2,300-year-old false tooth removed in northern France

Iron implant is same size and shape as incisors found with Celtic woman's remains – and was likely added after death

An iron false tooth found with real teeth at a Celtic grave at Le Chene, France. The implant is the oldest of its kind so far discovered in western Europe. 

Photograph: Antiquity Publications Ltd

An iron tooth implant fitted about 2,300 years ago has been found in the grave of a young woman in northern France. Archaeologists believe it may have been fitted to beautify her corpse, as it would have been too excruciating to have had it hammered into the living jaw.


The corroded piece of metal is the same size and shape as the other incisors from her upper jaw – which did not survive as the timber tomb collapsed and crushed her skull – and its appearance may originally have been improved by a wooden or ivory covering.

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Iron Age settlement unearthed at building site

A small Iron Age settlement has been found during excavations at the site of a new housing development near Swindon. 

Further digging at Ridgeway Farm is expected to continue for up to three weeks  

[Credit: Taylor Wimpey/BBC] 

A number of "round houses" with hundreds of pits for storage are among the discoveries at Ridgeway Farm, where Taylor Wimpey is building 700 homes. 

Other items found include loom weights for weaving, quern stones for grinding corn and various personal items.

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GIS technology verifies Caesar and Helvetii history

According to Caesar, more than a quarter of a million Helvetii were settled in the Swiss plateau before they decided to abandon their territory and invade Gaul in 58 BCE

AN INTERNATIONAL team is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modelling to assess Julius Caesar’s account of his war with a Celtic tribe.

According to Caesar, more than a quarter of a million Helvetii were settled in the Swiss plateau before they decided to abandon their territory and invade Gaul in 58 BCE.

In his Gallic Wars he says the Helvitii were running out of food.

UWA archaeologist Tom Whitley is developing a GIS model to test Caesar’s population estimate and is testing geophysical techniques to see if they can detect signs of the migration and war.

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7,000-year-old cave paintings found in Spain

Archaeologists in eastern Spain have discovered 12 prehistoric rock paintings depicting hunting scenes from 7,000 years ago. 

The site's location is being kept a secret until the necessary security  precautions are in place [Credit: Vilafranca Town Hall] Town hall representatives in the Valencian municipality of Vilafranca announced the finding on Tuesday, the first of its kind and importance for many years in the region. 

Although archaeologists are still searching the area for more rock paintings, their work has already unveiled detailed depictions of prehistoric hunting; including bulls, goats and archers chasing them down.

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Earliest houses, Bronze Age cremations and tools found by archaeologists in Scotland

An early Bronze Age food vessel found at East Challoch Farm in the south of Scotland

© Guard Archaeology

A Neolithic home which is south-west Scotland’s earliest known house, two cemeteries carrying 20 Bronze Age cremations, a pair of rare jet necklaces and thousands of flint tools used in Mesolithic coastal industries have been discovered during the creation of a bypass in Dumfries and Galloway.

Work on the new Dunragit intersection has uncovered a huge variety of artefacts from 7,000 years of Scottish history. Criss-crossing palaeochannels on the edge of a former estuary obscured a house which is thought to date from 6000 BC, accompanied by a perforated stone adze used to work wood.

The remains of Neolithic dwellers are thought to come from a nearby ceremonial complex excavated by Manchester University diggers more than a decade ago, unearthing three concentric rings of timber posts initially spotted through aerial photography.

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Baby mammoth goes on display in UK

A perfectly preserved baby mammoth which died 42,000 years ago has been unveiled at the Natural History Museum in London.

Named Lyuba by the Siberian deer herder who discovered her in 2007, the specimen is 130cm tall and weighs 50kg.

Palaeontologist Prof Adrian Lister described seeing her for the first time as an "incredible experience".

Transported in a box that was opened on Monday, the juvenile female mammoth looked almost intact.

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Scottish road works unearth Iron Age village

An Iron Age village along with a host of ancient artefacts including tools and jewellery have been discovered on a construction site of a new bypass for a Scottish town. 

Archaeologists have uncovered a range of artefacts and sites, including an Iron Age village, ahead of construction of a new road in southwest Scotland [Credit: Historic Scotland] 

The treasure trove unearthed during the building of the £17 million A75 Dunragit bypass in Wigtownshire sheds new light on land use and settlement in the area over the past 9,000 years. 

The discoveries include a rare and complete 130-piece jet bead necklace dating about 2000BC – the first of its kind ever discovered in south-west Scotland.

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Dunragit road works unearth ancient treasure trove

A neolithic arrowhead found during the construction of Dunragit bypass. 

Picture: Transport Scotland

AN IRON Age village along with a host of ancient artefacts including tools and jewellery have been discovered on a construction site of a new bypass for a Scottish town.

The treasure trove unearthed during the building of the £17 million A75 Dunragit bypass in Wigtownshire sheds new light on land use and settlement in the area over the past 9,000 years.

The discoveries include a rare and complete 130-piece jet bead necklace dating about 2000BC – the first of its kind ever discovered in south-west Scotland.

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Tomb found in Ayios Silas in Limassol

Workers came across significant archaeological finds when digging for a landscaping assignment

THREE burial chambers estimated to be from the late Hellenistic period were accidentally discovered on Tuesday afternoon in a plot in Ayios Silas in Limassol.

The tomb came to light when during landscaping works, an excavator hit the roof of a cave which collapsed and revealed skeletal remains, amphorae and coins.

The Antiquities Department was notified by the police.

So far, amphorae, seven skeletal remains and other small items were found. According to Yiannis Violaris, archaeologist of the Antiquities Department’s Limassol District, the tomb is estimated to be from the late Hellenistic period, between the second and first centuries BC, while modern day items which were found in the tomb are attributed to a probable older collapse of the roof.

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Stone Age items unearthed by work in Surrey

Rare archaeological findings dating back 10,000 years were unearthed during work to replace water mains in Surrey.

Archaeologists excavating the Roman villa uncovered near the River Mole [Credit: BBC] 

Work on the 2.2km pipe finished in May 2012 and it has taken two years to identify what was discovered.

 A Stone Age hunting camp and a Roman villa were among finds made during the work in Cobham Road, Fetcham, carried out by Sutton and East Surrey Water.

 The camp was the oldest find along items from the Bronze and Iron Ages, according to a report by researchers.

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Sunken body clue to American origins

The skull has been removed from the cavern but most of the skeleton remains in place

The ancient remains of a teenage girl discovered deep underground in Mexico are providing additional insights on how the Americas came to be populated.

Divers found the juvenile's bones by chance in a vast, flooded limestone chamber on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Aged 15 or 16 at death, the girl lived at least 12,000 years ago.

Researchers have told Science Magazine her DNA backs the idea that the first Americans and modern Native American Indians share a common ancestry.

This theory argues that people from Siberia settled on the land bridge dubbed Beringia that linked Asia and the Americas some 20,000 years ago before sea levels rose.

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Archaeologists say Stonehenge was "London of the Mesolithic" in Amesbury investigation

David Jacques (far right) helping volunteers uncover artefacts from the Blick Mead dig in October 2013

© Courtesy University of Buckingham

Bones of cattle twice the size of bulls and pink flints which change colour have led the way to an archaeological breakthrough in Amesbury

Giant bull, wild boar and red deer bones left at a settlement a mile from Stonehenge prove that Amesbury is the oldest settlement in Britain and has been continually occupied since 8820 BC, according to archaeologists who say the giant monuments were built by indigenous hunters and homemakers rather than Neolithic new builders.

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UK's OLDEST town revealed: Amesbury dates back more than TEN millenia

Archaeologists are confident they finally know the identity of the country's oldest town[PA]

Archaeologists at the University of Buckingham believe Amesbury, 40 miles from Stonehenge, is the oldest settlement in Britain not the previously thought Thatcham.

Researchers believe the town holds the distinction of being the birthplace of history in Britain.

They say the new findings dismiss previous theories that the Wiltshire town was conceived by European immigrants - instead, relics uncovered during a painstaking search point to British settlers being behind the settlement, which dates back to more than 10 millennia.

David Jacques, research fellow in archaeology at the University of Buckingham, who led the dig, said: "The site blows the lid off the Neolithic Revolution (deemed the first agricultural revolution in Middle Eastern history) in a number of ways. It provides evidence for people staying put, clearing land, building and presumably worshipping monuments.

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Thieves destroy ancient rock painting in Spain

Ancient rock art near the town of Quesada in Spain's southern Andalusia region. File image: YouTube/gualayriver

A 5,000 year-old rock painting in southern Spain has been destroyed by thieves who tried to steal the Unesco World Heritage-listed artwork by chipping it off the cave wall where it was housed.

Residents of the Santa Elena in Spain's southern Jaén province are reeling after news of the damage.

Local mayor Juan Caminero said the painting was now "irreparable" and condemned the act of vandalism as "heartless", Spanish daily La Vanguardia reported on Monday.

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Amesbury in Wiltshire named oldest UK settlement

History will have to be rewritten – astonishing new findings reveal Amesbury is now the oldest place in the country, where history began, and is also the longest continuous settlement in the UK. Previously it was thought that Stonehenge was conceived by European immigrants but this shows that British settlers were behind its construction. 

Amesbury - including Stonehenge - is the UK's longest continually occupied settlement 

[Credit: PA/BBC]

 Carbon dating from an archaeological dig by the University of Buckingham shows that the parish of Amesbury, which includes Stonehenge, has been continually occupied for every millennium since 8820BC. The origins of Amesbury have been discovered as a result of carbon dating bones of aurochs (twice the size of bulls), wild boar and red deer following a dig at Vespasian’s Camp, Blick Mead, a mile and a half from Stonehenge last year.

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Vikings Online Course

Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers 

12 May to 25 July 2014

Vikings: Raiders, Traders and Settlers is an online archaeology course run by the University of Oxford's Department of Continuing Education.

The course runs for ten weeks and successful completion carries an award of ten CATS points. Students write two short assignments as part of the course.

Online forums for each unit enable students to discuss the topic being studied, and help from the online tutor is always available

You can find more details here...

You can find details of other online archaeology courses here...

Scientists Uncover Evidence of Change from Hunting to Herding at Early Neolithic Settlement

An international team of researchers examining the earliest known pre-ceramic Neolithic mound site in Turkey, called Aşıklı Höyük, suggests that humans shifted from hunting wild ungulates and small animals to managing sheep and goats at the site over a period of a few hundred years beginning on or before 8200 BCE. 

The mound, located in south-central Turkey about 25 km southeast of Aksaray, Turkey, has been the subject of a number of studies and excavations in recent years, beginning with Professor Ian A. Todd in 1964. Subsequent investigations included salvage excavations by Professor Ufuk Esin (University of Istanbul) beginning in 1989, followed by those of Nur Balkan-Ath, also of Istanbul University, and more recent excvations in 2010. 

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Neanderthals were not less intelligent than modern humans, scientists find

Neanderthal and modern human skulls. Photograph: Sabena Jane Blackbird/Alamy

Scientists have concluded that Neanderthals were not the primitive dimwits they are commonly portrayed to have been.

The view of Neanderthals as club-wielding brutes is one of the most enduring stereotypes in science, but researchers who trawled the archaeological evidence say the image has no basis whatsoever.

They said scientists had fuelled the impression of Neanderthals being less than gifted in scores of theories that purport to explain why they died out while supposedly superior modern humans survived.

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Iron Age human remains uncovered in the Cotswolds

Human remains dating from the Iron Age have been found during archaeological excavations in Gloucestershire. 

The remains are thought to date from the Iron Age [Credit: BBC] 

The skeleton was found at a nature reserve on the outskirts of Bourton-on-the-Water near Salmonsbury Camp, an ancient hill fort. 

The work also revealed what is thought to be a roundhouse and a series of pits that may have been used to store grain. 

Tom Beasley-Suffolk, Cotswolds reserves manager, said the remains will be cleaned and then analysed.

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Prehistoric North Sea 'Atlantis' hit by 5m tsunami

A prehistoric "Atlantis" in the North Sea may have been abandoned after being hit by a 5m tsunami 8,200 years ago.

The wave was generated by a catastrophic subsea landslide off the coast of Norway.

Analysis suggests the tsunami over-ran Doggerland, a low-lying landmass that has since vanished beneath the waves.

"It was abandoned by Mesolithic tribes about 8,000 years ago, which is when the Storegga slide happened," said Dr Jon Hill from Imperial College London.

The wave could have wiped out the last people to occupy this island.

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