Archaeologica.org

When a new construction project breaks ground in Shanghai, nobody can tell whether any ancient tombs or other cultural relics are buried underneath. This is because the government does not ask them to provide an "underground relics report" prior to a new project kicking off.

This fact is of worry to local archaeologists, as they often receive calls from construction workers claiming to have found old coffins or other relics while digging.

Minimalist wrote:

The basic concept isn't new, Saturno admitted. "Crop marks have been used in Europe for decades to identify Roman villas, moats, things like that," he told me. "It's a matter of there being slight changes in the soil over those ruins that, in a wheat field, leaves certain marks. Wheat over [the buried ruins of] a wall matures faster than the wheat next to the wall."

In those cases, the differences in the vegetation are clear enough to be seen by the naked eye from the air. "But the tropical forest is a very different environment," Saturno said.




GeoEye / Space Imaging
Maya settlement sites show up as yellowish
splotches in this false-color infrared image
of Guatemalan rain forest, sent from orbit
by the Ikonos satellite.

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The color differences are invisible to the naked eye. You have to identify far more subtle changes in the reflectivity of infrared wavelengths, as seen in multispectral satellite imagery. That's just what NASA archaeologist Tom Sever and scientist Dan Irwin were able to help Saturno do, using data from the Ikonos satellite. The trees that grew up over buried ruins showed up as yellowish splotches amid the surrounding shades of red and blue.

New Viking treasures found
Archaeologists have made a major discovery in Western Norway, unearthing well-preserved Viking graves from the 9th century full of riches

Unearthing the mystery of the priestly city of Nob

By Ran Shapira

The first biblical reference to the city of Nob is in Samuel I. During King Saul's reign, after the destruction of Shiloh, priests from the house of Eli resided in Nob, and the tabernacle was located there. After Saul discovered that one of the priests, Ahimelech ben Ahituv, gave David Goliath's sword, which was also kept in Nob, and that David had managed to escape, the king ordered all of Nob's inhabitants killed. "And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen and asses and sheep, with the edge of the sword." (1 Samuel 22:19)

Where did the ceramic vessels found in the dust come from? That question will apparently never be answered, but it is reasonable to conclude that they belonged to residents of a settlement near the quarry:

RUSSIAN archaeologists have uncovered the 2000-year-old remains of a warrior preserved intact in permafrost in the Altai mountains region, the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily says.

The warrior was blond had tattoos on his body. He was wearing a felt coat with sable fur trimmings and was buried in a wooden frame containing drawings of mythological creatures with an icepick beside him, the paper said.