At least one member of Columbus’s second crew was African, according to analysis of teeth found in shallow graves at La Isabela, in the modern Dominican Republic. The new analysis suggests that Tainos, women, and children also lived at La Isabela.

Liquor bottles and pipe stems are among the nineteenth-century artifacts uncovered at Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas. The fort was one of the largest along the coastline, and was built after the U.S. Capitol was burned in 1812. “I’m not surprised we found whiskey bottles. It’s consistent with the wild tales of the place. But they had yellow fever, too. So maybe some was for medicinal purposes,” said Melissa Memory, chief of cultural resources for Dry Tortugas National Park.  

Egyptian authorities want U.S. customs officials in Miami to return a wooden coffin confiscated from a shipment from Spain.  

Local people of Peru’s Chucmar village have discovered a pre-Inca cemetery and citadel in the jungles of Amazonas.  They found several circular stone houses, stone pestles for crushing seeds, axes, and pottery.  

Excavations in Somerset, England, have revealed a large prehistoric roundhouse and Roman graves.  

In Huntington, West Virginia, a middle school could be constructed on the site of an early twentieth-century African-American orphanage and historic cemeteries.  

The Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau is deteriorating. “We have to finish conservation work on all these buildings within 10 to 12 years, so we need to start within three years at the latest,” said Piotr Cywinski, director of the museum. “This is our last chance.”  

Six ledgers of personal expenses unearthed in the archives of the University of Cambridge offer a glimpse into the daily life of nineteenth-century British college students, including Charles Darwin. “It is just wonderful to have a previously unknown insight into what Darwin was up to in this part of his life. These are really intimate details,” said Darwin scholar John van Wyhe. 

Drought in Iraq has exposed archaeological sites once submerged in the Euphrates River. “We have discovered that this area is one of the most important archaeological areas in all of Iraq. This part of Iraq was the first to be settled,” said Ratib Ali al-Kubaisi, director of the Antiquities Department for Anbar province.  

A group of Western, English-speaking tourists visited Iraq. “It wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea,” a retired British archaeologist said of the trip.  

Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper suggests in his column for The Columbus Dispatch that the cache of 13,000-year-old stone tools uncovered in Colorado could be ritual deposit, despite the residues of camel and horse blood detected on their edges.

A first-century A.D. marble sculpture unearthed at Herculaneum last month has gone on display in Naples. “The relief is particularly fascinating for scholars as we are not yet certain exactly the tale that is being reproduced on the work,” said excavation chief Maria Paola Guidobaldi.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 23, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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