DeDanaan

Archaeologists find more Iron Age buildings
The Truro Packet, Cornwall, UK

An archaeological excavation has been carried out at Truro College playing fields before construction work for the Fal Building begins. The work, by a team of archaeologists from Cornwall county council’s historic environment service (HES), has been funded by Truro College.

Three large areas were stripped by machine, targeting anomalies of possible archaeological interest indicated by a geophysical survey carried out last autumn.

The archaeological work then concentrated in one of the areas adjacent to the site of the new Richard Lander School where an Iron Age settlement of 12 hut circles was discovered by HES last summer. An oval-shaped house, part of the same settlement, was excavated and fragments of Iron Age pottery, known as South Western Decorated Ware dating to the 2nd or 1st century BC, were recovered from the eaves-drip gully surrounding the house. A La Téne Celtic brooch of broadly the same date was discovered alongside the pottery.

Even more exciting was the discovery of another Iron Age settlement, comprising three round houses within an enclosure ditch. All that remained of these houses were holes in the ground to hold the posts that would have supported the wattle walls and thatched roofs and pits in which their hearths were lit.

The pottery from the second settlement has still to be identified but appears to be of the Cordoned Ware style which, according to its type, can belong to three different phases spanning the later Iron Age and Roman-British periods and may indicate the second settlement represents a slightly later phase of occupation on the site.

The help of volunteers from the Cornwall Archaeological Society and Truro College’s archaeology department has been much appreciated. It is proposed to exhibit some of the finds in a permanent display in one of the new buildings, probably in the public entrance area.

Iranian, Japanese archaeologists to study Neolithic caves at Tang-e Bolaghi

TEHRAN, June 18 (Mehr News Agency) — A team of Iranian and Japanese archaeologists is to study two Neolithic caves located at the ancient site of Tang-e Bolaghi in Iran’s southern province of Fars, an expert of Iran’s Archaeological Research Center announced on Saturday.

According to an agreement signed between the Archaeological Research Center and the University of Tsukuba, several Iranian archaeologists and eight experts from the Japanese university will begin work at the site next month,� Karim Alizadeh added.

“Due to the dearth of studies on Iranian Neolithic caves, the upcoming studies on the two caves will be very important,” he noted.

The caves are located in the area that is to become the reservoir of the Sivand Dam, which is scheduled to come on stream in March 2006, flooding some very significant ancient sites.

Tang-e Bolaghi is situated only four kilometers away from Pasargadae, the first capital of the Achaemenid dynasty (about 550-331 BC) and the residence of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire. Even the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great is believed to be at risk. Pasargadae was registered on UNESCO’s World Heritage List last July.

Tang-e Bolaghi also contains sites from the Paleolithic period, the early, middle, and late Elamite era (2700-645 BC), and the Sassanid era (224-651 CE).

Alongside the Iranian experts, teams of Italian, French, Polish, German, Australian, and Japanese archaeologists have been assigned to save 129 ancient sites at Tang-e Bolaghi.

The Neolithic period pertains to the last phase of the Stone Age, marked by the domestication of animals, the development of agriculture, and the manufacturing of pottery and textiles. It is commonly thought to have begun circa 9000–8000 BC in the Middle East.

Possible Great Plains Campsite 700 Years Too Early
By Associated Press

GOODLAND, Kan. (AP) — Archaeologists have returned to a dig near the Colorado-Kansas border for a third summer, but this year’s dig has taken on new importance. Radiocarbon dating results finished in February showed that mammoth and prehistoric camel bones found at a rural site near Kanorado, about a mile from the Colorado border, dated back to 12,200 years ago.

That would mean people who once camped at the site may have arrived in the Great Plains 700 years before historians previously thought. (Continued)

Gaelic Language Gets Official EU Status

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer
Jun 13, 7:11 PM EDT

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — The European Union is saying “Failte!” - Welcome! - to Gaelic, Ireland’s little-used native tongue. But while official status is a boost to those campaigning to save the language from extinction, the move comes with a price: It will require the hiring of an estimated 30 Gaelic speakers at a cost to EU taxpayers of about $4.15 million annually.

Translation costs for the EU’s 20 official languages had already been spiraling out of control. In January, officials said the amount was set to pass $1 billion following the entry in 2004 of 10 new EU members chiefly from Eastern Europe. (Continued)

Burma rebuilding risks Pagan jewel
By Andrew Harding
BBC News, Burma

The sunsets are still spectacular - a golden glow brushing the curves of 2,000 ancient temples and pagodas clustered on the edge of the Irrawaddy River in central Burma.

But today some of the world’s leading experts have accused Burma’s military regime of waging “archaeological blitzkrieg” against the legendary Buddhist treasures of Pagan. (Continued)

June 3: AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Archaeologists have uncovered 17 ancient Celtic coins in a field in the south of the Netherlands, the first hoard of such coins found in the country.

Amsterdam’s Free University excavated the site in April and will display the coins, which are made of silver and mixed with copper and gold, in the Limburgs Museum in the city of Venlo on Saturday.

They are estimated to date from 20-50 B.C., shortly after Julius Caesar began the Roman conquest of the region. Leaders of local Germanic tribes “probably used these coins to reward their followers for loyalty,” researchers said.

Similar finds have been made in neighboring Belgium and Germany.

I’m wondering if there is any interest in having a set of forums on this site. We had forums on the old server and those didn’t get very much use by visitors, so I’m wondering if it would be worthwhile to bring them back or not. Comments on this are welcome.

I’ve moved the site from one server to another and in the process, decided to start over from scratch. Stay tuned.