Cathedral scribe penned Salibsury Magna Carta

Handwriting analysis has been used to determine that the same cathedral scribe who wrote the Register of St. Osmund also penned the Salisbury Magna Carta.

Scholars have long thought that the Magna Carta was issued by the king in the Chancery, the king’s central court, written by his scribes there and then sent out to other locations in the shires, or counties, of England.

According to Treharne, her research suggests the Salisbury Magna Carta was not just received and preserved at Salisbury, but that the Salisbury Magna Carta was written at Salisbury by one of the cathedral’s own scribes. She recently co-published her findings with University of Glasgow historian Andrew Prescott.

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Story: Angela Becerra Vidergar, Stanford University | Photo: L.A. Cicero

3,000-year-old pottery found in Papua New Guinea

A piece of red, glossy pottery has been found in Papua New Guinea that dates back 3,000 years.

It was found in the highlands region, well away from the coast where there was regular contact with other seafaring pottery making cultures such as the Lapita people.

“It’s an example of how technology spread among cultures,” said Dr Tim Denham, from the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology in the College of Arts and Social Sciences.

“Some pottery must have soon found its way into the highlands, which inspired the highlanders to try making it themselves.”

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Story: Australian National University | Photo: Tim Denham

Rare Roman sarcophagus damaged in Israel

Construction work in southern Israel has damaged a rare Roman sarcophagus found at the site.

The 1,800-year-old stone coffin, which the IAA describes as one of the most important and beautiful ever discovered in the country, is sculpted on all sides, weighs two tons and is 2.5 meters (8 feet) long. A life-sized figure of a person is carved on the lid.

The sarcophagus was recovered in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon during an overnight operation between Tuesday and Wednesday. IAA inspectors noticed the finely decorated coffin was severely damaged when building contractors improperly removed it from the ground.

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Story: Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News | Photo: Yoli Shwartz/IAA

Ancient Egyptians bred birds of prey

A new study has found that ancient Egyptians bred birds of prey for use as offerings to the gods.

Lead author Salima Ikram said: “The idea of birds of prey being bred to the extent of being kept and force-fed is new. Until now, the sheer number of raptor mummies had been a mystery – did they catch or trap them and kill them, raid nests, or find them dead? Our results explain why they had so many: we now think it was because of active breeding.”

Mummified animals from ancient Egypt are commonly found. Earlier this year, researchers said a catacomb containing eight million mummified puppies and dogs was found next to the temple of Anubis, the dog-like god of death, in North Saqqara in Egypt.

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Story: Harry Osborne, International Business Times | Photo: Carina Beyer

Leukemia found in Neolithic skeleton

An examination of a 7,000-year-old skeleton of a woman has revealed that she died from leukemia.

Together with her colleagues, the researcher found indications of leukemia on the skeleton of a woman, who was between 30 and 40 years of age at the time of death. “We examined several bones of the skeleton with our high-resolution computed tomography system, and we found an unusual loosening of the interior bone tissue – the cancellous bone – in the upper right humerus and the sternum,” adds Scherf.

In adults, the ends of the humeri and the sternum, as well as the vertebrae, ribs, skull, pelvis and the ends of the femurs contain hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells. In these locations, leukemia – colloquially known as blood cancer – can occur.

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Story: Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

English Civil War mass grave found

Construction work in Durham, England, has led to the discovery of a mass grave containing between 17-28 Scottish soldiers who were taken prisoner after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650.

The Battle of Dunbar was one of the most brutal, bloody and short battles of the 17th Century civil wars. In less than an hour the English Parliamentarian army, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, defeated the Scottish Covenanting army who supported the claims of Charles II to the Scottish throne.

Although the exact figures are not known, it is thought that around 1,700 Scottish soldiers died of malnutrition, disease and cold after being marched over 100 miles from the South East of Scotland to Durham, in North East England, where they were imprisoned in Durham Cathedral and Castle, by then disused for several years.

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Story: Durham University | Photo: Durham University

3D-printer used to make replica of Iron Age instrument

A researcher has recreated a replica of an Iron Age instrument using a 3D-printer.

Billy Ó Foghlú, from ANU College of Asia-Pacific, has found evidence that the artefact may have been a mouthpiece from an iron-age horn and not a spearbutt as previously thought.

When Mr Ó Foghlú used the replica artefact as a mouthpiece, the ancient Irish horn had a richer, more velvety tone.

“Suddenly the instrument came to life,” said PhD student Mr Ó Foghlú.

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Story: Australian National University | Photo: Australian National University

Neolithic pit oven recreated and tested

Archaeologists working at Prastio Mesorotsos in Cyprus have recreated a Neolithic pit oven.

A 9,000-year-old barbecue pit was recently discovered at Prastio Mesorotsos, a site in the Diarizos Valley outside of Paphos, which has been almost continuously occupied from the Neolithic era to the present. It took three years of excavations before archaeologists from the University of Edinburgh got to the bottom of the stone-lined, ash-covered pit, and only last summer could they say with some certainty that they were looking at an ancient oven. But the pit was so big — about 8 feet (2.5 meters) across and 3 feet (1 meter) deep — that Andrew McCarthy, director of the expedition, wasn’t sure if cooking in it would actually work.

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Story: Megan Gannon, Live Science | Photo: Andrew McCarthy

Missing military tanker found off Hawaiian coast

Divers have located the remains of a U.S. Naval tanker that served both in WWII as well as the Korean war, sinking off the coast of Hawaii in 1957 after striking a reef.

It lay undisturbed, and unseen to human eyes in 80 feet of water for almost 60 years, until August 3rd.

“I turn around, and this giant, looming structure, so eerie,” described Melissa Price, a maritime archaeologist and one of three people to make the discovery.

“I had to stare at it for a little bit, then I started freaking out under water, screaming and motioning,” said Rebecca Weible, a UH Manoa Marine Biology student.

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Story: Chris Tanaka, Hawaii News Now | Photo: Hawaii News Now

2,500-year-old reused tomb found in Luxor

The tomb of the 26th dynasty rule of Upper Egypt has been found inside the tomb of the ruler of Thebes in the 25th dynasty.

“Padibastet could be buried in a shaft inside the court or in a main burial chamber of Karabasken tomb,” the head of the mission Elena Pischikova suggested. She asserted that further cleaning of the tomb’s different sections and the continuation of the archaeological survey would definitely reveal more secrets of the tomb.

“It is a very important discovery,” the Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told Ahram Online. He explained that the discovery has shed more light on the architecture and design of tombs of top governmental officials during the Saite period, especially the 26th dynasty.

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Story: Nevine El-Aref, Ahram Online | Photo: Ahram Online

Roman mosaic undergoes conversation

A Roman mosaic from the 4th century A.D. has undergone conversation work at the ancient city of August Traiana in Bulgaria.

The Dionysus’s Procession mosaic has been shown to the media and the public at a special ceremony in the Stara Zagora Regional Museum of History, four years after its discovery in Augusta Traiana back in 2011 because of its really complex and time-consuming restoration, reports the website of the Stara Zagora District Governor.

The mosaic does not show ancient god Dionysus himself but, rather, part of his entourage including some of the participants in his Bacchanalia: Silenus, who, according to Ancient Greek mythology, was a tutor and companion of Dionysus, leading two dancing women, or “bacchantes” (i.e. followers of Bacchus (Dionysus)).

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Story: Ivan Dikov, Archaeology in Bulgaria | Photo: Stara Zagora District Governor’s Office

Philistines introduced sycamore, cumin and opium into Israel

New findings have revealed that the Philistines had a major impact on the floral biodiversity of Israel.

Recent studies have shown that alien species have had a substantial impact not only in recent times but also in antiquity. This is exemplified in a study published in the August 25th issue of Scientific Reports by a team led by archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University’s Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology (Suembikya (Sue) Frumin, Prof. Ehud Weiss and Prof. Aren Maeir) and the Hebrew University (Dr. Liora Kolska Horwitz), describing the bio-archaeological remains of the Philistine culture during the Iron Age (12th century to 7th century BCE). The team compiled a database of plant remains extracted from Bronze and Iron Ages sites in the southern Levant, both Philistine and non-Philistine. By analyzing this database, the researchers concluded that the Philistines brought to Israel not just themselves but also their plants.

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Story: Bar-Ilan University | Photo: M. Frumin