Archaeologists from Newcastle University, in collaboration with English Heritage, have begin the first systematic excavation of a cemetery on Hadrians Wall in England, in order to preserve it effectively.

Hadrians Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Roman Empire across the width of what is now northern England.

An important Roman cremation cemetery, situated on a cliff edge, forms part of the World Heritage Site at Birdoswald Fort, Cumbria.

It is under serious threat from erosion, which has accelerated over the last few years.

English Heritage voiced concerns about erosion after it acquired the site in 2001 and began investigative work to establish whether it could be prevented.

Findings revealed that the cliff on which the fort and settlement of Birdoswald stand is under constant threat of erosion, caused by a combination of the river at the base of the cliff and water and frost action on the boulder clay at the top.

Excavation is therefore the only way to avoid the loss of this delicate archaeology.

Is an old railroad bridge a hiking trail? Come October 2 and that could be a new national park trivia question now that the Poughkeepsie-Highland railroad bridge in New York State has been designated a National Recreation Trail by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The “Walkway Over the Hudson” project on the Hudson River turned an historic railroad bridge that stretched more than a mile into a scenic biking and pedestrian pathway. Now it will become part of a national network of scenic, historic, and recreation trails.

“The Hudson River Valley is one of America’s most scenic geographic corridors, and this project will allow thousands of people to enjoy its beauty,” Secretary Salazar said. “I encourage all New Yorkers and visitors to New York to hike or bike the bridge when the trail opens.”

The trail, which is scheduled to open October 2, will transform the cantilever railroad bridge into a linear park and trailway. It will provide public access to the Hudson River's scenic landscape for pedestrians, hikers, joggers, bicyclists, and people with disabilities as well as connect to an extensive network of rail-trails, parks and communities on both sides of the river.

A new project will survey mass graves and Jewish cemeteries in the Baltic states where Jewish communities were largely destroyed during World War II.

The aim is to identify and repair the neglected sites from the Holocaust era, which often are the last reminder of once-vibrant Jewish communities, according to a statement released Monday by Lo Tishkach-Do Not Forget, a project coordinated by the Conference of European Rabbis, the continent’s main Orthodox rabbinical association, and sponsored by the Conference for Jewish Material Claims against Germany.

Youth groups in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia will begin a training program this fall. They will conduct surveys of hundreds of local sites starting in early spring.

Top officials from George W. Bush's White House are greeting the impending arrival of the latest unflattering insider account of the administration with a collective question: Who is Matt Latimer?

Latimer, a former special assistant to the president for speechwriting, is the author of a new book titled "Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor," which includes a number of embarrassing Bush anecdotes including the assertion that the former president was confused about the very concept of the conservative political movement.

According to excerpts of the book released to GQ magazine, Bush also made a highly derogatory remark about Hillary Clinton, said then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had "no clue" and was uncertain about the identity of Sarah Palin when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) picked her as his running mate. The book is being published by Crown Publishing Group and is set for a Sept. 22 release.

The anecdotes imply that Latimer had significant access to the president, but several members of the Bush White House's senior staff told POLITICO that little of what the former aide says rings true.

The basilica where Francisco Franco is buried has canceled the politically charged tradition of holding a memorial Mass to mark the anniversary of the Spanish dictator's death, a monk said Monday.

The Mass at the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid was usually held around Nov. 20, the anniversary of Franco's death in 1975, and drew gatherings of far rightists nostalgic for Franco's nearly four-decade rule.

A law passed in December 2007 specifically outlaws political rallies at the Valley of the Fallen, which features a 150-meter tall (500-foot) granite cross and for many Spaniards is their country's most divisive and potent reminder of the Franco era.

Starting this year, Mass will be held Nov. 3 in memory of all those who died in the 1936-39 Civil War that Franco's fascist forces won, said Anselmo Alvarez. He is the abbot of the Benedictine community overseeing the basilica, which houses Franco's tomb and is part of the sprawling memorial site carved into the side of a mountain.

The bodies of more than 30,000 people who died in the war are also buried at the site.

Sitting in his front room at home in Moscow, surrounded by shelves of books on 20th-century history, Leonid Zhura recounts how life was better under Stalin. "It was a heroic epoch. It was the first time in human history that a society was founded on fair principles," he says, adding that Stalin did not commit any crimes.

Zhura's views are not greatly unusual in today's Russia. What distinguishes the amateur historian from other Stalin fans is that he is going to court to prove his assertion that Stalin never killed anybody. And he claims to have an impeccable witness – Stalin's 73-year-old grandson.

At lunchtime tomorrow Yevgeny Dzhugashvili – the offspring of Stalin's ill-fated son Yakov, from the dictator's first marriage – is due to appear at Moscow's Basmanny court. Dzhugashvili lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. But at Zhura's invitation, he is flying to Moscow to take part in a libel action against Novaya Gazeta, Russia's leading liberal newspaper.

Nearly 180 years ago, President Andrew Jackson handed a letter to a military officer with a message for two American Indian tribes: Leave Mississippi and Alabama, or else.

His direct language was the start of federal efforts that led to the forced relocation of five tribes and the infamous "Trail of Tears," as thousands of Indians died from starvation, exposure, and disease.

But historians have always had to depend on a draft of Jackson's message - not the final copy carried by Maj. David Haley to Choctaw and Chicasaw leaders. It was believed lost to history.

Until now.

Forgotten in a private family collection, the letter was discovered this summer, and sold to the Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-based dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts.

Lucille Boggess lost two brothers in the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. She wonders what will happen to the memorial to them and the other "Bedford Boys" whose deaths that day made their town in the Blue Ridge foothills a national symbol of suffering in World War II.

"I'd be very saddened" if the financially troubled National D-Day Memorial in the southwest Virginia town had to close, says Boggess, 80. "This community made a sacrifice on D-Day. We want our young people to understand."

Bedford lost 19 sons on D-Day, more proportionally than any other U.S. community. In all, 22 soldiers from the town of 3,400 died in the invasion. That loss prompted Congress to choose the town 200 miles from Washington for a national memorial to the greatest amphibious assault in history.

Congress gave little more than its good wishes. Private funds covered the $19 million construction cost. The memorial has relied on admission fees and donations since its dedication in 2001.

Bedford's remote location, the recession and the dwindling ranks of World War II veterans have combined to decimate the memorial's bottom line. Ray Nance, the last surviving Bedford Boy, died in April.

"Resolutions of disapproval" have been used several times in the U.S. House's history. But they're not always used to discipline a member, as Democrats are set to do shortly for Rep. Joe Wilson.

The last time one that was introduced as a disciplinary action, according to the House Historian's office, was in 2003 by Nancy Pelosi against California Republican Bill Thomas. Thomas, then the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, "called the U.S. Capitol Police to eject protesting Democrats from a committee room," The Hill recalls...

... Per the historian's office, here's the language of that "resolution of disapproval":

H.Res. 324 (108th Congress): Relating to a question of privileges of the House …. "Resolved, that the House of Representatives disapproves of the manner in which Representative Thomas conducted the markup of legislation in the Committee on Ways and Means on 18 July 2003, and finds that the bill considered at that markup was not validly ordered reported to the House."

(The motion was tabled by a vote of 170 to 143.)

More from the Library of Congress:

"Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the manner in which Representative Thomas summoned the United States Capitol Police to evict minority-party members of the Committee on Ways and Means from the committee library, as well as the manner in which he conducted the markup of legislation in the Committee on Ways and Means on July 18, 2003, and finds that the bill considered at that markup was not validly ordered reported to the House."

Here's a history of disciplinary actions, per the historian's office:

Office of the Historian
U.S. House of Representatives

MEMO: Resolutions of Disapproval

REPORT:
The term "resolution of disapproval" refers to two very different types of resolutions. House Resolutions in general are used for internal actions or expressions of the "sense of the House." One common example is a resolution expressing the sense of the House "disapproving" an action of a foreign government. This is a sentiment, and has no force of law. A resolution criticizing, or reprimanding, or censuring, or rarely, "disapproving" the actions of one of its own members, is a disciplinary action, under the privileges of the House. It is in the form of a House Resolution, and while it "disapproves" of the actions of an individual member, it is somewhat confusing to refer to this as a "resolution of disapproval." Such internal disciplinary actions are not normally referred to that way.

The most common use of the term "resolution of disapproval" involves a statutory review of a proposed executive branch action. "Congress has, from time to time, passed laws reserving to itself an absolute or limited right of review by approval or disapproval of certain actions of the executive branch or independent agencies. These laws, known as 'congressional disapproval' statutes, usually envision some form of congressional action," either a joint resolution, a simple resolution, or an action by a congressional committee. Some examples of such areas where there could be "resolutions of disapproval" include the War Powers Resolution, the DC Home Rule Act, a number of acts involving arms export controls, federal land policy, and the Defense Base closures and realignment. See Rules and Manual of the House, section 1130.


Here are several examples of the statutory "resolution of disapproval":

- H.Res. 79 (107th Congress): Providing for consideration of the joint resolution (S.J. Res. 6) providing for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor under chapter 8, title 5, of the U.S. Code relating to ergonomics. Introduced by Representative John Linder (R-GA) on 6 March 2001. Passed by a vote of 222 to 198....

TAMPA — Burned and sunk, the steamship Scottish Chief lay at the bottom of the Hillsborough River for 146 years, a legend for its ability to keep Tampa afloat amidst the city's isolation during the Civil War.

Underwater archaeologist John William Morris, with the Florida Aquarium, said Tuesday a research team has found the ship, a vessel not seen since the night in 1863 when Union troops raided the shipyard.

Morris' team first spotted the suggestion of a ship Aug. 29 with new sonar technology, but it took until Tuesday to confirm that the shadowy trace in the sand was that of the lost blockade runner.

Harvest time is here again on Germany’s 1.2 million allotments: potatoes have to be hoisted out of the soil and the last of the peas must be plucked.

In the shed, next to the trowel and gloves, there will almost certainly be a well-thumbed copy of the gardeners’ bible written by Alwin Seifert, the country’s organic guru.

Now it emerges that at least some of Seifert’s useful tips in his bestselling book Gärtnern, Ackern-ohne Gift, (Gardening, Working the Soil without Poison) may have been gleaned from his observation of the experimental gardens set up on the grounds around Dachau concentration camp.

Tended by half-starved slave labourers, at least 400 of whom were killed, drowned in the carp pond or trampled into the mud of the latrine trenches, the Dachau gardens were established at the behest of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s security chief, and stretched to 211 blossoming hectares.

Seifert, who after the war became a founder of the Green movement, was one of the top landscape gardeners of the Nazi era. He even had the title Reichslandschaftsanwalt — advocate of the Reich’s Landscape. It was Seifert who managed to persuade the Nazi autobahn planners to make the motorway curve, following the natural contours of the German countryside. The well-connected gardener was also opposed to artificial fertilisers poisoning German soil and went to Dachau, apparently oblivious to the emaciated prisoners, to see what could be done in the gardens and arable fields of the Fatherland.

“The question has to be how much of the information that flowed into his book derived from the research being done in Dachau,” says the Munich-based cultural historian Daniella Seidl, who has been digging in the Bavarian and federal archives. “He was a regular visitor, maintained a correspondence with the head gardener Franz Lippert, and even arranged for a couple from the camp to work in his own household.” Some of the ideas being tried out in the Dachau gardens were certainly adopted by Seifert for use in his own garden in the Tyrol.

One year after the collapse of global financial firm Lehman Brothers, most voters (56%) continue to blame the nation’s current economic problems on the recession that started under George W. Bush, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

That’s up one point over the past month, but down six points from mid-May.

A 2,000-YEAR-OLD Roman salthouse has been discovered during archaeological excavations at the planned £1.5billion port at Coryton.

Archaeologists who made the find on the 34-acre site are set to unveil the full extent of the discovery on Tuesday, September 15.

The site where the mine was found is due to become a wildlife area, protecting a range of birds, animals and plants to offset any disruption caused during the construction of the port.

Edinburgh, September 14 (ANI): A 500 year old ancient drain in Scotland, which lay undisturbed until its discovery in 1990, is turning out to be a goldmine for archaeologists from the Glasgow University.

According to a report in Herald Scotland, the team of archaeologists, backed by volunteers from Renfrewshire Local History Forum, is carrying out a 12-day excavation of the drain.

An initial excavation revealed an arched corridor almost 6ft high, and uncovered pottery fragments and gaming pieces, a complete chamber pot, and other artefacts.

This month’s dig is the first subsequent excavation of the drain, which dates to at least the fifteenth century...

... “We’ll be finding out about the sorts of things that were growing in the gardens, and the things they were eating. So, it’s possible to reconstruct the lifesyle of the monks,” he further added.

Paisley Abbey was founded as a Cluniac priory in 1163, and became an abbey in 1245.

An ancient treasure comprising three figurines of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which was buried underground for over 1,500 years, was uncovered during the tenth season of excavations that are carried out by researchers of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, headed by Prof. Arthur Segal and Dr. Michael Eisenberg. "It is possible that during the fourth century A.D., when Christianity was gradually becoming the governing religion in the Roman Empire, there were still a number of inhabitants in Sussita who remained loyal to the goddess of love and therefore wished to hide and preserve these items," suggests Prof. Segal.

The hidden figurines were discovered when the researchers exposed a shop in the southeastern corner of the forum district of Sussita, which is the central area of the Roman city that was built in the second century B.C., existed through the Roman and Byzantine periods and destroyed in the great earthquake of 749 A.D. According to the researchers, it was clear that the followers had wished to hide the figurines, as they were found complete. The clay pieces are 23 cm tall and represent the common model of the goddess of love known to the experts as Venus pudica, "the modest Venus." This name was given to the form due to its upright stature and the figure's covering her private parts with the palm of her hand – perhaps another reason for concealing them from the new religion that presided over the empire.

Public historically black colleges and universities have become increasingly diverse over a 20-year period, according to a new report by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

The proportion of Hispanic, Asian, and multi-ethnic students enrolled in the organization's member institutions jumped from 6 percent of the student population in 1986 to 8 percent in 2006. The total number of nonblack students of color increased by 64 percent. The organization represents 47 public historically black colleges and universities, or HBCU's.

"Diversity matters to HBCU's," Olivia M. Blackmon, a strategic research analyst for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said in a telephone news conference last week. Ms. Blackmon pointed to the historic mission of HBCU's to support underserved communities and said the institutions are fulfilling that promise not only by reaching out to African Americans, but also by reaching out to other minorities.

Responding to objections from American Indian students and staff members, the University of Michigan will remove a set of dioramas depicting scenes of Native American life from its natural history museum, Indian Country Today reported. Some American Indian professors at Michigan said they found it insulting for them and their culture to be represented as miniaturized dolls amid the museum's dinosaur bones and fossils. “We are living, breathing, contemporary human beings,” Margaret Noori, a professor of Ojibwe language and literature at Michigan, told Indian Country Today. A Michigan official confirmed that the dioramas would be removed by January.

Federal investigators Monday returned dinosaurs eggs, saber-toothed cat and other fossils stolen from China. Customs official had seized the fossils, taken without permission from China, and asked researchers at Chicago's Field Museum and the Virginia Museum of Natural History to evaluate them.

"These pre-historic fossils are an invaluable part of the history of the People’s Republic of China and they will undoubtedly contribute to the scientific exploration of that nation’s past,” said the Department of Homeland Security's John Morton, in a statement. “The attempt to remove them from China ran up against a network of national and international customs laws that are in place to protect against the theft of cultural property.

JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists have uncovered one of the earliest depictions of a menorah, the seven-branched candelabra that has come to symbolize Judaism, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Friday. The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000 years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee.

Pottery, coins and tools found at the site indicate the synagogue dates to the period of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, where the actual menorah was kept, said archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The artist might have seen the menorah during a pilgrimage and then recreated it in the synagogue, she suggested.

A small number of depictions of the menorah have surfaced from the same period, she said, but this one was unique because it was inside a synagogue and far from Jerusalem, illustrating the link between Jews around Jerusalem and in the Galilee to the north.

The first town of freed African slaves in the Americas is not exactly where you would expect to find it — and it isn't exactly what you'd expect to find either. First, it's not in the United States. Yanga, on Mexico's Gulf Coast, is a sleepy pueblito founded by its namesake, Gaspar Yanga, an African slave who led a rebellion against his Spanish colonial masters in the late 16th century and fought off attempts to retake the settlement. The second thing that is immediately evident to vistors who reach the town's rustic central plaza: there are virtually no blacks among the few hundred residents milling around the center of town.

Mirroring Mexico's history itself, most of Yanga's Afro-Mexican population has been pushed to neighboring rural villages that are notable primarily for their deep poverty and the strikingly dark skin of their inhabitants. Mexico's independence from Spain and new focus on building a national identity on the idea of mestizaje, or mixed race, drove African Mexicans into invisibility as leaders chose not to count them or assess their needs. Now many blacks want to fight back by improving the shoddy education and social services available to them and are petitioning for the constitution to recognize Afro-Mexicans as a separate ethnic group worthy of special consideration...

... Many of the country's mexicanos negros (black Mexicans), as they are called, know that their ancestors arrived in chains on boats that docked at ports in the sultry, steamy state of Veracruz. But they don't know much else. Indeed, Afro-Mexicans say that much of the history of los mexicanos negros is untaught or ignored by the rest of the country. Apart from Yanga, Afro-Mexicans claim Vicente Guerrero, who served briefly as President in the early 19th century and gave his name to the state of Guerrero, as one of their own, as well as revolutionary José María Morelos, who was executed by the Spaniards in 1815.

Black Mexican activists estimate the population of Afro-Mexicans at about 1 million, but there are no official figures. Earlier this year, they petitioned the National Institute of Statistics and Geography to include the Afro-Mexican population as a separate category in the next census, in 2010. Official statistics do not recognize blacks as a separate ethnic group (56 indigenous groups are officially accredited, the largest ones being the Nahuatl and the Maya, numbering more than 2 million each). As a result, Afro-Mexicans say they have been left out of institutional programs and are without a cultural identity. The group Mexico Negro A.C. is linking with similar Afro-descendant organizations in Latin America that have achieved success in securing better treatment. "We no longer want to be detained by security agents in our own country who say that in Mexico there are no blacks," says Rodolfo Prudente Dominguez, an activist with Mexico Negro...

A government-backed drive is promoting textbooks which say his reign of terror was entirely rational and necessary to make Russia great.

We visited a school in Volgograd - formerly Stalingrad - and found patriotism and pride for Russia and its pivotal role in the Second World War are still strong.

During a history lesson pupils learned about Joseph Stalin the hero - not the villain.

The students are bright and engaged - the Kremlin's initiative to reinterpret history seems to be working.

To Tasmania's Aboriginal community it is "racist art", an enduring symbol of the persecution, murder and dispossession their ancestors suffered under white colonial rule.

More than 130 years after her death, a bust of Tasmania's most famous Aboriginal woman, Truganini, is at the centre of controversy, with demands it be returned to her homeland by the British Museum which owns it.

Now representatives of the community have flown to Britain in the hope of reclaiming the plaster cast, along with remains of other ancestors still held by medical and academic institutions in the UK.

THE Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague has granted a request for the early release of former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic after serving two-thirds of an 11-year sentence for war crimes.

Plavsic was convicted in February 2003 of persecuting Bosnian Muslims in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, but will have served two-thirds of her sentence in October, making her eligible for parole under laws in Sweden, where she is being detained.

Judge Patrick Robinson at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said today that Plavsic should be granted early release as she is entitled to under Swedish law, "notwithstanding the gravity of her crimes."