INSTITUT SUPERIEUR D'ANTHROPOLOGIE

 INSTITUTE OF ANTHROPOLOGY

ONLINE COURSES / COURS A DISTANCE

 INSCRIPTION : Année Universitaire 2012/2013

   REGISTRATION : Academic Year  2012 / 2013

ITALIE -  Rome - The Rome cat sanctuary in the old Roman ruins of Largo Argentina may be on the move. The Italian ministry of culture says that part of it is occupying an illegal construction in an important section of the archaeological ruins. Over the last two decades the sanctuary, which is well-loved by Italians and tourists alike, has looked after thousands of the city’s stray cats, making sure that they are fed and healthy. Most of the cats that have arrived at the sanctuary – many of which have been abandoned on the streets – have also been sterilised to prevent overpopulation among the city’s felines. The Torre Argentina Roman Cat Sanctuary also tries to find loving and suitable homes for its strays. The ministry says that it is not the cats that are the problem but the illegal structure within the ruins. It is occupying a part of Temple D, which is seen as one of the most important archaeological remains in the city. The site is close to where Julius Caesar is thought to have been assassinated in 44 B.C.

http://www.wantedinrome.com/news/2001762/rome-cat-sanctuary-gets-eviction-order.html

USA -   Trumansburg - A national archaeology preservation group has bought two former Cayuga Indian village sites in New York's Finger Lakes region as part of the organization's ongoing effort to protect historical sites linked to the Iroquois. Andy Stout, eastern regional director for the Archaeological Conservancy, told The Associated Press that the sites are on private land just a few miles apart amid farmland in the Finger Lakes community of Trumansburg, 45 miles southwest of Syracuse. The larger of the two properties contains evidence of a palisaded Cayuga village that occupied the site in the mid-16th century, and the other site also was home to a Cayuga village during the same period, he said. The larger property, a 34-acre parcel known as the Indian Fort Road site, had been known to scholars since the late 19th century. Cornell University researchers who excavated the site in the mid-1990s found evidence of a palisade under the property's distinctive earthworks, indicating the village may have been fortified during a period of intertribal warfare between members of the Iroquois Confederacy and other Eastern Woodland tribes. The other nearby property, known as the Carman site, is believed to date back to the late 1500s. Archaeologists from the University of Pittsburgh have conducted several excavations at the site since the 1990s, uncovering evidence of the longhouses the Cayugas lived in. The work has uncovered the remnants of a culture that today's Cayugas still relate to, said Kathleen Allen, the University of Pittsburgh anthropologist who has led the digs at the Carman site. Both properties are near the southwest shore of Cayuga Lake, in a region that was home to the Cayuga tribe of what was then the Five Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Cayugas were mostly concentrated in an area between Seneca and Cayuga lakes in what is now Seneca, Schuyler, Tompkins and Cayuga counties.

http://poststar.com/news/state-and-regional/archaeology-group-buys-iroquois-sites-in-ny/article_303b1307-410e-57bc-8db1-1a9d15a36ab9.html

BELARUS -  Polotsk - The international conference “History and Archaeology of Polotsk and the Polotsk Land” opened in Polotsk, BelTA learnt from Ms Tamara Dzhumantayeva, the Director of the National Polotsk Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve. The conference is dedicated to the 1150th anniversary of the first mention of Polotsk in chronicles and is the final event on the program of celebrations of 1150 years of Polotsk. Attending the conference are 50 scholars from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Participants will discuss new archeological research on the history of Polotsk, the problem of restoration and use of the monuments, exchange their views on the study and interpretation of archaeological finds in Polotsk and the Polotsk land. A separate set of issues is related to the role of the museum in the preservation and presentation of the cultural heritage of the historic city, the use of new information technologies in the museum.

http://news.belta.by/en/news/culture?id=697724

ARMENIE - Tigranakert - The Hellenistic city of Tigranakert is located in the internationally unrecognized republic of Nagorno Karabagh, which has proclaimed its independence at the beginning of the 90s of the last century after the Armenian-Azerbaijani war. The discovery of Tigranakert is one of the most successful undertakings of the Armenian cultural heritage in terms of inclusion of this heritage into the current cultural processes. Before the archaeological research only legends are known about this city. The initiative to discover the city was a civic initiative to reveal to the Armenian and international scientific and political circles, that “historical excursus” of Azerbaijan about the idea the Armenians came to Nagorno Karabagh only in the 19th century, was a political hoax, via ignoring the presence of Armenians during last two thousand years in Nagorno Karabagh and surroundings, witnessed by many Greek and Roman (Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Ptolemy, Dio Cassius), Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Georgian historians, several thousands of Armenian inscriptions of the 7th-18th centuries, and so on. In 2005 an expedition was set for an archaeological research of the area. The mission examined the territory with radius of 10km where Khachenaget gets out into the steppe. As a result of this in the south-eastern slope of Vanqasar mountain, an ancient settlement were verified. The traces were in the form of foundations of a fortification walls 200m in length, dug into the rock, as well as large depositories of Hellenistic pottery. This data was sufficient enough for systematically excavations, as a result of which during 2006-2012 uncovered some parts of almost 60 hectares of a city: the Hellenistic Fortified area with foundations dug into the rock and walls with “swallow-like” ties, the single-domed basilica church of the Central area, Early Christian necropolis, Hellenistic necropolis and Hellenistic Quarter, Early Christian Cave sanctuary complex, and the Canal dug into a rock. We are trying to preserve the landscape look of the monument, which means exclusion of installation of any modern object on the whole territory of the monument, if it could disrupt the landscape perception of the monument.

http://times.am/?l=en&p=14387

G-B  -  Priddy Circles - When a retired businessman bought one of Britain’s most important prehistoric monuments as a pension investment, he plainly felt a responsibility to keep it looking nice. But Roger Penny, 73, found himself in court after contractors he asked to “tidy” up a 5,000-year-old earthwork ring filled in historically-important holes with rubble. Mr Penny, a retired plant-hire manager, was found to have caused serious damage to the Somerset monument, known as Priddy Circles, as a judge warned him “significant archaeological information” could have been lost. The court heard Mr Penny bought a former hunt stables and house as an investment, with adjoining land including the southernmost Priddy Circle. The ring, which dates back to 3,000BC, was built around the same time as Stonehenge and is designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The appellation means English Heritage must be consulted before building or renovation work is carried out. Instead, Mr Penny instructed two contractors to “tidy” and renovate the area, so he could eventually let it out for profit. The damage included the destruction of a circular ditch said to be completely bulldozed.

http://arbroath.blogspot.fr/2012/10/prehistoric-monument-filled-in-with.html

ARMENIE –  Aghitu-1 - The Armenian cave Aghitu-1 in Sisian will help puzzle out the mystery of migration of the Homo sapiens.   Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Pavel Avetisyan, told ArmInfo that some layers dating back to the Stone Age (the Upper Paleolithic) have been preserved in this area. The samples taken for analysis demonstrate that there were people here 25-27 thsd years ago.  But the cave also has more ancient layers, which are still to be studied.  Thus, Aghitu-1 can give important information about the version that the Homo sapiens migrated from Africa 50 thsd years earlier that it was considered. Experts think that the first camps of the Homo sapiens, who migrated from Africa, were in the southern part of ArabPeninsula. Aghitu-1 will help understand whether the migration of ancient people to Asian Near East was via territory of modern Iran or not.  The excavation in Aghitu-1 cave is carried out under an Armenian-German project

http://www.arminfo.am/index.cfm?objectid=24898240-22B6-11E2-98F1F6327207157C