Sevaan Franks

Two ancient curses inscribed on lead tablets have been translated, revealing their intended victims: a senator named Fistus and a veterinarian named Porcello.

Sánchez Natalías added that it isn’t certain who cursed Porcello or why. It could be for either personal or professional reasons. “Maybe this person was someone that (had) a horse or an animal killed by Porcello’s medicine,” said Sánchez Natalías.

“Destroy, crush, kill, strangle Porcello and wife Maurilla. Their soul, heart, buttocks, liver …” part of it reads. The iconography on the tablet actually shows a mummified Porcello, his arms crossed (as is the deity) and his name written on both of his arms.

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Story: Owen Jarus, LiveScience | Photo: Museo Archeologico Civico di Bologna

A recent genetic study has revealed that, due to cross-breeding over the years, modern-day dogs have very little in common with their ancient ancestors.

Although many modern breeds look like those depicted in ancient texts or in Egyptian pyramids, cross-breeding across thousands of years has meant that it is not accurate to label any modern breeds as “ancient,” the researchers said.

Breeds such as the Akita, Afghan Hound and Chinese Shar-Pei, which have been classed as “ancient,” are no closer to the first domestic dogs than other breeds due to the effects of lots of cross-breeding, the study found.

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Story: e! Science News | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The remains of a ship found in the Solent in 2003 has been identified as The Flower of Ugie, which sank in 1852.

The trust said the wreck was that of the Flower of Ugie, a 19th century wooden sailing barque that sank in the Solent on December 27, 1852 following a great storm in the English Channel.

The vessel was a three-masted sailing barque built in Sunderland in 1838. During its career it made regular voyages around Africa and onto India and the Far East.

Later it was employed in the Mediterranean, the Baltic and across the Atlantic, carrying cargo to and from America and Canada.

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Story: County Press | Photo: The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Trust for Marine Archaeology

Italian police have seized over 16,000 artifacts after investigating 70 people for illegally looting and selling their finds on eBay.

The investigation began when the police found an eBay announcement in 2009 and they tracked down a father and son team of tomb raiders in a village in Calabria in southern Italy who had dug up Byzantine, Greek and Roman burials.

Police said in a statement they had seized 16,344 artefacts including bronze and silver coins, rings and ceramic vases, as well as 10 metal detectors.

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Story: AFP | Photo: eBay

A bullaun “cursing stone” has been found on the Isle of Canna making it the first known stone found in Scotland.

“Stones like this are found in Ireland, where they are known as ‘cursing stones’, but this is the first to be discovered in Scotland,” she said.

“They date from the early Christian period but have continued to be used by pilgrims up to modern times.

“Traditionally, the pilgrim would recite a prayer while turning the stone clockwise, wearing a depression or hole in the stone underneath.”

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Story: BBC News | Photo: National Trust for Scotland

Road works in Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon has unearthed a Fremont Indian pit house.

The pit house Patterson’s crew is excavating is the first of its kind to be found so far up Nine Mile Canyon, he said. It’s also the first to be found with a burnt roof, which means the site could provide “a snapshot of daily life” once it’s completely unearthed, Patterson said.

“It’s extremely exciting,” he said.

The structure was discovered during the construction of a new low-water crossing on the Nine Mile Road. Work on that crossing was halted as soon as evidence of the prehistoric site was spotted, and won’t resume until the find can be documented and processed.

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Story: Geoff Liesik, Deseret News | Photo: Geoff Liesik, Deseret News

Archaeologists working at Tel Megiddo in northern Israel have unearthed a vessel containing a collection of gold and silver jewelry.

The researchers believe that the collection, which was discovered in the remains of a private home in the northern part of Megiddo, belongs to a time period called “Iron I,” and that at least some of the pieces could have originated in nearby Egypt. Some of the materials and designs featured in the jewelry, including beads made from carnelian stone, are consistent with Egyptian designs from the same period, notes Ph.D. candidate Eran Arie, who supervises the area where the hoard was found.

When the researchers removed the ceramic jug from the excavation site, they had no idea there was jewelry hidden within. The jewelry was well preserved and wrapped in textiles, but the circumstances surrounding it are mysterious. According to Prof. Finkelstein, it is likely that the jug was not the jewelry’s normal storage place. “It’s clear that people tried to hide the collection, and for some reason they were unable to come back to pick it up.” The owners could have perished or been forced to flee, he says. Prof. Ussishkin believes that it was the jewelry collection of the Canaanite woman who lived in the house.

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Story: Physorg | Photo: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

37 early Paleolithic stone tools have been found at the Luihusaishan site in Guangxi, China.

The stone artifact assemblage included cores, flakes, chunks, choppers and chopping tools, and picks, which were mainly made of quartzite, silicarenite and siltstone. The size of all artifacts was large and most of the tools were retouched on pebbles. The characteristics of these stone artifacts showed very strong ties with the pebble tool tradition of south China.

The stratigraphic observation on vermiculated red soil and the comparison of dating with tektites suggest that these newly discovered localities were formed in early stage of Middle Pleistocene.

These three localities were buried in the same layer of vermiculated red soil. Preliminary analysis illustrates that they show similar technological features, distribute across a broad area and span a limited time range.

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Story: Physorg | Photo: XU Xin and LI Feng

A deadly earthquake in northeast Italy yesterday has caused serious damage to some of the region’s historical buildings.

The earthquake and a powerful aftershock that followed it on Sunday brought down the belltower in Finale Emilia — the shocking image of the tower was on the front pages of many newspapers on Monday as Italy counted the losses.

The cathedral in the town also lay in ruins and turrets of the 13th century Castello delle Rocche were extensively damaged — their bricks splayed out as if the ancient fortress had been hit by a barrage of cannon fire.

“At the moment we’re just dealing with the emergency. We’re looking at all the homes to make sure that people can live in them. The reconstruction of the churches has to take second place unfortunately,” said the emergency worker who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

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Story: Dario Thuburn, AFP | Photo: Giuseppe Cacace, AFP

The remains of a buffalo sacrificed in 1402 has been found beneath a wall at the Ho Citadel in Vietnam.

Vu The Long, of the Viet Nam Institute of Archaeology, said the find was a big surprise for scientists as nothing similar had been found at the worshipping platforms of different dynasties across the country.

The fact the buffalo skeleton was buried directly underneath the biggest surrounding wall of the Nam Giao platform led scientists to believe it was sacrificed when Royal Mandarin Ho Quy Ly ordered the platform built in 1402, Long said.

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Story: VNS | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I always shake my head when I read articles like this: vandals have defaced some ancient petroglyphs at Land Hill in Santa Clara, Utah.

The many petroglyph panels of the Land Hill site reflect the stories and beliefs of the Native Americans who inhabited the area along the Santa Clara River as long as 5,000 years ago. Preservation of this and other archaeological sites gives future generations a glimpse of cultures that thrived in the past.

A few months ago, archaeologist William Banek and law enforcement officer Scott Lowrey of the St. George Field Office began noticing increased instances of scratched graffiti near these ancient petroglyphs.

“This is probably the work of juveniles who don’t understand the value and significance of these resources,” said Banek, who will be stepping up education outreach to local schools and youth organizations to address this issue.

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Story: The Spectrum & Daily News | Photo: The Spectrum & Daily News

Auction house Sotheby’s has sold a priceless Sicán mask for $212,500, prompting some to look into the object’s past.

According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, the mask was acquired over 40 years ago. Carlos Elera, director of the Sicán Museum, told Peru.21, “The mask was looted by grave robbers from the area over 40 years ago. They must investigate how it left the country.” Peruvian law bans the exportation of ancient artifacts from the country.

Sotheby’s did not list the purchaser of the Sicán mask. Elera said he would push the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to demand the artifact’s repatriation.

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Story: Nick Rosen, Peru This Week | Photo: Sotheby’s

Archaeologists working in Cyprus have unearthed an ancient farming village which dates back 11,000 years.

The oldest agricultural settlement ever found on a Mediterranean island has been discovered in Cyprus by a team of French archaeologists involving CNRS, the National Museum of Natural History, INRAP, EHESS and the University of Toulouse. Previously it was believed that, due to the island’s geographic isolation, the first Neolithic farming societies did not reach Cyprus until a thousand years after the birth of agriculture in the Middle East (ca. 9500 to 9400 BCE). However, the discovery of Klimonas, a village that dates from nearly 9000 years before Christ, proves that early cultivators migrated to Cyprus from the Middle Eastern continent shortly after the emergence of agriculture there, bringing with them wheat as well as dogs and cats.

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Story: PhysOrg | Photo: J.-D. Vigne, CNRS-MNHN

Engravings found at Abri Castanet in France has been dated back 37,000 years, making it the earliest known wall art.

The 1.5 metric ton ceiling piece was first discovered in 2007 at Abri Castanet, a well known archeological site in southwestern France which holds some of the earliest forms of artwork, beads and pierced shells.

According to New York University anthropology professor Randall White, lead author of the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the art was likely meant to adorn the interior of a shelter for reindeer hunters.

“They decorated the places where they were living, where they were doing all their daily activities,” White told AFP.

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Story: Jean-Louis Santini, AFP | Photo: Patrick Bernard, AFP

Anthropologist Pat Shipman believes that domesticated dogs may have given humans an advantage over Neanderthals.

Shipman analyzed the results of excavations of fossilized canid bones — from Europe, during the time when humans and Neanderthals overlapped. Put together, they furnish some compelling evidence that early humans, first of all, engaged in ritualistic dog worship. Canid skeletons found at a 27,000-year-old site in P?edmostí, of the Czech Republic, displayed the poses of early ritual burial. Drill marks in canid teeth found at the same site suggest that early humans used those teeth as jewelry — and Paleolithic people, Shipman notes, rarely made adornments out of animals they simply used for food. There’s also the more outlying fact that, like humans, dogs are rarely depicted in cave art — a suggestion that cave painters might have regarded dogs not as the game animals they tended to depict, but as fellow-travelers.

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Story: Megan Garber, The Atlantic | Photo: Shutterstock/Pedro Jorge Henriques Monteiro

Researchers in Britain have built up a detailed chronology of the rise of farming culture in the area 6,000-years-ago.

Until recently, archaeologists had an imprecise knowledge of the timing of agriculture’s arrival in Britain. “We knew the first long-barrow chambers, often used for communal burials, and the first causewayed enclosures appeared not long after the first farmers started taking over the land from existing hunter-gatherer tribes,” said Bayliss. “But we thought these processes took hundreds of years. In fact, they took about a tenth of that. Armed with this precise sequence, we can understand the social and political revolution that happened with agriculture’s arrival.”

The technique developed by the team is known as Bayesian chronological modelling; it exploits the theorems of the 18th-century mathematician Thomas Bayes to bring new precision to radiocarbon dating of prehistoric samples. In the past, bones or pieces of wood could only be ascribed dates to within a few hundred years. “Now, in many cases, we can date bones or tools with an accuracy of only a couple of decades. That changes everything,” said Whittle.

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Story: Robin McKie, The Guardian | Photo: Mark Bauer/ALAMY

The remains of a 200 year old shipwreck, complete with glass bottles, ceramic plates and boxes of muskets, has been found in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Artifacts in and around the wreck and the hull’s copper sheathing may date the vessel to the early to mid-19th century,” Jack Irion, a maritime archaeologist with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), said in a statement.

The first hint of the shipwreck came in 2011, when a sonar survey by Shell Oil Company turned up an unknown blip on the seafloor. BOEM requested that NOAA explore such unknown blips during a recent expedition by the ship Okeanos Explorer. The ship returned April 29 from its 56-day mission exploring unknown areas of the Gulf.

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Story: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience | Photo: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program

After months of work, a half-size replica of Dover’s Bronze Age boat sank on it’s maiden voyage.

A team of craftsmen and archaeologists had been working for several months to build the replica boat, using the same tools and the same methods as their ancestors would have used when the original boat was built more than 3,500 years earlier.

But time was against them. They only completed the task a couple of hours before the launch was due to take place and there was no time to test it.

A team of rowers, complete with life-jackets, were waiting to go on board, but they were not needed.

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Story: Graham Tutthill, East Kent Mercury | Photo: East Kent Mercury

Ancient remains and pottery, dating between 1200 and 1470 A.D., have been unearthed during the digging of a swimming pool in Winter Garden, Florida.

Experts have learned a lot about the artifacts since they were found, but a key question remains: How did they get there?

“This is definitely a secondary burial site,” said Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia.

Pieces of shredded English-language newspaper, dated March 16, 1978, were found alongside the artifacts and added to the mystery.

“We know that they were not placed in that location until after that date,” said Dr. John Schultz, a University of Central Florida anthropology professor who assisted Garavaglia with the remains.

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Story: Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph | Photo: BNPS

A Maori site dating back to the 13th century A.D. has been uncovered by construction work in northern New Zealand.

Significant evidence of early Maori settlement in the Kamo area of Whangarei was discovered during work on a bypass last year.

Archaeologists found hangi pits, fire scoops, post holes and stone mounds, as well as charcoal believed to be almost 800 years old. Earthworks for the bypass were carried out under an archaeological Historic Places Trust authority.

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Story: Joseph Aldridge, Northern Advocate | Photo: Northern Advocate

Border patrol agents in Tucson, Arizona have found two sets of ancient artifacts in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

In late February, Ajo Station agents patrolling on foot came across what they believed to be an ancient bowl hidden in a shady outcropping of rock, the Border Patrol said.

Officials from the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument were notified and identified the clay vessel as an olla, an ancient pot that was used to hold water and was stored in shade to keep the water cool, the Border Patrol said.

Agents patrolling in the same mountains in March discovered a second site with similar artifacts that were hidden in the entrance of a cave. The agents photographed the objects and passed the photos along to Organ Pipe officials for removal and preservation, the Border Patrol said.

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Story: Janet Rose Jackman, Tucson Sentinel | Photo: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

A fighter plane which crashed landed in the Sahara during WWII has been found preserved by a Polish oil company worker. [Thanks to Catherine for the heads up!]

The Kittyhawk P-40 has remained unseen and untouched since it came down on the sand in June 1942 and has been hailed the “aviation equivalent of Tutankhamun’s Tomb”.

It is thought the pilot survived the crash and initially used his parachute for shelter before making a desperate and futile attempt to reach civilisation by walking out of the desert.

The RAF airman, believed to have been Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, 24, was never seen again.

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Story: Richard Alleyne, The Telegraph | Photo: BNPS

A 3D virtual rendition of the Giza Plateau has been posted online for you to explore. It’s pretty cool!

Engineered by software design firm Dassault Systèmes, in collaboration with Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the free application is available on multiple devices, including 3-D-enabled computer monitors and TVs, and immersive environments.

Indeed, this is not just another too-clean looking and ultimately boring 3-D virtual tour of Egypt’s famous archaeological site.

“Many 3-D models of ancient sites have more to do with fantasy and video games than with archaeology. The colors, surfaces and textures are not researched and appear quite flat or unrealistic,” Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King professor of Egyptology at Harvard University and director of the MFA’s Giza Archives, told Discovery News.

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Story: Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News | Photo: Giza 3D

An ancient ballplayer figurine which dates back between 1399 B.C. and 899 B.C. has been unearthed near Oaxaca, Mexico.

The figure indicates the activity known as “the ballgame” was even more widespread than thought in Mesoamerica, which extended from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

The partial figurine shows about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of a male ballplayer’s chest. The head and legs have been broken off. It seems to be wearing a ballgame costume, including a wide belt covering the abdomen and an elaborate mirrored collar like those worn by other examples of ballplayers known from other areas of Mesoamerica.

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Story: Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience | Photo: Jeffrey Blomster