Archeologists

SAO PAULO -- A grouping of granite blocks along a grassy Amazon hilltop may be the vestiges of a centuries-old astronomical observatory -- a find arch eologists say indicates early rainforest inhabitants were more sophisticated than previously believed. The 127 blocks, some as high as 9 feet tall, are spaced at regular intervals around the hill, like a crown 100 feet in diameter. On the shortest day of the year -- Dec. 21 -- the shadow of one of the blocks disappears when the sun is directly above it. "It is this block's alignment with the winter solstice that leads...

Understanding the American consumer society--how we shop, what advertising does to us, why certain stores and products stick and others don't--has become an obsession of economists, marketers, even psychologists. What we consume offers insights into not only the wider culture, but also our own personal values and motives. In today's society, data abound to answer such questions. But there's another way to explore American consumerism: by going through the trash. Americans' buying habits have deep roots, and when it comes to telling the longer story of American consumption, archeology is emerging as an...

JERUSALEM -- Archeologists in Jerusalem have identified the remains of the Siloam Pool, where the Bible says Jesus miraculously cured a man's blindness, researchers said yesterday -- underlining a stirring link between the works of Jesus and ancient Jewish rituals. The archeologists are slowly digging out the pool, where water still runs, tucked away in what is now the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. It was used by Jews for ritual immersions for about 120 years until 70 AD, when the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple.

Archeology is often imagined as an exotic enterprise, something undertaken far off in the sands of Egypt, or at ruins in ancient cities like Rome. Where it's not typically expected is amid the clamor and din of urban life. But a recent dig at an 18th-century house in Newton is a reminder that archeology is relevant everywhere - and that our own backyards can be rich with artifacts and history, authorities say. This summer, University of Massachusetts Boston archeology students spent several weeks meticulously digging around the 1730s Durant-Kenrick Homestead at 286 Waverley Ave., unearthing a number of...

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, a short-lived Confederate prison camp began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for it in southeastern Georgia. They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem, and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost. Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced yesterday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia...

ADDISON, Vt. -- Old cellar holes, now depressions in the grass, are the most prominent clues that French and later British settlers once occupied the shores of Lake Champlain. Now archeologists are searching for more. They have unearthed ceramic, brick, and plaster fragments; animal bones; and shards of glass that may change what they thought about the French colonists that inhabited the region between 1730 and 1759. "The story is that French settlers lived right here on these little cellar holes and that the English in 1759, they chased...

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican archeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Emperor Ahuizotl, who ruled the Aztecs when Columbus landed in the New World. It would be the first tomb of an Aztec ruler ever found. The find could provide an extraordinary window into Aztec civilization at its apogee. Ahuizotl (ah-WEE-zoh-tuhl), an empire-builder who extended the Aztecs' reach as far as Guatemala, was the last emperor to complete his rule before the Spanish Conquest.

SOFIA, Bulgaria - Archeologist Georgi Kitov, a specialist on the treasure-rich Thracian culture of antiquity, died of a heart attack while excavating a temple in central Bulgaria considered to be one of his greatest discoveries, his family said yesterday. He was 65. Mr. Kitov died Sunday during the excavation of a large Thracian temple surrounded by lavishly furnished graves near the village of Starosel, according to his wife, Diana Dimitrova. The temple, unearthed by Mr. Kitov in 2000, as well as other sensational finds over...

EAST CARBON CITY, Utah -- Archeologists led reporters into a remote canyon yesterday to reveal an almost perfectly preserved picture of ancient life: stone pit houses, granaries, and a bounty of artifacts kept secret for more than a half-century. Hundreds of sites on a private ranch turned over to the state offer some of the best evidence of the little-understood Fremont culture, hunter-gatherers and farmers who lived mostly within the present-day borders of Utah. Hundreds of rock art panels are scattered across the canyon along Range Creek, some in red, white,...

NEW ORLEANS - The first archeological dig at one of the nation's oldest cathedrals has turned up a mix of new finds in the heart of the French Quarter. Discoveries behind St. Louis Cathedral include a small silver crucifix from the 1770s or 1780s and traces of previously unknown buildings dating to around the city's founding in 1718. The crucifix might have belonged to Pere Antoine, a Capuchin monk who was rector of the cathedral that dominates Jackson Square, lead archeologist Shannon Lee Dawdy told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

It is the kind of project politicians dream about: a growing medical software company building a new office off Route 24 in Freetown, bringing 800 jobs to the flagging South Coast labor market. But less than two months after Governor Deval Patrick's administration boasted about its speedy permitting of the proposal by Meditech, the development is bogged down in a morass of misunderstandings, rumors, and recriminations. "This project as it stands today is on life support," said Kenneth Fiola Jr., executive vice president of the Fall River Office of the Economic Development, whom...

Archaeologists said Tuesday they have discovered the remains of a Viking chief buried with his boat, ax, sword and spear on a remote Scottish peninsula — one of the most significant Norse finds ever uncovered in Britain. The 16-foot-long (5-meter-long) grave is the first intact site of its kind to have been discovered on mainland Britain and is believed to be more than 1,000 years old. Much of the wooden boat and the Viking bones have rotted away, but scraps of wood and hundreds of metal rivets that held the vessel together remain.

JERUSALEM - A tiny golden bell pulled from an ancient sewer after 2,000 years beneath the Old City of Jerusalem was shown yesterday by Israeli archeologists, who hailed it as a rare find. The orb half an inch in diameter has a small loop that appears to have been used to sew it as an ornament onto the clothes of a wealthy resident of the city two millennia ago, archeologists said. When Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority shook it yesterday, the faint, metallic sound was something between a clink and a rattle.

MES AYNAK, Afghanistan — It was another day on the rocky hillside, as archeologists and laborers dug out statues of the Buddha and excavated a sprawling 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery. A Chinese woman in slacks, carrying an umbrella against the Afghan sun, politely inquired about their progress. She had more than a passing interest. The woman represents a Chinese company eager to develop the world’s second-biggest unexploited copper mine, lying beneath the ruins. The mine is the centerpiece of China’s drive to invest in Afghanistan, a country trying to get its...

CAIRO — The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will return 19 artifacts taken from the tomb of the famed boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, Egypt’s antiquities authority and the museum said yesterday. The trove is made up of small figurines and jewelry, including a miniature bronze dog, a sphinx-shaped bracelet ornament, and a necklace, said antiquities chief Zahi Hawass. “Thanks to the generosity and ethical behavior of the Met, these 19 objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun can now be reunited with the other treasures of the boy king,’’ Hawass said.

ERUSALEM — Ehud Netzer, an Israeli archeologist best known for excavating King Herod’s winter palace and discovering the monarch’s tomb there, died after falling at the site this week. He was 76. Mr. Netzer led numerous high-profile digs over decades of work in a country where the ancient past plays a central part in national life and where archeologists have sometimes become leading public figures. Israel’s prime minister released a statement mourning his death. Mr. Netzer’s discoveries helped expand modern understanding of ancient...

NAZARETH, Israel - Just days before Christmas, archeologists unveiled the remains yesterday of what may have been the home of one of Jesus’s childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of about 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood. Archeologists and present-day residents of Nazareth imagined Jesus as a youngster, playing with other children in the isolated village, not far from the spot where, according to the Gospels, the Archangel Gabriel revealed to Mary that she would give birth to the...

KIBBUTZ TZUBA, Israel -- Archeologists think they've found a cave where John the Baptist baptized many of his followers -- basing their theory on thousands of shards from ritual jugs, a stone used for foot cleansing, and wall carvings telling the story of the biblical preacher. Only a few artifacts linked to New Testament figures have ever been found in the Holy Land, and the cave is potentially a major discovery in biblical archeology. "John the Baptist, who was just a figure from the Gospels, now comes to life," British archeologist Shimon Gibson said during...

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, a short-lived Confederate prison camp began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for it in southeastern Georgia. They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem, and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost. Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced yesterday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia...