Archaeology News: January 16, 2012

Department of Archaeology and Heritage in Umm Al Qaiwain has announced new discoveries at al-Dur archaeological site, north eastern of the emirate.

Archaeologists will carry out a three-week excavation at Birley Fields in Hulme before a new university campus is built on the land.One aim of the project is to find remains of a farm that could date back to the late Medieval period – thought to be the first time people lived in the area.

Archaeologists from Egypt and Switzerland have unearthed the 1,100-year-old tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings.

It is the only tomb of a woman not related to the ancient royal families ever found in the valley, said Mansour Boraiq, the senior official at the Antiquities Ministry in Luxor.

The Field Museum plans a rare display of mummies from its own collection, many of which haven't been seen by the public since the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893.

The complete H.L. Hunley was unveiled in South Carolina after a decade of conservation work that has kept most of it hidden from view. In 1864, the Confederate submarine torpedoed the Union warship Housatonic, but then sank, killing its crew of eight. “The submarine was a perfect time capsule of everything inside,” said archaeologist Ben Rennison.

Archaeologists are investigating the site of a future Irish Cultural Museum, which will be built in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The Northern Tutchone people did not become dependent upon Fort Selkirk, a fur trading post in the Yukon, according to research conducted by Victoria Castillo of Yukon College and the University of Alberta. She found few First Nation artifacts at the fort, indicating that not much trade took place.

The contents of a bathroom dating to the late 1850s  have been removed from Dunleith Plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, and will be reassembled in a Greek Revival mansion in Natchez National Historical Park. Jeff Mansell of the National Park Service says that there are fewer than 20 such bathrooms left in the country.