An ancient religious complex, dating back 2,000 years, has been uncovered in Le Mans, France.

Excavations near the antique city of Vindunum (now Le Mans) have revealed a vast religious site dating from the first to the third centuries AD with remarkably well-preserved offerings.

Sometimes archaeology requires imagination. And you need it to conjure up the vast complex of temples that stood nearly 2,000 years ago on this flat two-hectare strip of land, in what is now Neuville-sur-Sarthe, 4km to the north of Le Mans.

“I have been an archaeologist for 30 years, and I’ve been lucky enough to work on some wonderful digs. But this is an exceptional discovery, the sort that all archaeologists dream of making once in their lives,” said Gérard Guillier, who heads the team from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) that has been poring over this piece of land since June. The team has no time to lose because in the autumn this former Gallo-Roman sanctuary will be transformed into an “urban development zone”.

After an aerial assessment that revealed the shape of the ancient buildings in the wheat fields, followed by the some underground probing, mechanical diggers were sent in to clear the surface of the site. Unfortunately the blocks of limestone and sandstone from the antique buildings had disappeared, salvaged over the centuries for other building work in the area. Only a few stones bear witness to the original temple structures. Young archaeologists uncover them delicately one at a time, using trowels, scrapers and brushes. Every stone is numbered, drawn and its location marked on a map.

“Given the size of the site, hundreds of pilgrims, possibly thousands, would have come here to honour the gods,” said Guillier. “They probably held other mass events here too.”

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A group of masons are participating in an unusual architectual experiment in central France, creating an entire medieval castle in painstaking detail. [Thx Daniel]

The Chateau de Guedelon was started in 1998, after local landowner Michel Guyot wondered whether it would be possible to build a castle from scratch, using only contemporary tools and materials.

Today, the walls are rising gradually from the red Burgundy clay. The great hall is almost finished, with only part of the roof remaining, while the main tower edges past the 15m (50ft) mark.

Builders use sandstone quarried from the very ground from which the castle is emerging.

Modern cement did not exist in the 13th Century, so mortar is made from slaked lime and sand. For tools they have basic ironware.

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The BBC has posted a collection of poignant photographs showing some of the 6,000 personal artifacts that were recovered from WWI mass graves in Fromelles, France.

More than 6,000 artefacts were recovered with the bodies of 250 Australian and British World War I soldiers at Pheasant Wood in the French village of Fromelles. they include this Bible page with passages underlined.

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Testing has shown that the “remains” of Joan of Arc, kept in Chinon, France, are a mummified cat leg bone and a human rib, both dating back to the 6th-3rd century B.C.

A few years ago, Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincare Hospital in Garches, France, and his team first determined that the bottle contained an approximately 4-inch-long human rib covered with a black coating. It also housed part of a cat femur covered with the same coating, three fragments of “charcoal” and “a brownish textile scrap” about the same length as the rib.

Charlier said some historians then speculated that a cat, perhaps symbolizing the devil, was thrown onto Joan of Arc’s funeral pyre.

Carbon dating, however, found that the objects predate the French heroine’s lifetime by many centuries.

The “textile scrap” is likely a mummy wrapping, since “the chemical composition of the coatings was comparable with that of embalming products, such as those used by the old Egyptians,” the researchers concluded.

The dark coating contained a mix of bitumen, wood resins, gypsum and other chemicals. Pine pollen was also identified, probably from pine resin, commonly used during Egyptian embalming.

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A neo-Gothic 19th-century church that dominates the town of Gesté, France, is to be torn down due to it’s size, condition, and budget concerns. It was built on the ruins of a 16th-century church that was destroyed in the French Revolution.

Although the church, dedicated to St. Peter, is arguably the sole architectural jewel in this town of 2,400 people, the town has decided to tear it down and replace it with a new one that will be far cheaper to keep up.

Erected in stages to accommodate 900 people, the formidable stone building has stood sadly empty since 2006. Completing the picture of dereliction, it is surrounded by a wire fence to protect visitors from the very real threat of crumbling stonework.

“Because of its size and complexity it will always be costly to maintain,” said Jean-Pierre Léger, 61, a retired engineer who is Gesté’s part-time mayor. “It is a victim of its considerable size. It is too big.”

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