Four bronze statuettes have been recovered by Egypt’s tourism and antiquities police. Two of the statues were stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The other two will be identified and returned to the proper museums or archaeological sites. 

Researchers have found a 12,000-year-old site in southern Jordan which consists of three large buildings and several smaller ones. None of the structures appear to be individual family homes, leading Bill Finalyson of the Council for British Research in the Levant, and Steven Mithen of the University of Reading, to suggest that the people came together to process food and conduct other communal activities, during the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. 

There’s more information on the actual diet preferred by “Nutcracker Man” in this article by the Associated Press. 

Former archaeologist Sean McLachlan weighs in on the planned exhumation of The Leather Man, who was buried in Ossining, New York, in 1889. 

Some 650 pots are being reassembled at the National Park Service’s Western Archaeological and Conservation Center in Tucson, Arizona. The glue used to reconstruct the pots in the 1920s is disintegrating. 

A brass ship’s bell inscribed “U.S.S. Triton” has been returned to the U.S. Navy from a private home. The bell came from a submarine that was sunk in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, and then it later traveled on a nuclear-powered sub that became the first submerged vessel to circumnavigate the world in 1960.

Scientists have been excavating the intact grave of a high-status Celtic woman that was removed whole from the ground, encased in concrete, and transported to the archaeological offices of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Wet soil preserved the tomb’s wooden floor, in addition to fine gold and amber jewelry. 

Matt Sponheimer of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has analyzed isotopes from the teeth of Paranthropus boisei. The results suggest that this early hominid may have preferred to eat grasses and soft fruit over nuts, as had been thought. 

Three people have pleaded guilty to trafficking stolen artifacts in a federal court in Utah. They were among the 26 indicted by federal prosecutors after the widespread undercover sting operation that was completed in 2009. 

In northern Scotland, traces of a 1,000-year-old roundhouse have been uncovered at the site of Nybster. “We have dug down to what might be the earliest wall on the site and this wall may have been used to seal off the site as a territory, as if someone was saying ‘this land is mine,’” explained archaeologist Andy Heald. 

Residents of Whitewater, Wisconsin, want to protect an effigy mound located in their neighborhood. The mound was built near a natural spring and an oak savanna. “My concern is if the city is going to develop a more complete plan for the site, including trails and how visitors interact with that site, I’d like to see a lot more thought put into the archaeological resources that are there,” said state historian Rob Nurre. 

Egyptologist Kent R. Weeks has written about the state of archaeology in post-revolution Egypt for Newsweek.