world’s largest hoard of Celtic coins on display at Jersey Museum

Archaeologists put world’s largest hoard of Celtic coins on display at Jersey Museum

 

Two years after a pair of metal detectorists found the world’s largest collection of buried Celtic coins, the Le Catillon II hoard is about to go on public display in a tale of life in northern France and the Channel Islands, covering the Roman occupation of Gaul and featuring a Roman chariot burial from Normandy. Reg Mead and Richard Miles spent 30 years searching for the coins before triumphing in 2012. More than 70,000 pieces are thought to be clumped in the solid mound of metal and earth, weighing three quarters of a ton and left as it was when it was gingerly lifted from the soil. Read more.

Artifact Trove at Egyptian Tomb Illuminates Life Before Pharaohs

Artifact Trove at Egyptian Tomb Illuminates Life Before Pharaohs

 

A recently discovered tomb at a key Egyptian settlement has yielded the largest trove of artifacts ever found in a tomb there—including a young man’s burned and scattered bones—and is shedding new light on the ancestors of the pharaohs. Part of a cemetery complex that predates the formation of the ancient Egyptian state, the find is one of the richest “predynastic” burials archaeologists have ever seen.
The tomb, at the site known as Hierakonpolis, yielded 54 objects, including combs, spearheads, arrowheads, and a figurine made of hippopotamus ivory. Arrayed around the tomb are dozens more burials, including possible human sacrifices and exotic animals. Read more.

Dead Sea Scrolls: Fragments of biblical treasure are up for sale

Associated Press, 'Dead Sea Scrolls: Fragments of biblical treasure are up for sale', May 26, 2013.

Parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are up for sale — in tiny pieces. Nearly 70 years after the discovery of the world's oldest biblical manuscripts, the Palestinian family who originally sold them to scholars and institutions is now quietly marketing the leftovers — fragments the family says it has kept in a Swiss safe deposit box all these years. Most of these scraps are barely postage-stamp-sized, and some are blank. But in the last few years, evangelical Christian collectors and institutions in the U.S. have forked out millions of dollars for a chunk of this archaeological treasure. This angers Israel's government antiquities authority, which holds most of the scrolls, claims that every last scrap should be recognized as Israeli cultural property, and threatens to seize any more pieces that hit the market.

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Pot Found by Flinders Petrie Turns up in Private Hands

Battered pot found in Cornish garage unlocks Egypt excavation secrets

 

A battered pot found in a garage in Cornwall, broken in antiquity and broken again and mended with superglue some 5,500 years later, was treasure – but the scruffy little cardboard label it held is now unlocking a lost history of finds from excavations in Egypt scattered across the world in the late 19th century. The pot came with an odd family legend that back in the 1950s it was accepted in lieu of a fare by a taxi driver in High Wycombe. Alice Stevenson, curator at the Petrie Museum in London, which among its 80,000 objects has the original excavation records and hundreds of pieces from the same Egyptian cemetery, believes the story is true and may even have identified the mysterious passenger. Read more.

Israeli Archeologist Says he has Found King David's Citadel

Eli Shukron, an archeologist formerly with Israel's Antiquities
Authority, walks in the City of David archeological site
near Jerusalem's Old City. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Associated Press, 'Israeli archaeologist says he has found King David's citadel', Oregonlive May 08, 2014:

An Israeli archaeologist says he has found the legendary citadel captured by King David in his conquest of Jerusalem, rekindling a longstanding debate about using the Bible as a field guide to identifying ancient ruins. The claim by Eli Shukron, like many such claims in the field of biblical archaeology, has run into criticism. It joins a string of announcements by Israeli archaeologists saying they have unearthed palaces of the legendary biblical king, who is revered in Jewish religious tradition for establishing Jerusalem as its central holy city — but who has long eluded historians looking for clear-cut evidence of his existence and reign. The present-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also wrapped up in the subject. The $10 million excavation, made accessible to tourists last month, took place in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem and was financed by an organization that settles Jews in guarded homes in Arab areas of east Jerusalem in an attempt to prevent the city from being divided. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as the capital of a future independent state. Shukron, who excavated at the City of David archaeological site for nearly two decades, says he believes strong evidence supports his theory. 

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