At www.icenews.is/index.php/2012/01/28/evidence-suggests-vikings-grew-grain... we learn that the Medieval Warm Period must have been somewhat warmer than the present day temperatures of Greenland as researchers from the Danish National Museum have discovered the Vikings brewed beer and grew grain. The evidence is said to come from a dung hill. At the same web site, see www.icenews.is/index.php/2012/01/28/vikings-explore-hudson-bay/ ..
Archaeology news
Dogs and DNA
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120123152528.htm ... various studies and attempts to trace the origin of the domestic dog by DNA have been aired over recent years, tending to home in on the Out of Africa hypothesis = sophisticated human behaviour began with modern humans. They have variously targeted Africa as a source of the domestic dog, or East Asia, and in general have ignored the far north.
Boat burials, souterrains, and the Picts
The Oxford clay geological layer forms a bed that runs from Weymouth to East Anglia - usually well below the surface. It was found to be an excellent material for making bricks commercially as the clay included an oily element derived from fossils from the Jurassic era. Clay pits have proved to be a rich source of fossils for paleontologists over the years but a huge clay pit in Cambridgeshire, on the edge of Fenland, has proved to be a rich source of archaeology.
A new tomb from Thebes
At http://aegyptologie.unibas.ch/forschung/projekte/university-of-basel-kin... news of the discovery of an 18th dynasty tomb not far from KV40. The entrance was blocked up but at a later stage came into re-use - and blocked up again. This is what is thought happened, at the present time, as large stones in front and over the entrance belong to the secondary occupation. It seems the dynasty 18 burial was infilled with debris so as to accomodate a secondary burial. This consists of a black wooden coffin dated to dynasty 22.
Bluestone ... still up in the air
Contrary to some reports in the media the situation regards the bluestones is not cut and dried as far as human transportation is concerned.
Origins of the Jomon People
At http://heritageofjapan.wordpress.com/just-what-is-so-amazing-about-jomon... ... the Jomon, as well as the people of Okinawa, and the Ainu (thought to be descended from the Jomon) all have a genetic/blood marker they share with other Mongoloid populations (in Korea, Tibet, Siberia, among the Eskimo, and is commonest amongst the Buryat people that lived around Lake Baikal).
The Ice Age in East Asia
Human endeavour, in Europe during and immediately after the Late Glacial Maximum may have been quite different to what it was in East Asia. For example, human activity on what is now the submerged continental shelf system of Beringia, between Siberia and Alaska, which was dry land during at least parts of the last Ice Age, may have been wiped out - suddenly. The tide may have come in - and continued to come in until the ocean had covered Beringia, in a single day. Perhaps.
An epidemic at Amarna? ... Magdalenenburg, Easter Island and the Lion Gate at Tell Tayinat
Occurring in an offhand manner in the middle of an article, without any kind of follow-up or inquisitive turn of mind. In the Australian magazine, Archaeological Diggings Sept 2011, volume 18:4 page 29, it tells us that a large cemetary has been found at Amarna during recent excavation and exploration of the ancient city of Akhnaton, apparently a burial place of the poor as we are told the graves were simple ... but adding the fact that a large number of people there were buried at an early age, possibly as a result of an epidemic. Really.
Maya controversy and Mount Ararat
At www.examiner.com/road-trip-travel-in-atlanta/has-an-1100-year-old-mayan-... ... in this instance, Georgia in SE North America, on the opposite of the Caribbean to the Maya peoples of Yucatan and Belize, etc. The airing of this story has revealed a deep seated controversy with academics on one side, seeing the mound builders, and related structures, as purely an indigenous North American development - after all, mounds occur in many prehistoric cultures, especially in the old world, and do not necessarily involve migration (of people or ideas).
An alternative view of Gobekli Tepe
At http://archaeology.about.com/od/huntergatherers/ss/Gobekli-Tepe.htm there is a discussion of an article by EB Banning in Current Anthropology (2011) that suggests the T shaped pillars were used to lay a roof over the structure - otherwise compared by archaeologists with stone circles. They are circular in shape - but so are Iron Age houses in Britain and Ireland, and there are lots of these T shaped circles at Gobekli Tepe - within a quite small space.