The 3,500-year-old remains of a settlement have been found by an oasis in Egypt, revealing evidence of desert trade routes during the early days of the Egyptian civilization.

The settlement at Umm el-Mawagir in Egypt’s Kharga Oasis, more than 300 miles (500 kilometres) south of Cairo, has been excavated for the past year by a Yale University expedition, whose initial findings suggest it was an administrative post with massive baking facilities, possibly to feed local troops.

“The amount of bread production was pretty amazing,” said John Darnell, head of the expedition, citing discoveries of ovens, bread moulds and storerooms at the site, far out of proportion to its size.

“It’s probably a good bet they were basically baking enough bread to feed an army, literally,” he said.

The site was home to a few thousand inhabitants and also includes remnants of mudbrick buildings, similar to those used for administrative purposes in the Nile Valley to the east, suggesting close contact between the two regions.

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A substantial Egyptian settlement has been found in Kharga Oasis, Egypt.

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, announced that the settlement is dated to the Second Intermediate Period (ca.1650-1550 BC) and was discovered during excavation work as part of the Theban Desert Road Survey. This project serves to investigate and map the ancient desert routes in the Western desert.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the newly discovered settlement is 1km long from north to south and 250m wide from east to west. It lies along the bustling caravan routes connecting the Nile Valley of Egypt and the western oasis with points as far as Darfur in western Sudan. Hawass continued that archaeological evidence at the site indicated that its inhabitants were part of an administrative center and they were engaged in baking on a massive scale.

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Aerial photos taken by a police surveillance plan have revealed the location of an ancient Roman settlement in Italy.

Archaeologists say the site could be part of the mysterious city of Pausulae. The city is described by 1st century AD historian Pliny The Elder, and is believed to date from the late 2nd century BC.

Archaeologists from the surrounding Marche region identified from the photos a sprawling 20 hectare site criss-crossed by roads, with dwellings and buildings containing quadrangles and columns.

Thick walls enclose the settlement which is located in a river valley.

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A Native American settlement which dates back 1,400 years has been found south of Jerseyville, Illinois.

The archaeologists believe they have a village dating back to about A.D. 600, as well as archaeological deposits going back 4,000 to 5,000 years; also, on the east side of the highway, the archaeologists are conducting a more current excavation dating to the 1830s or 1840s.

“The excavations on the west side are yielding very well-preserved bone fragments, as well as pottery pieces,” Nolan said. “It appears this was a large communal village, but may not have been used year-round. Our later analysis of our data will have to tell us that.”

Some of the pits on the west side excavations are large, some smaller; some are storage pits, and some were trash pits. Two appear to have been kiln pits. To date, archaeologists have not found any evidence of homes, because they haven’t discovered any post pits. The large bell-shaped storage pit with the flagstone flooring is shaped such that it easily could have been sealed with a clay plug to keep rodents and other small animals out of the goods stored inside.

On the east side excavations, they are finding ample amounts of glass and pottery pieces dating to the 1830s and 1840s. While a much later time period, it is one that is not well-documented archaeologically. At that site, they have found what appears to be an old cistern and an odd, trench-like area that was known more to be a construction method of the French.

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A 12,000-year-old settlement has been found in Keene, New Hampshire.

Goodby is leading a team of archeologists excavating four areas on the site of the new Middle School. The site in only one of two this old known in Cheshire County — the other was discovered in the late 1970s in Swanzey — and only one of 15 of this age in the state.

The exact location of the dig is being kept secret to prevent looters from desecrating the sites and to preserve the team’s own painstaking work which has continued seven days a week for months.

Goodby was first hired by the Keene School District to examine the historic significance of the site as part of the permitting process to build near a wetland.

And it was good they did, since the team has discovered bits of history dating between 12,000 and 13,000 years old.

“Not very much at all is known about these people,” Goodby said. “What is very special about this site is that this is one of the very early sites. These were some of the first people to come into this area and the end of the ice age.”

Through digging deep soil test cores all across the flat and wet land area at the site, a geologist was able to get an historical picture of what the area looked like when the first people arrived in what was not yet Keene.

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