Experimental archaeologist Metin I. Eren of Southern Methodist University has been able to craft bamboo tools with simple stone tools, including knives capable of cutting meat, but not hides. “Our research does not debunk the idea that prehistoric people could have made and used bamboo implements, but instead suggests that upon arriving in East and Southeast Asia they probably did not start churning out all of their tools on bamboo raw materials either,” he explained. 

A skull showing signs of leprosy and a fatal head wound has been discovered in a soldiers’ cemetery in central Italy. Other skulls from the medieval cemetery bear evidence of surgical intervention. 

Archaeologists in Prague have reportedly claimed to have uncovered what has been called a “gay caveman” in the press, but scientists around the world hesitate to label the unusual Corded Ware culture burial. “We found one very specific grave of a man lying in the position of a woman, without gender specific grave goods, neither jewelry or weapons,” said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova of the Czech Archaeological Society. Some question if the skeleton is male, and others add that third-gender claims are “difficult to evaluate without a formal archaeological description.” 

Four sets of human remains recovered from various sites in Vietnam will be flown to the US Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command for identification. The remains are thought to have belonged to servicemen killed in aircraft crashes during the Vietnam War.

Federal prosecutors filed a complaint against a Utah woman who reported that her husband had violated his probation by hunting for American Indian artifacts and using methamphetamine. The husband passed a drug test, however. 

The prehistoric remains of a small child were uncovered by two men digging a hole in Chico, California. The hole was intended for an irrigation system for a medical marijuana garden. 

Part of a seventh-century heavy iron plow was unearthed in southeastern England. It had been thought that such plows, which were pulled by a team of eight oxen, did not come into use in England until the later medieval period. 

Three new pigment molecules have been identified on flint tools that turned blue while in storage at a military warehouse near Verona, Italy. Scientists think that the artifacts turned bright blue when a chemical in the synthetic rubber mats in their storage cabinets reacted with iron inclusions in the flint. “Nobody could foresee that stone materials that have crossed entire eras would have suffered from contact with the soft materials accommodating them,” said Vincenzo Tiné, regional supervisor for Italy’s Ministry of Culture. 

In Vietnam, construction workers found a brick tomb estimated to be 2,000 years old. Archaeologists called to the site uncovered a second, smaller tomb and other artifacts. 

One thousand workers are digging at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, in an attempt to save as many artifacts as possible before its Buddhist monastery sites are handed over to a copper mining company. The region is a Taliban stronghold and Mes Aynak, located in the mountains, was a Bin Laden training camp. 

Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History continue to excavate a 2,000-year-old tunnel at Teotihuacan. “We know that Teotihuacan was built as a replica of how they saw the cosmos, the universe. We imagine the tunnel to be a recreation of the underworld,” said archaeologist Sergio Gomez.