Wildfires in Arizona threaten archaeological sites.

Six men have been arrested in northern Greece for using dynamite while looking for gold at protected archaeological sites.

Prehistoric rice farmers selected for shorter rice plants with greater yields, according to a genetic study conducted by Makoto Matsuoka of Nagoya University.

Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas and David Lordkipanidze of the Georgia National Museum have found stone tools at the site of Dmanisi. Their team claims the tools suggest that Homo erectus occupied the site as long as 1.85 million years ago. “The recently discovered data show that Dmanisi was occupied at the same time as, if not before, the first appearance of Homo erectus in east Africa,” they reported.

Ten sets of human skeletal remains were unearthed in Mexico near the Texas border. Archaeologists think the bones represent U.S. soldiers who were killed in the Battle of Monterrey, during the Mexican-American War.

On the Channel Island of Guernsey, a settlement from the Neolithic period could soon be sealed by an airport runway, so archaeologists are taking a last look at it. “The overall impression given is that this was a fairly poor community without access to metal work or many prestigious items,” said archaeology officer Phillip de Jersey.

And in Scotland, a man walking on the beach spotted a Palaeolithic ax head.

Edward Jenner is remembered as the doctor who developed vaccinations, but archaeologists digging in the garden at his country home have uncovered Anglo Saxon and Roman remains. “It just goes to show that you never quite know what lies under your feet. It is unlikely that Dr. Jenner was aware of these unexpected neighbors lurking at the bottom of his garden,” said Mark Horton of the University of Bristol.

Excavation continues at Berenike, an Egyptian port city on the Red Sea. “We’ve probably covered about two percent of the surface, so there are still several lifetimes’ worth of work to be done. We’ll never be finished with it,” said Steven Sidebotham of the University of Delaware.

A mission church built of coquina has been rediscovered in St. Augustine. The church is thought to have been commissioned by the governor of Florida in 1677.

Flakes of quartz were found in sediment cores taken from a shallow area of Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada. The ancient shoreline was probably a site used for the manufacture of points, scrapers, and other tools for fishing and hunting.

Twenty-one volumes of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary have been completed after 90 years of work. “You always saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but the end of the tunnel kept getting further and further away,” said Robert Biggs, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.  You can also read about the dictionary at The New York Times.

The News will return on Thursday, June 9.

A lead tube discovered in the hull of a second-century A.D. Roman ship could be a piece of a pumping system for on-board fish tanks. “It would change completely our idea of the fish market in antiquity. We thought that fish must have been eaten near the harbors where the fishing boats arrived. With this system it could be transported everywhere,” said marine archaeologist Carlo Beltrame of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Three human skulls and a 2,000-year-old mummy from the Paracas culture on Peru’s coast were recovered by customs agents at Argentina’s central post office.

A string of fortresses on a pre-Columbian border between the Inca and the Cayambe of Ecuador suggests that the two groups may have battled each other, as suggested by later Spanish chroniclers.

Sediment cores taken from lakes in Greenland indicate that cooler temperatures in the twelfth century may help explain why the Vikings abandoned their colonies. “You have an interval when the summers are long and balmy and you build up the size of your farm, and then suddenly year after year, you go into this cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can’t make as much hay,” said William D’Andrea of Brown University.

An anchor estimated to weigh between 2,500 to 3,000 pounds has been recovered from the shipwreck off the North Carolina coast that is thought to be the Queen Anne’s Revenge. The anchor measures 11 feet, four inches long, with arms that measure seven feet, seven inches across.

Archaeological investigation has led to the replanting of George Washington’s Upper Garden at Mount Vernon. “One of the things the project did was to make people wipe clean their idea of what the garden should be. We all started again,” said Esther White, director of archaeology of the plantation.

In Australia, archaeologist Paul Tacon from Griffith University wants a national register for Aboriginal rock art.

A mysterious statue purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1988 has returned to Sicily and the museum at Morgantina. Scholars think the statue may represent the Greek goddess of fertility, Persephone.

In eastern Ontario, Paul Thibaudeau and his students at Carleton University unearthed stone tools and debris from tool making at a site they think was a temporary hunting and animal-skinning camp near a portage on the South Nation River. The more than 7,000 artifacts are made of stone from as far away as Pennsylvania and western New York.

Bones of Neolithic residents of southern France have been tested for the genetic mutation that allows some modern humans to digest fresh milk into adulthood.

Egypt’s antiquities minister Zahi Hawass announced that the head of a large alabaster statue of Amenhotep III has been uncovered intact in Luxor. Photographs of the excavation of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple are available at Ahram Online.

Merle Green Robertson, Maya researcher, has died at the age of 97. “Merle was the first to do large numbers of really superb rubbings in the New World. So many of these ruins have been destroyed that Merle’s recordings have been amazingly valuable. Her work was truly phenomenal,” said E. Wyllys Andrews, former director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane University.

The News will return on Thursday, June 9.