Archaeology news for May 27-June 8

[archersangel]

Tool Sites, Up to 12,000 Years Old, Discovered on California Island

On a rugged island just offshore from Ventura County, archaeologists have turned up evidence of some of the oldest human activity in coastal Southern California.

On Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the Channel Islands, researchers have found three sites scattered with ancient tool-making debris and the shells of harvested shellfish.

The youngest of the three sites has been dated to 6,600 BCE, but based on the types of tools found at the other two, archaeologists say they may be as much as 11,000 to 12,000 years old.

Black-Death Survey Reveals Incredible Devastation Wrought by Plague

The devastation wrought by the Black Death plague pandemic in medieval England has been revealed in a uniquely detailed archaeological study carried out for more than a decade with the help of thousands of village volunteers.

Although some historians have played down the impact of the bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the 1300s, new research shows that the Black Death was as deadly as described in writings that have survived from the time, with some villages suffering an almost 80 percent drop in population after the plague.

Oldest handwritten documents in UK unearthed in London dig

Tertius the Brewer, Junius the Cooper and Julius Classicus – the up-and-coming military commander who would turn traitor against Rome a decade later – have sprung back to life from the first decade of Roman London, their names – along with the first reference to London itself – miraculously preserved on writing tablets in a sodden hole in the heart of the City.

The wooden tablets, preserving the faint marks of the words written on bees wax with a metal stylus almost 2,000 years ago, are the oldest handwritten documents ever found in the UK.