Southeast student discovers shipwreck

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KRCU) - Southeast Missouri State University student Jennifer Rickard made the discovery of a lifetime during a summer program in Spain: the remains of a shipwreck deep in the Mediterranean waters.

Rickard was studying at the Cavalleria Ecomuseum when she and six other divers made the discovery.

The ship dates to the sixteenth or seventeenth century and was badly charred by fire.

Rickard says she was not expecting to find a shipwreck that day.

'They had told us to due magnitronomy and also some other indications that there possibly was one in that area, we did end up discovering it through a mass amount of dead seaweed that had been underneath us," Rickard said.

Jennifer was granted a scholarship from the Harryette Campbell Foundation to help fund the program.

Rickard's says she hopes to continue studying maritime archaeology for her masters and PhD.

Lauren Campbell, KRCU

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Bones discovered in Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway

CHARLESTON, MO (KRCU) - Water has subsided in the Bird Points Floodway and farmers have returned to their land. But it's not the washed away top soil that has many talking. Instead, it’s the washed up… bones.

The fragments were discovered near the blasted section of the levee, in Mississippi County Missouri.

By time the Mississippi County Coroner, Terry Parker, and his team stopped counting, the bone fragments were spread out over six and a half acres of land.

Parker is unsure exactly how many bodies the found fragments are from, but he is confident that more bone fragments may be found in the area when they go to exhume those they have already discovered.

Parker believes that the bones are likely from the area around or even under the part of the levee that was blasted.

However he is less certain as to whom the bones are from.

"Could possibly be early Native American, it could be early American settlers that were going to the west. It could be people that had resided in the early 1900’s, and that was their homestead, and as common they were buried there on the family home property," Parker said.

The bone fragments as well as the site have been turned over by Parker and the county to the Missouri State Parks and Historic Preservation Team.

The team is now tasked not only with discovering what time period the bones are from, but also what people the bones are from.

"You know if it’s American Indian, you know we have certain policies we have to follow and leave them as undisturbed as possible," Parker said. "So I think that right now they are in process there in the process of investigating, doing forensics to determine the nationality of the remains. And then at that point you know the process of collecting and reentering will happen."

Parker says that the process may take some time due to the degree of decomposition as well as the need for an accurate identification of what people the fragments are from.

Tim Filla, KRCU

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UMSL archeologists discover continental Europe's earliest-known written record

ST. LOUIS, MO (ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO) - Archeologists from the University of Missouri-St. Louis have discovered continental Europe's earliest known written record. 

The clay tablet fragment may date back to as early as 1490 B.C. -- more than a hundred-and-fifty years before any other known writings from mainland Europe.

UMSL archeologist Michael Cosmopoulos led the excavation that unearthed the tablet from a site in southwestern Greece.

“The tablets are accounting records, state accounting records, and they're the products of bureaucracy. So basically the Greeks of the period invented writing because of the bureaucratic needs of their states,” Cosmopoulos said.

Cosmopoulos says the tablet adds to evidence that the site was probably one of the nine state capitals of King Nestor, one of the most famous kings to fight in the Trojan War.

Cosmopoulos says the fragment has a word related to manufacturing on one side, and a list of male names with numbers on the other.

He says it's most likely part of a state government accounting record, possibly a tax record.

“So the fact that we have state records at such an early date and at a new site, suggests that bureaucracy and literacy developed earlier and were more widespread than what we had thought until now,” Cosmopoulos sayd.

The clay tablet dates back to about 1400 B.C. and is at least a hundred years older than any other known written record from continental Europe.

Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio
Photo: The back of the 2x3 inch tablet that was discovered in Iklaina, Greece. (Christian Mundigler) 

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