Archaeologists have discovered six Pagan Saxon skeletons dating back over 1,000 years on a housing development site just a few miles from Stonehenge.
The discoveries, which also include round barrows dating back to the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago, were unearthed at a redundant brownfield development site in Amesbury, Wiltshire, which is also famous for the Amesbury Archer – an early Bronze Age man found buried among arrowheads.
The remains are thought to be those of adolescent to mature males and females. Five skeletons were arrayed around a small circular ditch, with the grave of a sixth skeleton in the centre. Two lots of beads, a shale bracelet and other grave goods were also found, which suggest the findings are Pagan. Read more.
COLIMA.- A burial site with the osseous remains of some 28 individuals, whose antiquity is estimated to be around 1,500 and 2,500 years, was discovered by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) east of the city of Colima. The quantity of skeletons found here lead archaeologists to believe this is a pre Hispanic burial site related to western cultures.
Marco Zavaleta Lucido, an archaeologist of the INAH Center in Colima, explained that this area, of about 114 meters square [374.01 square feet], has burials distributed inside and outside of a shaft tomb. The tomb consists of a funerary complex made up by a vertical well of varying depth that leads to a vault where the dead were deposited. Inside this tomb they located the osseous remains of 10 individuals; around it they found 16 other burials, two of which are double having two skeletons. Read more.
Skeleton remains of four people that could date back to the Roman era were unearthed during work on a new water pipeline.
Anglian Water is connecting Boston to Covenham Reservoir in a £40million project to supply the area’s growing population.
Specialists were assessing sites ahead of laying the 63km pipeline when they came across bones of an adult and child, loosley buried in farmland in Stickford.
A spokeman said the bones were ‘more or less in the top soil’.
The first discovery was of an adult and very young child crouched or ‘spooned’. Another two adults were then found nearby and appeared to have been buried lying on their backs. Read more.
A CITY car park has been hailed a “real treasure trove of archaeology” after seven more skeletons were unearthed from the grave of a medieval knight.
Archaeologists working on the site now believe they have uncovered the remains of a family crypt having found bones from three fully grown adults, four infants and a skull.
The exciting discovery comes one month after experts excavated the burial site of a medieval knight – affectionately christened Sir Eck – within the grounds of the new Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) at High School Yards, off Infirmary Street.
Carvings of the Calvary Cross on an elaborate sandstone tomb and an ornate sword found beside the remains led archaeologists to believe it was the burial plot of a high-status individual such as a knight or nobleman. Read more.
The genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,500 years ago, new research suggests.
The findings, detailed today (April 23) in the journal Nature Communications, were drawn from several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.
“What is intriguing is that the genetic markers of this first pan-European culture, which was clearly very successful, were then suddenly replaced around 4,500 years ago, and we don’t know why,” said study co-author Alan Cooper, of the University of Adelaide Australian Center for Ancient DNA, in a statement. “Something major happened, and the hunt is now on to find out what that was.” Read more.
Archaeologists have uncovered 20 Stone-Age skeletons in and around a rock shelter in Libya’s Sahara desert, according to a new study.
The skeletons date between 8,000 and 4,200 years ago, meaning the burial place was used for millennia.
“It must have been a place of memory,” said study co-author Mary Anne Tafuri, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. “People throughout time have kept it, and they have buried their people, over and over, generation after generation.”
About 15 women and children were buried in the rock shelter, while five men and juveniles were buried under giant stone heaps called tumuli outside the shelter during a later period, when the region turned to desert. Read more.
Archaeologists found dozens of 800-year-old skeletons at a construction site in the central state of Puebla, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said.
Workers came upon the remains Tuesday during excavations to install a drainage system in San Andres Cholula, a town 15 minutes by car from Puebla city, the state capital.
Besides at least 63 skeletons, archaeologists have catalogued containers and other objects characteristic of the Olmec and Xicalanca cultures. Read more.
Archaeologists are facing a possible murder mystery after discovering two 8,500-year-old human skeletons at the bottom of a rare Stone-Age well used by the first farmers in Israel’s Jezreel Valley.
The skeletal remains belonged to a woman aged about 19 and an older man, according to archaeologists who announced the discovery today in an e-mailed release. The well dates back to the Neolithic period, they said.
“How did they come to be in the well?” the Israel Antiquities Authority asked in the statement. “Was this an accident or perhaps a murder? As of now, the answer to this question remains a mystery.” Read more.
