20 - 21 JUILLET 2010
- 21 JUILLET :
- PAKISTAN : 
Harappa - The Indus civilization encompassed more than 680,000 square kilometers, from western India to northern Afghanistan. The ancient cities of Harappa and Moenjodaro were the two largest centers of the Indus civilization. See the video :
- EGYPTE : Lac Qarun - Egyptian experts have begun to explore the depths of Lake Qarun south of Cairo using remote sensing radars in search of sunken artefacts. The discovery of the rocks was first made by Egyptian-American scientist Faruq al-Baz, a veteran of NASA's Apollo programme, five years ago. Baz, who now runs the Centre for Space Studies at Boston University, was carrying out a satellite survey of Egypt's Western Desert when he and his team discovered in the Lake Qarun area "a large number of huge blocks of rock. These huge slabs are made of basalt (volcanic rock) which were eventually moved upstream to the Giza plteau for the construction of the Great Pyramid.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100721/wl_africa_afp/egyptarchaeology_20100721164742
- NYANMAR : Pinle - An ancient building, later proved as a religious edifice, has been unearthed in Myanmar's old city of Pinle in Mandalay division's Kyaukse. The religious edifice was discovered by a group of researchers from the Archaeology, National Museum and Library Department based in Nay Pyi Taw when they were carrying out excavation work in the area for over one month from June 6 to July 12. The report claimed that the unearthed building is similar to some religious ones excavated earlier from ancient Pyu, Beikthanoe and Srikhattara cities.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/culture/2010-07/21/c_13407844.htm
- BELIZE : 
Cara Blanca - A team of divers began mapping some of the 25 freshwater pools of Cara Blanca, Belize, which were important to the ancient Maya. In three weeks this May, the divers found fossilized animal remains, bits of pottery and – in the largest pool explored – an enormous underwater cave. The Maya believed that openings in the earth, including caves and water-filled sinkholes, called cenotes, were portals to the underworld, and often left offerings there. Ceremonial artifacts of the Maya have been found in pools and lakes in Mexico, but not yet in Belize. Maya structures have been found near two of the eight pools the team surveyed. The use of these pools at the end of the Late Classic period (roughly A.D. 800-900) corresponds to an enduring drought that deforested parts of Central America and – some believe – ultimately drove the Maya from the area. The need for fresh water could have drawn the Maya to the pools. No vessels other than water jars were found in the structures built near the pools. They could have been making offerings to the rain god and other supernatural forces to bring an end to the drought.
http://www.rdmag.com/News/Feeds/2010/07/materials-extreme-archaeology-divers-plumb-sacred-maya-pool/
- JORDANIE : Hamad - A joint Jordanian-German archaeological team has discovered a statue in Jordan's eastern desert that dates back 6,000 years. The discovery shed new light on a little-known ancient Bedouin civilization that once thrived in the desert connecting Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The 35-centimetre-high statue, nicknamed 'Dalish,' was found near the Jordanian-Saudi border. The statue, which has a long nose and a bearded, abstract face, was part of a burial cairn, a mound of stones marking a burial site from the late Chalcolithic era. Experts believe hundreds of such burial sites were left behind by the nomadic and semi-nomadic prehistoric communities that once roamed the eastern desert.
- ONLINE : Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus project. A University of Southampton researcher is part of a team which has just secured funding from Google to make the classics and other ancient texts easy to discover and access online. The GAP researchers will enable scholars and enthusiasts worldwide to search the Google Books corpus to find books related to a geographic location and within a particular time period. The results can then be visualised on GoogleMaps or in GoogleEarth. The project will run until September next year.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=81689&CultureCode=en
- CANADA : 
It has been more than 150 years since Capt Sir John Franklin and his 128 men perished in the Canadian Arctic, their ships lost in one of the greatest disasters of British polar exploration. Now, a Canadian archaeological team is en route to the Arctic in a fresh hunt for Franklin's ships. Relying on 150-year-old testimony of indigenous Inuits and 21st-Century methods like sea-floor surveying, the team hopes to find HMS Terror and HMS Erebus and discover once and for all the fate of the men - who are believed to have succumbed to scurvy, hypothermia and even cannibalism before they perished in the frozen Arctic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10705564
- SERBIE : Zajecar - At the site of the ‘Felix Romuliana’, an imperial palace near the Town of Zajecar, German experts of the Archeology Institute in Frankfurt, together with the colleagues of the Archeology Institute in Belgrade have discovered a sensational sculpture, unique in this area of the Balkans. This marble statue originates from the first half of the third century. It is most likely a sculpture of Diana, the Goddess of the hunt. It is supposed that the sculpture symbolizes victory by Rome over barberians. Unfortunately a fragment of the sculpture (a horse and a rider) is missing. The rider is believed to be Diana. The ‘Felix Romuliana’ contains numerous floor mosaics and remains of monumental temples and buildings. The Portrait of Emperor Galerius, heads of Hercules and Jupiter, mosaic presentations of Dionis, Labyrinth and Venator are the very best of the Roman art of that time.
http://english.blic.rs/In-Focus/6688/Archeologists-found-sculpture-of-Diana-Goddess-of-hunt
- 20 JUILLET :
- U.S.A. : Gila River - Can a manufacturing industry purr along without a class system of managers and workers? That's part of a longtime mystery that may soon be solved: How did a prehistoric, egalitarian people called the Hohokam produce large quantities of decorated ceramic vessels without a "manager" hierarchy? Archaeologists from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the Cultural Resource Management Program of the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona have launched a unique research partnership to decipher the mechanics of the large-scale industry. The vessels were made in about 1000 A.D. by a culture archaeologists call the Hohokam. The ancient people used the pottery for daily serving, storage, and social and religious gatherings.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/smu-nrw072010.php
- ITALIE : 
Vatican - Michelangelo's depiction of God's throat in one panel of his Sistine Chapel fresco is awkward, which is odd for an artist so devoted to the study of anatomy. Now researchers have a theory to explain why: Michelangelo embedded an image of a human brain stem in Gods throat, they find. The Renaissance artist is known to have studied human anatomy by dissecting cadavers when he was a young man, and continued until late in his 89 years. This practice informed his powerful depictions of the human and the divine.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38334815/ns/technology_and_science-science/
- MEXIQUE : 
Procreator deities, patrons of the lustful and dissolute ones; ethnic groups prone to nudity; masturbation and rites involving homosexual acts are some themes treated in the latest issue of Arqueologia Mexicana dedicated to Sexuality in Mesoamerica. Upon Spaniards arrival, many native groups’ practices were considered taboo, particularly those with profound sexual-cosmogonical connotations. Prejudices around these aspects transcended in time and were not subject of studies.
Codices, Colonial chronicles, archaeological pieces and ethnographic data are the objects of study to learn about the lascivious activities of ancient inhabitants of Mexico; in the 1920’s decade a collection was integrated with Prehispanic objects related to sexuality from Huasteca and Maya regions; they were placed in a secret hall at the former National Museum. The magazine published by the National Institute of Anthropology and History and Editorial Raices uncovers the nuances of sexuality among ancient Maya people and sexual transgression, among other themes.
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=39254&int_modo=1
- NEPAL : 
Lumbini - Un nouveau projet pour la conservation et la gestion de Lumbini, lieu de naissance du Bouddha, un des sites du patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO au Népal, a été lancé le 16 juillet 2010. Il va en particulier permettre de financer les mesures de conservation du Pilier d'Asoka, de la Marker Stone (pierre marquant le lieu de naissance du Bouddha) et du bas-relief de Maya Devi, d'étudier les vestiges archéologiques dans et autour du site, d'analyser l'état actuel du Jardin sacré et de concevoir un Plan de gestion intégré pour l'ensemble du site.
http://whc.unesco.org/fr/actualites/632
- U.S.A. : 
Corolla - After surviving perhaps 400 years in the sand and surf off the North Carolina coast, the 12-ton remains of a shipwreck are making their final port-of-call. So far, theories have the ship being made in the early to mid-1600s. It could have been built in Britain or France, given the coins found on the wreckage. This ship was large, possibly 500 tons and 100 feet long.
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/07/colonialera-shipwreck-moved-corolla-hatteras