Family crypt of medieval knight discovered?
“This site just keeps getting more and more interesting, it is turning out to be a real treasure trove of archaeology,” Ross Murray, a former student at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement. “These new finds look likely to be the possible relations of the suspected Medieval knight we found earlier this year. The skull of the skeleton found immediately beneath the location of the knight looks like that of a female and the remains found on the other side of the ornate slab belong to an infant from the same period.”
Link to a photo gallery at LiveScience which has some interesting photos, but not the best descriptions. Two burials, for example, seem to be very close to each other, possibly the same burial event (though the one on the left seems higher up, stratigraphically), but the captions don’t say what they are.
Love beyond the grave: Skeletons discovered holding hands in coffin together
While excavating the courtyard of a former Dominican monastery in experts discovered skeletons of a couple buried together holding hands.
The bodies were discovered in the former cemetery of the monastery and it is believed the double grave dated back to the Middle Ages.
Adrian Rusu, from the Cluj-Napoca Institute of Archaeology and History of Art, said: “It is a mystery – and rare for such burials at that time.
I think this is about the fourth or fifth one of these I’ve come across since I’ve been blogging. Of course, knowing the world of media archaeology it might be the same one over and over. . . .
Anyway, hard to tell how they came to die at the same time, the male had a significant injury but the female apparently had no skeletal tissue damaged. Of course, not every cause of death affects the skeleton so it could easily have been disease or something.
Archaeologists Find Human Bones, Possible Burial Site in Alice
Archaeologists have found human bones at the site of the new multi-use complex being built in Alice, and project leaders believe they may have found an ancient burial ground.
The bones were found April 3 by archeologists who were doing a survey of the location. They have since been removed from the location and are being protected by an archeologist. The archeologist said he does not know how old the bones are, and he doesn’t even know how old the site is.
Video at the link. Actually, it’s not all that big of a deal, but I had to use that title.
Construction crew finds human bones at Ignacio school
The remains of five human bodies were unearthed last week at Ignacio Intermediate School, where a construction crew was laying a sewer line, said La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith.
The bones are believed to be 50 to 75 years old, possibly from a family burial plot, she said.
No foul play is suspected.
Interestingly, they seem to have a pretty good idea what the family name is. This — burials from small, unmarked family plots — has been happening more and more, but this is odd because it’s in an already-developed area. OTOH, I wonder if it didn’t happen quite often in the past as well, but never got reported, or at least not widely. Internet and stuff, donchaknow.
Archaeologist shares preliminary findings in report on excavated human remains
THE human remains found near the House of Taga on Tinian belonged to six individuals.
Australia National University archaeologist Dr. Michael T. Carson told Variety after their Northern Marianas Humanities Council-organized presentation at the American Memorial Park last Saturday that they were able to get a preliminary report on the human remains uncovered on Tinian.
“She was able to indentify six different individuals,” said Carson referring to anthropologist Dr Hsiuman Lin of the Taiwan National Museum of Prehistory.
Variety earlier reported that the remains were unearthed by Carson and his wife Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung within a layer of sediment that is associated with a period roughly 400-600 years ago.
Medieval Knight Found: How Did Scottish Archaeologists Find Skeleton Underneath Parking Lot?
A medieval knight found underneath a parking lot in Scotland’s capital of Edinburgh has archaeologists hoping they’ll find more. The grave of the medieval knight, or possibly a nobleman, was discovered while the site was being cleared for the construction of a new university center in Edinburgh’s Old Town, archaeologists announced this week.
The medieval knight found below the construction site has been dated to the 13th Century. A sandstone slab with carvings of an ornate sword and Calvary Cross marked the grave and was discovered next to the skeleton of the medieval knight.
For a couple of reasons: First, an ad automatically starts — with sound — so you have an automatic irritant. Second, note the caption under the photograph (which is a very cool photograph):
The skeleton, like the one pictured here of a recently discovered mummy in Peru, will tell archaeologist all about who the medieval knight was and how he died.
It’s not even a picture of anything related to a medieval knight!
You can see a photograph of the ACTUAL skeleton here.
Archaeologists Get Bird’s-Eye View of Dozens of Nameless Graves Discovered at UVa
Archaeologists are getting a new perspective of the abandoned gravesite near UVa.’s University Cemetery. Researchers are looking to the skies to learn more about what’s hidden underground.
A camera strapped to a balloon snapped hundreds of aerial photos of the land Tuesday morning.
“We just fly it up, take a picture every two seconds and then sort through the pictures,” said Chris Gist, a GIS Specialist in the Scholars’ Lab at Alderman Library. “It gives us an advantage that we can get up in height over the site without destroying it.”
It’s got the TV news story video to go along with it, which mostly restates the text. I’m not entirely sure what the aerial photos are going to show that you don’t get from the ground. It looks as if they’ve already outlined some of the graves by scraping off the topsoil, but perhaps they are getting better views from above?
From the Art Daily website:
Basalt mortuary container
A set of 12 burials, inside basalt boxes, were discovered by archaeologists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH – Conaculta) in the southeast part of Nayarit. Given the great quantities of human bones that were contained in each burial, archaeologists consider this finding as a type of pre Hispanic cemetery about 1000 years old.
According to Lourdes Garcia Barajas and Jose Beltran Medina, archaeologists of the INAH Center in Nayarit, this funerary finding is unique since it’s the first one of its kind and because this is a mortuary tradition that had been unknown in the region, with the only related findings being shaft tombs or osseous remains cramped inside clay pots. Until this finding, never had they found osseous remains inside basalt boxes.
The experts detailed that they found complete skeletons both inside and around the mortuary containers –most of which were determined to have been burned given their black coloring– also, they found bones inside ceramic pots contained in the basalt boxes, which is why specialists haven’t been able to determine the total number of individuals that had been interred.
Speaking of the raw & the cooked, where “raw” is sex and “cooked” is gender: archaeologists have found an individual with male skeletal anatomy who was buried about 5,000 years ago in a typically female manner. This individual comes from the Corded Ware Culture of Europe, and was found outside Prague. The skeleton was buried in the same orientation as women of that culture, and with an egg-shaped pot associated with womens’ burial rites. Absent were masculine cultural markers such as weapons. A short article by The Telegraph describes this find in more detail.
Below are photos of Corded Ware ceramics and polished stone tools
corded ware material culture
And it’s not a result of drug-cartel violence for once. The discovery is of 50 skulls placed at the Templo Mayor in Mexico City (Tenochtitlan). Five of the skulls were placed under a sacred stone (the other 45 were above the stone). Below is a photo of one of the skulls, showing the large holes in the sides of the skull so they could be placed on a skull rack (tzompantli).
(tzompantli)
A copy of the news story is here (but available at many other news sites). Among other aspects of this find being discussed is that it flies in the face of common beliefs that Aztec sacrifice necessarily means removing a heart from a body — this find indicates sacrifice by decapitation. Many different forms of sacrifice were used, depending on the purpose. For example, the god of spring, who is also the flayed skin god and the god of goldsmiths (Xipe Totec) required sacrifice by flaying the skin from an individual, which was then worn by the priest. We have various accounts and depictions of this type of sacrifice, such as these sculptures:
