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ECOSSE – Applecross - Skeletal remains of six men found under a kitchen floor in the Highlands have been revealed to date back to Scotland's Iron Age. The discovery below an estate office in Applecross was initially thought to be an 18th Century murder scene. But carbon dating has confirmed the bones are about 2,000 years old. Archaeologist Cathy Dagg said the find was significant, because it is the first Iron Age burial site to be found on the west Highland coast. "Iron Age burials had not been found previously," she said. "If people were buried here the remains would not have survived in the acidic soil." Burials had been found north and south of Applecross, preserved in the soils of sandy coastal meadows known as machair. The reason the Applecross bones survived was because the bodies were buried in an area of "storm beach", comprising cobbled stones which had helped to keep the remains dry. When the Applecross estate office was built in the 19th Century this further assisted in protecting the site from the elements.Ms Dagg said people would have sat in the kitchen eating breakfast, unaware of what lay under the floor. The bones, found after floor boards were ripped up, included three mandibles, initially leading archaeologists to believe the discovery involved the remains of three people. Analysis revealed other pieces of bone belonged to another three men, with all six having lived in the Iron Age. In Scotland, this period began around 800BC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-64756840
AFRIQUE – - FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS through the 1950s and 1960s, Karisa Ndurya worked as a foreman at some of the first excavations of ancient monuments in East Africa. Under the management of Scottish archeologist James Kirkman, Ndurya supervised teams of Kenyans who excavated the ruins of Gedi, one of the first medieval Swahili settlements on what is now the Kenyan coast, and Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island, the only fort maintained by the Portuguese. But if you were to read through Kirkman’s records on the excavations, you would not encounter Ndurya’s name or those of the Kenyans who labored alongside him. Fifty years later, a new exhibition aims to set those records straight. Currently on display at the Horniman Museum in London, “Ode to the Ancestors: Kenyan Archeology” is an exhibition of 28 previously unseen archival photographs commemorating the Kenyan archeologists and excavators omitted from archeological archives.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kenyan-archaeology-exhibit
ANGLETERRE – Lowther - The remains of a medieval castle and village at Lowther will be the subject of a new archaeological investigation in summer 2023. The project aims to reveal how the Normans conquered and colonised the region and what this process was like for inhabitants - and to chart the origins of the Lowther estate. Preliminary work suggests that the remains of Lowther’s medieval castle and its adjoining village may date to the late eleventh or early twelfth century. If so, the site might provide rare evidence of the conquest of Cumbria by King William Rufus and his brother, King Henry I – a generation after the Normans seized control of the rest of England. The team will conduct a geophysical survey and open trenches across the earthworks of the castle and village. Their goal will be to uncover evidence of when the castle was built, its relationship to the adjoining village, and how the site changed over the centuries.
https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/23340598.investigation-lowthers-medieval-castle-set-begin-summer/
JAPON - On pense que les Japonais modernes descendent principalement d’un mélange de deux populations : les chasseurs-cueilleurs Jomon (qui sont arrivés vers 14 000 avant J.-C.) et les agriculteurs d’Asie de l’Est continentale (qui ont commencé à migrer vers 800 avant J.-C.). Bien que les preuves archéologiques aient fourni un aperçu de ces deux communautés et de leur histoire, les détails de leur propagation régionale et de leur mélange n’ont pas été entièrement compris. Un outil d’analyse statistique nouvellement développé, appelé l’indice de marqueur d’ascendance (AMI), a été utilisé pour découvrir la distribution et le mélange de ces groupes à travers le Japon. En utilisant AMI et un marqueur génétique d’ascendance Jomon appelé le score d’allèle Jomon (JAS), l’équipe a étudié les données génétiques de 10 842 personnes à travers le Japon. Leurs scores génétiques indiquaient la proportion d’ascendance Jomon, et par rapport aux indicateurs de taille de population de l’archéologie, les chercheurs ont trouvé une corrélation. Des études antérieures avaient montré que la riziculture avait commencé dans la partie nord de Kyushu, la plus méridionale des îles principales du pays, puis s’était étendue à la région de Kinki, dans le centre-ouest du Japon (qui comprend aujourd’hui Osaka et Kyoto) et à l’île principale de Shikoku. dans le sud-ouest. Les scores de ces régions étaient relativement faibles, indiquant un Jomon inférieur et une population immigrée plus élevée. En comparaison, les scores étaient les plus élevés pour l’île méridionale d’Okinawa, suivie de la région de Tohoku au nord-est et de la région de Kanto au centre du Japon (contenant Tokyo), où les anthropologues considèrent que les gens possèdent plus d’ascendance Jomon. De plus, tout en étudiant les variantes génétiques dérivées de Jomon dans le japonais moderne, l’équipe a également trouvé des différences importantes. Alors que les chasseurs-cueilleurs Jomon avaient des traits qui les rendaient plus résistants à la famine (en raison d’une glycémie plus élevée et de taux de triglycérides gras), les agriculteurs continentaux d’Asie de l’Est étaient généralement mieux protégés contre les maladies (grâce à une teneur plus élevée en protéine C-réactive [CRP] et le nombre de globules blancs éosinophiles, qui sont impliqués dans la réponse immunitaire). Ils ont ensuite examiné les différences régionales dans les taux d’obésité chez les enfants de 5 ans et l’incidence de l’asthme. Les personnes des régions avec une proportion plus élevée d’ascendance Jomon semblaient avoir une prédisposition génétique à l’obésité, tandis que celles des régions avec une ascendance continentale plus élevée en Asie de l’Est ont un asthme plus exacerbé (car les mêmes éosinophiles qui protègent contre la maladie peuvent contribuer aux réponses inflammatoires). L’AMI n’est pas seulement applicable aux Japonais, mais aussi à d’autres populations humaines mixtes telles que les océaniens éloignés (indigènes des îles de la région de l’océan Pacifique à l’est de la Nouvelle-Guinée et des îles Salomon), les malgaches (du pays insulaire de Madagascar dans l’océan Indien, au large de la côte sud-est de l’Afrique) et plus encore.
https://ma-clinique.fr/la-recherche-revele-des-differences-regionales-dans-la-propagation-des-deux-principaux-groupes-ancestraux-du-japon
ANGLETERRE – Hadrian's wall - Hadrian's Wall runs between Wallsend, on the River Tyne, right across from east to west, into Bowness-on-Solway. Roman soldiers would have once lined the wall, stationed at large forts dotted across it, ensuring the land was protected from the country's native inhabitants. Throughout the centuries Hadrian's history has continued to be explored, with new discoveries constantly being made at the site, including the remains of two people who had become embroiled in a fight at a nearby pub. The wall's history was revisited during History Hit's, Hadrian's Wall: Building the Wall in 2021. Its English Heritage creator, Frances McIntosh, spoke of its mysteries, such as when they came across an "impressive" set of ruins.Underneath one of the unidentifiable buildings lay two bodies. She said: "So we're looking at some of the buildings outside the fort, the civilian settlement outside the fort. "These would have been prime locations because their settlement was just outside the gate, but we don't know what all these buildings would have been: Some of them might have been shops, some might have been taverns. "One of these buildings, when they were excavated, in the Fifties and Sixties, they found two bodies buried underneath what were the floorboards. We know that one's a woman and one's a man. "Ms McIntosh noted how the male body had a "dagger in his back, or through his ribs", and explained the building had been dubbed "the murder house" across the years. She said observers could "think up some great stories of why that might have happened and what happened," adding: "Was it a bar brawl that went wrong? Who knows." Throughout its history many bodies have been found close to the site, including in 2010 when the skeleton of a 1,800-year-old child was unearthed in a shallow pit of a barrack room in the Vindolanda Roman fort. During Roman rule, bodies were often cremated or buried away from settlements, which led many archaeologists to believe the child's skeleton on that occasion may have been hidden.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/history/1738949/hadrians-wall-archaeology-roman-empire-spt
CROATIE – Salona - The latest discoveries in Salona, an ancient city near Split, show that the site is almost a third larger than previously known and confirm that ancient Salona was a large city in an extremely important strategic position of the Roman Empire. The latest research carried out south of Gospin Otok on the left bank of the river Jadro revealed parts of the city ramparts that give a new image of ancient Salona and show that the city was larger than previously thought. These ramparts, Buzancic explains, stretch south of Gradina to Marko Marulic Street, from where they turn west to Sirina. The analysis of archaeological research has established, he emphasizes, that Gospin Otok, as well as the entire part of the city to Maruliceva Street, was located inside Salona. In archeological research on Sirina, walls that we know from 19th-century blueprints were found, towers that were not drawn at the time, and economic complexes of buildings within those walls.New finds, not only the ramparts of the southern part of the city, but the sensational finds of monumental buildings and infrastructure, as well as the finds of stone sculptures and sculptures found in these investigations, shed a completely new light on ancient Salona, Buzancic points out. Among them, he singles out "the imperial building with mosaics between the post office and the monastery of the Sisters of the Handmaids of Little Jesus, the ancient road with a huge canal opposite the same monastery, the large thermal baths that have only been partially explored on the stretch from Tuđmanova Street to the City Administration building, as well as the southern gate of the city which are located under the road in Petra Kresimira IV Street, together with the previously found channel and bridge north of Tudmanova street." Salona, Buzancic explains, is a huge Roman city with Illyrian and Greek roots. It was the port of Delmata until the age of Augustus. It began to develop as an important urban center of Illyricum, with new walls and monumental gates, a forum, and temples erected. The Flavian dynasty left a memory of its rule in the vast arena built west of the old city. In the time of Marcus Aurelius, in the middle of the 2nd century AD, the city, walled with ramparts and towers, reached the size of what, Buzancic notes, was considered the ancient Salona until recently. "It was a significant city in an important strategic position, the center of Illyria, which was destroyed and rebuilt many times because of this. It flourished in the period from the creation of the Roman Empire to the Gothic Wars, was rebuilt into a large and important late antique center, with the seat of a huge archdiocese that reached to the Sava and the Danube to the north, destroyed by the invasion of the Avars and left to the Croats, who built the center on the ruins of Salona his medieval state", he explains.
https://www.total-croatia-news.com/news/66598-ancient-salona
EGYPTE – Bahnasa - The joint Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission between the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the University of Barcelona, operating in the Bahnasa area in Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt, has uncovered 22 tombs dating back to different eras during excavations in the Upper Cemetery area. A statement by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Friday stated that these tombs include three limestone tombs from the Roman era, three other individual tombs from the Persian era, and 16 tombs from the Byzantine and Coptic eras.The head of the Central Department of Antiquities of Central Egypt Adel Okasha said that the tombs discovered from the Roman era were built out of limestone and were mostly vaulted. Most of them were found demolished down to their foundations and were not inscribed. A coffin was found in its original place without a cover in one of the tombs, he added. Okasha said that preliminary studies of the tombs of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt era showed that they were robbed long ago, which explains why no funerary furniture was found in them. Meanwhile, the tombs dating from the Coptic era were found in a rectangular hole in the ground, with the upper part built towards the east. Several pottery vessels and lamps were found nearby. The heads of the mission from the Spanish side Esther Pons Mellad, and Maite Mascort, said that the mission had succeeded during its last excavation season in uncovering a number of individual tombs from the Persian and Roman eras, including a closed tomb that had not been opened before.
https://www.egyptindependent.com/around-22-tombs-dating-back-to-different-eras-discovered-in-upper-egypt/