REMAINS OF ROMAN DEFENCES DISCOVERED UNDER EXETER STATION SITE

Archaeologists working on the redevelopment of Exeter’s bus station have uncovered the remains of a Roman fort. The find has been described by an archaeology expert as “very important and completely unexpected.” The finds, which include coins and local pottery made in the area for the military, as well as fine red Samian tableware imported from France will be studied, and the results published.

First to be uncovered was a Roman ditch at the top end of the site between Bampfylde Street and Cheeke Street. Further excavations revealed two further large Roman ditches running parallel to each other. Experts have revealed that these belong to a new, and completely unknown, Roman military site, either a fort occupied by a military unit, or a defended depot or compound.

Both are typical Roman military ditches. The outer, eastern one has a steep V shaped profile, with a deep “ankle breaker” trench along the bottom. The inner, western one is larger and deeper, and would have been immediately in front of a rampart above it to the west. It has a much steeper, near vertical, outer side, which was designed to trap any attackers who got this far and to leave them at the mercy of the defenders on the rampart above. It also has a deep ankle breaker trench. Below is a reconstruction drawing of what the fortress defences would have looked like (image courtesy of Exeter City Council's former Archaeological Field Unit).

"This discovery of yet another new Roman “fort” within the city does demonstrate, along with that of the fortress and baths back in the 1970s and of several other new major military sites in the last decade, just how pivotal a role the Exeter area played in the first decades of the Roman conquest and subjugation of Britain, and how crucial development led archaeology has been in revealing this.”

NEW ARTIFACTS SUGGEST PEOPLE ARRIVED IN NORTH AMERICA EARLIER

The artifacts would be considered among the earliest evidence of people in North America.

The findings, published today in Science, add weight to the hypothesis that initial human migration to the Americas followed a Pacific coastal route rather than through the opening of an inland ice-free corridor, said Loren Davis, a professor of anthropology at Oregon State University and the study's lead author.

"The Cooper's Ferry site is located along the Salmon River, which is a tributary of the larger Columbia River basin. Early peoples moving south along the Pacific coast would have encountered the Columbia River as the first place below the glaciers where they could easily walk and paddle in to North America," Davis said. "Essentially, the Columbia River corridor was the first off-ramp of a Pacific coast migration route. "The timing and position of the Cooper's Ferry site is consistent with and most easily explained as the result of an early Pacific coastal migration."

Cooper's Ferry, located at the confluence of Rock Creek and the lower Salmon River, is known by the Nez Perce Tribe as an ancient village site named Nipéhe. Today the site is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Over the last two summers, the team of students and researchers reached the lower layers of the site, which, as expected, contained some of the oldest artifacts uncovered, Davis said. He worked with a team of researchers at Oxford University, who were able to successfully radiocarbon date a number of the animal bone fragments. The results showed many artifacts from the lowest layers are associated with dates in the range of 15,000 to 16,000 years old.

"Prior to getting these radiocarbon ages, the oldest things we'd found dated mostly in the 13,000-year range, and the earliest evidence of people in the Americas had been dated to just before 14,000 years old in a handful of other sites," Davis said. "When I first saw that the lower archaeological layer contained radiocarbon ages older than 14,000 years, I was stunned but skeptical and needed to see those numbers repeated over and over just to be sure they're right. So we ran more radiocarbon dates, and the lower layer consistently dated between 14,000-16,000 years old."

The dates from the oldest artifacts challenge the long-held "Clovis First" theory of early migration to the Americas, which suggested that people crossed from Siberia into North America and traveled down through an opening in the ice sheet near the present-day Dakotas. The ice-free corridor is hypothesized to have opened as early as 14,800 years ago, well after the date of the oldest artifacts found at Cooper's Ferry, Davis said. "Now we have good evidence that people were in Idaho before that corridor opened," he said. "This evidence leads us to conclude that early peoples moved south of continental ice sheets along the Pacific coast."

The oldest artifacts uncovered at Cooper's Ferry also are very similar in form to older artifacts found in northeastern Asia, and particularly, Japan, Davis said. He is now collaborating with Japanese researchers to do further comparisons of artifacts from Japan, Russia and Cooper's Ferry. He is also awaiting carbon-dating information from artifacts from a second dig location at the Cooper's Ferry site.

"We have 10 years' worth of excavated artifacts and samples to analyze," Davis said. "We anticipate we'll make other exciting discoveries as we continue to study the artifacts and samples from our excavations."

HUGE FIND OF SILVER COINS GIVES CLUES TO NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND

With their metal detectors and spades "detectors" are a common sight in the British countryside. When their equipment bleeps, they start to dig in the hope of finding something old and valuable. They are often seen as figures of fun—in fact, the BBC shows a comedy series about a pair of such amateur archaeologists which has a cult following. But part-time treasure hunters do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to discovering antiquities buried in fields across the UK.

Two such detectors, Lisa Grace and Adam Staples, recently uncovered a haul of more than 2,000 silver coins in Somerset in the south-west of England, dating back to the turbulent period following the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

In the years after William of Normandy defeated Harold II and took the throne, the Norman invaders were confronted by frequent rebellion. They responded by planting castles to subdue the population. The coin hoard found in the Chew Valley in Somerset dates from the years of unrest when William was establishing himself on the throne.

One of the largest hoards ever recovered from the years around 1066, it includes more than 1,000 coins minted in Harold's name and a similar number in William's. Harold had been king for only ten months at the time of his defeat and death in battle, so all the coins of Harold date from no earlier than January 1066. Some may have been minted in his name after his death, as a desperate measure by survivors to hold the regime together in the two months that elapsed between the Battle of Hastings and William's coronation. Funds were very important at moments when the succession to the throne lay in doubt.

It is certain at any rate that whoever concealed the hoard was a person of high rank, probably one of the nobility—a circle of no more than 150 landed aristocrats, many of whom were related. A coin hoard of this size may have been to pay for an army. But we might only guess whose army or whether the hoarder was a supporter or opponent of the Norman regime.

EGYPT'S CITY ALEXANDRIA FACING MENACE IN FORM OF CLIMATE CHANGE

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AP) — Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria, which has survived invasions, fires and earthquakes since it was founded by Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago, now faces a new menace in the form of climate change.

Rising sea levels threaten to inundate poorer neighborhoods and archaeological sites, prompting authorities to erect concrete barriers out at sea to break the tide. A severe storm in 2015 flooded large parts of the city, causing at least six deaths and the collapse of some two dozen homes, exposing weaknesses in the local infrastructure. Alexandria, the country’s second city, is surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea and backs up to a lake, making it uniquely susceptible to the rise in sea levels caused by global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global sea levels could rise by 0.28 to 0.98 meters (1-3 feet) by 2100, with “serious implications for coastal cities, deltas and low-lying states.”

The land on which Alexandria is built, along with the surrounding Nile Delta, is sinking at roughly the same rate, due in part to upstream dams that prevent the replenishment of silt and to natural gas extraction. That is expected to exacerbate the effects of the rise in sea level, with potentially catastrophic consequences. A 2018 study predicted that up to 734 square kilometers (more than 280 square miles) of the Nile Delta could be inundated by 2050 and 2,660 square kilometers (more than 1,000 sq. miles) by the end of the century, affecting 5.7 million people.

Authorities installed sea defenses to protect the neighborhood, which is home to an oil refinery, a cement plant and tanneries, but residents say it hasn’t made much of a difference. Huge cement barriers have been placed as reinforcement against rising water levels near the famed citadel in Egypt's port city of Alexandria. The city’s antiquities sites — those that survived its tumultuous history — are also under threat.

Rising sea levels threaten to inundate poorer neighborhoods and archaeological sites of Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city which draws hordes of tourists to its beaches in the summertime. “We are aware that this street, which survived for hundreds of years, could be underwater in the coming years, in our lifetime,” he said. “Every year the waves are stronger than in the previous one. The winter is harsher and the summer is more sweltering.”

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