13 - 14 JUILLET 2010
- 14 JUILLET :
- TURQUIE : 
Biga- A sarcophagus of a warrior was recently discovered during archaeological excavations of the ancient city of Parion, in the village of Kemer near the town of Biga. According to the archaeologist, the newly found sarcophagus had an inscription of a warrior saying goodbye to his family as he left for a war. Parion is among the most important of the dozens of ancient settlements in the region of Troad, in which the city of Troy was the focus. Parion was first found by archaeologists in 2005. Many precious artefacts, including gold crowns and sarcophagi, have been unearthed at the site since, suggesting the city’s importance during the Hellenistic and Roman Age.
http://www.balkantravellers.com/en/read/article/2118
- ROYAUME-UNI : Sedgeford - Archaelogists working at Sedgeford SHARP dig, where a skeleton thought to be from the Bronze Age is being uncovered. Just days into this year's season another piece of the historical jigsaw, a second skeleton - thought to date back to the Bronze Age - has been unearthed.At the end of last year dig ground-breaking evidence suggesting the North-West corner of Norfolk was occupied thousands of years earlier than previously thought was discovered in a skeleton later carbon-dated to 2300BC. The latest skeleton, which is more complete than the first, will provide a further insight. Found with the shoulder bone of a cow, which was thought could have been part of a burial ritual.
-U.S.A. : 
St.Augustine - The St. Augustine Lighthouse LAMP program, First Light Maritime Society, lifted a 300 year old pot with 3 legs and 2 handles with holes (for hanging over a cooking fire). The pot was found off of the shores of St. Augustine in a place that has many wrecks still uncovered.
http://photos.jacksonville.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=1041079&CategoryID=9088&ListSubAlbums=0
- FRANCE : 
Molène - Une équipe d’archéologues travaillant sur le site de Ber ar Louer a mis au jour un alignement de petits menhirs. Ils étaient cachés dans les vestiges d’une maison vieille de 4 000 ans. L’un d’eux comporte un décor qui serait inédit en Bretagne : un sorte de petit mamelon de dix centimètres de diamètre, sculpté en bas relief.
- FRANCE : 
Rhuys - Une trentaine de vacanciers s’arc-boutent sous un soleil de plomb pour tracter un bloc de pierre de 4,2 tonnes à la force des bras, dans un effort collectif pour mieux comprendre l’histoire mystérieuse des mégalithes de Bretagne. C’est ça, l’archéologie expérimentale : on essaie concrètement de savoir comment les hommes du néolithique ont déplacé des blocs énormes sur des distances dépassant parfois dix kilomètres . Comprendre l’étonnant parcours d’une dalle du dolmen de l’île de Gavrinis, un bloc gravé de 17 tonnes qui sert de plafond au monument funéraire érigé en - 3 600. Les travaux menés ont permis d’établir que cette dalle était en fait un fragment du grand menhir brisé du site de Locmariaquer, à plus de 5 km à vol d’oiseau, érigé un millénaire plus tôt (vers - 4 800). Celui-ci provient d’une carrière située à une dizaine de kilomètres de là, sur l’actuelle presqu’île de Rhuys.
- CHINE : 
Two millennia of foreign invasions and internal wars in China were driven more by cooling climate than by feudalism, class struggle or bad government, a bold study released Wednesday argued. Food shortages severe enough to spark civil turmoil or force hordes of starving nomads to swoop down from the Mongolian steppes were consistently linked to long periods of colder weather, the study found. The collapses of the agricultural dynasties of the Han (25-220), Tang (618-907), Northern Song (960-1125), Southern Song (1127-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) are closely associated with low temperature or the rapid decline in temperature. A shortage of food would have weakened these dynasties, and pushed nomads in the north -- even more vulnerable to dips in temperature -- to invade their southern, Chinese-speaking neighbors.
http://news.discovery.com/history/china-climate-wars.html
- ITALIE : 
Florence - Scientists who exhumed the remains of several members of the Medicis, the clan that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, have conclusively dismissed the theory of family murders, solving a more than 400-year-old cold case. Malaria, not poison as long rumored, killed Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife, Bianca Cappello, according to research to be published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The couple died a few hours apart in October 1587 after 11 days of agony. Their almost simultaneous deaths led to speculation that they had been murdered.
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/medici-mystery-cold-case.html
- U.S.A. : 
New-York - A 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years. A 1797 map shows that the excavation site is close to where Lindsey’s Wharf and Lake’s Wharf once projected into the Hudson.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/18th-century-ship-found-at-trade-center-site/
- ETHIOPIE : 
What could be the world’s earliest illustrated Christian manuscript has been found in a remote Ethiopian monastery. The Garima Gospels were previously assumed to date from about 1100AD, but radiocarbon dating conducted in Oxford suggests they were made between 330 and 650AD. The radiocarbon dating could even link the manuscript to the time of Abba (Father) Garima, who established the monastery. Originally from Constantinople, the monk is traditionally believed to have arrived in Ethiopia in 494. Legend has it that he copied the Gospels in a single day. To assist him in completing this lengthy task, God is said to have delayed the setting of the sun.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Discovery-of-earliest-illuminated-manuscript%20%20/20990
- U.S.A. : 
Jerseyville - South of Jerseyville, along U.S. Route 67, a team of state archaeologists excavating about 4 acres of land has found evidence of a 1,400-year-old Native American settlement. 40 pits, some very large storage pits, and one bell-shaped pit that appears to have had hundreds of tons of limestone hauled in and has a flagstone floor. The archaeologists believe they have a village dating back to about A.D. 600, as well as archaeological deposits going back 4,000 to 5,000 years. The excavations on the west side are yielding very well-preserved bone fragments, as well as pottery pieces. It appears this was a large communal village, but may not have been used year-round.
http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/site-42563-pits-nolan.html
- CANADA : 
Québec - Les trésors archéologiques découverts sous la terrasse Dufferin ne seront pas enfouis sous des tonnes de sable. Les vestiges des premières fortifications de la Nouvelle-France du temps de Champlain demeureront visibles. Les fondations du premier fort Saint-Louis et le sous-sol des Châteaux Saint-Louis seront protégées par un toit de béton étanche sur lequel reposera un nouveau plancher de bois. Depuis quelques semaines, de nouvelles fouilles sont en cours. Jusqu'à maintenant, on y a mis au jour un des murs du fort que Champlain avait fait construire en 1620. Cette découverte a permis d'en apprendre davantage sur l'emplacement du fort. On a également retrouvé les vestiges d'une boulangerie et de son four à pain, de carreaux de céramique qui recouvraient le plancher.
- 13 JUILLET :
- ESPAGNE : 
Burgos - Un grand musée sur l'évolution humaine a été inauguré mardi, non loin du gisement archéologique d'Atapuerca, l'un des plus importants d'Europe, dont il exposera quelque 200 pièces. Ses quatre étages exposent notamment les pièces archélogiques les plus célèbres découvertes sur le gisement d'Atapuerca, dont un crâne, baptisé «Miguelon», appartenant à un ancêtre de l'être humain remontant à quelque 500 000 ans. Ce gisement a permis en 2007 la découverte de restes fossilisés du «premier européen», une mâchoire remontant à environ 1,2 million d'années.
- ALLEMAGNE : Stralsund - Two skeletons and abandoned weapons found. Tatters of clothing and old muskets with the owners' initials still etched into the butts helped scientists identify the bodies as soldiers in the Habsburg monarchy's army during the Thirty Years War. They were killed while besieging the rich Baltic coast port of Stralsund (1628), probably during a sally by mercenaries defending the city. The bones were found just outside the walls in what must have been a trench along with six pikes, some featuring spiky balls on chains, and six swords, indicated that four more soldiers must have run for their lives when the mercenaries stormed the trench. Both skeletons lay on their stomachs with leather shoes and scraps on clothing intact. Two of the three muskets were carved with the initials 'WN' and 'ON'.
- ROYAUME-UNI : 
Redgrave - Kathy Mills exposed the entrance to the secret chamber that had been hidden for centuries as she rehearsed a scene for an upcoming production of the musical Quasimodo at St Mary's Church, in Redgrave, Suffolk. She dislodged a marble flagstone near the altar of the 14th century building and her foot vanished into a dark void below. She had uncovered a mystery tomb containing coffins thought to contain the remains of the village's aristocracy stretching back centuries. A tunnel was discovered with a set of steps descending into the ground visible in one direction and a cluster of about six coffins tucked inside a dark chamber in the other. The coffins are thought to belong to descendents of the local ruling Holt family. But the chamber is believed to have been built deep in the 1500s by the Bacon family.
- ROYAUME-UNI : Oxford - The hot dry weather is revealing some of Oxfordshire’s Bronze Age history normally hidden from view. The site dates back 3,500 years. There are very extensive areas of Bronze Age barrow cemeteries in that area, and some Roman remains too. There is a whole mix of multi-period sites. The barrows, constructed between 2,200 BC and 1,000 BC, would once have been mounds, like the prehistoric Seven Barrows site on the Lambourn Downs south of Wantage, but over the centuries, farming has obliterated all surface traces of them.
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8267986.Drought_shows_up_south_Oxfordshire_bronze_age_graves/
- ESPAGNE : 
Madrid - Madrid’s National Archaeological Museum may have acquired 22 antiquities that were illegally excavated and exported from Italy. The objects in question were bought by the Madrid museum in 1999, as part of a major collection of 181 ancient artefacts from the Etruscan period, Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and Spain, spanning the fifth century BC to the fifth century AD.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Looted-from-Italy-and-now-in-a-major-Spanish-museum?/21261
