Hurriyet Daily News

Drilling work at a construction site in Hatay has unearthed ancient works including an 850 square meter mosaic. Said to be Turkey's largest, the mosaic will be exhibited in a new hotel at the site along with other discoveries

Archaeological treasures, including a large mosaic, have been found during drilling at a construction site for a new hotel in the southern province of Hatay. The mosaic found during the drilling is 850 square meters and estimated to be the largest mosaic discovered in Turkey. As a result of the discovered artifacts the construction project will now only employ man power and the hotel will display the precious works when it opens.

Ahram Online

Two ancient limestone Egyptian reliefs stolen from Hetepka tomb in Saqqara were recovered today

The Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Police have succeeded in recovering two well-preserved limestone reliefs stolen in 1986 by an international antiquities smuggling gang from Saqqara archaeological storehouses.

The objects belong to the Fifth Dynasty tomb of the king's royal hairdresser Hetepka, discovered by British archaeologists Geoffrey Martin in the late 1960' s at the Old Kingdom cemetery at Saqqara necropolis.

Live Science

Christie's auction house may have sold a priceless piece of art by Leonardo da Vinci for a little more than $21,000, according to researchers who claim to have identified the origins of the hotly debated painting.

The painting appears to have come from a 500-year-old book containing the family history of the Duke of Milan. Art historian Martin Kemp, of the University of Oxford, believes the mystery painting, which appeared in 1998, is a portrait of the duke's daughter, created by da Vinci for her wedding book. [See images of the portrait and book]

This is Bath

New evidence of archaeological features in and around the three prehistoric stone circles at Stanton Drew has been revealed.

The results of a geophysical survey carried out by Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society (BACAS) in collaboration with Bath & North East Somerset Council's Archaeological Officer in summer 2010 have just been published.

The 2010 survey was led by John Oswin and John Richards of BACAS and shows evidence of below-ground archaeological features, including a second entrance into the henge monument first identified by English Heritage in 1997. The second entrance is south-west facing and forms a narrow causeway, defined by two large terminal ends of the circular ditch. Further work at the South-West Circle suggests that it sits on a deliberately levelled platform.

The Hindu

New results from the analysis of paddy grains found in the Porunthal graveyard archaeological site prove that writing systems in India were in existence in the 5th Century BC, predating the arrival of Asoka, according to history professor at the Pondicherry University and director of the excavation project at Porunthal K. Rajan.

Rice paddy samples that were contained in an engraved pot found inside one of the graves were found to be from 450 BC when analysed using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) by the Beta Analytic Lab, USA, he said, addressing a private gathering organised by the Manarkeni journal.

Times and Star

The first week of a 12 day excavation on land below Papcastle has uncovered remains of a Roman building which could have been used as a Roman bath house or a high status building.

Grampus Heritage is leading the community excavation on land owned by Robert and Edmund Jackson.

Archaeologists found evidence of walls of a large Roman building, shards of pottery and metal objects.

The excavation is part of a development phase before the non-profit organisation puts in a full application bid in March for £200,000 to the Heritage Lottery to fund a three-year project.

Science Magazine

Of all the precious and fragile artifacts in museums, silk clothing and artwork can pose the most puzzles for historians.

They frequently have to rely on circumstantial evidence and guesswork to assign a date of manufacture for ancient silk clothing and tapestries, as traditional carbon dating requires samples so large that it visibly damages the fabrics. A new ultrasensitive chemical technique now promises to solve those silky mysteries.

The new dating method came about when chemist Mehdi Moini joined the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute in Suitland, Maryland, last year and gained easy access to the Smithsonian's famous collection of silk treasures. Moini had been working for years on a technique for measuring the natural decay of materials made of protein. It seemed to be sensitive enough to measure the exact amount of decay that occurs on an hourly basis- and that amounts to a molecular clock for dating proteinaceous materials like silk. The problem, until his new job, was that he had no rigorously dated silk artifacts to calibrate his clock.

EurekAlert

New assessments by researchers using the latest high tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas.

By analyzing microscopic pits and scratches on hominid teeth, as well as stable isotopes of carbon found in teeth, researchers are getting a very different picture of the diet habitats of early hominids than that painted by the physical structure of the skull, jawbones and teeth. While some early hominids sported powerful jaws and large molars -- including Paranthropus boisei, dubbed "Nutcracker Man" -- they may have cracked nuts rarely if at all, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Matt Sponheimer, study co-author.

Nature

Participants in the 1000 Genomes project reconstruct the genetic variation of a lost group of Native Americans.

The Taínos were the first Native Americans to meet European explorers in the Caribbean. They soon fell victim to the diseases and violence brought by the outsiders, and today no Taínos remain.

But the footprints of this extinct ethnicity are scattered throughout the genomes of modern Puerto Ricans, according to geneticist Carlos Bustamante at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. On average, the genomes of Puerto Ricans contain 10 to 15% Native American DNA, which is largely Taíno, says Bustamante.

At a presentation at the 12th International Congress of Human Genetics in Montreal, Canada, Bustamante described preliminary results from a study that aims to reconstruct the genetic features of the Taíno people. The cryptic information was found in the genomes of 70 modern Puerto Ricans, some of the latest additions to the ongoing 1000 Genomes project, an international consortium whose goal is to find the variations in DNA sequence among the genomes of all human populations.

Nature

DNA tests of shipwrecked jars illuminate early trade markets in the Mediterranean.

A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods - not just wine, as many historians have assumed. The study, in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science1, finds evidence in nine jars taken from Mediterranean shipwrecks of vegetables, herbs and nuts. The researchers say DNA testing of underwater artefacts from different time periods could help to reveal how such complex markets developed across the Mediterranean.