A 2,000-year-old, well-preserved timber road has been found in eastern England. Archaeologists think that the road was built by an Iceni tribe before the arrival of the Romans. “This particular track way is very interesting to us because we have tools… which may actually tie in with some of the tool marks and methods of construction we are turning up in the investigation,” said John Davies of the Norwich Castle Museum.

Peru’s Ica Valley, located near the southern coast, is now a barren desert. But bioarchaeologist David Beresford-Jones of the University of Cambridge examined plant remains left in ancient middens, and he concluded that the area was once a fertile floodplain. “The farmers inadvertently crossed an ecological threshold and the changes became irreversible,” he explained.

A three-year excavation will reveal more about the lives of the enslaved people who lived at Montpelier, James Madison’s Virginia home, between 1810 and 1830. “We hope that this archaeology, combined with historical research and other efforts, will let us do a better job of telling the larger, human story of the enslaved community here,” said Matthew Reeves, director of archaeology at Montpelier.

More than 3,000 bronze coins dated between 264 and 241 B.C. were discovered off the coast of the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria. “Since all coins feature the same iconography, we believe that the money served for an institutional payment,” said Leonardo Abelli, director of the excavation.

Here’s a photograph of the Hercules statue unearthed in northern Israel.

The Israel Antiquities Authority reports that a marble statue of Hercules has been uncovered in the Jezreel Valley.

Archaeologist Alvaro Arriabalaga says a 25,000-year-old stone pendant has been unearthed in Spain’s Basque region.

The Roman city of Ulpia Serdica sits beneath Bulgaria’s modern capital of Sofia, so excavation for a new subway line has prompted the construction of an underground museum that will open next year.

Two medieval seals belonging to Constantine, Archbishop of Archidos, have been found at the site of Perperikon in southern Bulgaria by archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov. Such an archbishopric was previously unknown.

The mid-nineteenth-century home of surveyor John James has been excavated in San Antonio, Texas.

The natural landscape of ancient Athens was marked with open spaces, rivers, and freshwater springs. The Greek newspaper Kathimerini offers this essay about the continuing importance of these  water sources.

No bits or pieces of the Parthenon Marbles  were found during recent dives on the shipwreck of the Mentor, which sank in the Mediterranean Sea in 1802 while attempting to carry the sculptures away to England.

Pig Point, Maryland, has been continuously occupied for some 10,000 years, and perhaps even longer. “If they encountered pre-Paleo, this would be an international site. Archaeologists worldwide would beat a path to it,” commented Joe Dent of American University.

A federal judge in Maryland dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which had seized some Chinese and Cypriot coins of unknown provenance in 2009. The ancient coins had been purchased in London.

Eighteenth-century pipe-making  in Shropshire, England, has been the passion of archaeologist Alan Peacy for the past 15 years. Now he’s ready to stop digging.

Here’s an update on the quest to bring home to Tennessee the remains of 11 soldiers who were killed during the Mexican-American War. Their shallow graves were unearthed earlier this year by a developer in Monterrey, Mexico.