This week in archaeology

News from the trenches! (9 pictures)

Diyarbakır province, Turkey: 1,700-year-old temple reveals ancient religion in east Anatolia

As part of the excavations conducted over the last four years at the Zerzevan Castle in Diyarbakır province, where an underground church, underground shelter and secret passages were discovered formerly, a 1,700-year-old underground temple, belonging to the Mithras religion, has recently been unearthed.

Sauce: https://www.dailysabah.com/history/2017/05/02/1700-year-old-temple-reveals-ancient-religion-in-east-anatolia

Aarhus, Denmark: Denmark’s Bog Dogs

A salvage excavation at the site of a new housing development near Aarhus, Denmark, has revealed the remains of sacrificial victims, including a headless woman and eight dogs, who were dropped into a bog more than 2,000 years ago.

Sauce: http://www.archaeology.org/issues/202-1601/trenches/3935-trenches-denmark-bog-dogs

Livescience: Frozen in Time: DNA May ID Sailors Looking for Northwest Passage in 1845

Scientists have extracted DNA from the skeletal remains of several 19th-century sailors who died during the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, whose goal was to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage.

With a new genetic database of 24 expedition members, researchers hope they'll be able to identify some of the bodies scattered in the Canadian Arctic, 170 years after one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.

Sauce: http://www.livescience.com/58797-dna-sailors-on-1845-arctic-expedition.html

ScienceNews: Ötzi the Iceman froze to death

Ever since Ötzi’s mummified body was found in the Italian Alps in 1991, researchers have been trying to pin down how the 5,300-year-old Tyrolean Iceman died. It now looks like this Copper Age hunter-gatherer simply froze to death, perhaps after suffering minor blood loss from an arrow wound to his left shoulder, anthropologist Frank Rühli of the University of Zurich reported April 20 at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Sauce: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/otzi-iceman-froze-death

The Lower Silesian wilderness, Poland:
In the Lower Silesian Wilderness , archaeologists have found remnants of the castle belonging to the Piast dynasty prince Bolek II the Small (died in 1368) - the last independent Piast prince in Silesia. The ruins are located in the village of Nowoszów (Neuhuas), abandoned after 1945, on the border of the provinces Lubuskie and Dolnośląskie.

Sauce: http://scienceinpoland.pap.pl/en/news/news,413952,archaeologists-have-discovered-a-lost-castle-in-the-lower-silesian-wilderness.html

Denmark: Danish Vikings 'may have made their own wine'

Studies of grape pips point to wine production in Denmark during the time of the Vikings.

The Vikings liked alcohol, but while it is easy enough to grow crops and produce beer in the Danish climate, wine is a different challenge and was thought to have always been imported from southern parts of Europe to northern countries. But new research has showed that at least one of the two oldest grape cores found in Denmark was grown locally, reports science news site Videnskab.dk.

Sauce: https://www.thelocal.dk/20170426/danish-vikings-may-have-made-their-own-wine

Denmark: Famous Bronze Age Dane was 'immigrant'

A Bronze Age woman whose remains were uncovered in a famous 1930s archaeological discovery in southern Denmark migrated to the country from distant lands, new research has revealed.
A groundbreaking new study has shown that the Skrydstrup Girl, who was discovered in a burial mound in 1935, was neither born nor raised in Denmark.

Sauce: https://www.thelocal.dk/20170410/famous-bronze-age-dane-was-immigrant-research

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