A 1,100-year-old Sican tomb has been discovered in coastal northern Peru. The noble buried within the tomb was found “sitting on a litter, with a mask, crown and several gold and silver objects that show his high rank,” said Carlos Elera, director of the Sican Archaeology Project. 

Archaeologist Yoichi Watanabe of Japan’s Yamagata University claims to have found two new, small geoglyphs in Peru’s Nazca province. One depicts a human head, the other an animal figure.  

An unnamed antiquities collector has returned four mummies to Chile, one of which may be 7,000 years old.  

Pop singer Boy George has returned an icon looted from a Cyprus church in the 1970s. Church officials spotted the painting in his home during a televised interview.  

Archaeologists and ecologists from Arizona State University are studying the Agua Fria National Monument to learn how people used this environment in prehistory. “The monument is a giant laboratory. It allows us to work on the entire landscape of a prehistoric community, which contains hundreds of habitation, agricultural and special-purpose sites,” explained archaeologist Katherine Spielmann.  

Scientists from Barcelona, Spain, have developed a new way to register artifacts using bi-dimensional data matrix codes. The labels can be applied directly to the artifacts, and have been shown to reduce coding errors to one percent.  

Just for fun, tour the home of a nineteenth-century French gentleman of leisure, Louis Mantin. He willed his home to the town of Moulins on the condition that it remained untouched for 100 years.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, January 20, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.