47 Times Archaeologists Dug Up Surprising Finds That Should Have Been Major News

We discovered a previously unknown ice age human population in southern Arabia.

In Egypt a female Egyptian Priest was found buried nearby one of the pyramids.
Female priestess are not to believe to be common, so this discovery is truly remarkable and makes us see the life of an high power priestess over 4000 years ago.

In the Netherlands a whole bunch or Roman boats were found almost completely intact. They were probably used to go up and down the rivers of the Roman border to supply the forts with food/ammo etc.

I live along Hadrian wall. And my god it's been so well kept there are daily finds. From bath house Sandles, leather boots various clothing just tapping into house Romans lived and how culture and tradition still stayed intact all the way north of England far from Rome.

In my hometown of Luebeck in northern germany they found a latrine from the middle-age and analysed the genes of the tapeworms in it or something and apparently that dude that pooped there has once also pooped in England cause his DNA has been found in tapeworms there as well

I'm primarily an Egyptologist but I work for a UK regional archaeology crew, and recently they found a specific vessel which was very unusual. Its hard to describe but I couldn't find a picture, but it was a smallish clay pot, which had been made on a wheel and was incredibly well-made, but the neck of it was tiny, and it pinched in and out at points. Bad description I know. Anyway, we got it dated to around the Stuart era, and gave it over to a potter who we sometimes worked with, so he could attempt to make a copy.

He couldn't do it. He made a lovely pot, but it was nothing like the original. He explained that he couldn't get the clay thin enough to pinch like the original, because his hands were simply too big to make a pot with a neck of that size.

So after a lot of thought they came to a conclusion that it must have been children making these pots (I suggested women but it turned out even womens hands were too big). Based on other circumstantial evidence from the same context, this was from a relatively poor family, who trained their children in the same trade as them to create beautiful pottery to sell to the elites. In the Stuart era, that style of pottery was around a lot, but it had started not too far from the city we found it in, so we figured they must have been copying the popular style. It's so interesting to think that a child, probably no more than 8, made such a beautiful piece of work.

EDIT - Just adding for clarification as it seems to have confused some people - when I said I'm an Egyptologist, I mean that's my main link to archaeology. The pot I'm talking about here is from a regional archaeology find - it's Stuart, as in its English and dates from the 15th/16th centuries. Its not Egyptian, just to clear up any confusion!

Though discovered quite a few years back, Gobekli Tepe only recently escaped the controversy of its significance. Now widely considered to quite possibly be the first temple of worship the site has caused a rethinking of early humankind's spiritual practices.

To give you an idea, Gobekli Tepe is estimated to be six millennia older than Stonehenge.

Also, I am not an archeologist, so here are so further details.

Not an arcaeologost, but a major in paleontology!

A well preserved t-rex skeleton has been discovered in Saskatchewan. They named the new World's largest & oldest T-rex skeleton.

I have always loved dinosaurs, sorry that it doesn't fully relate to the reddit question.

Source

The recent discovery of tree climbing humans with monkey feet as recent as 40,000 yrs ago Indonesia.

A couple of Viking ships and settlements have been found recently in Norway using LIDAR.

Three articles, unfortunately only the first is in English:

NIKU

TU

NRK

I'm an archaeological geophysicist. At the end of last year, I found a Roman theatre in a Roman town near Hull, UK. I've just completed a second survey there, with a couple of new buildings, but nothing as exciting as the theatre.

The lost city of Etzanoa, home to as many as 20,000 inhabitants was discovered in southern Kansas. The site was also the location of a battle between the Spanish and the Native American inhabitants.

A thousand years before folk decided to pile up rocks on Salisbury Plain the Orkney Islands probably held the most important religious sites in Britain.

Discovery last year of a ceramic wine vessel, decorated with grape clusters, from Tiblisi, Georgia, pushing back the archaeological evidence for a functioning winery and vinicultural industry in the Transcaucuses 1000 years (from Areni One and Hajj Furiz Tepe) to over 8000 years ago. I'll drink to that!

Yesterday I was reading they found a mixed Denisovan and Neanderthal family in a cave with a mix breed 13 year old daughter.
So neat!

I'm an archaeologist who mostly works in the private sector. We find a lot of cool stuff, but almost everything we do is classified to some degree or another to discourage pot hunters and vandalism. This year I've found an extension of a really important Late Woodland (the period right before Europeans arrived in America) site, and worked on a very cool 19th century burial ground that had been partially destroyed out of negligence by a construction company, which is a big problem we run into. Both sites were super cool, but I can't get into specifics about where they're located!

That Australasians reached South America tens of thousands of years before the northern migration. They keep the remarks within the relatively accepted time frames of 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. But the hidden truth is there is evidence of settlements closer to the 100,000BCE mark.

News Scientist

Smithsonian Magazine

Orkney was the capital of neolithic Britain, turning the traditional map upside down.

Recently a tonne of phenomenal finds have been excavated in Britain. Examples being a preserved iron age shield found in Leicestershire, which changes how we perceived Iron Age British tribal equipment in combat, hoping it will open the door to a broader understanding of the military capabilities of this period, and that C14 dating will give us a more specific dating assessment.

I've mainly worked in classical Greek and Imperial Roman archaeology and Vindolanda is one such site which has been pumping out phenomenal research and artifact findings. being a reasonably well preserved Roman fort along Hadrian's wall, artifacts are found daily. During the past couple of weeks, finds have ranged from leather shoes, tent canvas, even bathhouse sandals to prevent you burning your feet on the hot tiles. These finds have opened a window of immense understanding of daily life within a Roman defensive fort.

Don't know how major or interesting this is but in Athens in the area of Faliro (Φάληρο) (which used to be the port of ancient Athens before it was moved to Piraeus) during some excavations for the construction of a cultural center, a huge cemetery was discovered. An entire year of construction was put on hold (and this is a frequent problem in Athens, major construction work running into ancient buried buildings which now have to be preserved).

Apparently the cemetery is interesting not only because it hosts many dead babies and children, which were buried inside vessels, (infant mortality rate was very high) but also many prisoners and criminals who were executed. There's also a mass grave of about 80 shackled men.

It has been speculated the mass grave may be related to Cylon of Athens, a winner in the Olympics and wannabe tyrant, who tried to stage a coup by taking over the Acropolis but was promptly chased out of there by Megacles (of a powerful Athenian clan) and escaped to Megara. His followers sought refuge in the altar of Athena Polias. Anyone present at an altar was considered to be under the protection of the gods, and was not allowed to be harmed. They agreed to descend the Acropolis afted being promised they would be left unharmed but were slaughtered nonetheless by the followers of Megacles, as they considered the men unworthy of the gods' protection.