26 JUIN 2023 NEWS
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GEORGIE – 
Colchis - Roman soldiers attending a military camp located in present-day Georgia used to carry coins that were minted by Jewish rebels in the land of Israel about 2,000 years ago, according to a new study, which was published in the journal Notae Numismaticae. Archaeologists who participated in the research discovered the coins from the Roman period in Colchis, an exonym for the Georgian polity of Egrisi located on the coast of the Black Sea, centered in present-day western Georgia. Some of the coins were brought to the site by Legio X Fretensis, a legion of the Imperial Roman Army founded by the young Gaius Octavius in 41-40 BC to fight during the period of civil war that started the dissolution of the Roman Republic. The legion was centrally involved in the Great Jewish Revolt, the first of three major rebellions by the Jews against the Roman Empire. Jaworski and his colleagues found that some of the coins were minted by Jewish rebels, and the Romans continued to use them. This was after the Jewish rebels had minted their own coins, on which pomegranates and Jewish goblets, among other things, were illustrated.
https://www.ynetnews.com/travel/article/rye4zkbu3
ANGLETERRE – 
Lowther - A new archaeological investigation to unearth the remains of a medieval castle and village at Lowther gets underway on Monday, June 26. The project, funded by the Castle Studies Trust, 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 first phase of the month-long dig will include a geophysical survey. Then two metre by ten metre trenches will be opened across the earthworks of the castle and village. This will involve three weeks of intensive investigations in the hope of uncovering important new 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/23604851.investigation-lowthers-medieval-castle-village-start/
CANADA – 
Ontario - This repository of 16th– and 17th-century pottery and cookware fragments unearthed in Southern Ontario is helping researchers and local communities learn about a vanished Indigenous Nation as they work to decolonize the practice of archaeology. Working with communities from Six Nations of the Grand River, researchers from McMaster’s Collaborative Archaeologies (CA) project are studying hundreds of these artifacts, mostly unearthed during development in the 1960s and ’70s. The focus of the project is on foodways — the food and eating practices of a culture or group — but the information gleaned from the pots can also be used to fill in gaps in the historical record, especially of the history of the Neutral nation, which isn’t as well understood. Partly out of that recognition came the idea for the Sustainable Archaeology (SA) lab. The lab looks to use existing pot sherds (fragments of pottery) to shed light on and contribute to the cultural history of the Indigenous inhabitants of the region — without the need to dig up any more artifacts, says operational manager Scott Martin, an adjunct faculty member in the Faculty of Social Sciences. The sherds used in the CA project come from seven sites across Southern Ontario. Five of those sites are in the Hamilton area, from villages that were inhabited by Neutral Iroquoian people in the 16th- and 17th centuries before they died out or were assimilated into neighbouring cultures. Researchers are also studying pots from a site in Cootes Paradise near McMaster and an ancestral Huron-Wendat site north of Toronto. The sherds have been examined in the lab after researchers used minimally invasive techniques to take food residues off them, said Rylan Godbout, an anthropology student. First, the sherds are rubbed with a dry finger to remove surface-level residue, which can be examined under a microscope for starch grains. Then, ultrapure water is used to wash the pot before a sonicated wash, using sound waves, or even an electric toothbrush, to dislodge more starch grains. “From there, we can identify starch grains,” said Godbout. “So you can understand what plants are being used and get a better understanding of the ingredients for some of the recipes that these people were making in the past.” The analysis recovered residues from corn, grasses and geophytes (such as tubers and roots) cooked in the pots. There is also evidence for beans, squash, nuts, and berries, but they were less common. In the second stage, researchers scraped a small section of the ceramic off the pot to analyze using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, a sophisticated method that can read fat signatures. That can give the team an idea of the meats that were cooked in the pots. Small samples of pottery material were removed from the sherds to understand what fatty, lipid-rich foods — such as stews containing meat — were cooked within these pots. McMaster professor Greg Slater led this work with biomolecular archaeology and archaeological geochemistry expert Kalyan Chakraborty from Ashoka University in India. All samples showed mixed fatty residues with specific biomarkers for plant oils, leaf wax, corn, aquatic fats (such as fish) and animal fats.
https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/indigenous-archaeology-foodways-cooking-vessels/
IRAQ – 
Nimrud - In the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, a large stone monument depicting the goddess Ishtar has been unearthed. Amid the smashed ruins of an ancient town sacked by ISIS, archeologists have returned and yielded all kinds of ancient artifacts. Among the new relics discovered at the site are ones from a 3,000-year-old temple that was dedicated to Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, who’s the goddess with the earliest written evidence. Early this year, archaeologists from the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the University of Pennsylvania continued work on the Temple of Ishtar, which burned when Nimrud was sacked by an invading army in 612 BCE. Chief among their finds were fragments of a large stone monument that depicts the goddess Ishtar inside a star symbol. “Our greatest find this season was a spectacular fragment from the stone stele that shows the goddess Ishtar inside a star symbol. This is the first unequivocal depiction of the goddess as Ishtar Sharrrat-niphi, a divine aspect of the goddess associated with the rising of the planet Venus, the 'morning star,' to be found in this temple dedicated to her,” Dr Michael Danti, Program Director of the Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program and archeologists at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement. During earlier excavations in Nimrud, the same team revealed a 2,800-year-old palace belonging to an Assyrian king Adad-Nirari III, who reigned from 810 to 783 BCE. They also found monumental stone slabs inscribed with cuneiform, the ancient writing system widely used throughout the Middle East in the Early Bronze Age. Many of the new discoveries this season highlight the opulence of ancient Nimrud and the reign of Adad-Nirari III. The archeologists identified two colossal stone column bases that suggest the palace was grandly decorated with beautifully carved columns. Within the throne room, evidence of a large stone basin was recovered, which the researchers believe may have served as a central heating system. On top of this, they unearthed scatterings of ivory fragments and ostrich eggshells, rare materials that would have been highly valuable in the early Bronze Age.
ALLEMAGNE – 
Paderborn - There is increasing evidence of a Roman camp under the St. Johannisstift on Neuhäuser Strasse in Paderborn. Archaeological excavations under the professional supervision of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) took place on the site of the future educational campus of the St. Johannisstift back in September last year. In addition to indications of the city’s modern and early medieval past, the archaeologists from the specialist company commissioned came across fragments of five different wine amphorae. It was the first sign of a Roman military presence in Paderborn over 2,000 years ago. New results now support these indications.
https://www.breakinglatest.news/news/an-augustan-marching-camp-in-paderborn/
ALLEMAGNE – 
Duttenbrunn - It is an archaeological sensation: in the past few weeks, 29 historical graves have been discovered and uncovered near Duttenbrunn near Würzburg. In addition, there are about five other discolorations in the ground, which can be interpreted as burial pits. For more than 1000 years, skeletons lay a few centimeters underground. Everything points to the Carolingian period. “The sensation is that there are not only ten skeletons that we found here,” says Harald Rosmanitz, head of the excavation. “But if you extrapolate that to the entire area, we’re talking about 1,000 to 1,500 people buried here.” That makes the find so interesting, because such a village would not normally have buried 1,500 people within two to three generations. “So we know: Something important happened here that ended relatively abruptly. There are no written sources about it. With a good 1,000 people buried, a document could have been written.” Most of the former places of the Carolingian are now overbuilt. Not here. The Seehausen deserted settlement is one kilometer outside the village of Duttenbrunn. “The special thing about it is that Carolingian-era burial grounds have not yet been uncovered in this dimension here in the region,” says archaeologist Christine Reichert. “We have evidence of settlements from the Carolingian period. But there have not yet been any concrete skeletons or burial places.” Everything indicates that it is a former settlement from the Carolingian period. The ruling family of the Carolingians, based in Franconia, shaped large parts of Europe in the early Middle Ages. Under King Charlemagne, they created an empire that stretched from the Elbe to the Atlantic and from the Baltic to Rome. The Carolingians were so adept at laying out trails and sites that most still exist today. A rectangular stone structure was also found and excavated in recent days. One had suspected something like this based on the results of the geophysical measurements in the run-up to the excavations. The top edge of a building corner has been revealed. The wall is up to 60 cm wide, laid in mortar and made of limestone. The archaeologists suspect that it is a basement foundation. The wall was removed at a point in time that cannot be dated and the stones fell into the interior of the building. The surface of this wall collapse has now been uncovered. It is not yet possible to date the wall with certainty, when it was built and when it was used. The finds are limited to pottery shards and animal bones of pigs and cattle, some with traces of disassembly. This speaks for slaughterhouse waste and thus for more affluent residents. At least the finds so far do not contradict a dating to the Carolingian period.
CROATIE – 
Šćedra - As a result of collaborative training exercises between Croatian and Italian naval mine-clearance divers, one of the earliest fully preserved shipwrecks in the eastern Adriatic seabed has been discovered. A previously undiscovered shipwreck containing a cargo of ancient amphorae from the 3rd century BC has been found in the waters of the Šćedra Island archipelago, just off the southern coast of Hvar island, the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media announced in a statement on Friday. It rests at a depth of 50 meters. This is one of the earliest fully preserved shipwrecks on the eastern Adriatic Sea coast, taking into account the dating and preservation of the site.
INDE – 
Enikepalli - Two square pillars with sculptures of Jain Tirthankaras and inscriptions were found lying neglected on the outskirts of Hyderabad, at Enikepalli village in Rangareddy district’s Moinabad mandal. E. Sivanagireddy, archaeologist and CEO of Pleach India Foundation, said he inspected the spot based on information given by P. Srinath Reddy, a young archaeologist and heritage activist. He said he found two pillars, one of granite and another black basalt, with the sculptures of four Jaina Tirthankaras—Adinatha, Neminatha, Parsvanatha and Vardhamana Mahavira—in a seated meditation pose carved on their four sides. The pillars are decorated with Keerthimukhas on the topside. There are Inscriptions in Telugu-Kannada script on both the slabs, some of which could not be deciphered as they are fitted to the masonry walls of the sluice of the village tank. The visible part of one inscription refers to a Janina Basadi (monastery) that existed close to Chilukuru, a prominent Jaina centre during the Rashtrakuta and Vemulawada Chalukyan times (9th-10th centuries CE). More details could only be known after the slabs are removed from the sluice. The Jaina Tirthankara slabs might have been brought from dilapidated Jain temple in the locality and fitted to the sluice about 100 years ago, said Mr. Sivanagireddy.
AFGHANISTAN – 
Baghlan - The professional delegation of Information and Culture of Baghlan has discovered 10 historical sites in Tala and Barfak districts, which date back to the Islamic and Kushan eras, said official Zabihullah Sadat. The archaeologists of the department strive to collect more data about the newly discovered historic sites, he added. Lately, archaeologists have discovered 95 historical sites in 14 districts of the Northern Province of Baghlan.
https://bakhtarnews.af/en/10-more-historic-sites-discovered-in-baghlan/
FRANCE – 
Sélestat - Des fouilles réalisées à Sélestat au titre de l'archéologie préventive ont permis de mettre au jour la plus importante concentration de « fentes » du Néolithique en France (entre 5.300 et 2.000 ans avant JC en Alsace). . Elles servaient probablement de pièges pour la chasse. « Ces alignements ont pu servir à piéger des animaux qui étaient rabattus vers eux et ainsi faciliter les prises », avance Nina Henry, l'archéologue qui supervise ces fouilles. Cette hypothèse reste cependant à confirmer en fonction des restes d'animaux trouvés. Un bovidé est en train d'être mis au jour, sans certitude pour l'heure qu'il s'agisse d'un aurochs, sauvage, ou d'un boeuf domestiqué, auquel cas l'hypothèse d'un piège pour la chasse serait discutable. Les ossements seront analysés en laboratoire pour trancher la question. Cette étude permettra aussi de déterminer si l'animal a été découpé pour récupérer sa viande. Tout à côté, et au même niveau dans le sol du fait de l'érosion, plusieurs « silos » servant à conserver du grain au premier âge du Fer (entre 1.450 et 1.100 av. J.-C.) ont aussi été découverts.
CROATIE – 
Zambratija - Il y a environ 3 000 ans, un bateau cousu à la main dénommé Zambratija coulait au large des côtes de l'actuelle Croatie. Désormais, une équipe franco-croate s'apprête à extraire de l'eau l'impressionnant vaisseau, qui pourrait bien aider à percer les mystères séculaires de techniques antiques. Zambratija, une incroyable épave d'environ 3 200 ans, identifiée quelques années plus tôt dans la baie éponyme, en Croatie. En plongeant pour l'observer, les chercheurs ont découvert de petits trous creusés dans le bois et les traces de passage de cordes, permettant de le classer dans la famille des bateaux dit "cousu main". Il s'agit même du doyen de son genre en Méditerranée. Les planches de bois étaient autrefois reliées à l'aide brins de cordelettes végétales, selon une technique de construction qui a perduré de l'Antiquité jusqu’au haut Moyen Âge dans l’Adriatique orientale et ailleurs. Mais alors qu'elle gisait dans les eaux croates, dissimulée sous des pierres et des sacs de sable pour la protéger des plongeurs trop curieux, l'épave de Zambratija est sur le point d'émerger : selon un communiqué du CNRS du 6 juin 2023, une équipe franco-croate du Centre Camille Jullian (CNRS/AMU) et du Musée archéologique d’Istrie (Pula, Croatie) va se lancer dans une opération extraordinaire pour extraire hors de l'eau cette merveille antique et enfin, pouvoir l'étudier plus en détail. En réalité, le bateau a été vu pour la première fois en 2008, par des pêcheurs locaux. Une observation réalisée à 600 mètres de la plage de Zambratija et seulement deux mètres de profondeur, qui a laissé à penser aux archéologues qu'il devait s'agir d'une épave récente. La datation initiale a finalement surprenamment montré qu'au contraire, elle était particulièrement ancienne. De nouvelles recherches ont été menées en 2011 afin de prélever d'avantages d'échantillons et d'effectuer des analyses plus rigoureuses. Les résultats de la datation ont ainsi révélé que la coquille a été construite entre la fin du XIIe siècle et la fin du Xe siècle av. J.-C., durant l'ère pré-romaine. Le navire, qui mesure 7 mètres de long sur 2,5 mètres de largeur, est un bateau cousu. Des ouvriers l'ont minutieusement construit en utilisant des fibres flexibles pour assembler ses morceaux de bois. La technique était d'ailleurs employée dans le monde entier avant le développement des attaches métalliques. Après encore, elle pouvait être utilisée sur les petits bateaux pour réduire les coûts.
