Greece: Ancient theatre unearthed on the island of Lefkada
After archeological excavations on Koulmos hill in Lefkada, a huge new ancient theater was discovered, test sections were cut in the area, specifically on the hill ‘s northeast slope which forms a downward amphitheatric hollow, ending in a long, flat section.
Seats of the theatre on the “Koulmos” hill
Archaeological excavations on the Ionian island of Lefkada have brought to light a previously undiscovered and sizeable ancient theatre, the culture minister announced on Wednesday. It said the find was made on Koulmou hill toward the end of the year.
Test ‘sections’ were cut in an area on the northeast flank of Koulmou’s middle hill, which forms an amphitheatrical downward hollow ending in a lengthy flat section, the ministry announcement said.
Part of the retaining wall of the koilon
It noted that archaeologists knew very little about the city’s ancient theatre, which was not mentioned in any ancient source.
Though the logs of an early 20th-century archaeological excavation under the direction of German archaeologist Ε. Κrüger, lasting only a few days, recorded the discovery of signs indicating the presence of an ancient theatre.
Part of the theatre’s orchestra
The Aitoloakarnania and Lefkada Antiquities Ephorate dug sections in 13 places, which confirmed the existence of the theatre and uncovered rows of seats, parts of the orchestra, and some of the retaining walls for the stage and other parts of the theatre.
Elongated retaining wall north of the theatre
The location of the theatre on Koulmou hill
The ministry said that six sections revealed seats carved from the rock, about 0.73 to 0.90 meters deep and 0.22-0.33 meters high.
Others found the orchestra and a section of a wall in a quadrant plan, up to 0.6 metres across. The sections also found portions of retaining walls.
The culture ministry said that continuing the excavation in order to reveal and protect the monument will be a priority for the ministry’s services, adding that the Lefkada Municipality and Ionian Islands Regional Authority have both supported the work.
In the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag, Egypt announced the discovery of the ruins of a forgotten city believed to be more than 7,000 years old.
The ancient residential city, found alongside a nearby cemetery, dates back to 5,316 BC and is being heralded as a major archaeological discovery that pre-dates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period that began about 5 millennia ago.
A team of archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities found the remains of ancient huts and graves during a dig 400 meters to the south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC.
Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.
“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.
Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.
In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.
“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.
It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.
Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.
“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”
According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:
Gérard Ducher
The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.
According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.
We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.
A Lost Japanese Village Has Been Uncovered in the British Columbia Wilderness
In 2004, archaeology professor Robert Muckle was alerted to a site within the forests of British Columbia’s North Shore mountains, where a few old cans and a sawblade had been discovered. He suspected the area was once home to a historic logging camp, but he did not anticipate that he would spend the next 14 years unearthing sign after sign of a forgotten Japanese settlement—one that appears to have been abruptly abandoned.
Brent Richter of the North Shore News reports that Muckle, an instructor at Capilano University in Vancouver, and his rotating teams of archaeology students have since excavated more than 1,000 items from the site.
The artifacts include rice bowls, sake bottles, teapots, pocket watches, buttons, and hundreds of fragments of Japanese ceramics. Muckle tells Smithsonian that the “locations of 14 small houses … a garden, a wood-lined water reservoir, and what may have been a shrine,” were also discovered, along with the remnants of a bathhouse—an important fixture of Japanese culture.
Dishes and bottles found at the site in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve.
The settlement sits within an area now known as the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, located around 12 miles northeast of Vancouver.
Muckle has in fact uncovered two other sites within the region that can be linked to Japanese inhabitants: one appears to have been part of a “multi-ethnic” logging camp, Muckle says, the second a distinctly Japanese logging camp that was occupied for several years around 1920. But it is the third site, which seems to have transitioned from a logging camp to a thriving village, that fascinates him the most.
“There was very likely a small community of Japanese who were living here on the margins of an urban area,” Muckle tells Richter. “I think they were living here kind of in secret.”
In approximately 1918, a Japanese businessman named Eikichi Kagetsu secured logging rights to a patch of land next to where the village once stood, making it likely that the site was once inhabited by a logging community.
The trees would have been largely harvested by around 1924, but Muckle thinks the village’s residents continued to live there past that date.
“The impression that I get, generally speaking, is it would have been a nice life for these people, especially in the context of all the racism in Vancouver in the 1920s and ’30s,” he tells Richter.
The first major wave of Japanese immigration to Canada began in 1877, with many of the new arrivals settling in the coastal province of British Columbia. From the start, they were met with hostility and discrimination; politicians in the province prohibited Asian residents from voting, entering the civil service, and working in various other professions, like law, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.
Anti-Japanese prejudices boiled over during the Second World War, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Days later, Japanese troops invaded Hong Kong, killing and wounding hundreds of Canadian soldiers who were stationed there.
Back in Canada, authorities began arresting suspected Japanese operatives, impounding Japanese-owned fishing boats, and shutting down Japanese newspapers and schools. By the winter of 1942, a 100-mile strip of the Pacific Coast had been designated a “protected area,” and people of Japanese descent were told to pack a single suitcase and leave.
Families were separated—men sent to work on road gangs, women, and children to isolated ghost towns in the wilderness of British Columbia. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, more than 90 percent of Japanese Canadians were uprooted during the war, most of the citizens by birth.
No records survive of the people who lived in the North Shore camp, and Muckle has yet to find an artifact that can be reliably dated to after 1920. But given that the inhabitants of the village seem to have departed in a hurry, leaving precious belongings behind, he tells Smithsonian that he suspects they stayed in their little enclave in the woods until 1942, when “they were incarcerated or sent to road camps.”
Eventually, per the CBC, the Greater Vancouver Water District closed off the valley where the settlement was located, and the forest began to take over.
Speaking to Richter of North Shore News, Muckle notes that, after nearly 15 years spent excavating at the site, he will likely not return again.
But he hopes to share his records and artifacts with several museums and archives— including the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia, which seeks to preserve Japanese Canadian history and heritage—so the forgotten settlement in the woods will be remembered for years to come.
A 5,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Near Mysterious Sanxingdui Ruins, China
On Tuesday, Chinese archaeologists revealed they had discovered an important site next to the ruins of Sanxingdui, which they claim to be a settlement about 5,000 years old.
For its striking resemblance to the main character in the Angry Birds mobile app, an ancient clay pig figurine has created a sensation on the internet. The fist-size artwork was found under the remains of a tribal settlement in southwestern China dating back almost 5,000 years.
It has sparked a trending topic in the country after people said it looked exactly like the Green Pig in the popular video game.
A fist-size clay sculpture (left) discovered under an archaeological site in China has sparked a sensation after people said it looked exactly like the Green Pig (right) in the Angry Birds
Archaeologists found the tiny sculpture while digging in the remains of a small ancient community outside modern-day Guanghan in Sichuan province.
The experts believe that the village was situated about eight kilometres (five miles) outside Sanxingdui, a mysterious Bronze Age kingdom. The tribe likely came into being around 5,000 years ago, and the pig figurine is thought to be 3,200 years old.
The piece of pottery has been described as ‘cute, vivid and delicate’ by the researchers, who say it represents the advanced aesthetic standards of the region’s prehistoric residents.
Chinese internet users expressed their amazement after a picture of the piece of pottery was released by the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute.
On Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter, one person gushed: ‘It is the pig from the Angry Birds!’
Another reader wondered: ‘The Angry Birds? It’s like time travel.’
A third commenter joked: ‘The pig in the Angry birds. You have infringed the copyright.’
The research team claims to have discovered traces of continuous human activity on the archaeological site dating from 5,000 years ago until the dynasties of Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912).
Officials plan to excavate 7,000 square meters (75,350 square feet) of the site, which is officially named Guanghan Joint Ruins. By the end of July, they had studied 4,500 square meters (48,440 square feet), according to an official post.
Apart from the pig figurine, experts found detailed carvings of a dragon and a phoenix under a broken clay plate, a totem symbolizing good fortune.
Other discoveries include daily utensils, such as vases and cups made with porcelain or stone.
Burscough, England —Ansa reports that the site of a first-century A.D. Roman fort in northwestern England has received official recognition from Historic England, a government body dedicated to historic preservation.
A Roman fort lies underneath land off Flax Lane, Burscough
The ruins comprise a 30,000 sq m fort, roads, and a smaller fortlet and experts believe the find will unlock unknown details of how the Romans settled and travelled around the area.
Considered alongside other forts in the region, including those at Wigan and Ribchester, Burscough’s will provide great insight into Roman military strategy. It is believed that the area was occupied multiple times over the course of hundreds of years, a theory that is backed up by the variety of pottery found at the site.
Historic England says the lines of the fort’s defences are clearly identifiable on the geophysical survey and aerial photos, but the north-west and south-west corners are also visible as slight earthworks on Lidar, which uses laser light reflections to produce 3D images.
The north-west corner of the fort is visible as the slight earthwork of a broad bank about 12m wide, with a regular, broad and shallow external ditch; the latter is interpreted as a shallow quarry ditch dug during the construction of the rampart.
Several large depressions visible in the wider landscape are considered to be post-medieval extraction, probably marl pits: one of these pits sits within the angle of the north-west corner of the fort.
The number of ditches is considered to indicate more than one phase of occupation, and it is considered that a later, small fortlet overlies the eastern rampart of the earlier fort.
A number of internal features have been revealed by geophysical surveys including a well-defined eastern gateway with double gate towers, and numerous stone buildings interpreted as granaries or barracks. Limited trial trenching of the latter has revealed the presence of a large stone, buttressed building typical of a Roman granary.
The geophysical survey has also revealed the buried remains of a broad section of Roman road approaching the fort on the east side. A similar feature is thought to be associated with the fort’s southern entrance.
For several years, a non-profit archaeology group has been managing the site and allowing people to help with the excavation of the ruins but the location of the fort has largely been kept a secret.
Those interested in visiting were able to pay to take part in organized digs, while items of Roman pottery have been found in nearby fields by passing walkers.
The fort had survived regular ploughing through the years before the archaeology group took an interest in the site but concerned residents noticed diggers on the field in recent weeks and feared that the invaluable findings could be lost forever.
But, possibly partly as a result of those fears being raised with Historic England and then the Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the ruins have now been classified as a Scheduled Monument.
That means it is a criminal offence to destroy or damage it; do any works to remove, repair or alter it; use a metal detector without prior consent, or remove any historic or archaeological object from the site without prior consent.
A spokesperson for Historic England said: “DCMS recently agreed with our advice that this site should be protected as a scheduled monument because it is a highly significant find of a Roman fort which has survived well.
‘‘We are actively in contact with the owners and local authority to offer advice and support on how best to manage this site to ensure its future.”
8,000-Year-Old Human Skeletons Found In Neolithic Village Of Slatina, Bulgaria
Four Early Neolithic tombs, believed to date back 8000 years, were discovered by a Bulgarian archeologist team at the Slatina site in the capital Sofia, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences said on July 28.
There are skeletons of three adults and one child.
Together with two graves discovered at the Slatina site in 2019, these are the earliest in the territory of Sofia.
Team leader Vassil Nikolov said that it was the first time in the ritual complex that such extremely rare finds had been made.
Excavations in the area have been going on for more than 30 years and the objects found so far show that the village was inhabited by farmers and pastoralists.
The settlement itself existed for about 500 years, from the end of the seventh to the middle of the sixth millennium BCE.
It is assumed that the civilization of Europe started from the Neolithic settlement in Slatina, Nikolov said.
The graves discovered date from the beginning of the sixth millennium and very little is known about the rituals of this period. Probably there were houses, which unfortunately were destroyed, archaeologists believe.
During the excavations, archaeologists from the National Archaeological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences came across a double grave – most likely a man with a child.
The other remains are of a woman lying on her stomach and of a man who was laid out in a very special way – one of his hands remained under the skeleton.
Anthropologists from the Institute of Experimental Morphology, Pathology, and Anthropology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences are to continue their research in laboratory conditions.
DNA analysis may show if there was a relationship.
The work in Slatina is part of rescue archeological excavations due to new housing construction. Among the new finds are objects such as ceramic vessels, weights for a loom, a furnace plug shaped like a human image, and part of a spindle.
10,000-Year-Old Neolithic Figurines Discovered in Jordan Burials
From classical paintings of crucified Messiahs to Damien Hirst’s starkly grim tanks of pickled sharks, death is a subject that has haunted artistic imaginations throughout the ages.
As it turns out, a trove of archaeological discoveries in Jordan suggests that death and an unusual process of digging up the deceased may have sparked an important ancient artistic revolution in Early Neolithic Asia: the jump between artworks depicting animals to portraying humans.
Reported in the journal Antiquity, archaeologists from the Spanish National Research Council and Durham University in the UK developed this idea while studying a number of unusual objects discovered at the site of Kharaysin in the Zarqa river valley, Jordan, dating to the 8th millennium BCE.
The Neolithic figurines found in Jordan were of differing shapes and sizes.
The team was initially stumped by the jagged objects, thinking they must be tools, until they came to realize they were actively crafted into crudely-shaped human bodies, complete with broad shoulders, slim waist, and wide hips.
“One of the excavators suggested they were figurines, which the rest of the team were skeptical about,” lead author Dr. Juan José Ibáñez said in an email statement. “However, the more we studied, the stronger the idea appeared.”
Two clay human figurines found at the bottom of a 1.6-meter-deep pit located in J 105/110 at Kharaysin.
The figures appear to have been crafted around the 7500 BCE, about a century after depictions of humans became more common in the Early Neolithic communities of Western Asia. But, what drove humans in the Zarqa river valley to start making human sculptures 9,000-10,000 years ago?
By no coincidence, the researchers say, the figurines were found in an area used by the Early Neolithic communities of the Zarqa river valley to bury their dead.
Among the seven original burials found here, a number of the remains appear to have been dug up following an initial burial and the partial decomposition of bodies, manipulated – in some cases bones were removed or muddled up in an unusual mortuary practice – and then reburied.
The placement of the figurines to these burials suggests they were carelessly dropped, but actively deposited in specific areas. Assembling all of these odd pieces of evidence together, the researchers put forward the hypothesis that the figurines were part of a burial ritual.
Although precise details remain unclear, it’s suggested the figurines were used as a physical representation of the dead to honor the community’s ancestors, a practice that’s well documented during this time.
“These rituals probably included remembrance of the deceased. The presence of ‘figurines’ suggests that individuals could have been symbolically depicted in flint with a simple technical gesture. If this were the case, the ‘figurines’ were discarded where they were used,” the researchers write in their paper.
The roughly shaped figurines alone might not be enough to convince some of this theory, but the conclusion was backed up by comparisons to other examples of figurines from the Neolithic Zarqa river valley.
For example, archaeologists also discovered a similar set of figurines that clearly depicted humans at another Neolithic site in Jordan, ‘Ain Ghazal.
Much older depictions of humans can be found elsewhere in the world; the 35,000-years-old Venus of Hohle Fels, found in modern-day Germany, is the oldest undisputed depiction of a human being.
However, in Early Neolithic culture in present-day Jordan, human iconography has not been found until around the time of these unusual funerary ceremonies. From this point onwards, it appears that humans became a recurring subject of artistic creations in this part of the world.
Perhaps, as the researchers outline in their study, this “artistic revolution” was triggered by this ceremony of digging up the dead and honoring lost ancestors.
Israeli archaeologists unearth 1,500-year-old Byzantine church
The remnants of a church of the 6th century — possibly a monastery — were discovered during an Israel Antiquities Authority salvage excavation in the Galilee town of Kfar Kama.
The site adjacent to Mount Tabor is holy to Christians, who since the early Byzantine era have identified the area as the site of the New Testament account of the transfiguration of Jesus.
Mount Tabor is noted in the books of Mark, Matthew, and Luke as the site where Jesus took his disciples Peter, James, and John when they witnessed the face and clothing of their teacher glow with dazzlingly bright light.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Feast of the Transfiguration “celebrates the revelation of the eternal glory of the Second Person of the Trinity, which was normally veiled during Christ’s life on earth.”
Based on the excavation’s findings, the IAA researchers and Prof. Moti Aviam of the Kinneret Academic College believe the church compound was likely a monastery that was built on the outskirts of the ancient village.
With what he called “great and unusual cooperation,” the IAA excavations were joined by Aviam, who is heading a long-term research project with Jacob Ashkenazi, also of the Kinneret Institute of Galilean Archaeology. Their wide-ranging research on churches in the Holy Land and the eastern Mediterranean is supported by the Israel Science Foundation, which also aided in funding this Kfar Kama excavation.
“Our research is trying to find the connection between the town/village and the hinterland,” said Aviam. “If Kfar Kama in antiquity was an important town, what is the connection to villages around it? What is the connection of the town to the monks?”
Aerial view of 1,300-year-old church in the village of Kfar Kama, near Mount Tabor.
Another 6th-century church, dedicated to the female St. Thecla, was previously excavated in Kfar Kama in the 1960s. While a saint’s reliquary was also discovered during the current dig, archaeologists have yet to uncover which saint’s bones were once stored in the small stone box. Likewise, no inscriptions or coins were found at the site to aid in dating and identification.
“Part of the ‘glory’ of our field of archaeology is that we know nothing before we dig — and sometimes we continue to know nothing after we dig,” laughed Aviam. “It’s like a detective story; we piece it together.”
While surveying the area ahead of construction of a new playground in the now largely Circassian-populated town in the Lower Galilee, the Israel Antiquities discerned the outline of a badly damaged, 12×36 meter (40×118 foot) church.
Upon further investigation, the archaeologists headed by Nurit Feig discovered that the church had three apses — similarly to approximately half the churches of the area, said Aviam — and that the compound included a large courtyard, a narthex or antechamber foyer, and a central hall.
According to the IAA press release, there are additional, as yet unexcavated rooms at the site that were identified during a ground-penetrating radar survey that was conducted by the IAA’s Dr. Shani Libbi.
During excavations of the church remains, the archaeologists unearthed pieces of colorful floor mosaics depicting geometric shapes, and blue, black, and red floral patterns.
Mosaic floor of 1,300-year-old church in the village of Kfar Kama, near Mount Tabor
If Aviam has his way, children and parents visiting the new playground will soon gaze upon some of the remains of the 6th century church, if the project is greenlighted by the Kfar Kama Local Council and the Jewish National Fund, which initiated the excavations. Perhaps a recent visit of Catholic Archbishop Youssef Matta, head of the Greek Catholic Church in Israel, to the site will inspire the authorities to preserve the ruins.
Aviam said that researchers are aware of a few cases of monasteries found near cities and towns.
Based on the pottery typography, this church was built in the 6th century and abandoned in the 7th. Aviam said the building boom of Galilee churches was in the 6th century, but there are a few earlier examples, such as a Nazareth chapel dating to the 4th century and a few others dating to the late 4th and beginning of the 5th century.
“We’re trying to collect all the evidence from the field. All the information is important to build the story of the Galilee of the Byzantine period,” Aviam said.
The site was likely a popular destination for pilgrims and was well-funded by the Byzantine empire
