27 Mai 2019: Blenheim - Leicestershire -- Newington - Hualongdong - Crantock - Sofia - Huseby Klev - Salehabad - Gülşehir -
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NOUVELLE ZELANDE - 
Blenheim - Pieces of Blenheim's early history have been unearthed by workers constructing a new double-lane bridge at the northern edge of the town. The accidental discovery of a wooden bridge pile and century-old bottles has surprised workers at the Ōpaoa River site, where a bridge is being built to replace the current 102-year-old crossing. Workers found the old wooden pile while driving piles into the ground in March. The pile hit the wood and sliced part of it off. Blenheim New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) senior project manager Andrew Adams said the pile was believed to have supported the original Ōpaoa Bridge, built in 1868.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/112941457/historic-bridge-remains-found-during-build-in-blenheim
ROYAUME UNI – 
Leicestershire - An “astonishing and unparalleled” 2,300-year-old shield made of tree bark has been discovered in Leicestershire, the only example of its kind ever found in Europe. Archaeologists say the discovery of the shield, made between 395 and 250BC, has completely overturned assumptions about the weapons used in the ironage, sparking breathless reactions among experts of the period. The shield was discovered in 2015 by archaeologists from the University of Leicester Archaeological Service in a site close to the River Soar. Organic objects from the period very rarely survive, but the shield was preserved in waterlogged soil and may have been deposited in a water-filled pit, according to Matt Beamish, the lead archaeologist for the service. Bark shields of the period were entirely unknown in the northern hemisphere, he told the Guardian, and the assumption was that the material may have been too flimsy for use in war. However experiments to remake the weapon in alder and willow showed the 3mm-thick shield would have been tough enough for battle but incredibly light. It was likely that, contrary to assumptions, similar weapons were widespread, Beamish said. The shield is made from green bark that has been stiffened with internal wooden laths, described by Beamish as “like a whalebone corset of split hardwood”, and surrounded by a rim of hazel, with a twisted willow boss. “This is a lost technology. It has not been seen before as far as we are aware, but presumably it is a technique that was used in many ways for making bark items.” The malleable green wood would then tighten as it dried, giving the shield its strength and forming the rounded rectangles into a slightly “waisted” shape, like a subtle figure of eight.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/23/2300-year-old-iron-age-bark-shield-leicestershire
ROYAUME UNI – 
Newington - An entire Ancient Roman town including a temple and main road has been uncovered buried next to a major motorway . This discovery has been hailed one of the most significant finds in regional archaeological history. The 18-acre settlement, which contains rare coins, pottery and jewellery, dates back as early as 43 AD. It has been uncovered next to the A2 in Newington, Kent. The site includes remains of a temple which has since been named Watling Temple - making it one of only 150 sites recorded in England. Archaeologists also uncovered an ancient seven-metre road which is believed to have been an alternative route to the A2 which runs from London to Kentish coast.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/entire-18-acre-ancient-roman-16203884
CHINE - Hualongdong - Paleontologists have discovered more than 30 human fossils dating back about 300,000 years, at an excavation site in Dongzhi County in east China's Anhui Province. They have also found more than 100 stone artifacts used by ancient humans as well as mammalian fossils of over 40 species. The discoveries are expected to shed new light on how ancient humans in the East Asia continent evolved. The findings have been published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Based on testing results, the buried age of the human fossils, which belonged to 16 individuals, has been determined at between 275,000 and 331,000 years ago, around the Mid-late Pleistocene period. The human fossils include a human skull that contains a largely complete facial structure, most of the brain cranium, and one side of the mandible. Based on the features of the teeth, researchers believe that the skull belonged to a 14 to 15-year-old male. The skull exhibits morphological similarities to other East Asian Middle and Late Pleistocene archaic human remains, and foreshadows later modern human forms, said Liu Wu, another member of the team and also a professor with the institute.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2019/0526/c90000-9581578.html
ROYAUME UNI – 
Crantock - Remnants from a Bronze Age society have been found at a building site in Cornwall. Two pits, thought to be graves, have been found in Crantock. They contained tree Beaker vessels dating between 2400 and 2000B.C. The excavation found both pits lined with slate and capped with quartz. he first pit contained two Beaker vessels and the second contained an intact beaker, standing approximately 300mm high. They represent an era of migration and trading associated with Bell Beaker people. From 2500B.C, an influx of migrants from Europe settled in Britain. They were called Bell Beaker Folk because of the shape of their pottery which is often to be found in their graves. They are associated with the earliest metal working in Britain, working first with copper and gold and later in bronze, which may provide a clue as to why they appear to have settled in Cornwall, an area rich in metal minerals.
https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/remnants-bronze-age-community-found-2895001
BULGARIE – 
Sofia - An ancient burial chamber, of bricks and masonry and estimated to date from the third to fourth century CE, has been found near the landmark Alexander Nevsky cathedral in Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia, the Regional Historical Museum said. The burial chamber had been covered with a flat roof made of a stone slab. The structure, which was just below the paved surface, had been damaged, probably during construction of the square around the cathedral in the early 20th century, the Sofia Regional History Museum said. Made of bricks bonded with pale yellow mortar, the burial chamber was about 2.1m by 1.2m. No human remains were found inside. The estimated date of the tomb was arrived at on the basis of a comparison with similar facilities that archaeologists have studied at the nearby eastern necropolis of Serdica, an ancient name of Sofia. Archaeologists believe that in the city’s ancient times, funeral processions began from what is today the Largo, via Moskovska Street to the area of today’s Alexander Nevsky Square, the church of St Sofia, near the Vassil Levski monument. It is believed likely that there are more tombs, dating from the second century BCE to the fourth century, in the area. Archaeological studies are continuing and the fate of the find has yet to be decided.
SUEDE – 
Huseby Klev - Three 10,000-year-old pieces of chewing gum have been found to contain the oldest examples of human DNA from Scandinavia. The Stone Age DNA has confirmed a theory that humans colonised the peninsula on two separate occasions. The chewing gum, made of a tar-like substance extracted from the bark of a birch tree, was excavated in the early 1990s from a site called Huseby Klev in western Sweden. Huseby Klev was the home to a group of hunter-fishers who lived in the Mesolithic (middle Stone Age) period. The saliva these Mesolithic humans left in the chewing gum they spat onto the ground allowed them to be identified as two females and one male. As well as that, the team based at Stockholm University identified that they were most genetically similar to Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, the first human settlers on the peninsula. This group migrated from the south of Scandinavia around 11,500 years ago. Remarkably, however, tools also found at the site did not match up to the technology developed by Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, but rather with tools made by Mesolithic humans from eastern Europe, in what is now Russia. The blades were shaped by a technique known as “pressure-knapping”, which produces a sharpened stone blade with a conical core. The Mesolithic humans then used the tar-like chewing gum to glue the blade to a handle made from an animal bone. The presence of this eastern technique provides proof of the theory that Scandinavia was colonised by two separate groups: the Scandinavian hunter-gatherers from the south, and the eastern hunter-gatherers from Russia. Evidence supporting this theory was hard to come by, since few human bones have been preserved from that era, and even fewer preserved in the right conditions for the DNA to be analysed.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/stone-age-chewing-gum-reveals-history-of-scandinavia/
IRAN – 
Salehabad - A team of archaeologists has commenced an extensive research on a centuries-old underground “city”, which is located in Salehabad district of Hamedan province, west-central Iran, ISNA reported on Friday. The site, estimated to date 800 years, was found some three years ago but the story didn’t publicized in order to prevent any possible looting from the underground city before the appropriation of credits for the beginning of studies, a provincial tourism official Ahmad Torabi said. The official said that initial works found at the site are pieces of pottery, which are related to the Islamic and earlier eras, emphasizing “We need more time to do further research and exploration so that we can fully investigate this area.” “At the time when Russian soldiers crossed the area [during the World War II], the men of the region concealed their families in the underground city so that no one noticed their presence,” Torabi added. It is the third underground city being discovered in Hamedan province after Samen and Arzan-Fud, which some archaeologists attribute the two to the times of Medes (678 – 549 BC) so that Hamedan may be named as a pioneering region of troglodyte architecture in the country, he explained. Last October, Hamedan hosted the 3rd International Troglodytic Architecture Conference in which tens of experts, researches and academia discussed troglodyte-associated architecture, culture and technology. Modern Hamedan largely lies on ancient Ecbatana, which was the capital of Media and subsequently a summer residence of the Achaemenian kings who ruled Persia from 553 to 330 BC.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/436333/Doors-of-ancient-underground-city-opened-to-archaeologists
Turquie – 
Gülşehir - Archaeologists have discovered 3,500-year-old Hittite hieroglyphs inside a barn located in Turkey's historical Cappadocia region, which is expected to shed light on an ancient kingdom. Excavation head Professor Yücel Şenyurt told reporters that they found the invaluable hieroglyphs in Gülşehir district of central Nevşehir province. The professor noted that the pieces are from the Tabal Kingdom and will greatly contribute to shedding light on the history of the Neo-Hittite kingdom. The Tabal Kingdom appeared following the downfall of the Hittite Empire in South Central Anatolia.