For years, the ruins of Vikramshila university, an ancient seat of Buddhist learning in Bhagalpur, India, have been neglected. Now a team of archaeologists have decided to begin work on the "university" which once housed over 10,000 students.

"It seems always to have stood in the churchyard at Nigg," said Liz Budge, of Nigg Old Trust about an intricately carved Pictish stone in Easter Ross, Scotland. The Nigg Old Trust has recently received a funding package of UK£178,000 for conservation and display. (photo)

1,300 years ago, a tribe of warriors tried in vain to defend a fort below Abbey Craig in Stirling, Scotland. Their failure led to the total destruction, or vitrification, of the fort by fire. Recently archaeologists spent four days investigating the site.

A series of well-preserved medieval churches in central Sudan are giving researchers new information into the world of medieval pilgrimages and veneration. Inscriptions at one site show that pilgrims came from as far away as Catalonia.

You've read about it. You've seen the photos. Now you have the chance to see the wonders in person when one hundred artifacts from the Staffordshire Hoard go on display at National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C.

Dr. Will Bowden, associate professor of Roman archaeology at the University of Nottingham, has begun a new dig at he site of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund, this time in search of a Roman forum and an Anglo-Saxon town.

Archaeologists from the University of Bristol are digging up Edward Jenner's garden, not seeking evidence of the 18th century British scientist, but secrets much older, including a skeleton dating to Roman times.

The Portable Antiquities Scheme blog has posted a new paper on "the potential of environmental archaeology" in regard to the Staffordshire Hoard discovered in 2009 near Staffordshire England.

To enhance the visitor experience, the burial chamber at Sutton Hoo is being reconstructed. Richard Daniel, of the BBC, reports. (video)

Researchers have long traced the roots of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince of Denmark to Amlethus in the History of the Danes, written around 1200, but a new study traces the name back even further, to 8th or 9th century Ireland.

The National Archaeology Institute museum in Sofia, Bulgaria is hosting a display of over 50 eartifacts discovered in the country in 2010. Among the finds were a 14th century gold earring and an 8th century silver coin.

A medieval Islamic necropolis, containing over 200 human remains, has been discovered in the southern Portuguese city of Beja during renovation of a high school.

In her 1991 Master's Thesis, The Role of the High Cross in Early Christian Ireland: 8th to 11th Centuries, Jill Quattlebaum discusses the early Christian Church in Ireland and the importance of the stone cross as its symbol. The thesis is available to read online.

Researchers of all things Viking may want to visit the Vikverir website which features a links page of museums throughout Scandinavia which have posted photos of their collections.

The British Library has announced that digitized copies of two "iconic treasures" from the Anglo Saxon era have been added to the library's Digitised Manuscripts site: the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Old English Hexateuch.

What do you get when you mashup an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poem with a twentieth-century antiwar pop song? A very amusing music video, sort of a "Cliff's Notes" version of the epic tale.

Scholars have debated the existence of the Prophet Muhammad, but Petra Sijpesteijn, professor of Arabic language and culture at Leiden University, believes proof exists on Egyptian papyrus manuscripts.

In the 8th century, the caliphs of Cordoba, Spain constructed the magnificent great mosque. After their conquest, 13th century Christians rechristened the building a cathedral. Now the two cultures have begun to clash again over tourist signs.

"The discovery of Arabic coins at the coast of the Baltic sea proves that there was global trade more than 1,200 years ago," said Greifswald historian Fred Ruchhoeft about the discovery of 82 Arabic coins in a northern German field.

A team of archaeologists believes it has found Linn Duchaill, Ireland's lost Viking settlement, near the village of Annagassan, 70 kilometers north of Dublin. The outpost was mentioned in the Annals of Ulster, a 15th century account of medieval Ireland.

Archaeologist Harold Mytum believes that a pre-Viking settlement at Port y Candas on the Isle of Man was probably the home of an important leader who could "support the craftsmen who would have worked making tools, weapons and bronze jewellery."

Archaeologists have unearthed a burial mound they suspect belongs to pre-Christian Bulgars of the Pliska period. Little is known about the people of this time and place.

The fragments of a vellum manuscript of a book of psalms dating to the 8th century has excited the archaeological community in Ireland who have called it the “most important day in the history of the museum since 1868 when the Ardagh Chalice came in."

Craftsman Larry Robinson, who designs and crafts custom inlayed musical instruments, has created a true work of art in a guitar, decorated with inlays based on the Lindisfarne gospels. The Lindisfarne Project is chronciled on Robinson's blog. (photos)

Archeologists in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein are excited over the discovery of a five-meter (16 feet) wide portal through the Danevirke, a 30-kilometer (19-mile) stone wall built across Norhtern Germany by the Norse in the 8th century. (photos)

Computer scientists at the University of Kentucky will turn their attention to a pair of medieval manuscripts this summer.

An elaborately carved Anglo-Saxon stone is up for auction in a move that has upset scholars of the period.  Nick Evered bought his house eight years ago with the stone already in it, and decided to sell it in order to be relieved of responsibility for the ancient artifact. The Evereds' home sits on the site of the hermitage of eighth-century St.Pega, Britain's first female hermitic saint.

Dr. Deborah Vess of Georgia College & State University has created an online overview of Celtic monasticism illustrated with photographs of monastic and pilgrimage sites.

Maya commoners of their Classic Period --  "illiterate farmers, builders and servants" -- preserved their history by burying their old possesions in the floors of newly built homes. 

On Sunday April 25, 2010, the National Geographic Channel will repeat Lost Gold of the Dark Ages, a program on the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard, the amazing golden treasure found recently in the English Midlands.