A fourth gate has been found which leades to the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi.

The People’s Daily Online says the north gate is huge, some 93 metres (about 280 feet) tall by seven (21 ft) metres and was built in the north facing wall of the tomb’s outer city, and is more than 400 metres (about 1,200 feet) from the east and west walls.

A platform made of rammed earth has been found at both eastern and western sections of the northern wall, the western one being 4,4 metres long (13,5 ft). The gate itself, presumably made of wood, has collapsed and so far, the archaeologists have found only earth.

Until now, scholars were unsure whether the north gate really existed and the orientation of the tomb was not clear. The report speculated the first emperor’s tomb could run from south to north.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

The skeleton of a mongrel who went down with the Mary Rose on July 19, 1545 has been pieced together.

The dog, now preserved as an almost complete canine skeleton, acquired the nickname Hatch after divers discovered her remains near the sliding hatch door of the Mary Rose’s carpenter’s cabin.

Experts believe the hound, estimated to have been between 18 months and two years old, earned her keep as the ship’s ratter – superstitious Tudor seafarers did not have cats on board ship as they were thought to bring bad luck.

And she was probably very good at her job – only the partial remains of rats’ skeletons have been found on board the Mary Rose.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

Archaeologists in Tasmania have found what they believe to be the oldest, most southerly site of human habitation in the world.

Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart.

Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in the world.

It is believed up to 3,000,000 artefacts could be buried there.

Dozens of protesters have been arrested and 19 people have been charged over protests aimed at trying to stop the roadwork in recent months.

Fiona Newson from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land and Sea Council says the Tasmanian Goverment needs to take the latest report from archaeologists seriously.

“We’re talking about a worldwide significant site in regards to the scientific values and heritage values,” she said.

“It would be a total waste and not a good look on Tasmania if they were going to destroy it.”

[Full story] [Discuss here]

Researchers in Israel believe they have identified the site of the biblical city of Neta’im, mentioned in 1 Chronicles.

Based on its proximity to another biblical town, and archaeological ruins dating from the time of the biblical King David’s rule, researchers think Neta’im might have been located at the modern site called Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel.

Khirbet Qeiyafa contains the ruins of an ancient fortress city on top of a hill overlooking the Elah Valley. Pottery shards and burned olive pits at the site date to about 1,000 B.C. Most scholars think King David ruled during this time.

Archaeologists have previously associated Khirbet Qeiyafa with the biblical city Sha’arayim, which means “two gates,” because of the discovery of two gates in the fortress ruins, and because Sha’arayim was also associated with King David in the Bible. But now researchers claim this site is really Neta’im, a town mentioned in the book 1 Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

“The inhabitants of Neta’im were potters who worked in the king’s service and inhabited an important administrative center near the border with the Philistines”‘ said Gershon Galil, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa in Israel.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

Caravaggio has replaced Michaelangelo as Italy’s top artist.

By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.

That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip Sohm. He has studied the number of writings (books, catalogs and scholarly papers) on both of them during the last 50 years. Mr. Sohm has found that Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo.

He has charts to prove it.

The change, most obvious since the mid-1980s, doesn’t exactly mean Michelangelo has dropped down the memory hole. To judge from the throngs still jamming the Sistine Chapel and lining up outside the Accademia in Florence to check out “David,” his popularity hasn’t dwindled much.

But, charts or no charts, Mr. Sohm has touched on something. Caravaggiomania, as he calls it, implies not just that art history doctoral students may finally be struggling to think up anything fresh to say about Michelangelo. It suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people. His otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric, which, for postwar generations, now belongs with the poetry of Alexander Pope or plays by Corneille as admirable but culturally remote splendors.

[Full story] [Discuss here]