All posts tagged: Archaeologist

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

Under Notre Dame cathedral, a ‘dig of the century’ unearths 1,700 years of history

Published by Sam Flores

PARIS (AP) — Wilting in the summer sun, a line of tourists waits to climb Notre Dame cathedral and meet its gargoyles. Four meters (13 feet) beneath them, a team of archaeologists is digging the other way — straight down and back in time, to Roman Paris 2,000 years ago. In 2019, fire brought Notre Dame’s spire crashing down as the world watched. The cathedral was rebuilt and reopened in late 2024, and now Paris wants to soften the hot, bare square in front of it with trees and shade. But in a city this old, the soil cannot be turned until what lies beneath it is excavated, in case it is damaged during works. So a slice of Notre Dame’s forecourt has become an excavation site — an open pit ringed by barriers and crossed by a wooden walkway, a few steps from the line-up. A modern Da Vinci Code French media have dubbed it the “dig of the century.” “It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to …

Chinese Archaeologist Liu Bin Pleads Guilty to Corruption Charges

Chinese Archaeologist Liu Bin Pleads Guilty to Corruption Charges

Published by Jenni Sidey

Liu Bin, the Chinese archaeologist widely known for his work at the ancient city at Liangzhu, the so-called Venice of the Stone Age, pleaded guilty on May 20 to charges of taking bribes and embezzling research funds, Caixin Global reports. In the trial, which took place at Suichang County People’s Court in Zhejiang Province, Liu was accused of accepting more than 4.65 million yuan (about $690,000) in bribes and embezzling 300,000 yuan (about $45,000) from a research project related to the civilization at Liangzhu, reports Caixin, noting that he was detained by the authorities in December 2025 and arrested in February. Related Articles No penalty has been announced. After studying archaeology at Jilin University, Liu joined the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in 1985, later becoming deputy director and then director. He oversaw the excavation of Tomb No. 12 at Liangzhu in 1986 and then discovered the ruins of the city in 2007. China has argued, based on that find, that the lower Yangtze region was home to one of the earliest …

Archaeologist Who Found D’Artagnan’s Skeleton Arrested: Morning Links

Archaeologist Who Found D’Artagnan’s Skeleton Arrested: Morning Links

Published by José Betancourt

Good Morning! Dutch archaeologist Wim Dijkman was arrested and then released for taking some of the skeletal remains that are possibly of the fourth Musketeer, D’Artagnan. Congress rejected a bill to build a Smithsonian Museum dedicated to women. The Commission of Fine Arts approved plans to build Trump’s 250-foot triumphal arch. The Headlines ALL FOR ONE, AND ONE FOR ALL? The Dutch archaeologist involved in the recent discovery of what many hope are the remains of the 17th-century musketeer D’Artagnan—found beneath the floor of a church in Maastricht—was arrested and released after retaining some of the excavated skeletal remains, Le Figaro reports. The archaeologist, Wim Dijkman, remains the subject of a police investigation. When the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul parish in Maastricht’s Wolder neighborhood announced that stones on its church floor had unexpectedly sunk and a skeleton had been found beneath them, hopes ran high that the remains were those of D’Artagnan—born Charles de Batz de Castelmore, the real-life inspiration for Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel The Three Musketeers—who died near the site in the Battle of Maastricht in 1673.But Dijkman told Le Figaro that no stones sank by …

What Happens When a Globalized World Collapses: Archaeologist Eric Cline Explains How Bronze Age Civilizations Adapted, Survived or Vanished

What Happens When a Globalized World Collapses: Archaeologist Eric Cline Explains How Bronze Age Civilizations Adapted, Survived or Vanished

Published by José Betancourt

We live, as we’re often told, in the era of glob­al­iza­tion. In fact, we’ve been told it so often over the past few decades that it now hard­ly seems like an obser­va­tion worth mak­ing. But how­ev­er thor­ough­ly our era is defined by con­nec­tions between far-flung nations, soci­eties, economies, and cul­tures, we should­n’t flat­ter our­selves into think­ing we are pio­neers in a whol­ly new glob­al­ized real­i­ty. As clas­si­cist Eric Cline explains in this recent Big Think inter­view, an inter­con­nect­ed world flour­ished in the late Bronze Age, and espe­cial­ly the four­teenth and thir­teenth cen­turies BC. “Life was pret­ty good” in those days, he says, at least if you lived in one of the lands around the Mediter­ranean and Near East that con­sti­tut­ed what he calls the “ancient G8.” The mem­ber peo­ples of this ret­ro­spec­tive orga­ni­za­tion includ­ed the Myce­naeans and Minoans in Greece, the Hit­tites in mod­ern-day Turkey, the Assyr­i­ans and the Baby­lo­ni­ans in mod­ern-day Iraq, as well as the Cypri­ots, Egyp­tians, and Canaan­ites. Alas, as implied by the title of Cline’s 1177 BC: The Year Civ­i­liza­tion Col­lapsed, their …

Russian Hermitage Archaeologist Arrested in Poland Over Crimean Excavations

Russian Hermitage Archaeologist Arrested in Poland Over Crimean Excavations

Published by José Betancourt

A senior archaeologist at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has been arrested in Poland at the request of Ukrainian authorities, according to The Art Newspaper, who are seeking his extradition over alleged illegal excavations carried out in Crimea. Alexander Butyagin, who heads the Hermitage’s department focused on ancient archaeology of the northern Black Sea region, was detained in Poland in December 2025 while traveling in Europe for a lecture tour. A Warsaw appeals court upheld the arrest in February and ordered that he remain in custody until June 1 as the extradition process moves forward. Related Articles Ukrainian prosecutors accuse Butyagin of conducting archaeological work in Crimea without authorization from Ukrainian authorities after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Investigators say the excavations were carried out without the permits required under Ukrainian law. According to Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence agency, Butyagin was added in February 2025 to the government’s “War and Sanctions” registry, which tracks individuals accused of violating Ukrainian law in territories occupied by Russia. Ukrainian officials allege that an archaeological expedition he …

Ukraine Demands Extradition of Archaeologist for Illegal Excavations

Ukraine Demands Extradition of Archaeologist for Illegal Excavations

Published by Jenni Sidey

Ukraine has requested the extradition from Poland of an archaeologist who was detained in Warsaw earlier this month on suspicion of conducting illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea, according to the Polish media. The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office received the extradition request from Kyiv authorities for Oleksandr Butyagin, following his apprehension in Poland on December 4. Butyagin, 52, is an employee of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where he leads the archaeology division specializing in the Northern Black Sea region, which encompasses Crimea. Polish authorities arrested Butyagin in Warsaw while on a lecture tour across Europe, with a planned final destination in Belgrade. A Polish court placed him in custody until January 13 while the extradition process unfolds. Related Articles In November, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office charged Butyagin with illegal excavations of the ancient city of Myrmekion in the Kerch district of Crimea from 2014 to 2019 without permits from Ukrainian authorities, allegedly resulting in significant damage to the site. The Ukrainian security service SBU said in a statement that Butyagin’s archaeological team …

Egyptian Archaeologist Vows to Bring Nefertiti Bust Back from Germany

Egyptian Archaeologist Vows to Bring Nefertiti Bust Back from Germany

Published by Jenni Sidey

Zahi Hawass, a well-known Egyptian archaeologist, renewed his promise to bring an ancient bust of Nefertiti home this week, claiming that his country was readier than ever to host it once more, thanks to the recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza. He called once more for Berlin’s State Museums to return the bust of Nefertiti, which dates to ca. 1351 BCE–1334 BCE and is among the most famous ancient Egyptian artifacts held outside Egypt. It has repeatedly faced calls for repatriation across the years, and was very nearly given back to Egypt during World War II, when the Nazi regime thought that doing so would help Germany curry favor with Egyptians. Related Articles Ludwig Borchardt, a German Egyptologist, found the bust in 1912 at Tell Al-Amarna and brought it back with him. Since 2009, the bust has been on view at the Neues Museum. Germany has maintained that the bust was exported legally. Hawass’s position on what really happened in 1912 has changed over time. In 2010, Hawass told National Geographic that …

Was the Baghdad Battery Actually a Battery?: An Archaeologist Demystifies the 2,000-Year-Old Artifact

Was the Baghdad Battery Actually a Battery?: An Archaeologist Demystifies the 2,000-Year-Old Artifact

Published by José Betancourt

Image by Ironie, via Wikimedia Commons The average Open Culture reader may well be aware that there is such a thing as Archaeology YouTube. What could come as more of a surprise is how much back-and-forth there is within that world. Below, we have a video from the channel Artifactually Speaking in which Brad Hafford, a University of Pennsylvania archaeologist, gives his take on the so-called Baghdad Battery, an ancient artifact discovered in modern-day Iraq. He does so in the form of a response to an earlier video on the Baghdad Battery from another channel hosted by a young archaeology educator called Milo Rossi. At some points Hafford agrees, and at others he has corrections to make, but surely both YouTubers can agree on the fascination of the object in question. After all: an ancient battery? Even those of us without any particular investment in archaeology may find our curiosity piqued by the notion that some long-vanished civilization had managed to harness electricity. The name Baghdad Battery was granted in the first place by Wilhelm …