Excavations at Swahili trading town in East Africa

Archaeology website "Past Horizons" reports on the excavations at Songo Mnara in Tanzania. The town was occupied between the 14th and 16th centuries AD, when the town was part of "the indigenous and cosmopolitan  form of urbanism that linked Africa with the Indian Ocean world system from AD 700 - 1500"

"Before silk: unsolved mysteries of the Silk Road" : video

Professor Colin Renfrew of the MacDonald Institute of Archaeological Research (Cambridge) delivers a lecture on the early contacts between China and Western Asia and Europe from the neolithic to the 8th century AD

This video of his lecture is uploaded onto YouTube.
Please note it runs for an hour and was recorded live

School of Museology to be established in Egypt: online article

Egypt's museums have been in the news following the looting that took place in major institutions and at archaeological sites during the country's recent political upheavals.

"The lack of trained museum personnel is indeed the overarching problem in Egypt's path towards the creation of a new effective museum system" says Ramadan Badri Hussein, supervisor of the office of the MSA's Minister for Archaeological Affairs.

As part of an ongoing programme of initiatives, a School of Museology is shortly to be established at the Casdagli Palace in Cairo.

Read more in Nevine El-Aref's report for the al-Ahram Weekly Online