Archaeology News: July 18, 2011

First Look: Robert Willett's raw edit of an archeological dig on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at Historic in Raleigh, N.C. Yates Mills County Park.

1. As Egypt transitions to democracy, Egyptians from all walks of life are stepping up to protect the country’s ancient heritage.
   
2. The main Saturday morning news featured the troubles of professional archaeology. There were now, we were told,  7% fewer professional archaeologists than however many months ago and indeed archaeology was "more reliant on volunteers" than it had ever been before.
   
3. Archaeologists of Ohio Historical Society survey Great Circle Mound just below the surface Friday in preparation for a Labor Day weekend powwow.
   
4. The loss of the good ship Warwick was not the only disaster that this cruel storm brought with it. It also meant the total ruin of the winter’s crop of corn, to such a great extent that all the inhabitants were very worried about a shortage of food. They had good reason to be anxious, for even though the islands were prolific enough in every respect, and had two harvests every year, yet careless wastage had become the custom with most of the people’ C.F.E. Hollis Hallett, Butler’s History of the Bermudas, 2007
   
5. Four ancient Buddhist caves have reportedly been destroyed during mining activities in central India.
   
6. If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.
   
7. Excavation of a monastery complex in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan has revealed a large statue of a seated Buddha.
   
8. A rare statue of the Roman emperor Caligula was unearthed in a large nymphaeum south of Rome. The site was found when Italian police stopped looters from taking parts of the statue out of the country and archaeologists investigated the illegal dig.
   
9. It was only a few weeks ago that a team of academic professionals, college students and volunteers gathered from around the world to uncover what mysteries they could from Abner Landrum's kiln site at historic Pottersville, a forgotten community outside today's Edgefield.
   
10. In Montreal, archaeologists continue to look for traces of an early Canadian parliament building that was burned down by rioters in 1849.
    
11. Clean up of the BP oil spill has turned up artifacts along the Gulf Coast. “I was walking on marine shell, rangia clam shell, walking out on a point I know, when I looked down, found a pot sherd, and then I started finding more and more”.
    
12. Residents of Madisonville, Louisiana, are looking for the grave of the town’s founder, Jean Baptiste Baham, but nothing has been found at the site of his eighteenth-century plantation.
    
13. A boulder bearing a petroglyph was returned to the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area in southern Nevada by helicopter. It had been stolen in 2008 by a real estate agent who put it in his front yard.