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SLOVAQUIE – Čičva Castle - A vaulted, brick-lined corridor connecting the northern and western wings has been discovered at eastern Slovakia’s Čičva Castle. The castle was built in the early fourteenth century. L’ubomír Hutka of Pro Futuro said the bricks used in the construction of the corridor are usually found in Poland, and may have been made by Polish workers brought to the site by the Hungarian Drugeth family in the seventeenth century. Recent excavations have also unearthed ceramics, jugs, bowls, and two broken stone cannonballs. Emergency restoration work on the northern and southern castle walls repaired two cannon loopholes.
https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20940699/archaeological-research-at-cicva-castle-revealed-connecting-corridor.html
USA – Floride – More than 7000 years ago, a group of indigenous people in Florida picked a shallow pond as a burial site. They would have, as far as archaeologists understand, sunk the body into the peat-bottomed body of water and marked the grave with sharpened stakes, the tops sticking out above the water. At least six people were buried in this particular pond. All those millennia ago, this pond was far from Florida’s shoreline, and nine feet above sea level. But over time, the sea level has crept up dramatically, so that when this gravesite was discovered in June 2016, it was more than 20 feet below the surface of the water. In this part of Florida’s west coast, about an hour south of Tampa, divers are often hunting for fossils in the rich underwater deposits. The site was discovered when a diver pulled a human jawbone from the sea floor; once he realized what he’d found, he reported the discovery to the state’s Bureau of Archaeological Research. The jaw’s one tooth hinted that it had belonged to a person who lived thousands of years ago. Since then, archaeologists have uncovered fabric fragments, burial stakes, and more human remains at the site. The peat bottom of the pond helped preserve the site, but generally it’s thought that sites like this one, long covered by the encroaching sea, should have been destroyed by hurricanes and other disturbances. “Seeing a 7,000-year-old site that is so well preserved in the Gulf of Mexico is awe inspiring,” one of the state’s archaeologists said in a press release.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florida-manasota-key-underwater-graves
HONGRIE – Erd - Lost treasures, including 2,000 gold and silver coins, have been found by archaeologists on the Danube riverbed in Hungary, and it’s all thanks to a recent drought which caused the water levels in the Danube river to drop to record lows last week. “Around 2,000 coins have been found, as well as arms, pikes, cannon balls and swords,” Katalin Kovacs, an archaeologist with the Ferenczy Museum Center, told the MTI agency. The discovery was made last week where the river passes by the town of Erd, to the south of Budapest, according to AFP. But the coins were not the only treasures found. The ducats and pennies were found among other items from a wreck of a trading boat whose origin is not yet known, archaeologists said. “The coins are 90 percent foreign and date from between 1630 and 1743,” archaeologist Balazs Nagy told the Klub radio station. Some of the coins found can be traced to the Vatican, from Pope Pope Clement XII, Zurich and Dutch ducat, according to Hungary Today. There are 22-carat Hungarian gold coins from the XVII-XVIII century, silver coins and French coins from Louis XIV. Iron objects, weapons, bells, ship parts, daggers and cannonballs have also been discovered.
https://www.geek.com/news/hidden-treasures-uncovered-in-hungary-as-danube-water-levels-fall-to-record-low-1758390/?source=science
IRAN – Alamut castle - he Public Relations Office of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT) quoted Hamideh Choobak, head of the 14th season of archeological exploration in Alamut castle in Qazvin as saying that although the castle palace of Alamut was destroyed by the Mongols in their invasion in the year 654 Hegira, however due to its importance for the Ismaili sect, once again its followers returned back to the place. Referring to the construction of valuable monuments with tile decorations after the return of the Ismaili followers to Alamut, she said it seems that the decorations belonged to the mausoleum of Hassan Sabbah and the Ismailis intended to revive it. She underlined the importance of the mausoleum of Hassan Sabbah for the followers of the Ismaili sect and said in historical texts, the mausoleum of Hassan Sabbah and his successors had been referred to the place of pilgrimage for their followers. She expressed the hope that in future exploration operations further documents and evidence would be obtained from the burial site of Hassan Sabbah. In Explaining characteristics of the two golden shade tiles, Choobak said the tiles showed that after the invasion of the Mongols, the Islamilis one again returned to the place and settled there and the tiles are the relics of the same period. Speaking to the reporters who were visiting the site, Choobak said in her opinion the place, in addition to being a research center, could become an important educational center for the typology of pottery in the Caspian cultural region as well as the Islamic period. Choobak pointed to the discovery of over 7,200 pottery pieces just in one exploration workshop and noted that over one hundred thousand pottery pieces are available in the Alamut Information System. Stressing that in the Alamut base nothing would be throw away and all the pottery pieces are collected and classified, she said about 29 types of pottery, each with a subset, have been classified and studied.
http://www.irna.ir/en/News/83082982