UNESCO has urged all sides to preserve Libya’s cultural heritage, including the archaeological sites of Leptis Magna, Sabratha, and Cyrene.  

There’s no new information in this story from NPR, but you can listen to Tarek al-Awadi, director of the Egyptian Museum, and deputy director Mahmoud el Halwagi, talk about what happened in Cairo in January 29 first hand. The story also covers the demand of archaeologists worldwide for government protection of Egypt’s monuments and antiquities. 

This report from Turkey states that Egypt’s archaeologists are ready to go on strike unless a new minister or archaeological affairs is appointed. 

University of Cambridge archaeologist Barry Kemp, who works in Egypt at the site of Amarna, reminds everyone that any artifacts on the market were looted or are fakes. “The main targets of robbers are the antiquities storerooms. It is impossible to know at the moment how bad the overall situation is,” he told New Scientist. 

In fact, officials from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said that 65 objects sold at auction in Paris as ancient Maya artifacts are fakes. 

Archaeologist Mark Moore talks about making stone tools in his shed in Armidale, Australia.

High-resolution scans of the face of an Egyptian mummy thought to be Queen Tiye, King Tut’s grandmother, suggest that she had a wart or other small growth on her forehead, right between her eyes. 

Scientists at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in South Carolina are ready to set the H.L. Hunley upright. Once it has been rotated, the conservators will be able to remove concretions and examine the hull of the Confederate submarine, which sank in 1864. “We don’t know if there’s hull damage; we don’t know if there were leaks. The rotation is a monumental event,” said archaeologist Maria Jacobsen. 

Tree islands in the Florida Everglades may have originated as prehistoric garbage mounds. “This goes to show that human disturbance in the environment doesn’t always have a negative consequence,” said Gail Chmura of McGill University. 

Looting in Latin America is fueled by the antiquities trade. “They come at night to explore the ruins and dig the holes. They don’t know the history, they’re just looking for bodies and for tombs. They’re just looking for things to sell,” said shopkeeper Cuba Cruz de Metro, who lives in a farming village in Peru. 

Members of the Battlefield Restoration Archaeological Volunteer Organization in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, don’t want a new bridge to be built in an area they want added to state and national historic registers because they think George Washington traveled through the site on his way to the Battle of Trenton. “They found a stirrup. They found money from the 1700s. It shows there’s a 1700s road going through here,” commented resident Beth Kerr. 

Here’s more information on the recovery of cannon from a ship thought to have been sailed by pirate Captain Henry Morgan.