2006 in archaeology
The year 2006 in archaeology includes the following significant events.
Explorations
Excavations
- KV63 - the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt.
- Ancient pre-Inca pet cemetery dated to the Chiribaya culture found south of Lima, Peru.
- Ancient pre-Inca tombs complex dated to Middle Sican culture discovered under the Huaca Loro pyramid in Peru; 12 ceremonial tumi knives found.
- The Jewish cemetery, Lucena, the largest such cemetery excavated in Spain, is discovered during construction of the city's southern ring road and excavated.
- Portions of Timișoara Fortress in Romania.
Finds
- July - The Faddan More Psalter, a devotional book, is found in a peat bog in Ireland, where it has been buried for approximately 1200 years.
- December
- * Little Horwood Hoard of Iron Age gold staters from Buckinghamshire, England.
- * River Boyne shipwreck of 1530s found off Drogheda in Ireland.
- Inscriptions in an early form of Linear Elamite discovered at Jiroft in Iran.
- Roman sarcophagus found during work at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, well outside the walls of Londinium.
- Defences from the Siege of Leith discovered in Pilrig, Edinburgh, Scotland.
- Wreck of Type A Kō-hyōteki-class midget submarine, sunk in the 1942 attack on Sydney Harbour, discovered off Sydney's Northern Beaches.
Publications
- Steve Burrow - The Tomb-builders in Wales 4000-3000 BC
- Andrea Carandini - Remo e Romolo: Dai rioni dei Quiriti alla città dei Romani and La leggenda di Roma
- Gwyn Davies - Roman Siege Works
- Jürg Eggler & Othmar Keel - Corpus der Siegel-Amulette aus Jordanien: vom Neolithikum bis zur Perserzeit
- Lars Fogelin - Archaeology of Early Buddhism
- Matthew Johnson - Ideas of Landscape
- Chris Stringer - ''Homo Britannicus: the Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain''
Awards
- June - Barry Cunliffe knighted.
Events
- October - British historian Alex Woolf publishes arguments that the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu was located around the Moray Firth region, further north in Scotland than the previous consensus.
- The Kharosti scrolls, the oldest collection of Buddhist manuscripts in the world, are radiocarbon-dated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. The group confirms the initial dating of the Senior manuscripts to 130-250 CE and the Schøyen manuscripts to between the 1st and 5th centuries CE.
Deaths
- June 6 - Leslie Alcock, English archaeologist
- August 2 - Richard Avent, British archaeologist, conservationist and civil servant
- December 1 - Bruce Trigger, Canadian archaeologist and McGill University professor