Month: August 2011

3000 year-old lion statue discovered in Turkey

Archaeologists leading the University of Toronto’s Tayinat Archeological Project in southeastern Turkey have unearthed the remains of a monumental gate complex adorned with stone sculptures, including a magnificently carved lion. The gate complex provided access to the citadel of Kunulua, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina (ca. 950-725 BCE) and is reminiscent of the citadel gate excavated by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley in 1911 at the royal Hittite city of Carchemish. Read the full story on the University of Toronto website.

Bronze Age Elderly might have been Leaders

A recent study of two Bronze Age cemeteries in Austria has shown that over a 600-year time period the elderly had become leaders of society. While in the earlier period, old men were not buried any differently from young men, over time the older men were given status symbols into their graves, such as bronze axes, which is indicative of a leading role in society. Read the whole story at Live Science.

Project: Online Map of Ancient Britain

The School of Archaeology of Oxford University has just announced a new five-year project looking at the history of the English landscape from the middle Bronze Age to the Norman period. The results will be publicly available on a website to be called ‘A Portal to the Past’. The Portal to the Past website is expected to go live in 2014. Read the full Portal to the Past press release on the Oxford University website.

Ancient City Survived 2200 BC Civilization Collapse

Recent research shows that an ancient city at the site of Tell Qarqur in Syria surprisingly expanded during a severe drought period in around 2200 BC. During this period, several civilizations of the Ancient Near East declined or collapsed, including the Akkadian Empire and the Old Kingdom of Egypt. During the same period, Tell Quarqur grew in size, which recent research attributes to the particular nature of the Orontes river, at which the site is located. Read the full story on Live Science.