As armed conflict wears on in Syria, archaeological sites and artifacts fall to destruction and looting.
Some 140 gold and silver coins and a trove of jewelry were among the treasures uncovered by archaeologists near Kiryat Gat, the Israel Antiquities Authority have announced.
The Great Wall of China has been officially declared even longer than previously thought, state-run media report. Previous estimates of the wall’s length were mainly based on historical records.
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have found two medieval skeletons pierced through the chest with iron rods to supposedly stop them from turning into vampires.
Another look at a nearly 80-year-old pottery collection at the Arizona State Museum is yielding new information about migrants who abandoned the Four Corners region. While there is no written record of what happened, much of what archaeologists know is told in the ceramics that were created and left behind when those civilizations later collapsed.
By about 30,000 years ago, Europeans were using cartoon-like techniques to give observers the impression that lions and other wild beasts were charging across cave walls, two French investigators find.
Wooden fish traps said to be some 9,000 years old have been found in the Baltic Sea off Sweden, possibly the oldest such traps in existence.
The remains of a newly discovered suburb of the ancient city of Cahokia are right in the path of a new interstate freeway in East St. Louis. Some hope the construction of a new bridge across the Mississippi River will help revitalize the area. But archaeologists worry future development could destroy what’s left the ancient neighborhood.
In the course of routine excavation work at the tomb of the first Middle Kingdom governor of the Hare Nome or province, the nomarch Ahanakht I at the Deir Al-Barsha site in Minya, Belgian archaeologists from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven stumbled on what is believed to be an important burial going back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.
Archaeologists in the eastern Mediterranean region have been unearthing spherical jugs, used by the ancients for storing and trading oil, wine, and other valuable commodities. It’s thought merchants used these jugs to measure precise volumes, contrary to previous beliefs that the merchants of antiquity could only approximately assess the capacity of these round jugs.
Transitioning from military service to civilian life remains daunting for many veterans, but the men and women staffing a north Old Town archaeology laboratory are getting a lift from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Italian police said they had reported five people to prosecutors after finding and impounding some 18,000 ancient artifacts dug up in illegal excavations at archaeological sites near Rome.
Tinged green by age, copper sheathing from the disintegrated wooden hull of a newfound shipwreck sits deep in the Gulf of Mexico, where the craft sank as far back as 200 years ago. Despite clues found in surrounding artifacts—muskets, beer bottles, an anchor—the ship’s exact age, origin, and purpose remain unknown.
In the run up to bicentennial commemorations of the War of 1812, there has been increased federal and state interest in protecting the war’s battlefields and important sites on the east coast, especially those threatened by development.
Security forces seized 40 pieces that make up the top parts of Pharaonic Shawabti figurines. The artifacts were stolen from the Cairo University excavation warehouses located in the archeological Saqqara region in Giza.
