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By studying and excavating ancient burial grounds, we can learn about how final respects were paid when people died during ancient times. The artifacts located alongside these remains also provide insight into what items people valued and what they believed about the afterlife. A 2013 discovery of an ancient burial ground near Bethlehem is providing new information about one civilization that lived approximately 4000 years ago. In 2013, efforts began to build an industrial park near Bethlehem, leading to a discovery that may prove to offer fresh insights about the ancient world. The area where the industrial park was to...

A 4,000-year-old cemetery made up of more than 100 tombs has been found near Bethlehem in the West Bank. Now known as Khalet al-Jam'a, the cemetery probably served an undiscovered settlement for more than 1,500 years. Many of its tombs have been destroyed by modern construction or looting, but at least 30 tombs have survived. Many of them are shaft tombs with one or more rock-cut chambers. According to Lorenzo Nigro of Sapienza University of Rome, the settlement was situated near trade routes, and artifacts from the tombs indicate that it had been a wealthy place. "Typical pieces of the...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Along an isolated, rocky stretch of Greek shoreline, a Florida State University researcher and his students are unlocking the secrets of a partially submerged, “lost” harbor town believed to have been built by the ancient Mycenaeans nearly 3,500 years ago. “This is really a remarkable find,” said Professor Daniel J. Pullen, chairman of FSU’s Department of Classics. “It is rare indeed to locate an entire town built during the Late Bronze Age that shows this level of preservation.” Pullen and a colleague, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies Thomas F. Tartaron of the University of Pennsylvania, led students...

Devastating 'World War ZERO' destroyed ancient Mediterranean civilisations and plunged Europe into a dark age 11:41, 13 MAY 2016 UPDATED 11:44, 13 MAY 2016 BY JASPER HAMILL Controversial theory finally identifies mysterious 'Sea Peoples' blamed for cataclysmic series of events which changed the course of history It was a disaster which destroyed the ancient world's greatest civilisations and plunged Europe into a dark age that lasted centuries. Now one archaeologist think he's worked out who's to blame for sparking an event he calls "World War Zero", but which most academics refer to as the The Late Bronze Age Collapse ....

The Trojan War was a grander event than even Homer would have us believe. The famous conflict may have been one of the final acts in what one archaeologist has controversially dubbed "World War Zero" -- an event he claims brought the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age world crashing down 3200 years ago. And the catalyst for the war? A mysterious and arguably powerful civilisation almost entirely overlooked by archaeologists: the Luwians. By the second millennium BC, civilisation had taken hold throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Egyptian New Kingdom coexisted with the Hittites of central Anatolia and the Mycenaeans of mainland...

A team of archaeologists, led by Professor Vance Watrous and Matt Buell of the University at Buffalo, have discovered a fortification system at the Minoan town of Gournia. The discovery rebukes the popular myth that the Minoans were a peaceful society with no need for defensive structures. That idea arose from work done in the early 20th century by Sir Arthur Evans... The town was originally excavated from 1901-1904 by Harriet Boyd Hawes, a pioneering women who was among the first to excavate a Minoan settlement. Located on the north coast, Gournia was in use during the "neo-palatial" period (ca....

Greek archaeologists confirm authenticity of 'Theseus Ring' Aug 2, 2006, 15:44 GMT Athens - The long-lost 'Theseus Ring,' a gold ring found in the Plaka district of Athens in the 1950s and generally dismissed as a fake, has been identified by Greek archaeologists as a genuine 15th century BC artifact, reports said Wednesday. The Greek press had reported the discovery of a gold signet ring, with dimensions 2.7 x 1.8 cm dating from the Minoan period, and the National Archaeological Museum wanted to purchase it for 75,000 euros from the woman who owned it. There was a huge debate about...

Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and his colleagues at Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities in Athens have spent the day diving near the cliffs of the tiny island of Dia in the eastern Mediterranean. They have identified two clusters of pottery dating from the first century BC and fifth century AD. Together with other remains that the team has discovered on the island's submerged slopes, the pots reveal that for centuries Greek, Roman and Byzantine traders used Dia as a refuge during storms, when they couldn't safely reach Crete. It is a nice...

The tomb was built sometime between 800 B.C. and 760 B.C., a time when Corinth was emerging as a major power and Greeks were colonizing the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. The tomb itself consists of a shaft and burial pit, the pit having a limestone sarcophagus that is about 5.8 feet (1.76 meters) long, 2.8 feet (0.86 m) wide and 2.1 feet (0.63 m) high. When researchers opened the sarcophagus, they found a single individual had been buried inside, with only fragments of bones surviving. The scientists found several pottery vessels beside the sarcophagus, and the tomb also contained...

Since this disk was found in Crete, and the people of Crete today speak Greek, that's a good language to assume was spoken by the maker of the disk. Still, that's a guess, or a hypothesis, not a fact. Besides that, we know that not everybody on Crete spoke Greek in the Bronze Age. The classical Greeks mentioned people they called Eteocretans who did not speak Greek. Further, we know that Linear A, written by the Minoans on Crete before the Mycenean Greeks came, did not represent Greek. Professor Hubert LaMarle considers it to be an early Indo-Iranian language, related...

The sharing of food and alcoholic beverages is extremely important today as in the past because provides a wealth of information on societies where this occurred. So far however, most of these practices known through archaeology have been primarily those undertaken by people from the same individual community or regional district. The Bronze Age site of Roca (2) in Southern Italy, has produced clear evidence for the existence at this place of one of the earliest inter-cultural feasting 'party' in Mediterranean Europe, dating to c.a. 1200 BC. This small (about 3 hectares nowadays, although it was larger in the past)...

Archaeologists digging at Pylos, an ancient city on the southwest coast of Greece, have discovered the rich grave of a warrior who was buried at the dawn of European civilization. He lies with a yardlong bronze sword and a remarkable collection of gold rings, precious jewels and beautifully carved seals. Archaeologists expressed astonishment at the richness of the find and its potential for shedding light on the emergence of the Mycenaean civilization, the lost world of Agamemnon, Nestor, Odysseus and other heroes described in the epics of Homer. “Probably not since the 1950s have we found such a rich tomb,”...

While Hughes explores the Late Bronze Age reality behind the story of Helen, she takes in some of the most beautiful scenery of the ancient world, from the magnificent citadel at Mycenae to the spectacular site of the shrine to Helen, high in the hills above Sparta. She also tastes the food of the ancient world -- based on the latest archaeological research -- and discovers how the conflict in Helen's name would really have been fought. Working with weapons experts and accurate replicas of chariots pulled by local gypsy horses, Hughes experiences firsthand how chariots and archers battled beneath...

Helen of Troy Existed? By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery NewsWas a Queen of Sparta Helen of Troy? Oct. 17, 2005— Helen of Troy, described in the epic poem The Iliad, was based on a real woman, according to a new book that weaves history, archaeology and myth to recreate the famous ancient Greek beauty's life. According to the new theory proposed by Bettany Hughes, Helen's mythological character was inspired by a wealthy Bronze Age leader from the southern mainland of Greece. Hughes, a former Oxford University scholar who has conducted research in the Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor, was unavailable for...

Archaeologists discover palace with archaic inscriptions built during the Mycenaean period 'Archaeologists in Greece have discovered the ruins of an ancient palace with important archaic inscriptions dating back to the Mycenaean age, the culture ministry said Tuesday. The palace, likely built around the 17th-16th centuries BC, had around 10 rooms and was discovered near Sparta in southern Greece. At the site, archaeologists found objects of worship, clay figurines, a cup adorned with a bull’s head, swords and fragments of murals.'

Ongoing excavations at a site in the southern Peloponnese are offering rare insight into the ancient past of Laconia, about which very little physical evidence exists, the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency cited the Culture Ministry as saying on Tuesday. Covering an expanse of 3.5 hectares, the site on Aghios Vassilios Hill near the village of Xirokambi on the Sparta plain has been under excavation since 2009 and is believed to contain valuable evidence that will shed light on life in the area during the 17th to 16th centuries BC, the announcement said. A palace complex found on the site and...

In 1983 a sponge diver found funny metal biscuits with ears at the ocean floor. That is how the excavation got started, Hirschfeld said. The ship carried ten tons of copper ingots, which after being analyzed, were determined to be from Cyprus. Each ingot weighs approximately 60 pounds, she said. She and her team also excavated glass ingots, tons of tin, and three Italian swords that were not part of the cargo of the ship. Among the 130 Canaanite jars they found, there were traces of wine in the jars and one was full of glass beads. The team also...

Midwife Mercada Dasa lived in the Old City of Jerusalem until 1948. In her attic she raised an unusual pet -- a white female snake about a meter and a half long -- and fed it sugar cubes. Just before the entry of the Jordanian Legion she left the besieged city with her family and her pet remained behind. That a midwife, whose family lived in Jerusalem since the time of the Second Temple, carried on a tradition of feeding white female snakes was part of the family's lore, but not something anyone considered significant. Now Mercada's grandson, Benny Avigdory,...

Research into the dispersal of Philistine cooking methods among various populations in Israel shows that the Philistines spread their culture beyond the areas under their control... Unlike most of the peoples living in the region in the biblical era, the Philistines were not Semites... They prepared meals in a characteristic sealed pottery vessel suited to long cooking times at low heat, while most inhabitants of Canaan at the time used open pots and faster cooking methods. The bones found at the Philistine cities showed that... the Philistines ate mainly pork, with an occasional meal of dog meat. The Philistines' wine...

Swedish archaeologists in Jordan led by Professor Peter M. Fischer from the University of Gothenburg have excavated a nearly 60-metre long well-preserved building from 1100 B.C. in the ancient settlement Tell Abu al-Kharaz. The building is from an era characterised by major migration... Pottery from one of the rooms from 1100 B.C.‘We have evidence that culture from present Europe is represented in Tell Abu al-Kharaz. A group of the Sea Peoples of European descent, Philistines, settled down in the city,’ says Peter Fischer. ‘We have, for instance, found pottery resembling corresponding items from Greece and Cyprus in terms of form...