news 2024

Since the summer of 2016, archaeologists from Innsbruck have been carrying out excavations in a late antique hilltop settlement in the municipality of Irschen in southern Austria. Two years ago, they made a sensational discovery: a Christian reliquary was still hidden in a previously unknown church.

Ancient grave find in Wels provides new insights through interdisciplinary research. When a grave was discovered in Wels 20 years ago, the find was thought to be the early medieval double burial of a married couple together with a horse due to its unusual characteristics. Only now has it been possible to clarify the biological sex and relationship of the buried persons using the latest archaeological technologies.

Researchers from TU Graz and the University of Graz have digitised a broken altar stone from Lavant so that citizens can put it together on the internet. The aim is to achieve what generations of archaeologists have failed to do. The Bishop's church at Kirchbichl in Lavant in East Tyrol is one of the most important early Christian monuments in Austria.

The Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever virus (CCHFV), first described in 1944, is also spreading rapidly in Europe due to global warming and is included in the WHO list of infectious agents with epidemic or pandemic potential as a top priority. There are currently no therapeutic or preventative measures available against the disease, which is mainly transmitted by ticks and is fatal in 40 per cent of cases.