20 SEPTEMBRE 2017 NEWS: Chapelle Dom Hue - Fort de France - Cambridgshire - Mer Noire - Kurnool - Loches - Nonant le Pin -
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ROYAUME UNI – 
Chapelle Dom Hue - Archaeologists digging at an island religious retreat have unearthed the remains of a porpoise that, mystifyingly, appears to have been carefully buried in its own medieval grave. The team believe the marine animal found on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue, off the west coast of Guernsey, was buried in the 14th century. When they first spotted the carefully cut plot they were convinced it was a grave and would hold human remains, but they were taken aback when they dug further and unearthed the skull and other body parts of a porpoise. Quite why the porpoise was buried so carefully on the island, which is thought to have been used by monks seeking solitude, is a mystery. Porpoises were eaten in medieval times but it would have been easier to dispose of the remains in the sea, which is only 10 metres from the site. Philip de Jersey, a States of Guernsey archaeologist, said: “If they had eaten it or killed it for the blubber, why take the trouble to bury it? Some effort was made to create a neat hole.” De Jersey said it was possible that a monk hid the body of the porpoise because he was not supposed to have it, or that the body was placed in the hole in salt to preserve it. As well as the porpoise remains, shards of 14th-century pottery, a prehistoric stone tool and what is believed to be the remains of the walls of the monks’ retreat have been found.
MARTINIQUE – 
Fort de France - Archaeologists digging in Martinique chanced upon the first tsunami deposit from the earthquake found in the New World. The tsunami left a strong trace, it seems, because the wave went up a river. Portuguese citizens were celebrating All Saints Day on 1 November 1755 when a massive earthquake—now estimated to be between magnitude 8.0 and 9.0—struck off the coast of the country. Buildings collapsed in the intense shaking, and tsunami waves radiated outward across the Atlantic Ocean. Written records report large waves washing ashore in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, England, the Azores, and Newfoundland. But smoking gun evidence of the tsunami—actual deposits of sand or other materials, which allow scientists to estimate tsunami intensity—has proven to be elusive in the New World. That’s all changed now. Alerted by a phone call from an archeologist saying, “There’s probably something of interest to you in [the Martinique city of] Fort-de-France,” marine geophysicist Jean Roger and his colleagues have now shown that layers of white and black sand in an archaeological dig in the historical city center are relics of the powerful 18th century cataclysm. Because Fort-de-France is located in a very sheltered area of Martinique, the team ruled out storms as a source of the unusually thick deposits, roughly 8 centimeters in total, of sand. “The only possible way to inundate this city is from a tsunami,” Roger told Eos in a recent interview. Roger, an independent researcher based in Mayotte, a grouping of islands between Mozambique and Madagascar, had long sought Caribbean deposits from the 1755 tsunami. Before he received that phone call, which came in 2013, he and his collaborators had already fruitlessly scoured the region for 2 years. Then, at the ongoing excavation of 17th and 18th century buildings in Fort-de-France, the researchers were shown an unusual stripe that ran throughout the excavated pits: a roughly 1-centimeter-thick white sandy layer rich in shells, capped by a 6- to 9-centimeter-thick layer of coarse black sand. On the basis of the ages of ceramic fragments found in adjoining soil layers, Roger and his colleagues estimated that the sandy stripe had been laid down between 1726 and 1783. The researchers then compared this date range with historical tsunami catalogs and meteorological reports of storm surges and heavy rains. The only match was the 1755 earthquake in Portugal, whose tsunami waves would have traveled roughly 5,700 kilometers before washing ashore on the tiny Caribbean island.
https://eos.org/articles/caribbean-sediment-traced-to-1755-portuguese-quake-and-tsunami
ROYAUME UNI – 
Cambridgshire - The remains of a 200-year-old ‘utopia’ colony which espoused free love and wife-swapping has been discovered by archaeologists.You might think of the Victorian era being filled with stuffy, sexually-repressed people, but that wasn’t the case with The Manea Fen community. The recently discovered site was once the location of a socialist community, which was set up in 1838 by Cambridgshire farmer and Methodist minister William Hodson. Hodson wanted to create a community without money, marriage, or monogamy, where all people worked together and were entirely equal. The colony, which at one point had 150 people living within it, was intended to be the start of a utopian society, however it only lasted 25 months. Personality clashes and objections to the practice of free love along with a key investor going bust brought the community to a premature end.
http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/18/200-year-old-wife-swapping-colony-discovered-in-cambridgeshire-6936893/
BULGARIE – 
Mer noire - Scientists who took part in an expedition of marine archaeology, called Black Sea Maritime Archaeological Project, have found ships used in antiquity at the bottom of the Black Sea. According to participants, nobody has seen or registered those ships before. One of the wrecks was found very recently. A submarine with dozens of cameras installed will be used to explore the ship, while scientists will look at the find on monitors. On Bulgarian National Television (BNT), Dr. Dragomir Grbov from the Center for Underwater Archeology in Sozopol said, one of the most important discoveries in underwater archaeology had been made. Grbov said, there was an antique ship which was very well preserved, almost in its entirety. It included “many elements that are completely unknown to science so far”. Dr. Krum Bachvarov from the University of Connecticut said the ship’s mast was broken but its lower part was left. “There is a full load of amphorae. We saw at least two types of amphorae and we found ceramics, kitchen ceramics and part of the galley.” Processing all samples found and analysing all the data will take years
http://sofiaglobe.com/2017/09/19/bulgaria-ancient-world-shipwreck-found-in-black-sea/
INDE – 
Kurnool - Archaeologists along with epigraphists, on Tuesday discovered two new Kannada inscriptions at Srisilam temple town in Kurnool district. The two inscriptions are engraved on the outcrop rocks located towards the north-eastern corner of Mallikarjuna temple next to Karivena Annadana Satram. The inscriptions date back to the 14th and 16th Centuries and are pertaining to records of certain donations made to the Mallikarjuna Swamy temple. One of the inscriptions reads, ‘Sankara Vasiyanu, Samastha Rachidara, Ganacharanam Tavadeyaru Bita bidaru’ in the Kannada language. The inscriptions were found on the rocks of the ancient stone quarries of the 16th century AD, from where the stones for the huge Prakara wall of the Mallikarjuna Temple were extracted.
FRANCE – 
Loches - Sous les indices concordent, même si, en archéologie, il faut toujours rester prudent. Depuis mi-août, au fond du parc du Logis royal, les archéologues du conseil départemental fouillent la grande salle seigneuriale du palais des comtes d'Anjou (XIe siècle) et ses abords. Et vendredi, au dernier jour de leur chantier, ils ont mis au jour un pan de mur crucial. Deux rangées de grosses pierres, l'une sous l'autre, qui semblent bien être la première trace retrouvée du castrum de Loches, datant de l'Antiquité tardive, tant recherché. Une telle méthode de construction (gros appareil, sans mortier) est abandonnée au Moyen Âge, ce qui accrédite l'hypothèse antique. « Ces deux assises de pierre servaient de fondation. Or, ils ne s'embêtaient pas à tailler des pierres comme ça pour les enfouir. On peut penser que ces pierres, sans doute du Ier ou du IIe siècle, appartenaient à l'origine à un bâtiment militaire ou religieux et qu'elles ont été réemployées ensuite pour cette fortification qui pourrait dater, elle, du IIIe ou du IVe siècle », ajoute Vincent Hirn, l'un des deux archéologues professionnels chargés du chantier. Qui plus est, ces vestiges probablement antiques ont été retrouvés sous le rempart découvert il y a une douzaine de jours et qui, lui, a vraisemblablement été bâti à la fin du XIIe siècle ou au XIIIe siècle (NR du 11 septembre). Autrement dit : le rempart médiéval « a été installé sur le mur que l'on attribue au castrum. On aurait donc là une limite de fortification pérenne, ayant fonctionné depuis l'Antiquité tardive jusqu'à la fin du Moyen Âge », précise Pierre Papin, responsable du chantier de fouilles. Mais les trouvailles ne s'arrêtent pas là. En fouillant sous les sols de la grande salle seigneuriale, ils ont retrouvé les traces d'un bâtiment plus ancien, appartenant à l'époque carolingienne (sans doute du IXe siècle ou du Xe siècle). On distingue très nettement une partie de sol rouge qui est la marque de la présence d'un foyer, qui a pu être aussi bien une forge qu'un feu culinaire. Du coup, les fouilles programmées en 2018 pourraient entre autres rester au même endroit, afin d'approfondir cet aspect carolingien. Et établir la fonction exacte de ce bâtiment antérieur à la grande salle des comtes d'Anjou.
Dans l'immédiat, au vu de l'importance de la découverte relative au castrum, les fouilles vont finalement se poursuivre Histoire d'accumuler les preuves scientifiques qui lèveront les derniers doutes.
FRANCE – 
Nonant-le-Pin - Avant de construire un pont au-dessus de la voie ferrée Paris-Granville, des fouilles archéologiques ont été réalisées pendant l’été 2016, sur un terrain qui doit accueillir une nouvelle route, à Nonant-le-Pin, près d’Argentan, dans l’Orne. L’Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives, l’Inrap, y a découvert plusieurs tombes. Sans doute des sépultures de l’époque mérovingienne. Les ossements ont été transférés à Caen pour y être analysés. Un an plus tard, les spécialistes sont revenus explorer une partie du terrain trois semaines durant. Quarante-cinq nouvelles sépultures ont été découvertes. « Nous avons trouvé un petit couteau, des épingles à vêtements et une boucle de ceinture. Nous pouvons confirmer ce que nous supposions il y a un an. Ces squelettes datent du VII e siècle après Jésus-Christ, confie Raphaëlle Lefebvre, l’anthropologue qui dirige les recherches. La position des bras, croisés sur le bassin ou positionnés le long des corps orientés ouest-est, nous indique qu’il s’agit de sépultures chrétiennes. » Ces fouilles ont permis d’en savoir un peu plus sur les pratiques funéraires de l’époque. « Les tombes pouvaient être réutilisées. Les ossements d’un défunt étaient alors posés en vrac,dans un coin de la fosse, pour être remplacés par un autre corps, souvent celui d’un enfant. Nous avons aussi découvert des tombes jumelées et des sépultures avec trois inhumations successives. » Comme l’an passé, les ossements ont été transférés à Caen pour des études approfondies. Ces squelettes ont été trouvés à moins de 40 cm de profondeur. « Ces découvertes n’ont pas pu être réalisées avant, car nous labourions à une profondeur de 25 cm seulement en raison de la couche de calcaire », explique Antoine Le Brethon, le propriétaire du terrain. Le site où les fouilles ont été réalisées sera recouvert par la route qui sera construite en novembre. « Il reste d’autres tombes hors emprise, sous la route provisoire et sous lescultures, mais nous ne savons pas si nous serons missionnés pour revenir » , indique Raphaëlle Lefebvre .