* Astronomy

Vandals have struck at the 5,000-year-old village of Skara Brae in Sandwick,  painting graffiti on the interior of the best preserved houses.

A large Neolithic complex on the Brodgar peninsula lies on the low ridge between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar.
An initial geophysical survey, as part of the WHA Geophysics Programme, revealed numerous anomalies indicative of settlement covering 2 ½ hectares.
In 2003 a large notched stone was ploughed up and a rescue excavation was undertaken, under the Human Remains Call-Off Contract, as the stone was thought to be from a cist. The trench revealed part of a large structure similar to Structure 2 at nearby Barnhouse Neolithic Village. This finding initiated a resistivity survey to try to define the extent of the built archaeology and complement the initial gradiometer survey.

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Latitude: 58.997504N  Longitude: 3.214835W

Middle Asia Digs Suggest a New View of the Dawn of Civilization

For decades, school children have learned that human civilization emerged about 5000 years ago along the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia, along the Nile, and along the Indus River in South Asia. But archaeologists working in a broad arc from the Russian steppes through Iran and onto the Arabian Peninsula are finding evidence that a complex network of cities may have thrived across the region in roughly the same era, suggesting a dramatic new view of the emergence of human civilization.
In a feature in the 3 August issue of Science, news writer Andrew Lawler details the discoveries by teams of researchers and the emerging multi-national effort to piece together the array of new evidence into a unified understanding.
Though their efforts are at an early stage, Lawler writes, many of the archaeologists say the finds are rewriting historical accounts of human civilization by offering "a far more complex picture in which dozens of urban centers thrived between Mesopotamia and the Indus, trading commodities and, possibly, adopting each other's technologies, architectures, and ideas."

For more information, read the full story.

The remains of an ancient city on the Black Sea coast will be unearthed for the first time next month. Archaeologists are beginning excavations and underwater dives with the aim of unveiling the architectural plan of Teion (or Tion), located in Zonguldak's Filyos district.
  Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, archaeologist Sümer Atasoy said the excavation team conducted surface research last year but that the major digging will start in August with a 30-member excavation team.

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