When did early humans master fire? A new survey of archaeological sites in Europe suggests that hominins may have survived the cold climate for 600,000 years without fire. “We assumed fire had to be an element of the human toolkit to survive northern-latitude winters,” said Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux. 

A team of scientists will study the thousands of sets of human remains recovered from Egypt’s Lower Nubia region when the Lower Aswan Dam was enlarged in the early twentieth century, but first they will review the work done by George Reisner and Grafton Elliot Smith. “The archives give us clues as to where the material has gone, how and why it went to particular countries and institutions, what the dispersal patterns were. We also want to know about any tests that have been done with them, and find what information we can about material or remains that haven’t survived,” said Rosalie David of the University of Manchester. 

The New York Times has more information about Donny George, who played a key role in recovering artifacts that were stolen from Iraq’s National Museum in 2003. Dr. George died suddenly last Friday. 

There’s also more on the pre-Roman road unearthed in western England.

Donny George, former director of Iraq’s National Museum, has died. Dr. George was forced to flee his country after the start of the Iraq War. He had been a visiting professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York.

Beneath a Christian basilica, archaeologists have found traces of a small fourth-century A.D. building that may be the oldest Christian worship space in Thessaloniki, Greece. 

A report from Sri Lanka indicates that an Australian archaeologist discovered a piece of silk dating to the second century A.D. in the Kotavehera Stupa. 

A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to one felony violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act for defacing the “Descending Sheep” rock art site in the Grand Canyon. He will pay $10,000 in restitution. 

Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the plague, was discovered in the tooth pulp of fourteenth-century skeletons across Europe. Some had argued that the Black Death, which killed 60 percent of the population, was caused by an unidentified “fever.” 

Terry Myers of the College of William and Mary thinks he has located the small building that was once housed the Bray School, opened to educate enslaved and free African Americans in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1760. The building had been moved and renovated in the nineteenth century, so more research is necessary. 

Here’s a new attempt to explain King Henry VIII’s health woes and infertility problems. 

CNN offers more information about mystery novelist Agatha Christie’s connection to archaeology.