Here is another recent article about the discovery (or re-discovery) of a 13th century BCE tomb in Egypt. If you really look for this type of stuff (which I have been doing since this class started), it is amazing how often significant discoveries happen.
In the vast open areas of desert how do they figure out where to dig? Also when they discover these tombs, do they post guards to make sure that, if there are treasures, the tomb is not robbed?
ReplyDeleteNice find! Yes, the world is just filthy with history! Old ways of discovering these places included doing surface surveys with teams of people walking a grid across a large territory, collecting potsherds and things as they went and then digging where they found the largest number of sherds. Now they also use satellite imaging and surface magnetic resonance to find things long buried.
ReplyDeleteThey definitely post guards at archaeological sites. The countries' antiquities departments get involved, too. But when order breaks down, all bets are off. Here's a link to a site with images of the ancient city of Umma, turned into swiss cheese by looters since the Iraq war: http://sumerianshakespeare.com/127912.html.
I think some of the sites are found by accident, construction sites that are turned into archeological digs once the foundation has turned up fragments that lead to larger discoveries...
ReplyDeleteI agree. I've been finding lots of pictures and documents related to this stuff and quite a bit has been recent findings.
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