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Archaeologists Uncover Rare Living Spaces at One of England’s Earliest Leprosy Hospitals
Archaeologists excavating one of England’s earliest medieval leprosy hospitals have uncovered traces of square structures that may reveal how people with the disease lived around 900 years ago. The remains emerged during a three-day excavation at the Hospital of the Holy Innocents on South Common in Lincoln. The hospital was founded around the late 11th…
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Mysterious 19th-Century Shipwreck in Portugal’s Algarve Revealed in New Detail
A mysterious wooden ship resting at the bottom of Portugal’s Arade River has emerged in unprecedented detail, giving archaeologists their clearest look yet at a vessel whose origin, purpose and final voyage remain unknown. Known as GEO 5, the wreck lies near Ferragudo in Portugal’s Algarve region. Archaeologists believe it probably dates to the 19th…
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Inside the Anglo-Saxon Neighborhood That Once Thrived Beside the Vatican
More than a thousand years ago, an English traveler arriving in Rome could reach the area beside the Vatican and St Peter’s and find a community where people from Anglo-Saxon England were not simply passing through. Recent excavations beneath the Palazzo della Rovere have added unusually vivid evidence to that picture. Archaeologists identified twenty Anglo-Saxon…
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A Tiny Lead Venus Changes the Story of a Roman Village Near Ancient Aquincum
For four years, archaeologists excavating a Roman village northwest of ancient Aquincum have been reconstructing the practical side of life there through houses, pottery, tools and traces of everyday work. This season, they found something the site had not produced before. A small lead figurine depicting Venus has become the first object from the settlement…
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10,500-Year-Old Wooden Remains Found 20 Meters Beneath a German Lake
Deep beneath a lake in northern Germany, archaeologists have found remarkably preserved wooden remains dating back some 10,500 years. The discovery could provide rare evidence of how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers built and organized the places where they lived. The wooden remains were discovered in Lake Arendsee in Saxony-Anhalt, according to the State Office for Heritage Management…
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Perfectly Preserved Bronze Age Sword Found Beneath an Italian Lake
A perfectly preserved Late Bronze Age sword has been discovered beneath the waters of Lake Mezzano in central Italy, adding a striking new find to one of the region’s most important submerged prehistoric settlements. The weapon was recovered from the lake’s southern shore near Valentano, in the province of Viterbo, during ongoing underwater archaeological investigations.…
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A 6,500-Year-Old Fire May Have Preserved Clues to Europe’s Earliest Beer
A fire that destroyed a prehistoric house in Bulgaria around 6,500 years ago may have preserved evidence of one of Europe’s earliest beer-making traditions. Archaeologists working at Provadia-Solnitsata found charred emmer wheat inside a Late Chalcolithic building dating to around 4500 BC. What made the grains unusual was not simply their survival. Many had begun…
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A Huge New Rock Art Panel Emerges at Sweden’s Tanum World Heritage Site
A survey of the Tanum rock carvings at Trättelanda has revealed 16 previously undocumented carved rock surfaces. The largest contains ships and human figures across an area whose boundaries researchers have yet to establish. Researchers surveying the southern edge of Sweden’s Tanum World Heritage Site have reached a granite panel they cannot yet measure in…
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9,000-Year-Old Bones Reveal Moose and Salmon at a Swedish Stone Age Site
A fragment of moose vertebra, a beaver claw and tiny pieces of burned bone are helping archaeologists reconstruct life at a Stone Age settlement in central Sweden. Among the animals identified so far at Laforsen, moose and salmon appear most frequently. The excavators have also identified beaver, pike and eel, along with a possible marten.…