Federal agents charged a group of men with trafficking in ancient Egyptian coffins and other artifacts yesterday. “Antiquities dealers and collectors are on notice that the smuggling of cultural patrimony will not be tolerated,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch.

Human remains have been found in Scotland, at an Iron Age roundhouse built of stone. “At the moment we have no idea on a date. They could be 50 years old, or 3,000 years old,” said archaeologist Andy Heald.

A 500-year-old, unfinished canoe has been found in the rain forest of southeast Alaska. Ancient tools had been used to cut the cedar and hollow it out. “That’s a valuable piece of equipment they left there in the forest…. Why did they leave it there? Only thing I can think is there was sickness in the village,” speculated anthropologist Rosita Worl of the Sealaska Heritage Institute.

A marker will be placed near the graves of 19 Union soldiers in Folly Beach, South Carolina, in 1987. Two life-sized busts reconstructed from the skulls of two of the men, who were part of the Army’s second all African-American unit, will be on display for the ceremony.

Have a good weekend! The News will return on Monday, July 18.

Andreas Vött of Johannes Gutenberg University has studied sediments from Olympia, and he’s concluded that a series of tsunamis destroyed the ancient home of the Olympic Games, rather than an earthquake. “In earlier times, Olympia was not 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) away from the sea as it is today. Back then, the coastline was located eight or perhaps even more kilometers further inland,” he explained.

A second lead sarcophagus has been found in Italy’s Lazio region by a team from the University of Michigan.

Researchers from Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute report that a sixteenth-century Chinese bronze artifact has been discovered off the Pacific coast of Baja California. The incense burner lid came from a wrecked Spanish galleon that had set sail from Manila.

An effort to stabilize the banks of Moccasin Bend on the Tennessee River has led an American Indian group to claim that burials have been desecrated. Park Service officials say the damage was caused by recent storms, erosion, and looting. “We found these things because this project was occurring. It wasn’t a result of that [work]. And this whole project…is intended to protect against this kind of thing happening in the future,” said Jim Szyjkowski of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

Thirty bronze coins featuring the Greek god Apollo have been unearthed in Bulgaria, near the Black Sea. The coins date to the fourth and third centuries B.C.  And at the subway construction project in Sofia, Bulgarian archaeologists are excavating several small, medieval Christian churches.

Nicola Stern of La Trobe University will begin a new research project at Australia’s Mungo National Park. “We know surprisingly little about how people actually lived in this landscape over 45,000 years – and that’s really what I’m trying to document,” she said.

Volunteers have been actively involved in the excavation of the homes of two steamboat captains who lived in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley in the nineteenth century. The digs have been led by Marc Henshaw of Michigan Technological University.

Last week, the U.S. returned another batch of artifacts to Iraq, including an ancient bead necklace recovered from an auction house, and terra cotta pottery and plaques.