Making the Statue of Liberty

There is something incredibly appealing about seeing the various stages of construction of iconic builds, this is definitely up there! Check out this link to see the whole series of amazing images: LINK

11,500 Year Old Human Remains Discovered in Alaska

Burial of 3-Year Old Child is the Earliest Example of 'behavior associated with the death of an individual' Yet Recovered

Some 11,500 years ago one of America's earliest families laid the remains of a 3-year-old child to rest in their home in what is now Alaska. The discovery of that burial is shedding new light on the life and times of the early settlers who crossed from Asia to the New World.

The bones represent the earliest human remains discovered in the Arctic of North America, a "pretty significant find," said Ben A. Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

While ancient Alaskan residents were known to hunt large game, the newly discovered site shows they also foraged for fish, birds and small mammals, he explained. "Here we know there were young children and females. So, this is a whole piece of the settlement system that we had virtually no record of."

The site of the discovery, Upper Sun River, is in the forest of the Tanana lowlands in central Alaska, Potter and his colleagues report.

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As everyone knows, Hazel Dodge is a legend

And now even more famous, click here to find out more.

Titled “Roman Spectacle in the Greek East,” the free talk will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Morgan Room of Poling Hall. It is sponsored by the MC Classics Department, in cooperation with the Western Illinois Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).

3000 year old Native American Settlement at Pig Point

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When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found in Maryland.

Now, deeper excavation at the site — the front lawn of a modest rental house — is yielding details of much earlier settlement, extending its history back to at least 3,000 years ago.

"As far as I know, it's older than anything in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, perhaps the oldest structures in the Chesapeake region," said Ann Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach, leader of the dig.

And that's just the age that's been established by carbon 14 dating. Slicing deeper in the sandy bluff overlooking the Patuxent's broad marsh, Luckenbach's crew has found stone tools suggesting humans were exploiting the river's abundance as long as 10,000 years ago.

Called Pig Point, the site is producing a gusher of ancient artifacts —decorated pottery, tools crafted from stone and bone, ornaments and food waste that have begun to fill in the details of life along the Patuxent River centuries before Europeans arrived.

"Some of the ceramics that have come out of this site are really just astounding," said Maureen Kavanagh, chief archaeologist at the Maryland Historical Trust and a specialist in ceramics.

There have been pot fragments with incised angular decorations or rims crimped like a pie crust — both different from any ever found in Maryland. Diggers found an intact paint pot the size of a child's fist, and a miniature, decorated pot the size of a thimble.

"These really have us scrambling to figure out what they represent," Kavanaugh said. "Some of these artifacts are one of a kind, and we don't have an easy way of fitting them into our mental template … It's a great, great site."

Archaeologists say some of their discoveries are so exotic in this region, they suggest Pig Point was a center of trade among native people as far-flung as Ohio, Michigan and New York.

Even today, the town site overlooks broad expanses of wild rice and Tuckahoe — river plants that would have helped to feed the native people. Geese, heron, osprey, bald eagles still patrol the shores. Tiny fish roil the shallows.

Trash middens unearthed in the dig are yielding the remains of freshwater mussels, oysters, fish, beaver, muskrat, otter, deer, duck, nuts and more. Archaeologists have also found carbonized corn kernels, evidence of agriculture.

"It's one of the biggest marshes on the East Coast. You couldn't have starved here if you tried," Luckenbach said

Trained in prehistoric archaeology, but best known for leading excavations of Anne Arundel County's colonial-era "Lost Towns," Luckenbach said Pig Point has changed the arc of his long career as the county's chief archaeologist.

"I've been waiting 20 years for the right Indian site," he said. "And here we are at Pig Point."

Work at the site began in April 2009, after the owner, William Brown, contacted the county archaeology office about the artifacts he'd been finding. The dig began soon after in the front yard of a rental home on the property.

"This has made me very happy," Brown said of the dig, which he has joined as a volunteer. "It's my opportunity to learn about the people who lived here before us. I'm fortunate I have the time to be here with them, and through every step of it."

Funded this year by Anne Arundel County and a $32,000 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust, the work at Pig Point has astonished Chesapeake archaeologists, who rave about the fine preservation of artifacts and deep layering of the soil.

"Archaeologists just live for these nice, layer-cake sites where the oldest [artifacts] are the most deeply buried, until you get to the modern stuff on top," said Richard J. Dent, professor of anthropology at American University in Washington.

When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found in Maryland.

Now, deeper excavation at the site — the front lawn of a modest rental house — is yielding details of much earlier settlement, extending its history back to at least 3,000 years ago.

"As far as I know, it's older than anything in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, perhaps the oldest structures in the Chesapeake region," said Ann Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach, leader of the dig.

And that's just the age that's been established by carbon 14 dating. Slicing deeper in the sandy bluff overlooking the Patuxent's broad marsh, Luckenbach's crew has found stone tools suggesting humans were exploiting the river's abundance as long as 10,000 years ago.

Called Pig Point, the site is producing a gusher of ancient artifacts —decorated pottery, tools crafted from stone and bone, ornaments and food waste that have begun to fill in the details of life along the Patuxent River centuries before Europeans arrived.

"Some of the ceramics that have come out of this site are really just astounding," said Maureen Kavanagh, chief archaeologist at the Maryland Historical Trust and a specialist in ceramics.

There have been pot fragments with incised angular decorations or rims crimped like a pie crust — both different from any ever found in Maryland. Diggers found an intact paint pot the size of a child's fist, and a miniature, decorated pot the size of a thimble.

"These really have us scrambling to figure out what they represent," Kavanaugh said. "Some of these artifacts are one of a kind, and we don't have an easy way of fitting them into our mental template … It's a great, great site."

Archaeologists say some of their discoveries are so exotic in this region, they suggest Pig Point was a center of trade among native people as far-flung as Ohio, Michigan and New York.

Even today, the town site overlooks broad expanses of wild rice and Tuckahoe — river plants that would have helped to feed the native people. Geese, heron, osprey, bald eagles still patrol the shores. Tiny fish roil the shallows.

Trash middens unearthed in the dig are yielding the remains of freshwater mussels, oysters, fish, beaver, muskrat, otter, deer, duck, nuts and more. Archaeologists have also found carbonized corn kernels, evidence of agriculture.

"It's one of the biggest marshes on the East Coast. You couldn't have starved here if you tried," Luckenbach said

Trained in prehistoric archaeology, but best known for leading excavations of Anne Arundel County's colonial-era "Lost Towns," Luckenbach said Pig Point has changed the arc of his long career as the county's chief archaeologist.

"I've been waiting 20 years for the right Indian site," he said. "And here we are at Pig Point."

Work at the site began in April 2009, after the owner, William Brown, contacted the county archaeology office about the artifacts he'd been finding. The dig began soon after in the front yard of a rental home on the property.

"This has made me very happy," Brown said of the dig, which he has joined as a volunteer. "It's my opportunity to learn about the people who lived here before us. I'm fortunate I have the time to be here with them, and through every step of it."

Funded this year by Anne Arundel County and a $32,000 grant from the Maryland Historical Trust, the work at Pig Point has astonished Chesapeake archaeologists, who rave about the fine preservation of artifacts and deep layering of the soil.

"Archaeologists just live for these nice, layer-cake sites where the oldest [artifacts] are the most deeply buried, until you get to the modern stuff on top," said Richard J. Dent, professor of anthropology at American University in Washington.

(Story Source)

Four Castles Found in Turkey - 2nd Century BC

A group of American archeologists found ruins of four ancient castles dated back to the 2nd century B.C. in western Turkey.

The group including 16 students from the universities of Boston, Pennsylvania and Brown led by Assistant Professor of Archaeology Christopher H. Roosevelt has been searching for ancient ruins in Golmarmara town of the western province of Manisa upon permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism. In an interview with the Anatolia news agency on Monday, Roosevelt said that he had directed an archaeological project across central Lydian landscapes for the past five years. "Our findings indicate that the castle could belong to the Arzawan kingdoms of Seha River Land. We believe that the castles constituted a settlement network. One of them could be the biggest castle built in western Anatolia during the period. The castle is four times bigger than the Troy castle. We may have discovered the capital of the Seha River Land," he said. Roosevelt said that they were planning to apply to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to get permission for archaeological excavations at the site. As a specialist in the archaeology of western Anatolia (Turkey), specifically that of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, Roosevelt has directed the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey (CLAS), a project that investigates cultural and environmental dynamics across central Lydian landscapes since 2005. He published "The Archaeology of Lydia, From Gyges to Alexander" providing the first overview of the regional archaeology of Lydia in western Turkey. The book includes much previously unpublished evidence and a fresh synthesis of the archaeology of Sardis, the ancient capital of the region. (Story Source)