Roadworks reveal remains of Iron Age village in York

An enclosure measuring 16 metres across is believed to date from the Iron Age 

[Credit: City of York Council]

The earliest find – a large ring ditch which could have been an enclosure or roundhouse – appears to date from the Iron Age, around 2,500 years ago. At around 16 metres in diameter, it is one of the biggest to be unearthed in York.

Pits and what looks to be a hearth have been found alongside, during roadworks at the roundabout of the junction with the road to Wetherby, on York’s outer ring road

A nearby ditch has produced a series of related finds, including decorated pottery fragments, a piece of quern-stone and industrial waste material in the form of molten slag.

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Treasure found across Northern Ireland

More than 40 objects found across Northern Ireland between 2009 and 2016 have been officially categorised as "treasure" by a coroner.

The items include a variety of precious rings, jewellery and Viking coins.

They were found by members of the public through metal-detecting, as well as by archaeologists on excavation.

After examination both by the coroner and the British Museum, some of the treasured items are now being held at the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

In Northern Ireland, any search for archaeological material that involves disturbing the ground requires a licence in advance from the Department for Communities' Historic Environment Division (HED)

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Lessons From A Real Atlantis

Before it was lost to the bottom of sea, Doggerland was made up of woodland, meadows, marshes and rivers,  as shown by simulations [Credit: Philip Murgatroyd]

The discoveries, both on land and underwater, are helping to fill in some of the blanks about Europe’s prehistory and are offering insights into how our species responded to global climate change in the past.

Around 8,500 years ago, after the end of the last ice age, global warming triggered huge rises in sea levels due to the melting of glaciers and ice sheets that had covered much of the northern hemisphere.

An area of land twice the size of the European Union was lost to the rising seas, prompting mass migration across the continents.

Much of the human experience of this cataclysm, however, has remained buried out of reach of even the most assiduous investigator, leaving a huge gap in the story of our ancestors.

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Research on British teeth unlocks potential for new insights into ancient diets

Skeleton sampled for the study, dating to the post-medieval period in Britain. The analysis suggests the Victorians were partial to a bowl of porridge, while in modern diets potatoes, soybeans and peanuts are flavour of the day 

[Credit: Camilla Speller, University of York]

Dental plaque accumulates on the surface of teeth during life and is mineralised by components of saliva to form tartar or "dental calculus", entombing proteins from the food we eat in the process.

Identifying evidence of many foods, particularly plant crops, in diets of the past is a challenge as they often leave no trace in the archaeological record. But proteins are robust molecules that can survive in tartar for thousands of years.

Archaeological tooth tartar has previously been shown to preserve milk proteins, but the international study, led by researchers at the University of York and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has proved for the first time that it can also reveal more precise information about a wider range of food proteins, including those from plants.

The discovery could provide new insights into the diets and lifestyles of our ancestors, adding to the value of dental remains in our understanding of human evolution.

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Hidden landscapes the heatwave is revealing

As the summer sun continues to beat down on the British Isles, ghosts are appearing in the yellowing fields.

Normally kept hidden by lush grasses and crops, old and prehistoric features are making themselves known through imprints on fields and lawns, some for the first time in known memory.

It's hard to see these features from the ground - but with the rise of drones for aerial photography, they can be captured where they may have remained unidentified in previous heatwaves.

The marks are revealed when grass or crops on top of wood or stone still in the ground flourish or deteriorate at different rates to surrounding material in the unusually hot weather.

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The real cabbage soup diet: What Britons ate down the ages

Ancient Britons were eating dairy, peas, cabbage and oats, according to gunk trapped in their teeth.

Scientists analysed dental plaque found on the teeth of skeletons from the Iron Age to post-Medieval times.

They found evidence of milk proteins, cereals and plants, as well as an enzyme that aids digestion.

In modern samples, they found proteins that reflect a more cosmopolitan diet, including potatoes, soya and peanuts.

The research gives a picture of what people have been eating through the ages, including food that leaves no trace in the archaeological record.

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Brú na Bóinne: Megalithic tomb discovered in Meath

One kerbstone is heavily decorated with Neolithic carvings

The discovery of a 5,500-year-old megalithic tomb in County Meath has been described as the "find of a lifetime" by archaeologists.

Two burial chambers, six kerbstones and two suspected satellite tombs have been found during the dig.

The find was made at the 18th Century Dowth Hall, within the Brú na Bóinne complex, a Unesco World Heritage site.

The project is being carried out by the agri-technology company Devenish and University College Dublin (UCD).

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Unsere weitverzweigten afrikanischen Wurzeln

Artefakte aus der Mittleren Steinzeit, die im Norden und Süden des afrikanischen Kontinents gefunden wurden. Bild: Eleanor Scerri/Francesco d»Errico/Christopher Henshilwood

Während allgemein anerkannt ist, dass der moderne Mensch seinen Ursprung in Afrika hat, wurde der Frage, wie sich der Mensch innerhalb des Kontinents entwickelt hat, bislang wenig Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Vielfach ging man davon aus, dass die frühen Vorfahren des Menschen als eine einzige, relativ große Bevölkerungsgruppe entstanden sind, welche Gene und Technologien, wie die Herstellung von Steinwerkzeugen, mehr oder weniger zufällig untereinander austauschten.

In einer diese Woche in Trends in Ecology and Evolution veröffentlichten Studie eines wissenschaftlichen Expertenteams unter der Leitung von Eleanor Scerri, Wissenschaftlerin an der British Academy der Universität Oxford und am Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschichte in Jena, wird diese Sichtweise nicht nur durch die Untersuchung von versteinerten Knochen (Anthropologie), Steinwerkzeugen (Archäologie) und Genen (Populationsgenetik) in Frage gestellt, sondern auch durch neue und detailliertere Rekonstruktionen von Afrikas Klimazonen und Lebensräumen während der letzten 300.000 Jahre

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Power company project becomes one of Europe's largest archeological digs

The site included the skull of an auroch, an extinct species of cattle.

A Neolithic trackway dating to 2300 B.C. was uncovered in a nondescript field in Suffolk, on the east coast of England, thanks to a power company.

Among the findings at the site were the skull of an auroch -- an extinct species of wild cattle dating to about 4000 B.C. -- as well as pottery, building structures, bones, coins and poles to designate the route of the ancient trackway, the centerpiece of this particular excavation. Trackways are ancient roadways that formed when people or animals repeatedly tread the same path.

"Undoubtedly this is a site of international archaeological significance. It is exceptionally rare to find preserved organic materials from the Neolithic period, and we will learn a great deal from this discovery," said Richard Newman, associate director at Wardell Armstrong, the company overseeing the dig.

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'German Stonehenge' Yields Grisly Evidence of Sacrificed Women and Children

A reconstruction of the 4,300-year-old Pömmelte enclosure.

Credit: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt” (State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt); photographer Juraj Lipták

The broken, battered bones of children, teenagers and women discovered at the newly excavated "German Stonehenge" may be evidence of ancient human sacrifice, a new study finds.

Archaeologists found the fractured skulls and rib bones buried in pits alongside axes, drinking vessels, butchered animal bones and querns (stone mills) at an archaeology site near Pömmelte, a village in Germany about 85 miles (136 kilometers) southwest of Berlin.

The victims' last moments were gruesome; it appears they were thrown or pushed into the pit, and that at least one of the teenagers had their hands bound together, said study lead researcher André Spatzier, an archaeologist at the State Office for the Preservation of Historic Monuments at Baden-Württemberg, a state in southwest Germany. 

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Archaeologists stumble on Neolithic ritual site in Suffolk

A 4,300-year-old stake discovered in a field in Suffolk. Photograph: Scottish Power

As diggers began to strip the daisies and buttercups and carve down through the parched clay of a field near Woodbridge in Suffolk that sloped down to a riverbank, with archaeologists watching over the pretty but apparently featureless site, something extraordinary began to emerge. Clear spring water came bubbling from the ground, and with it came massive timbers preserved so perfectly that tool marks were still visible and stake posts were sharply pointed.

The archaeologists first thought the timbers must be medieval or even Victorian, and were puzzled to find them so deeply buried. But as 30 metres of timber track were exposed, alongside other unexpected objects too, such as the massive horns and skull of an aurochs, an extinct breed of giant cattle, they realised they were dealing with something far more ancient. The timbers were 4,300 years old, according to the first carbon-14 tests, and underlying ones may be much older.

The Neolithic trackway, which had evidence of being repeatedly restored and renewed over decades and probably generations, seems to have led up to a level timber platform, with spring water deliberately channelled to surround it. From the platform, objects were dropped into the running water, including metal, pottery and the horned aurochs skull. The skull had been carefully shaped either to fix to a pole or use as part of a headdress – and as the archaeologists who had to lift and carry it down the hill could testify, lugging it to the site would have taken considerable effort.

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Mycenaean vessels among finds at Dromolaxia, Cyprus

Chariot krater from Tomb RR, Dromoloaxia-Vyzakia 

[Credit: Cyprus Department of Antiquities]

The Department of Antiquities in Cyprus announced that, during five weeks in April and June 2018, a Swedish team, headed by Professor Peter M. Fischer from the University of Gothenburg, carried out excavations at the Late Cypriot harbour city of Dromolaxia-Vyzakia (Hala Sultan Tekke). The team consisted of 27 students and specialists. Amongst the latter were those trained in osteology, botany, conservation, Aegean and Near Eastern ceramics, and geophysical prospecting.

In June 2017, the site was surveyed with a magnetometer with ten sensors mounted on a 5 m wide cart. This arrangement allowed the mapping of 23 hectares within a week, demonstrating stone structures and “pits” down to a depth of roughly 1.5 m.

The architectural remains point to numerous man-made structures in the entire area of the survey, demonstrating the vast extent of the city. In 2018, 0.6 hectares of the magnetometer-surveyed area were re-investigated with georadar in order to see details of the buried features which facilitates the subsequent excavations.

However, the results of the georadar survey were of limited value: the strong radar attenuation at the site, due to clay-rich soil, did not allow electromagnetic waves to penetrate deeper than a few decimeters from surface.

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Four hundred-year-old fort discovered in County Tyrone

A 400-year-old fort has been discovered in Brockagh, County Tyrone.

Students from Queen's University in Belfast have taken part in the dig over the past month.

Evidence of a settlement going back thousands of years has also been found.

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Ötzi – a new understanding of the holy grail of glacial archaeology

Reinhold Messner (right) looking at Ötzi after more ice had melted or been hacked away. Notice the wooden stick in his companion’s right hand. It was used during the first attempts to hack Ötzi out of the ice. It is in fact part of the frame for Ötzi’s backpack. In the upper right corner, we can see Ötzi’s bow resting against the rock. 

Ötzi the iceman is the holy grail of glacial archaeology, nothing less. The discovery of the 5300-year-old mummified body and the associated artefacts created a media frenzy and great public interest. Today, 250000 people visit the Ötzi Museum in Bolzano each year to get a glimpse of Ötzi and the exhibited artefacts. A wealth of scientific papers, popular books and documentaries have been published.

Ötzi was discovered in 1991 in a gully at the Tisenjoch pass close to the Italian/Austrian border. The original interpretation by the Innsbruck-based archaeologist Konrad Spindler was that Ötzi froze to death in the gully. He was quickly covered by a glacier and remained encased in ice until he melted out in 1991. How else could the body and artefacts be so well preserved?

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