23 OCTOBRE 2017 NEWS: Topsy Grade - Kilmarnock - Damariscotta -
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USA – 
Topsy Grade - A guided history hike in the Klamath River Canyon on Saturday, Oct. 28 will explore long-abandoned wagon roads that preceded the relatively modern Topsy Grade road, according to a news release. “We’ll be tracing a pair of wagon roads built in the 1870s and 1880s that were abandoned when the final Topsy Grade road was constructed in 1890,” said museum manager Todd Kepple. “The cuts and fills they made some 130 years ago are still holding up pretty well, probably because they never saw an automobile.” Laird Naylor, archaeologist for the BLM, said the old roads shed light on how pioneer settlers met challenges of their day. “These roads clearly show people using the technology of their time to get wagons across the rough mountainside, using hand tools and stacking rocks,” Naylor said. “Archaeological evidence also helps to clear up the question of which road is the oldest.”
ROYAUME UNI – 
Kilmarnock - GUARD Archaeology Ltd has discovered what appears to be one of the oldest houses in East Ayrshire, dated to c.4000-3500 BC. The post-holes of a rectangular building, measuring approximately 14m long by 8m across, were revealed in the countryside near Kilmarnock, during a multi-million pound Scottish Water project to upgrade water mains between Ayrshire and Glasgow, and a number of them were found to contain early Neolithic carinated bowl fragments. ‘The width and depth of these post-holes indicated that they once held very large upright timber posts, suggesting that this building was once a large house, probably home to an extended family or group of families.’ These types of houses were constructed by the first sedentary communities in Scotland, who cleared forests and established farming settlements. It is hoped that further analyses of the recovered pottery and other environmental samples from the site may be able to determine a more precise date for the house, and thereby provide a better understanding of farming settlements in general throughout Neolithic Scotland. ‘The pottery recovered from the Neolithic house are sherds of carinated bowl, one of the earliest types of pottery vessels ever to be used in Britain,’ added Green. ‘Traces of milk fat have been found in other carinated bowls found elsewhere in Scotland. These bowls are distributed across much of the country, but very few have been found in the west. This represents an important discovery.’
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/neolithic-house-discovered-ayrshire.htm
USA - 
Damariscotta - Hidden beneath the grass is a massive pile of oyster shells left by Native Americans. And hidden among those shells are rich, detailed stories thousands of years old. Middens like this one line Maine’s tortured shoreline. “We know that there are over 2,000 shell heaps on the coast of Maine,” said Dr. Kelley, an associate research professor at the University of Maine Climate Change Institute. “In virtually every case here in southern Maine, they are disappearing or they are gone.” While many of New England’s Native American artifacts have decomposed in acidic soils, those in middens are often well preserved, as the calcium carbonate in the shells creates more alkaline conditions. The middens hold clues not only to ancient cultural practices, but also to historic environmental and climatic conditions. Seas have generally been rising in Maine since the glaciers retreated 15,000 years ago. Rising waters had transformed the Damariscotta estuary into an optimal oyster habitat by the time this midden, and another across the river, were created. The middens around Damariscotta are the largest examples north of South Carolina, said Arthur Spiess, senior archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. From about 2,200 to 800 years ago, Native Americans visited this site in late winter and spring. The inhabitants discarded the shells in heaps that grew year after year, century after century. “They were eating oysters like crazy and catching alewives,” Dr. Spiess said, referring to a type of herring. In later centuries, European settlers viewed the middens as a resource. One company burned the oyster shells for lime; another smashed them for chicken feed. As the shells were unearthed, however, archaeologists found ceramics, bones and stone tools, and the remains of animals on which the tribes feasted. This and other middens have revealed much of what is known about Native Americans in Maine over the past 4,000 years. The best-studied site, Turner Farm, on North Haven Island in Penobscot Bay, has yielded artifacts more than 5,000 years old. The inhabitants ate shellfish, of course, mostly soft-shell clams. But they also had a taste for deer, bear, moose, porpoise and seal; cod, sturgeon and swordfish; and even extinct species like sea mink and the flightless great auk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/science/native-americans-shell-middens-maine.html