18 JUILLET 2020 NEWS
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ROYAUME UNI – 
Talbert - A tantalising discovery at Tarbert Castle can only be further investigated if enough money is donated. Archaeologist Roddy Reagan has uncovered a significant castle entrance, with a visible slot for a portcullis, in dressed red sandstone between the castle’s twin towers at the seaward end of the site.
EGYPTE – 
Nagaa Hammadi - An ancient sandstone wall decorated with inscriptions and dating back to the Ptolemaic era has been found by a specialist antiquities team in southern Egypt. The find, believed to be at least 2,300 years old and bearing the name of King Ptolemy IV, was made in Nagaa Hammadi, about 80 km northwest of Luxor, in the Qena governorate. The wall is located about 200 meters from a shrine to the goddess Hathor. Experts believe ruins at the site are likely to have great religious significance. Waziri said that during the excavation, entrances were found in the Holy Valley, south of the royal cemetery in Umm El-Qa’ab. Studies showed that the entrances led to rooms carved from rock and no more than 1.2 meters in height. Archaeologists found another set of five rooms connected via narrow entrances cut into the walls. Mohammed Abdel-Badi, head of the Central Department of Antiquities of Upper Egypt and chief of the mission, said that the rooms are undecorated and located above deep vertical wells linked to natural water tunnels. Most of the rooms contain pottery fragments, fountains, terraces and a number of small holes in the walls. Gaps near the entrances were likely used as handles or for tying ropes. Graffiti in one room shows the name Khou-so-n-Hour, his mother Amon Eards and his grandmother Nes-Hour. Abdel-Badi said that pottery scattered on the valley floor south of the royal tombs in Umm El-Qa’ab indicate the area being inhabited during the Ptolemaic period, most likely during the second and first centuries B.C., and also during the late Roman era. Pottery fragments include an item originally belonging to a jar with a spherical body made from oasis mud and imported to Abydos, one of ancient Egypt’s oldest cities.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1705196/art-culture
CHINE - Guangzhou - More than 100 pieces of cultural relics and a cluster of tombs dating back up to 4,000 years were unearthed in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. After months of excavation, which started in December 2019, 65 tombs from the late Neolithic Age and the Zhou Dynasty (1046BC-256BC), were unearthed, with pottery, jade products and stone tools found, according to the Guangzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archeology yesterday. To date, more than 2,200 square meters of area has been excavated.
https://archive.shine.cn/nation/Relics-tombs-found/shdaily.shtml
POLOGNE – 
Dzwonowo - He may have been a merchant or a craftsman, but one thing is sure is that experts now know what a man looked like when he walked the Earth during the 16th century. Archaeologists located a lost medieval village in Poland six years ago, which was home to a massive graveyard filled with more than 100 skeletons. Several unusual discoveries were made in the cemetery, one being a coffin filled with lime, but the skeleton of a man around 35 to 44 years old caught the teams' attention. Using 3D technology, researchers scanned the man's skull that showed signs of malocclusion and reconstructed his face showing a large forehead, pointy nose and an anterior bite. The mystery man, along with the lost city, was found near Niedźwiedziny village in the Wielkopolska region, in western Poland, The First News reports. However, the location was originally known as Dzwonowo and has missing until 2016. The city was discovered drones and plant formations, allowing the team to pinpoint the location of the city only talked about in literature – the first mention of the town was in the early 14th century. During the first week of excavations, archaeologists examined 21 graves, one of the skeletons was found to have a coin in the mouth known as a Sigismund III Vasa penny, which allowed scientists to determine the time of burial was the first half of the seventeenth century.
MEXIQUE - 
Mexico - Archaeologists excavating a historic pawnshop in Mexico City have discovered the long-buried remains of an Aztec palace and a house built by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. Per a statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the former—a royal residence constructed for Moctezuma II’s father, Axayácatl—dates to between 1469 and 1481, while the latter postdates the 1521 fall of Tenochtitlan. Subsequent archaeological work revealed a 16- by 13-foot room, likely part of Cortés’ home, made of basalt and vesicular lava stones. Nearly ten feet below this structure, experts led by Raúl Barrera Rodríguez and José María García Guerrero discovered a second basalt slab floor dating to the pre-Hispanic period. They concluded that these stones once formed a courtyard or open space in the Palace of Axayácatl. In addition to the basalt floors, archaeologists found two statues—one of the feathered serpent god Quetzalcóatl and another of the glyph that symbolizes “market”—in a corner of the building’s colonial room. These objects act as a reminder of the conquistador’s ransacking of Indigenous buildings and sacred spaces.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aztec-palace-unearthed-180975319/
ROYAUME UNI - Lincolnshire - Scientists have found new evidence of a massive tsunami that devastated ancient Britain in the year 6200 BC on the east coast of England. The giant tsunami event, known as the Storegga Slide, was caused when an area of seabed the size of Scotland - around 30,000 square miles - under the Norwegian Sea suddenly shifted. New geological evidence reveals three successive waves tore across an ancient land bridge connecting Britain with the rest of Europe, known as Doggerland, now submerged beneath the North Sea. Evidence of the event had already been found in Scandinavia, the Faroe Islands, northeast Britain, and Greenland, but no direct evidence for the event had been recovered from the southern end of the North Sea until now. Underwater deposits including stones and broken shells taken from the North Sea, in an area south of a marine trough named the Outer Dowsing Deep just off the coast of Lincolnshire, show trademarks of the tsunami event. Storegga is thought to have been triggered when a 120 mile long stretch of sediments that had accumulated off the coast of Norway during the Ice Age broke free of the continental shelf and plunged into the depths 8,150 years ago.
EGYPTE – 
– Avaris - According to ancient texts, roughly 3,600 years ago, an invading force, known as the Hyksos, seized northern Egypt from a series of incompetent pharaohs, banishing them to a small chunk of land in the south. Analysing human remains from extensive burial sites in the ancient Hyksos capital - about 120 kilometres northeast of Cairo - the largest isotopic study of the region supports a different theory: that these new rulers were descended from various Asiatic populations who had been living in Egypt for generations. Thus, the authors argue, the rise of Hyksos was not a foreign invasion; it was more like an immigrant uprising. "Instead, this research supports the theory that the Hyksos rulers were not from a unified place of origin, but Western Asiatics whose ancestors moved into Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, lived there for centuries, and then rose to rule the north of Egypt." We can tell this from the ratio of strontium isotopes found at the archaeological site. Comparing isotope ratios among locals of northern Egypt and the non-local Hyksos, researchers have found the signature of the Nile in both. While there appears to be an influx of immigrants several hundred years before the Hyksos came to power, during the Hyksos period, the population born in the Delta is larger. "This is consistent with the supposition that, while the ruling class had Near Eastern origins, the Hyksos' rise to power was not the result of an invasion, as popularly theorised, but an internal dominance and takeover of foreign elite," the authors write. But Egypt wasn't just home for local Egyptians. This new data adds weight to the idea that the "northeastern Nile Delta represented a multicultural hub long before the Hyksos rule." Isotopic analysis suggests most people were non-locals, hailing not from a unified homeland but an international influx. Other archaeological evidence supports this idea. Researchers have struggled to find signs of a battle in this region, despite extensive burial sites, and during this time, there's more documentation of men with Egyptian names marrying women with non-Egyptian names than the other way around. This matters because most invasions in history have been waged by men. Yet the new analysis suggests before the Hyksos uprising, there were far more non-local females immigrating to this region than non-local males. "The excavated cemeteries and domestic burials are assumed to be more representative of the elites of the city rather than the 'common' population," the authors explain, "and it is possible that these women are coming to the region for marriages cementing alliances with powerful families from beyond the Nile." Egyptologist Orly Goldwasser, who was not involved in the study, told Science Magazine he suspects most immigrants travelled to Egypt during this time with peaceful intentions. While ancient historians described them as "invaders of an obscure race", some archaeologists suspect that's actually 'fake news' or ancient propaganda. Instead, they argue the Hyksos probably rose to power in a slow and peaceful way, bringing technology like the horse and chariot along with them. The study was published in PLOS One.