Israeli archaeologists have announced that ruins long thought to be of an ancient synagogue are actually the remains of a palace built by Arab caliphs 1,300 years ago. The site, on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, was identified as a synagogue in the 1950s because archaeologists found a carving of a menorah, a seven-armed candelabra that is a Jewish symbol. But scholars said in a report published this week that the identification was an error, and that the site was a winter palace used by the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty, the same rulers who built Jerusalem's gold-capped Dome of the Rock. Read more
NRC scientists who measured the Mona Lisa's smile with laser precision recently gave similar scrutiny to an ancient temple on the Acropolis. Specialists from the NRC Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) scanned and photographed the Erechtheion temple, located near the larger Parthenon, then used software to assemble a highly accurate three-dimensional digital model for Greek cultural authorities. Read more
Historians have uncovered in the British Library in London letters written in 1776 that describe a 40ft-high pole which once stood at the centre of Silbury Hill. Europes largest man-made mound. The letters detail an 18th century excavation into the centre of the man-made mound, where archaeologists discovered a long, thin cavity six inches wide and about 40ft deep. Read more
A number of ancient vessels and clay pots have been unearthed by workers from a plot of land which was to be used for constructing a house at Manaveli block near Puducherry, revenue officials said today. Read more
Jan 18, 2007 A Swiss-led team of archaeologists has discovered pieces of the oldest African pottery in central Mali, dating back to at least 9,400BC. The sensational find by Geneva University's Eric Huysecom and his international research team, at Ounjougou near the Unesco-listed Bandiagara cliffs, reveals important information about man's interaction with nature. Read more
A thousand-year-old temple complex (including a tomb with human sacrifice victims, shown in a digital illustration) has been found under the windswept dunes of northwestern Peru, archaeologists say. The discovery of the complex, excavated near the city of Chiclayo between 2006 and late 2009, has injected a dose of reality into the legend of Naylamp, the god who supposedly founded the pre-Inca Lambayeque civilization in the eighth century A.D., following the collapse of the Moche civilization. Read more
How do traces of a civilization with no written language and no documented history survive? In the case of the ancient societies that populated Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the period between 5000-4000 B.C., the challenge has proved especially daunting. The cultures that thrived for centuries across modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Macedonia, and Ukraine suddenly collapsed and disappeared. Only now, with a new exhibit at New York University, are Western audiences becoming acquainted with what curator David Anthony says was the most advanced European civilization of its time. Read more
Kanawha Valley rock structures Shortly after a surveyor marked off the boundaries of his newly purchased farm in southern Cabell County two years ago, the landowner hiked its perimeter. Halfway up a steep hillside behind his home, he noticed a series of rock piles on a bench of flat land and walked over to investigate. He found dozens of carefully stacked conical, circular and oblong rock piles, ranging in height from a foot or two to more than seven feet.
A team of archaeologists from UCLA, USC, Israel and Palestinian territories has developed the first map detailing Israeli archaeological activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem much of it never publicly disclosed. The fully searchable online map, which serves as a window into thousands of years worth of archaeological sites in the Holy Lands, has won the 2009 Open Archaeology Prize from American Schools of Oriental Research, the main organisation for archaeologists working in the Middle East.