Elgin! Elgin! Elgin! Oy! Oy! Oy!
With all the crises going on in Greece, it’s probably not surprising we haven’t heard much about the campaign to get the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles back for quite a while, but interestingly, over the past few weeks there’s doings afoot in Australia, of all places. First I read of an impending legal challenge in an article [...]
The Oracle at Rantidi!
I always like when really ‘obscure’ stuff shows up in the news … here’s the incipit of an item in the Pacific Northwest Inlander: There’s a rock off the southwestern tip of Cyprus that juts out of the sea. You can get there on the B6, a windy coastal road hewn out of rock in [...]
‘Forgotten’ Mithras Site ‘Reopens’
I wonder how many other sites are in similar circumstances … An ancient sanctuary of the Roman god Mithras, located in the Rodopi Mountains border region between Greece and Bulgaria, was shown for the first time since its discovery in 1915. The archaeological site is located 6 kilometres into Greece from the Greek-Bulgarian border, near [...]
The Daily Aztec – SPOTLIGHT: Olympic historian digs up ancient arena
Not a Classicist or Classical Archaeologist per se, but an important find at Alexandria Troas … here’s the incipit: He stood there, unnerved by the thickets and nasty spiders surrounding him. The temperature was more than 100 degrees, but he didn’t care; he had finally found the sphendone. Last summer San Diego State exercise and [...]
23,000 Years B.P. Stone Wall from Thessaly
A bit out of the period of our purview, but of interest for those first classes of Classical Civ: The oldest stone wall in Greece, which has stood at the entrance of a cave in Thessaly for the last 23,000 years, has been discovered by palaeontologists, the ministry of culture said Monday.The age of the [...]
Macedonian Coin Hoard
From Balkan Travellers: Around 20 coins with the image of the father of Alexander the Great, Philip II of Macedon, and “other ancient Macedonian rulers” were found by archaeologists during excavations along the road between the south-western Macedonian towns of Ohrid and Struga, national media reported today.In addition to the coins, a space with around [...]
Egalitarian Mycenean Burials?
Most of a very interesting item from the Independent: A team of archaeologists have unearthed five chamber tombs at Ayia Sotira, a cemetery in the Nemea Valley in Greece, just a few hours walk from the ancient city of Mycenae. The tombs date from 1350 – 1200 BC, the era in which Mycenae thrived as [...]
The Iklaina Archaeological Project
I may have mentioned this one before, but I just came across this website while trying to track down another one of those ‘spa therapy’ type claims which had one being found in the Palace of Nestor (they did find evidence of ‘rose scented oil’ there, but the claim is too vague to go further). [...]
Recent Thessaloniki Finds
I forgot they were building a new metro in Thessaloniki … I guess that explains why there seem to be so many antiquities smuggling cases there of late. Anyhoo … from the ANA: A large early Christian Basilica (1st to early 4th century AD) and an important late Byzantine period (1204-1430) building were unearthed at [...]
Recent Finds from Knossos
As my one son works on a high school paper about Knossos, it’s interesting that they still find things there: Geophysical studies at Kefala Hill in the Knossos archaeological site on Crete island, have revealed findings of the most ancient farm houses in Greece, and perhaps in all of Europe, dating back between 7,000- 6,400 [...]
Hellenistic Tombs
Haven’t heard of any reports of this in any greater detail, alas: Eight tombs dating to the Hellenist Period were partially revealed recently in the region of Gonous, Larissa prefecture, after flooding caused by heavy rainfall swept away a rural dirt road. The Archaeological Service subsequently conducted an excavation, which brought to light the tombs [...]
Burial in the Aigai Agora?
Excerpt from an interesting item about a burial from Aigai in the Associated Press: The find in the ruins of Aigai came a few meters (yards) from last year’s remarkable discovery of what could be the bones of Alexander the Great’s murdered teenage son, according to one expert. Archaeologists are puzzled because both sets of [...]
