“The last time any excavation was allowed inside its ancient sarsen stone pillars was in 1964 but now the first archaeological excavations at Stonehenge in almost half a century are attempting to solve, once and for all, the mystery of how and why the stone circle was built.

The enigma of Stonehenge, famed for its orientation in relation to the rising and setting sun, has puzzled and divided experts for decades. Some say the ancient stones were built as a temple used to worship ancient earth deities. Others say it was a prehistoric astronomical observatory; others claim it was a sacred burial site for people of high birth. Arthurian legend even has it that the stones were put there by the magician Merlin.

But yesterday, researchers started the dig inside the stone circle, a project English Heritage is calling the most significant in the site’s history, and which they hope will finally lift the lid on the truth behind one of Britain’s most famous landmarks.”

(Thanks Kallisti!)

(via The Independent)

(Just for fun: Carhenge)

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“An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.

The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.

According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:

The artifact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures. Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.”

(via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)

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“Evidence of pagan rituals involving swans and other birds in the Cornish countryside in the 17th century has been uncovered by archaeologists. Since 2003, 35 pits at the site in a valley near Truro have been excavated containing swan pelts, dead magpies, unhatched eggs, quartz pebbles, human hair, fingernails and part of an iron cauldron.

The finds have been dated to the 1640s, a period of turmoil in England when Cromwellian Puritans destroyed any links to pre-Christian pagan England. It was also a period when witchcraft attracted the death sentence. Jacqui Woods, leading the excavations, has not traced any written or anecdotal evidence of the rituals, which would have involved a significant number of people over a long period. There are no records of similar practices anywhere else in the world.”

(via Times Online)

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An argument about the theory that “Moses was high on drugs”.

“Over the last week, Benny Shanon’s article “Biblical Entheogens: A speculative hypothesis” has been a rather popular topic online, both in mainstream media outlets and specifically in the skeptical community. I wonder how much of this interest, especially in the the skeptical community, is just a case of Schadenfreude. After my skeptical comments on the article earlier this week, I have decided to go through the article thoroughly, and offer a more concrete review of Shanon’s work.

Effectively, Shanon’s thesis is that Moses, throughout his encounters with God, was under the effects of an Entheogen, a mind altering psychedelic drug, which lead to hallucinations and an altered state of consciousness. This is certainly an interesting theory, but one that I believe Shanon fails to support. His main evidence appears to be comparison to known historic and modern usages of such substances in religious and spiritual endeavors. However, his comparisons to Pre-Columbian and modern American examples may serve as example of entheogen use, they cannot serve as evidence of Israelite use.”

(via Archaeoporn)

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“A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history. Aside from illustrating that consumption of one’s own species isn’t exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth about 30,000 years ago.

“The story of Neanderthal extinction is one of the most intriguing in all of human evolution,” author Simon Underdown told Discovery News. “Why did a large-brained, intelligent hominid that shared so many traits with us disappear?” To resolve that question, Underdown, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, studied a well-documented tribal group, the Fore of Papua New Guinea, who practiced ritualistic cannibalism. ”

(via Discovery News)

(Related: “Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice” via Global Politician)

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“Eastern Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon holds more than 10,000 known American Indian rock-art images. But they may be no match for 800 gas wells. A Denver-based energy company’s proposal to drill at least that many wells on the West Tavaputs Plateau threatens the thousand-year-old Anasazi ruins, where dust and chemicals are already corroding peerless rock art. And the Bill Barrett Corp. wants to drill some of those wells in wilderness study areas and critical habitat for deer, elk and sage grouse, as well as operate year-round instead of laying off for the winter as has been the tradition to accommodate wildlife needs.
Conservationists say the company’s full-field development of the Stone Cabin and Peters Point gas fields would guarantee the end of Nine Mile Canyon as it has been for millennia. “This project, if approved, if implemented, will be the death blow for Nine Mile Canyon, for the cultural sites there and for the wilderness-quality areas there,” said Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance attorney Steve Bloch.”

(via Stone Pages)

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“This is an educational web site that aims to provide the viewer with the elements of archaeological work, including the progress of excavation. The daily results are crucial to an understanding of how field investigation takes place, since decisions must be made on the basis of ongoing work. The people involved in the work are also an essential feature and contribute profoundly to the final outcomes. The focus of our diary is thus often on the people and their activities.

In January 2008, Dr. Betsy Bryan once more traveled to Egypt with students. Work at the temple of Mut began later than usual, however, as Dr. Bryan first led fifteen undergraduate and three graduate students on a study tour of Egypt. This intensive intersession course included sites rarely visited in recent years due to result of convoy traffic that moves non-Egyptians at certain times of the day, and only allows stops at a few and unvarying archaeological sites.”

(Hopkins in Egypt Today via Alternative Approaches)

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“Archeologists have discovered what may prove to be a burial grave of a mystical, priestly class of elite individuals called Druids among Celtic societies in Britain. Druid societies existed through much of Western Europe, Britain and Ireland, until they were supplanted by the Roman government and, later, the arrival of Christianity. Until now, here has been no archaeological evidence of their existence.

A series of graves found in a gravel quarry at Stanway near Colchester, Essex, have been dated to 40-60 A.D. At least one of the burials, it appears, may have been that of a Druid, according to a report published in British Archaeology.”

(via The Daily Galaxy)

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“He works as a blacksmith in one of Baghdad’s swarming Shiite slums. But at least once a month, Abu Saif tucks a pistol into his belt, hops into a minibus taxi and speeds south. His goal: to unearth ancient treasures from thousands of archaeological sites scattered across southern Iraq. Images of Baghdad’s ransacked National Museum, custodian of a collection dating back to the beginning of civilization, provoked an international outcry in the early days of the war in 2003.

The ancient statues, intricately carved stone panels, delicate earthenware and glittering gold are now protected by locked gates and heavily armed guards. But U.S. and Iraqi experts say a tragedy on an even greater scale continues to unfold at more than 12,000 largely unguarded sites where illegal diggers like Abu Saif are chipping away at Iraq’s heritage.

“It may well be that more stuff has come out of the sites than was ever in the Iraqi museum,” said Elizabeth Stone, an archaeology professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Iraqi officials say the U.S. government has supported their efforts to retrieve looted antiquities from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Islamic and other civilizations, but they do not hide their bitterness that more was not done to secure them in the first place.”

(via LA Times)

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