14 JUIN 2017 NEWS: Deffenbaugh - Dima Hasao - Sanguinaires - Pink and White terraces - Gorgan - Tal e Kamin -
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USA – 
Deffenbaugh Site - In a picturesque field just north of the Pennsylvania state line, students from WVU's Department of Sociology and Anthropology are carefully and methodically uncovering a village of the Monongahela, a prehistoric Native American group that occupied the region a thousand years ago. But in the context of prehistory, these items and the specific places they were found are what make up our entire understanding of a people. The Monongahela were not a "tribe" like the Souix or Cherokee. In fact, we have no idea what they even called themselves; there was no one to record their name, beliefs or rituals. The study of prehistorical peoples is a purely empirical one, defined only by physical remnants. In the case of the Monongahela, a primary identifier has been their village structure: circular, and often surrounded by palisades - defensive walls of wooden stakes or tree trunks. In addition to the expected finds - pottery shards, beads, arrowheads - these sites also sometimes yield something unusual. Over the past few weeks, the students have also discovered a pit surrounded by walls, a rare find in this context. Piece by piece, the students are not only uncovering the details of the Deffenbaugh Site, but one more piece in a much larger puzzle: the disappearance of the Monongahela people. All archaeological traces of the Monongahela vanish in the early 1600s. The reason is unknown.
http://www.thedaonline.com/gallery/featured/article_b3441c50-4fbd-11e7-86a3-af9c24d35640.html
INDE – 
Dima Hasao - The State Directorate of Archaeology in collaboration with the Dima Hasao District Archaeology Department has excavated a large number of megaliths from Khobak, some 110 km southwest of Haflong. The site is located on a plateau close to Khobak village inhabited by Baite people. During the excavation, megaliths of different sizes – tapered base with round top megaliths having various curves and designs, menhirs (upright stone) having curves, dolmen, stone circles, cylindrical pillar-shaped megalith tapering towards base with round table-shaped top – and a stone jar were found. Among the six varieties of megaliths, the tapered base with round top are found in large numbers, said Nabajit Deori, technical officer of the archaeology directorate, who supervised the excavation work. The Khobak megalithic site is adjacent to the historic Khobak stone jar site, which was discovered by JH Hutton and JP Miles in 1932. Khobak stone jar site is one of the largest stone jar sites of the world. The megalithic site was discovered by the archaeology directorate in 2015 and till then it was not known to the people outside the Khobak area.Deori said the megaliths found at Khobak are minutely curved, designed and decorated. The raw materials used to curve out the megaliths are soft sand stones, he said. Other antiquities found at the site are very less in number and these include a few iron implements, nails and iron dowels, etc. The curving and designs suggest that the megaliths were either contemporary or older than the stone jars of Dima Hasao, Deori said.
http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=jun1317/at060
FRANCE – Sanguinaires - Les archéologues retournent vers le site de recherche. "L'épave se situe ici, donc on arrive à se positionner à deux trois mètres près du site archéologique", explique Hervé Alfondi, archéologue sous-marin. Ici, à la passe des Sanguinaires, en 2005, les chercheurs ont découvert une épave à 19 mètres de fond. Une ancre est toujours visible, sous un tas de blocs de chaux. Les plongeurs ont extrait des maillets, des outils pour travailler la pierre. À la main, ils déblayent et prélèvent des bols, des fragments d'assiettes, des céramiques pisano-ligures. "On les trouve plaquées contre la coque ou alors entre les varangues, elles ont été protégées par le bois. Ça, ce sont des bols d'origine pisane, on a encore le motif des poissons, c'est quand même d'une qualité extraordinaire. Leur vernis a tenu. Ce sont des poteries qui datent du XVIe siècle, donc ça fait plus de 500 ans qu'elles sont dans l'eau", s'enthousiasme Hervé Alfondi. Cette épave pourrait être celle d'une petite caravelle du XVIe siècle, un bateau venant de Gênes, et transportant du matériel pour la construction des tours génoises.
NOUVELLE ZELANDE – 
Pink and White terraces - In the 1800s, New Zealand's Pink and White terraces were one of the country's biggest attractions, with many referring to the site as the eighth natural wonder of the world. A catastrophic volcanic eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886 ruined the terraces, leaving many people thinking the cascading landforms were gone forever.But researchers now believe they have pinpointed the location of the terraces 15 metres below the shore and are calling on archaeologists to perform a full survey to recover the famous feature.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4598952/New-Zealand-s-pink-white-terraces-found.html#ixzz4jtpU4lEr
IRAN – 
Gorgan - A burial dating back to the late Iron Age era together with three clay dishes and two spindle whorls with two clay dishes beside a head just in front of the face of the skeleton was discovered in Gorgan, Golestan province. According to the Public Relations Office of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT), head of the archeological team Habibollah Rezaei said due to crossing of the pipeline for conduit of oil products of the National Iranian Oil Company from Mazandaran Province to the eastern cities of Golestan Province, passing through the northern side of the ancient site, RICHT was requested to conduct speculation operations to determine the limits which finally received the permit. Referring to the results achieved out of the explorations in Tappeh Sharif, he said before launching the speculation operations mapping and topographic map of the site were conducted and through networking the area the place for the digging of the first speculation site was specified on the curved map and speculations were named. The cultural materials discovered in the exploration operations including clay and glass pieces, bricks and remains of the burial of a man belong to the Iron Age III, the Sassanid and the Parthian eras, he added.
http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82563497/
IRAN – 
Tal-e Kamin - Tal-e Kamin in Marvdasht, Fars Province, includes cultural and residential vestiges from periods ranging from the ancient rural dwelling era of the sixth millennium BCE up to the middle- and late-Islamic period. According to the Research Institute of Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization, the head of the joint Iranian-German archeological team in Tal-e Kamin , Norouz Rajabi said that the first season of studies in that area showed that cultural activities and residential settlements existed in the region from the beginning of the sixth millennium BCE up to the beginning of the first millennium CE and the Achaemenid period, IRNA reported.However, no evidence has been found about the cultural establishment in that surroundings after the Achaemenid era up to the early Islamic centuries, he added. Due to the vulnerability of the mound on the side of the farmlands and in order to prevent the gradual destruction and leveling of this mound, the program for determining the limits of the hill started in the form of 12 speculative operations around the mound which were completed satisfactorily, Rajabi said. He referred to the pathology, documentation and preparation of 3D map of the hill as yet another research plan of the joint Iran-German archeology team.Rajabi hoped that the present conditions of the mound can be documented. Tal-e Kamin is an important area on the banks of the Kor River which spans one hectare and was first identified by William Sumner and in the 1980s several explorations were conducted on it by Vandenberg..