Tomorrow marks the winter solstice, when the chamber at Newgrange, Ireland’s 5,000-year-old tomb, fills with light at sunrise.

Fluctuations in the climate influenced cultural changes in prehistoric New England, according to a review of information collected from Pennsylvania to Maine. “It’s not a straightforward relationship,” cautioned Samuel Munoz of the University of Wisconsin.  

Pillar holes that once supported a protective wall and drainage ditches have been unearthed in Japan, at the site of the Western Palace in the ancient capital of Nagaoka-kyo.  

Tiny bone fragments that may be remains of Amelia Earhart are being tested at the University of Oklahoma. The bone fragments were found on a deserted island in the South Pacific, along with artifacts suggesting that Westerners had been stranded there.  

Canadian authorities are investigating the death of archaeologist Mario Bergeron, who was injured while excavating in a 15-foot-deep hole at the site of the country’s first parliament building in Montreal.  

White paint was used to damage 2,000-year-old petroglyphs at Agua Fria National Monument in Arizona. “It would actually take some climbing on cliffs to get to where these petroglyphs are,” said Bureau of Land Management Ranger Rem Hawes.  

Archaeologist David Gill reviews recent arrests made in Spain for his blog, “Looting Matters.”  

France could return Korea’s “Uigwe,” or royal protocol books, next year. The books were taken by the French in the late nineteenth century.  

Maintenance work on a train line in central Athens has turned up archaeological artifacts.  

The remains of a man thought to have been a disgraced Roman gladiator have been uncovered in shallow ground at England’s Yorkshire Museum. “The physical evidence reveals he was a swordsman and that his body was literally dumped with the rubbish – there was no hint that he had been buried in a ceremonial way,” said Andrew Morrison of the Yorkshire Museum. The site may mark the location of York’s Roman amphitheater.

Archaeologist Mario Bergeron, aged 55, has died of injuries he sustained during an excavation in Montreal. He had been uncovering the remains of Canada’s first permanent parliament building.

A 50,000-year-old human skull fragment may have been used by Neanderthals as a sharpening tool. The bone was found in a cave in southwestern France, among other bone tools. “It could reflect that a human bone was not seen as any different from an animal one…Or it could reflect a particular process in which using this human bone as a tool had a special meaning, even though we don’t know which one,” explained Paleoanthropologist Christine Verna of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  

Casa Concha in Cusco, Peru, will be renovated to accommodate more than 300 artifacts from Machu Picchu to be returned by Yale University.  

Earlier this year, ancient agricultural fields and an entire town were discovered in central China, near a well-preserved site of 2,000-year-old houses that was found in 2003. “If these are preserved in the same way the houses are, it would really turn out to be a staggering development,” said Tristram Kidder of Washington University in St. Louis.  

National Geographic Daily News offers more information on the potential manipulation of sound effects in ancient Mesoamerican architecture.