Unearthed tombs on Crete reveal a dynasty of priestesses reigned on the isle during the “Dark Ages” of ancient Greece.
In an Archaeology magazine report, writer Eti Bonn-Muller details the results from last summer’s excavation of the tombs of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna on Crete, where a team found the burials of a high priestess of Zeus and three acolytes this summer.
“People then may have considered them sorceresses, or intermediaries with the gods,” Bonn-Muller says. Led by archaeologist Nicholas Stampolidis, the team dates the four burials to 2,800 years ago. Earlier digs had discovered the cremated …

A Mysterious ring fort in Co Tipperary holds “massive potential for discoveries” according to archaeologists who have carried out the first survey of the site.
Their initial findings suggest that the site may have been used for Bronze Age sporting contests in an arena that is the ancient equivalent of Semple Stadium.
Archaeologists have long been curious about the origins of the Rathnadrinna Fort located about 3km south of the Rock of Cashel – one of Ireland’s most important heritage locations and seat of the High Kings of Munster.
The unusually large and distinctive …

Italian archaeologists claim to have found a stone enclosure which once protected the legendary “Golden Bough”.

Discovery of shark tooth in site near Cambridge sheds some light on prehistory of East Anglia

One of the world’s oldest shipwrecks has been discovered off the coast of Devon after lying on the seabed for almost 3,000 years.

THE Romans had something to declare at Exeter Airport – 2,000 years after they arrived in Devon.
Passing through customs was a very old pot that the visitors had left behind during their stay in the county some time in the mid-70s AD.
The black-burnished urn was dug up during an archaeological dig in Cullompton and since then everyone has been wondering what was in it.
Rather than put a hand in and root about inside or hold it upside down and scatter the contents on the table, the pot was sent along …

New research has found that the sea level of the Mediterranean has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years.

Buried deep under the ground for centuries, a long-forgotten Roman skeleton has been unearthed in Lincolnshire.
The skeleton, whose age and gender remain a mystery, was uncovered during a dig at The Hoplands in Sleaford.
Little is known about the ancient figure other than the fact it was buried face down and was discovered with a plethora of other Roman items.
Wells, walls and a Roman Road were all uncovered in the vicinity of the bones, creating the picture of a thriving Roman community.
The figure was found during a dig by Network Archaeology …

Researchers excavating an ancient Roman cemetery made a surprising discovery when they extracted ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from one of the skeletons buried at the site: the 2,000-year-old bones revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry.
The results will be presented at the Roman Archeology Conference at Oxford, England, in March, and published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.
According to Tracy Prowse, assistant professor of Anthropology, and the lead author on the study, the isotopic evidence indicates that about 20% of the sample analyzed to-date was not born in the area around Vagnari. …

Part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever has been discovered by researchers at University College London’s Department of History. Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment.
The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded “Projet Volterra” — a ten year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context.
Corcoran and Salway found that the text belonged to the Codex Gregorianus, or Gregorian Code, …