Many of the well-known red frescoes in Pompeii were once yellow, according to a new study conducted by Italy’s National Institute of Optics. “I am always a bit suspicious of these claims. We know that some of the red was once yellow, but I’m not sure that we can be certain about the proportions. What is certainly true, though, is that the heat had some effect on the colors: it’s another case in which we can see that Pompeii was not the time capsule we sometimes imagine it to be,” cautioned Mary Beard of Cambridge University.

In Turkey, traces of a 7,000-year-old settlement have been uncovered along the coast of the Dardanelles. “We know that almost all settlements older than 5,000 years ago were established on high plateaus. This discovery gives us important clues that people settled deliberately because of the rise and fall of the sea,” said archaeologist Rüstem Aslan.

National Geographic Daily News offers more photographs of the 2,500-year-old chariots and horse skeletons that were unearthed in central China.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has honored the students and faculty of Georgia Southern University for their work at Camp Lawton, a Civil War prison camp. “Georgia Southern University is very proud of our students and faculty who have been honored with the Partners in Conservation award,” said University President Brooks Keel.

Images of five of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been placed online by Google and Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. “Some of these images are appearing for the first time in Google – what no one has seen for 2,000 years and no scholar since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found,” said James Charlesworth, director of the Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls Project.

And 3-D scans of small objects from George Washington’s family farmstead in Virginia are being made. “The details of the decorations on these items are very impressive but difficult to see with the naked eye,” said David Muraca, director of archaeology at The George Washington Foundation.

The National Park Service is looking for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artifacts along the upper Hudson River, at the Saratoga National Historical Park in Stillwater, New York. The archaeologists are working ahead of EPA-ordered dredging of the river for PCBs. “You can pretty much go anywhere on the Hudson and find something. We’re just being very careful,” said Gary Klawinski, dredging project manager.

The Iraq Museum in Baghdad will reopen by the end of 2011.

In northwestern Turkey, archaeologists have been excavating a well-preserved Neolithic village known as Aktopraklik Höyük for the past eight years. “Findings such as mud-brick walls, preserved fireplaces and wooden floors have all been uncovered,” said Necmi Karul of Istanbul University.

Two people were arrested for attempting to loot a Roman site at England’s Chester House Farm.

The skeletons of 42 children and 76 skeletons of either llamas or alpacas have been discovered in a sand dune on Peru’s northern coast. The children and animals are thought to have been sacrificed some 800 years ago by the Chimú culture.