Daily Archives: May 15, 2012

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Phil Kurz, working at the Office of the State Archaeologist, labels items unearthed at a recent dig near South Amana Photos by Tim Schoon.
May 15, 2012 0 Comments

Archaeologists excavate Iowa’s history to reveal the past

Sixty volunteers helped out with a 10-day dig this past March and April on the Amana Society farmland just outside of South Amana. They came from as far away as Minneapolis and St. Louis, but also from much closer to home, including a retiree from the Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) at the University of Iowa, which coordinated the dig.

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Small shell pendant left as an offering in the large communal building of Klimonas
May 15, 2012 0 Comments

The oldest farming village in the Mediterranean islands is discovered in Cyprus

The oldest agricultural settlement ever found on a Mediterranean island has been discovered in Cyprus by a team of French archaeologists involving CNRS, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History), INRAP, EHESS and the University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail. Previously it was believed that, due to the island’s geographic isolation, the first Neolithic farming societies did not reach Cyprus until a thousand years after the birth of agriculture in the Middle East (ca. 9500 to 9400 BCE).