, built by the local Iceni tribe. In AD60, the Iceni ambushed one Roman legion and sacked Roman settlements at London and Colchester before being defeated.

Excavator Nicholas Stampolidis said his team discovered more than 3,000 pieces of gold foil in the 7th-century B.C. twin grave near the ancient town of Eleutherna... The tiny gold ornaments, from 1 to 4 centimetres (0.4 to 1.5 inches) long, had been sewn onto a lavish robe or shroud that initially wrapped the body of a woman and has almost completely rotted away but for a few off-white threads... The woman, who presumably had a high social or religious status, was buried with a second skeleton in a large jar sealed with a stone slab weighing more than half a...

LIMA (Reuters) – An ancient ceremonial ground used by a Pre-Columbian civilization for human sacrifices has been uncovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists said on Thursday. The discovery appears to reinforce prevailing theories about a ceremony known as "the presentation" that was carried out by the Moche people, an agricultural civilization that flourished between 100 B.C. and 800 A.D. Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war. Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons...

A team of archaeologists led by Stephen Houston has discovered a royal tomb in Guatemala, filled with materials that have been preserved for approximately 1,600 years. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A well-preserved tomb of an ancient Mayan king has been discovered in Guatemala by a team of archaeologists led by Brown University’s Stephen Houston. The tomb is packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who may have been sacrificed at the time of the king’s death. The team uncovered the tomb, which dates from about 350 to 400 A.D., beneath the El Diablo pyramid...

An ongoing archaeological excavation in Tel Tzafit continues to unearth the ruins of what was once the city of Gat – described in the Bible as the hometown of Goliath. Professor Aren Maeir, who is directing the dig, spoke to Arutz Sheva's Hebrew-language news service to discuss the latest finds. Recent finds from the Tel Tzafit excavation are “fascinating,” Maeir said. The site, inhabited at times by Canaanites and at other times by Philistines, has remnants from many periods of history. “We are focusing on the Canaanite period, the Philistine period, and the Israelite period, and for now we're primarily...

ANKARA (Reuters) – Archaeologists in the ancient city of Troy in Turkey have found the remains of a man and a woman believed to have died in 1,200 B.C., the time of the legendary war chronicled by Homer, a leading German professor said on Tuesday. Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor of archaeometry who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze age. The discovery could add to evidence that Troy's lower area was bigger in the late Bronze Age than...

JERUSALEM – Archaeologists digging in Jerusalem have uncovered a 3,700-year-old wall that is the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in the city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday. The 26-foot-high wall is believed to have been part of a protected passage built by ancient Canaanites from a hilltop fortress to a nearby spring that was the city's only water source and vulnerable to marauders. The discovery marks the first time archaeologists have found such massive construction from before the time of Herod, the ruler behind numerous monumental projects in the city 2,000 years ago, and shows that Jerusalem...

"Oldest Church" Discovery "Ridiculous," Critics SayMati Milstein in Rihab, Jordan for National Geographic NewsJune 13, 2008 A Jordanian archaeologist's announcement this week that he had uncovered the world's first Christian church in an underground cave drew surprise and skepticism from experts in Jordan and beyond. The Jordan Times earlier this week quoted archaeologist Abdel-Qader al-Housan, director of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies as saying, "We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 A.D. to 70 A.D." Al-Housan later told the Associated Press that he discovered a cave beneath St. George's...