Two 18th century glass bottles of cherries have been discovered in the cellar of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. The dark green glass bottles were found still sealed and upright. Their shape dates them to the 1740s or 50s, and since a brick floor was laid above them in the 1770s, that means they haven’t seen the light of day since before the Revolutionary War. Mount Vernon Principal Archaeologist Jason Boroughs said, “This incredible discovery at Mount Vernon is a significant archaeological find. Not only did we recover intact, sealed bottles, but they contained organic material that ..read more

Archaeologists have found a Neolithic “revenant grave” near Oppin in Saxony-Anhalt. The deceased was pinned under a large stone to prevent him rising from the grave to wreak havoc with the living. Precise dating has yet to be done, but evidence suggests it is a Bell Beaker culture grave from around 4,200 years ago. If the preliminary dating proves accurate, this is the first deviant burial from the period discovered in central Germany. Excavations in advance of power line expansion work uncovered the grave of an adult male between 40 and 60 years old. There were no grave goods interred with hi ..read more

A long stretch of a Roman colonnaded street has been discovered in the resort town of Antalya, southern Turkey. So far a section of wall 100 meters (328 feet) long has been uncovered, but archaeologists expect to find much more, up to 800 meters (half a mile) of the colonnaded wall. The massive wall was unearthed during an excavation of around the Hıdırlık Tower, a landmark of the city that was built in the 2nd century A.D. and is the one of the oldest surviving monuments in the city. Located at the intersection of the city walls and the sea wall, the original square base may have been built ..read more

The exploration of the wreck of the 15th century Danish royal warship Gribshunden has uncovered a unique late medieval weapons chest. It is a zeuglade, an ammunition storage and production toolbox that we know from illustrations around that time often accompanied armies on battlefields. Gribshunden sank in the Blekinge archipelago after a fire broke out when it was anchored off the Baltic coast of southern Sweden in 1495. The royal flagship was carrying King Hans of Denmark and Norway, but he and his retinue had already disembarked on their way to meet with the regent of Sweden when the ship c ..read more

One of the oldest garden mazes in Europe is reopening to the public after years of closure this weekend. The boxwood hedge maze at the Bufalini Castle in San Giustino, about 30 miles from Perugia in central Italy’s Umbria region, has been continuously maintained since the 17th century. The original medieval fortress built by the Ghibelline Dotti family was destroyed in the late 15th century by order of the Republic of Florence. In 1487, it was transferred to Niccolò Bufalini who employed military architects to transform it into a square fortress with four towers in the corners surrounded by a ..read more

A new study of the skeletal remains of two women discovered at the Middle Neolithic (4250-3600 B.C.) site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux in southern France has revealed they were ritually murdered by an agonizing method still utilized today by the Mafia: by tying their necks to their bent legs until they inevitably strangled themselves. The Italian mob calls this torturous execution method “incaprettamento” (literally “ingoatment” because they’re strung up like goats on a spit), but the Neolithic version one-ups even the cruelty of organized crime by burying the victims alive. Saint-Paul-Trois-C ..read more

As if the fact that Tracy and Rory Vorster found a hidden trap door on a ledge above their toilet in their home in Lincoln weren’t cool enough, when they opened it, they found a slab of stone carved with a grotesque face bearing a striking resemblance to local icon, the Lincoln Imp. A hole in the open mouth suggested it had been a drain of some sort, or perhaps a urinal. When it was examined by an expert at the Lincoln Civic Trust, the initial impression was confirmed: it was a drain from the middle or late 14th century. [The couple] said the discovery is an example of why Lincoln is “amazing ..read more

A 2,500-year-old Greek-Illyrian helmet has been discovered in the village of Zakotorac on Croatia’s Pelješac peninsula. It was unearthed by archaeologists from the Dubrovnik Museums at the Gomile cave tomb site where rich graves from the second half of the 1st millennium B.C. have been discovered since the excavation project began in 2020. This is the second Greco-Illyrian helmet found in the Gomile excavations. The previous example was found in a grave along with fragments of iron weapons and thus likely belonged to a member of the warrior elite who was buried there. The recently-discovered h ..read more

The Roman lead coffin discovered in Garforth, near Leeds, in 2022 will go on display for the first time in an exhibition at the Leeds City Museum next month. The coffin was unearthed in an excavation of a previously unknown cemetery containing burials of more than 60 men, women and children from the late Roman and early Saxon periods. The lead coffin was used as the inner lining of a larger wood coffin which has decayed leaving only the metal interior in place. Lead coffins were expensive and rare, only affordable by the elite of Romano- British society. Pieces of jewelry — a bracelet, glass b ..read more

Archaeologists have discovered a hoard of silver bracteates from the 12th century in a grave at the Brahekyrkan church in Visingsö, southern Sweden. It is rare to find extensive grave goods in Christian graves, and large numbers of coins have been found in only a handful of burials from the period. What makes this find unique is that some of these coins are completely unknown on the archaeological record. The county museum archaeologists were overseeing the installation of the church’s new geothermal heating system in mid-March of this year when a skeleton was discovered in a shaft where wirin ..read more