Don't know if this is important but at www.livescience.com/31983-minoans-were-genetically-european.html ... is a reference to skeletons going back 3700 to 4400 years ago that have been found to be very similar to present day Cretans and Neolithic Europeans in general. The findings dispute an older idea that claimed Minoan civilisation was the result of migration from outside the Aegean, most notably from Egypt or the Levant.
Archaeology news
Dunwich
At www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130509091118.htm ... underwater investigation of the medieval town of Dunwich has recently been undertaken - funded and supported by English Heritage. The ruins of the town lie on the sea bed, off the coast of Suffolk (just south of Southwold, home of Adnam's bitter). DIDSON technology has been used to counter the very cloudy nature of the North Sea at this point. It is surprising how much of the town still remains as the town did not disappear in one event but over several centuries of successive storms and high tides.
Before Rice, and the Elephant's Tomb
At www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/plos-iac050113.php ... Chinese Academy scientists (Beijing) have published a paper saying that prior to the adoption of rice cultivation, those people living in southern subtropical China, probably relied on sago as a staple food item. Bananas were also an important foot resource, various roots and rhizomes (including fresh water tubers).
Pyramid aligned to winter solstice
At http://news.yahoo.com/stunning-astronomical-alignment-found-peru-pyramid... ... an alignment, marked by a trail of stones (geoglyphs), runs 2km from the pyramid as people descended down the valley from the highlands. At the time of the winter solstice the pyramid and the setting Sun line up so that the Sun appears to actually sink down behind, or into, the pyramid.
Babylon in Nineveh
At www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/05/babylon-hanging-garden-wonder-nin... ... S Dalley of Oxford University has accumulated a lot of evidence to show the Hanging Gardens were erected in Nineveh rather than in Babylon, in the reign of Sennacherib rather than Nebuchadnezzar. The two cities are 300 miles apart and the Assyrians had a history of creating parks and gardens.
The alien of the Atacama
Another conspiracy theory has been washed down the plug hole it would seem. The idea that a small skeleton with a squashed head, likened to a Sci Fi alien (in the ET mode) found in the Atacama desert a decade ago, was in some way unearthly, has been scotched it seems. DNA tests suggest it was a child of between 6 and 8 years of age and yet the remains were only 6 inches in length - see www.livescience.com/29176-alien-looking-skeleton-poses-medical-mystery.html
Kerma
At http://phys.org/print286438628.html ... a lot of archaeological work has been taking place in the region of ancient Kush - upstream from ancient Egypt. Some ionteresting factoids have emerged as in Egypt itself, in the late third millennium, and intermittently during the MK period, droughts were a problem, and lots of people died as a result of low Nile flood levels. It is assumed monsoon rains had periodically failed in what is now Ethiopia (the Abyssinian Highlands) - but how did it affect the kingdom of Kush?
Vikings and Latitude
An intriguing and very good piece at http://phys.org/print286551435.html ... a discovery at Uunortoq in Greenland over 50 years ago, thought to be a Viking sea compass used to determine direction, has been reinvestigated and some surprising results have emerged. It is being suggested it was not direction ath was being worked out - but latitude. The paper has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A which must mean somebody is impressed. The Vikings were sailing the northern Atlantic and its peripheries where there was up to 24 hours of daylight in summer.
Early Neolithic site at a gravel pit near Heathrow
I've logged this story before, I think, but here it goes again - from a different source (www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/roundup/articles/2013/03/12/87456-horton-q...). The newspaper cutting I have is dated March 15th 2013 where dwhiteway@berksmedia.co.uk writes about excavations at Kingsmead Quarry in Stanwell Road, Horton, on the back road loop to Heathrow, missing out blockages on the M25 (always a short cut, especially at rush hour).
Fertilisers, the common wood ivy, and the resurrection of the Claude Schaeffer opus
At www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/uog-nei042613.php ... the study of a Neolithic community at Karleby in Sweden has come up with some interesting results after scientists from the University of Gothenberg analysed samples taken from the soil. They were looking for clues on diet but what they found was apparently evidence for the use of nitrogen as a fertiliser to enhance the growth of wheat and barley crops. However, as the site goes back deep into the third millennium BC might the nitrogen have another point of origin?