25 MAI 2016 NEWS: Delhi - Leeds - Huaca Cao Viejo - Kuitheri -
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INDE – 
Delhi - In the cramped market of Badarpur Village, hidden amid shops and eateries, are the Badarpur Gateways. It is believed that these gateways used to be a sarai (inn) for travellers in the medieval times. People travelling between Delhi and Agra would often stop here in the 18th century. The inn doesn’t exist anymore, but what remains are its three gateways — northern, southern and central — along the central road through the market. A fragment of an enclosure (cell), part of the inn, also exists here. According to heritage experts, the gateways are believed to have been erected by Roshanuddaula, who flourished during the reigns of Mughal rulers Farrukhsiyar and Muhammad Shah. The sarai was an extensive building made of rubble masonry. It consisted of two enclosures with a gateway between them and all three gateways which are similar to one another lying in an axial line. According to INTACH officials, the southern enclosure contained arched cells for the accommodation of travellers. These cells are mostly ruined, and only a few of them on the north and west now remain. The northern enclosure, known as the ganj, was surrounded by a battlement wall with bastions at its four angles. It also contained cells similar to those of the sarai, but these together with the bastions on the east have now disappeared, the enclosing wall also dilapidated. The ganj stored vehicles and bulky goods of travellers or merchants who stayed in the sarai.
ROYAUME UNI – 
Leeds - Excavations at the site where the £165m Victoria Gate shopping centre is taking shape recovered at least 28 bodies, many of them children, buried in the grounds of what was the Ebenezer Chapel between 1797 and 1848. Micro-analysis of bones and teeth have shown that nine of the 12 children had metabolic diseases, including rickets, scurvy and possibly anaemia - and some of those buried could have been taken in a cholera outbreak in the area in 1832. Dr Jane Richardson, manager of Morley-based Archaeological Services WYAS, which spent over a year on the site, said the finds help them to paint a picture of the individuals living in 19th-century Leeds. While they also discovered a medieval ditch that pre-dated mapping of the area, and a collection of buttons, glass and pottery, it is the bodies, particularly the children, that are “really fascinating”. “What makes these stand out is not the fact that remains were found, but the malnutrition they show us,” she said. “It was the most grim part of Leeds at the time, and malnutrition was so prevalent.
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/discovery-of-children-s-bodies-reveals-an-insight-into-leeds-s-grim-past-1-7921792#ixzz49aUkIZxc
PEROU – 
Huaca Cao Viejo - A group of experts from Harvard University will arrive in Trujillo this week and take samples of the archaeological find known as Señora de Cao, Señora de Cao is a mummy that was found in 2006 and is suspected that she was once a powerful ruler of the Moche people. The aim of the sample taking is to determine whether there is a level of kinship and of what type with the other mummies buried with Señora de Cao. The research will be led by American archaeologist Jeffrey Quilter, who is in charge of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Quilter announced that DNAstudies of Señora de Cao and her funeral cortege which consists of 5 others should be ready by the end of this year or early 2017. The discovery of the mummy changed the concept of Moche society, the mummy was found inside the Huaca Cao Viejo and was remarkable well preserved and buried and was buried along with items that suggest that she was once a ruler. Along with the discovery there were a young girl that appeared to have been sacrificed along with three companions that were buried along with her, all with robes, necklaces, headdresses, ceremonial batons and nose rings. Six months of work led by experts carefully unwrapped the mummy and found skin samples that suggests that the body was tattooed with figures and symbols which has left researchers baffled.
http://www.peruthisweek.com/news-senora-cao-to-be-investigated-by-harvard-experts-109589
INDE – 
Kuitheri - Yet another evidence of proto- historic habitation in Malabar has emerged with the discovery of a rare megalithic cist burial monument near Kuitheri in Valayam grama panchayat in Kozhikode district. “This secondary burial practice of the Megalithic people has been constructed with six rocks slabs. The monument has a length of 1.50 metres and width of 1.10 metres,” says N.K. Ramesh, archaeological- anthropologist, who has made several discoveries in north Kerala including megalithic urn-burial and cist burial sites at Manikkovilakam near Kuitheri. “The depth of the chamber is 1.30 metres. The orthostats (upright slabs) used in the construction of the cist have an average thickness of 18 cms. These slabs are vertically placed in rectangular shape. The orthostat on the southern side is missing, thus leading to a possible assumption that the local people might have taken it for some other use,” he adds. Mr. Ramesh, who is a senior assistant, Museum project, Cultural Heritage Department of Thunchathu Ezhuthachan Malayalam University at Tirur, says that the chamber of the cist has been filled with red soil. Well-fired black ware pottery pieces have been found inside the ancient burial chamber. Usually one finds umbrella stones and laterite domes (rock cut caves), he adds. An urn burial jar with Capstone flush (lid of the urn) has also been unearthed near the cist. The rim of the jar has a depth of one metre and the capstone has a length of 47cms and width of 30 cms. But this jar might have been partially destroyed during digging for construction of a road earlier, Mr. Ramesh says. The 32-year-old researcher has been credited with the discovery of iron ingots weighing 8 kgs and several urn burial jars near the cist burial site. “The different burial practices in a single area clearly show that the social stratification of the megalithic people in north Kerala. Such types of cist having similar features have been discovered all over Kerala,” he says.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/kozhikode/megalithic-cist-burial-monument-discovered/article8638861.ece?ref=tpnews
