Windsor may have been popular with royalty rather earlier than generally thought.
Archaeologists, excavating near the Royal Borough, have discovered the 4400 year old gold-adorned skeleton of an upper class woman who was almost certainly a member of the local ruling elite.
She is the earliest known woman adorned with such treasures ever found in Britain.
The individual, aged around 40, was buried, wearing a necklace of folded sheet gold, amber and lignite beads, just a century or two after the construction of Stonehenge some 60 miles to the south-west. Even the buttons, thought to have been used to secure the upper part of her now long-vanished burial garment, were made of amber. She also appears to have worn a bracelet of lignite beads. Read more.
Mystery surrounds a 600-year-old skeleton found at the site of an archaeological dig in County Fermanagh.
The crannog - a man made island settlement - is situated on a site where the new A32 Cherrymount link road in Enniskillen will be built.
The woman, who was in her late teens when she died, was not buried in either a recognised graveyard or in traditional manner.
This has led archaeologists to consider the possibility of foul play.
Excavation director Dr Nora Bermingham dated the teenager’s death to around the 15th or 16th centuries.
“The skeleton of a young woman, probably around 18 or 19 with very bad teeth, was found in the upper layers of the crannog,” she said. Read more.
SHIBUKAWA, Gunma — The skeleton of a man in armor dating from the early sixth century has been discovered in a layer of volcanic ash here, the Gunma Archaeological Research Foundation announced on Dec. 10.
The armor-clad remains were found at the Kanai Higashiura ruins here during archaeological excavations accompanying road construction. According to the foundation, the armor is the first set from the Kofun (burial mound) period ever discovered on the body of its owner. The only other pieces of armor from the period have been found among grave goods in tombs. The man is thought to have been caught in the eruption of Mt. Haruna’s Futatsudake, a nearby volcano.
“The find is a valuable clue for learning about the life, habits and disasters of the time,” said a foundation representative. Read more.
Archaeologists working to identify the Greyfriars remains are reconstructing the 500-year-old skeleton’s face to give people a possible glimpse of King Richard III.
Scientists at the University of Leicester are using techniques similar to those which recreated Tutankhamen’s face more than 3,000 years after the young Pharaoh died.
The Leicester skeleton, found at a council car park in August, has already been subjected to a CT scan which will allow a specialist team to build a 3D digital picture of the face.
They hope to reveal the results in the new year.
Professor Lin Foxhall, head of archaeology at the university, said: “We’ve provided 3D scans of all the bones, including the skull, to a specialist team, which will build up a picture of how he used to look. Read more.
It’s no tall tale—the first complete ancient skeleton of a person with gigantism has been discovered near Rome, a new study says.
At 6 feet, 8 inches (202 centimeters) tall, the man would have been a giant in third-century A.D. Rome, where men averaged about 5 and a half feet (167 centimeters) tall. By contrast, today’s tallest man measures 8 feet, 3 inches (251 centimeters).
Finding such skeletons is rare, because gigantism itself is extremely rare, today affecting about three people in a million worldwide. The condition begins in childhood, when a malfunctioning pituitary gland causes abnormally growth.
Two partial skeletons, one from Poland and another from Egypt, have previously been identified as “probable” cases of gigantism, but the Roman specimen is the first clear case from the ancient past, study leader Simona Minozzi, a paleopathologist at Italy’s University of Pisa, said by email. Read more.
Human remains found on a County Durham beach are likely to be thousands of years old, experts have said.
The remains, thought to be of a teenaged boy, were discovered by a group of schoolchildren in sand dunes at Crimdon, near Hartlepool, on Monday.
Police said nearby cliffs were unstable and a recent landslip is believed to have exposed the bones.
Archaeological experts have concluded the body was buried in the “distant past”, possibly thousands of years ago.
Rachel Grahame of Tees Archaeology, said: “The crouched position of the body and the lack of grave goods strongly suggest that this is a prehistoric burial. Read more.
HUATULCO, MEXICO.- The sepulcher of an individual that (possibly) governed a place known today as Bocana del Río Copalita in Huatulco, Oaxaca, 1300 years ago, was discovered by investigators of the ceremonial area of this archaeological site. Here another 38 burials were found, some of which were individuals whom they believe part of the elite.
The pre Hispanic burials were registered by specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH-Conaculta) during the sixth season of the investigation. This investigation takes place in the superior façade of the site’s Mayan Temple, where the elite resided; there, archaeologists found a sepulcher made with masonry’s stone blocks of about 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) high and 1 meter (3.28 feet) wide. The sepulcher contained the skeleton of an individual, presumably of the male sex who was between 20 and 23 years old at death. Read more.
A human skeleton with a cleaved skull discovered beneath a parking lot in England may belong to King Richard III, researchers announced today (Sept. 12), though they have a long way to go in analyzing the bones to determine the identity.
The researchers note they are not saying they have found King Richard III’s remains, but that they are moving into the next phase of their search, from the field to the laboratory.
“(W)e are clearly very excited, but the University now must subject the findings to rigorous analysis. DNA analysis will take up to 12 weeks,” Richard Taylor, the director of corporate affairs at the University of Leicester, told reporters this morning, as recorded in a tweet.
The remains were hidden within the choir of a medieval church known as Greyfriars, where the English monarch was thought to be buried. Though the location of this church had been lost, historical records suggested Richard III was buried there upon his death in battle in 1485. Read more.
