#necropolis-excavation

#necropolis-excavation

The footage captured by Trevor Grassi shows dozens of square shafts carved into bedrock, many extending deep underground but primarily filled with sand, raising new questions about what may lie beneath the surface.

The study offers what the researchers describe as the first systematically identified burial site in Europe associated with plague burials, revealing a large buried structure filled with disturbed sediments and fragments of human bone.

Similar to four others unearthed nearby earlier this month, it is sitting upright at the bottom of a one-metre-wide pit. The skeleton's hands are resting in its lap. Like the others, its back is against the eastern wall, its face directed westward.

Five tombs of Gauls buried in a seated position have been discovered in central Dijon. Similar to four others unearthed nearby earlier this month, it is sitting upright at the bottom of a one-metre-wide pit. The skeleton's hands are resting in its lap. Like the others, its back is against the eastern wall, its gaze directed westward.

The significant number of ancestors held in UK museums is extremely distressing and symbolic of the colonial origins of these collections. We hope that the responses gathered by The Guardian will be shared with the relevant communities to support them in bringing their ancestors home.

The corrective fluid analysed using light infrared photography revealed a mixture of huntite and calcite, while images made using a 3D digital microscope show that there also are flecks of yellow orpiment, probably to make it blend in better with the fresh papyrus, which would have originally been pale cream in colour.

At least that's the mood director Gianfranco Rosi evokes in his mesmerizing documentary Pompei: Below the Clouds, which won a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last year and is finally being released theatrically in the U.S., ahead of a March 27 streaming premiere on Mubi. The apocalypse Rosi presents is not just the legendary one that destroyed the ancient Roman town of the film's title but an ongoing one that encompasses the calamities of our modern era as well as the rejuvenation that sometimes accompanies destruction.

This project demonstrates the combined power of science, the study of human remains and historical research to discover new information about the six mortuary chests and their occupants which would not have been available to us a generation ago.

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a 1,400-year-old tomb in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca that had been lost to history. The stone structure, built by the Zapotec culture, known as Be'ena'a, or 'The Cloud People', is adorned with sculptures, murals and carved symbols that suggest ritual significance. The Zapotec believed their ancestors descended from the clouds and that, in death, their souls returned to the heavens as spirits.

An ancient Egyptian papyrus held by the British Museum has been cited as possible evidence supporting some of the Bible's most controversial claims about giants. The 3,300-year-old document, known as Anastasi I, has been in the museum's collection since 1839 and has recently resurfaced on the Associates for Biblical Research, renewing interest in its possible links to biblical accounts. The papyrus describes encounters with the Shosu people, said to stand 'four cubits or five cubits' tall, up to eight feet in height.

The excavation ultimately unearthed 34 burials, 15 of them belonging to children between two and ten years old when they died. The graves are clustered in groups, probably reflecting family nuclei. Most the grave types are earthen pits covered with roof tiles angled against each other.

The coffins are elaborately painted in vivid polychrome. They were stacked in layers and carefully arranged so the 22 coffins fit into the constricted space. They were placed in 10 horizontal rows and the lids separated from the body of the coffin to maximize the limited space. There are no personal names on most of the coffins, but there are titles. The most common title found in the coffin is Singer of Amun or Chantress of Amun.

Both of the cyst graves feature funerary markers reused as building material. One of them contains the partially preserved tombstone of Legio I Italica centurion Gaius Valerius Verecundus was engraved with a wreath of which only traces remain and an inscription that describes him as having been heavily pressed by fate.

His investigation began after identifying recurring giant T-shapes, three-level indents, and step pyramids carved into ancient stones worldwide. 'These specific symbols that are built in different size proportions, and the symbols are found in ancient stones around the world, are not supposed to exist; no cultures are supposed to have any cross-platform,' LaCroix explained. The symbols appear in locations ranging from Turkey's Van region to South America and Cambodia.

More than 200 scans from multiple satellites, including Italy's Cosmo-SkyMed and the US-based Capella Space, showed uniform results suggesting massive pillars about 65 feet in diameter wrapped in spirals and plunging nearly 4,000 feet deep. Those pillars appear to end in 260-foot cubic chambers beneath all three pyramids and the Sphinx, which Biondi described as 'huge chambers' measuring roughly 260 feet in length and width.

The team identified multiple buildings aligned roughly west-east, in several sizes, ranging from about 8 × 7 metres to 14 × 8 metres. Within these structures are rectangular halls-some interpreted as spaces for worship-alongside smaller rooms that may have served devotional or practical functions for the monks. Excavators also noted evidence of plastered wall surfaces and tiled floors, as well as architectural features such as entrances and surviving supports, including beams.