01 - 02 SEPTEMBRE 2010

 - 02 SEPTEMBRE :

 - FRANCE : Ville-en-Sallaz - Début août, à l'occasion de travaux de terrassement sur le chantier d'un programme immobilier, les vestiges d'une villa romaine et d’un établissement thermal datant du IIe siècle ont été mis à jour. Une découverte faite par les ouvriers. Le site, qui n'a pas fait l'objet de fouilles préventives, s'étend sur près de 1600 m². Les archéologues départementaux n'hésitent pas à parler d'une "découverte exceptionnelle pour la région". Mais aujourd'hui les fouilles s'effectuent dans l'urgence. Les promoteurs n'ont donné que quelques semaines aux archéologues pour établir des relevés et effectuer un plan du site avant sa destruction. Un délai insuffisant...  Voir le reportage de FR3.

           http://www.france3.fr/STATIC/video/index-fr.php?titre=D%E9couverte%20de%20vestiges%20romains%20%E0%20Ville-en-Sallaz%20-%2001/09/10&url=mms://a988.v101995.c10199.e.vm.akamaistream.net/7/988/10199/3f97c7e6/ftvigrp.download.akamai.com/10199/sgv/diff/videotheque/regions/raa/videothequeinfo/F3588_vestiges.wmv&section=regions_raa&rubrique=video

 - ROYAUME-UNI : Cockermouth - The first Roman watermill to be discovered in Cumbria has been unearthed in an archaeological dig on the edge of Cockermouth. The discovery, behind the Lakes Homecentre, signals that the River Derwent, on the banks of which it stood, was an important part of Romano-British life in Cockermouth. The watermill, thought to date back to the first or second century. The team used instruments to detect buried walls, but it was two pieces of wood sticking out of the ground which led to the discovery of what may have been a wooden channel leading to the water wheel. Foundation stones compatible with a mill and fragments of a structure that may have supported the wheel have also been found.

          http://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/other/first-roman-watermill-discovered-in-west-cumbria-1.753855?referrerPath=home/energy

 - FRANCE : St-Romain-en-Gal : Le musée gallo-romain vient de faire l'acquisition d'une statue d'Aphrodite dite « Nymphe de Sainte-Colombe ». Elle a été mise au jour parmi les ruines des thermes romains appelés le Palais du miroir. Taillée dans le marbre, elle mesure 1,18 mètre de hauteur, elle représente une jeune femme debout sur un petit socle arrondi. Le corps penché en avant porte sur la jambe droite, tandis que la gauche est pliée en retrait. La partie inférieure est enveloppée dans un manteau qui, nouée au bas du ventre, tombe en longs plis entre les pieds. Le haut du corps est nu, la tête un peu inclinée vers la droite. Ses cheveux forment deux bandeaux. La « Nymphe de Sainte-Colombe » date du IIe ou IIIe siècle, elle est l'une des mieux conservée des cinq répliques attribuées à l'artiste hellénistique Trallès. Seuls font défaut les avant-bras, la vasque, une partie du support et l'extrémité du nez. La Nymphe de Sainte-Colombe est la dernière d'une formidable collection enfouie dans les vestiges du Palais du Miroir. Celui-ci s'étend sur 9 hectares, près du site archéologique de Saint-Romain-en-Gal. C'était le complexe thermal de la Vienne antique où les Gallo-Romains aimaient prendre soin de leur corps. Des décors somptueux animaient cet édifice.

         http://www.leprogres.fr/fr/permalien/article/3710101/

 - U.S.A. : Door County - Archaeologists call the Cardy Camp on the southeastern edge of Sturgeon Bay the most important archaeological site of its era in Wisconsin. Scientists say it was a hunting camp on the edge of a glacier at the end of the last Ice Age. Spear points, other stone tools, and the remains of a fire pit of a paleo-Indian culture have been discovered. The artifacts date back 11,000 years.

         http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=13082631

 - LIBYE : From Greek and Roman shipwrecks to 20th-century warships; from ancient streets with intact buildings and mosaics to am­phorae and ingots, the Mediter­ranean is a subaqueous treasure trove. So BP’s plans to drill exploratory oil wells off Libya has raised serious concerns among archaeologists, historians and heritage preservation organisations. There are two archaeologically rich areas along the Libyan coast—Cyrenaica and Tripoli­tania. Within Cyrenaica lies Apollonia, an ancient harbour submerged five metres under the water. It’s a complete town under the sea with streets, walls and houses. Slow tectonic movement caused it to sink. Tripolitania, which extends from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, includes two important ancient sites on the shore: Leptis Magna, a once powerful Roman city and harbour, and Sabratha which has the remains of a theatre and a Roman bath with spectacular mosaics. Both are Unesco World Heritage sites.These sites are archaeologically significant because they allow us to understand the complete evolution of this part of the world from Greek colonisation in the seventh century BC to the Arab invasion in the seventh century AD.

          http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Archaeologists+attack+BP%25E2%2580%2599s+drilling+plans/21319

 - 01 SEPTEMBRE :

 - TURQUIE : - Allianoi - Controversy over plans to bury an ancient city in western Turkey with sand ahead of a new dam project was overshadowed by revelations from Turkey’s environment minister that the site did not, in fact, exist. Pr. A. Yaraş, head of the excavations, said : “Allianoi is the most protected hot spring in the world. Some 11,000 coins, around 400 metal artifacts, 400 bone artifacts, 800 ceramic artifacts and around 400 glass artifacts have been found during excavations, adding that only 20 percent of the city had been successfully excavated so far. “We have found a sculpture of Asklepios, who was known as the god of health. Alliaoni has 400 surgical instruments, the highest number ever found, proving that the place was a hospital at the time,” he said.  

          http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=saving-an-ancient-city-that-doesnt-exist-2010-09-01

 - GRECE : Athènes - Myrtis the 2500 year old Athenian girl. It was the name that was given to her by scientists who uncovered her remains, as well as over 150 other skeletons, from an archaeological dig of a 'plague grave' at Kerameikos Cemetery dating back between 426-430BC. Myrtis' resurrection some 2,500 years after her death from Typhoid - a plague which wiped out a third of the Athenian state including Pericles during the Peloponnesian War - has proved useful to researchers who took samples from her teeth to understand more about the microbe which led to the deaths of so many. The reconstruction of Myrtis came about as her skull was discovered intact, and complete with her jaw and teeth (a mixture of both adult and milk teeth). Orthodontics professor Manolis Papagrigorakis led the project to team to rebuild the face of Myrtis, using techniques involving markers or little nails that show the thickness of the tissue, as well as by considering the origin, the sex, the living conditions and the age of her skull. To recreate the muscles and the tissue, the face is sculpted with the markers acting as a basic guide as to the how thick the sculpting clay should be. The shape and size of eyes and nose were calculated from the size of the ocular and nasal cavities.

         http://heritage-key.com/blogs/prad/myrtis-2500-year-old-athenian-girl-finds-new-home

 - BULGARIE : Perperikon - Bulgarian archaeologist has discovered two tombs of Ancient Thracian rulers near the famous rock city and sanctuary. The tombs are dated to 1100-1000 BC judging by the pottery and ceramics found in them, which are characteristic of the later Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. One of the most interesting finds in the tombs is a bronze coin with the face of Emperor Alexander the Great, dated to the 4th century BC.  The tombs are situation in an east-west direction, with the buried notable facing the rising sun, a clear sign of a sun cult. The excavations have revealed ritual hearths and others signs of sacrifices that were connected with the traditions of venerating the dead as godly creatures.

          http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=119743

 - ESPAGNE : Orce - The importance of a new archaeological dig at Fuente Nueva 3 and Barranco León, in Orce, Granada, is becoming clear. In the first two days of the new dig, remains of elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus and deer have been found, and evidence that these animals were eaten by humans. The news was given by the Project Director, Robert Sala. He described the finds at Orce as ‘the richest and the best in Western Europe’ as the site could show human existence at a particular time. He said such human evidence was greater at Orce than at Sima del Elefante, at Atapuerca, Burgos, and that made the site more important, provided the expected human fossils are found, dating from 1.3 million years ago.

           http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_27041.shtml

 - U.S.A. : College Station - Texas A&M University researchers working to restore the hull of La Belle, a light frigate recovered from its underwater grave, are using an unconventional method to preserve the pieces: a state-of-the-art freeze dryer big enough to hold a few head of cattle. La Belle was carrying 43 people when it sank in Matagorda Bay in January 1686. Voir video :

           http://tamunews.tamu.edu/2010/08/31/giant-freeze-dryer-to-preserve-ship-pieces-at-texas-am-lab/

 - ROYAUME-UNI : Sudbury - An intact Roman lantern made of bronze, believed by experts to be the only one of its kind in Britain, has been unearthed in a field by a metal-detecting enthusiast. The unique artefact which dates from between the 1st and 3rd century. Archaeologists said the British Museum in London holds only fragments of similar finds and its closest complete double was found at the Roman city of Pompeii in southern Italy. Suffolk is known to have been dotted with plush Roman villas and country estates in the 2nd century and experts speculate it could have been used by a rich landowner to move between his villa and its outhouses at night.
The lantern resembles a modern hurricane lamp and the naked flame would have been protected by a thin sheet of horn - now decomposed - that had been scraped until it was translucent.

           http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Rare-Roman-lantern-found-20100901