Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama has spotted 17 pyramids, more than 1,000 tombs, and 3,000 ancient settlements using infra-red satellite images of Egypt. Test excavations have confirmed the presence of two of the pyramids. “It allows us to be more focused and selective in the work we do. Faced with a massive site, you don’t know where to start,” she said.  This video clip shows the pattern of streets and houses revealed by the infra-red satellite images.

Government officials in Israel and Palestinian authorities are racing to claim cultural property in anticipation of a Palestinian bid for statehood later this year. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a conflict of territory but of identity and narratives, with archaeology and cultural heritage the physical embodiments of the narratives. Addressing these issues is critical for the stability of Israelis and Palestinians,” explained lawyer Daniel Seidemann.

Oregon’s Hidden Forest Cave in the Deschutes National Forest has been vandalized. Art is the cave was probably painted by ancestors to the members of the Klamath Tribe or the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. “I would imagine that because they’re exposed to the elements that they’re probably not 10,000 years old, but they were probably created before any Euro-Americans were living in the area,” said forest archaeologist Penni Borghi.

Lisa J. Lucero of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reports on her recent trip to central Belize, where she tried to determine if the Maya increased their offerings to the rain god Chaak between A.D. 800 and 900, when there was a series of droughts.

Administrators of the University of California system have reportedly told scientists that they are not permitted to study two 9,000-year-old skeletons discovered in the 1970s on property owned by UC San Diego in La Jolla, California. “Administrators are doing everything they can to ignore the scientific value of the specimens. They are trying to illegally repatriate them to a lobbyist for a dozen San Diego County tribes,” accused UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White.

Irrigation techniques in Nubia may have contributed to the spread of parasites and disease. “Our study suggests that, just like people today, these ancient individuals were capable of altering the environment in ways that impacted their health,” said Amber Campbell Hibbs of Emory University.

New radiocarbon dates for textiles and rope discovered in Peru’s Guitarrero Cave make them the oldest known textiles in South America. “By dating the textiles themselves, we were able to confirm their antiquity and refine the timing of the early occupation of the Andes highlands,” said Edward Jolie of Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania.

South Carolina’s state archaeologist, Jonathan Leader, is assisting police in the search for Brandy Hanna, who disappeared six years ago. Police detectives found a tennis shoe that might have belonged to the missing woman on the former Charleston Naval Base, prompting the dig.

Archaeologists offered tours of Danger and Jukebox caves to a few lucky people during Utah’s Archaeology Week. Between 1949 and 1953, Jesse D. Jennings of the University of Utah uncovered seeds, nuts, brush, hair, basketry, and leather and wood artifacts in dry Danger Cave. Coprolites, quids, arrowheads, bone tools, and grinding stones were found in Jukebox Cave in the 1980s.