A metal artifact that may have been a war shield has reportedly been found at what is believed to be an Inca citadel in northern Peru. Rangers at the Cordillera de Colan Reserved Zone in Amazonas made the discovery while on patrol.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited the mass graves of Japanese soldiers recently unearthed on the island of Iwo Jima. “Because we lost the war, for a long time there was not much enthusiasm about projects like this, but time is running out. The families of the dead, their brothers and sisters, are in their 80s,” said Yukihiko Akutsu, who heads the search mission.  

A snowstorm in Israel has destroyed the modern sea wall that surrounds the ancient port of Caesarea. “There is no disagreement among experts that the current situation, if it is not improved, will lead to the destruction of one of the flagship archaeological sites of Israel,” said architect Zeev Margalit.  

Calls for the resignation of Italy’s Culture Minister Sandro Bondi continue. “The minister is responsible for having chosen a management style at Pompeii that favored appearance over substance. No expert would have done this. Technicians, restorers, and archaeologists were denied any say in the matter,” said Tsao Cevoli, president of Italy’s association of archaeologists.  

Skeletons uncovered in Pompeii in the 1980s have provided scientists with information about how people lived. Among the discoveries are markers of congenital syphilis, long thought to have first reached Europe with Christopher Columbus’ sailors in the fifteenth century.  

How did people amuse themselves during their free time 5,000 years ago in Mexico? Archaeologist Barbara Voorhies, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara, thinks they played dice games and kept score using holes arranged in C-shapes on special clay floors.  Here are more photographs of the potential game boards.  

Anthropologists Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo and Peter Andrews have examined recently chewed bones and some that were on the dinner menu in the 1960s for The Journal of Human Evolution. They want to be able to recognize the evidence of human consumption on ancient animal bones.  

A Druid leader has asked that cremated human remains excavated from Stonehenge be reburied.  “We shall pursue every avenue open to us within the law to ensure the timely return of our ancestors,” said Frank Somers of Aes Dana Grove and The British Druid Association.

Turkey’s Roman city of Allianoi has been completely buried with sand and will soon be submerged by waters from a new dam. “The method is obsolete and it will destroy, rather than protect, the ancient site,” said Ilker Ertugrul of the Istanbul Chamber of Architects.

The excavation of one of the few colonial-era steel mills in North America will be back filled because the state of New Jersey cannot afford to turn the Trenton site into an archaeological park. “Let’s focus the money on current parks, and let’s preserve [the Petty’s run site] properly so we can open it again when we have money to build a really cool interpretive center with staff,” said Irene Kropp of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.  

Chinese archaeologists say they have excavated a 2,400-year-old pot of soup from a tomb near the ancient capital of Xian.  

Two 1,500-year-old sculptures of serpent’s heads have been uncovered at the ball court in the Maya city of Tonina in Chiapas, Mexico, further strengthening its resemblance to the ball court described in the Popol Vuh.  

More than two tons-worth of encrustation have been removed from the USS Monitor’s steam engine at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. “If you consider that it spent nearly 139 years underwater, it’s in outstanding shape – though some of the wrought iron has seen better days. And there are some copper alloy parts that look brand new when they’re first uncovered – like they just came off the shelf,” said conservation project manager Dave Krop.  

New regulations issued by the Department of the Interior require museums and other institutions to hand over American Indian remains and funerary objects that cannot be linked to modern cultural groups to “other Indian tribes,” or “to an Indian group that is not federally recognized,” or even to rebury the remains.  

A tiny bone fragment found on the southwestern Pacific island of Nicumaroro had been thought to be a turtle bone, but scientists are now testing to see if it may have belonged to lost pilot Amelia Earhart.  

The Guardian provides the story of the discovery of the Frome Hoard in an English field last April. Archaeologists think the more than 50,000 coins were deposited all at once as a metal offering to the gods.  

It is December, so the “Blue Santa” article has made another appearance.