An antiquities dealer in Colorado is expected to settle charges against him for digging up graves and looting federal lands. He was busted with 25 others last year in a federal sting operation.  A Utah man snagged in the same federal artifacts sting claims he can’t be prosecuted because the ancient jewelry in his possession came from private land.

An anonymous businessman has pledged up to £50,000 to the Tullie House museum for the purchase of a Roman parade helmet if the public will match his gift. The rare helmet was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast in Cumbria, England, but it did not qualify for protection under the treasure trove law. The helmet will be auctioned off next week.  

Barricades intended to protect 6,000-year-old Indian mounds on the Louisiana State University campus were reportedly removed by the university in order to prevent injury to football fans. Children attending a game had been using signs reading “Please do not slide on the mounds,” and “Help preserve the mounds,” as sleds to slide down them. “It would be nice if people would not just think of the mounds as big piles of dirt,” said LSU archaeologist Rob Mann.  

In September 2007, Yale University agreed to return thousands of Machu Picchu artifacts to Peru. “Now is the time to start packing up the things and send them over together with the research. … Silence would indicate that they are guilty of robbery,” Peruvian President Alan Garcia told the press.  

Isotope analysis of a boy’s teeth who had been buried with an amber-bead necklace at Stonehenge 3,550 years ago indicates that he had grown up around the Mediterranean Sea. “Most archaeologists would say that when you find burials like this…people who can get these rare and exotic materials are people of some importance,” said Andrew Fitzpatrick of Wessex Archaeology. 

Welsh families are being encouraged to share their World War I memorabilia and stories with Cardiff University’s School of History and Archaeology. The school is creating an online archive of information about what the Great War was like for soldiers and their families.

Morris Sutton, once a factory manager, quit his job to become an archaeologist. Now he lives in South Africa and digs at Swartkrans in the Sterkfontein Valley. “There’s a huge attraction that you are picking up something like a stone tool that maybe some hominid dropped a million years ago,” he explained.

You can read more than 250 ancient Greek manuscripts online, thanks to the British Library in London, which has made some of its holdings available to everyone. “This is exactly what we have all hoped for from new technology, but so rarely get,” said Mary Beard of the University of Cambridge.  

Discovery News has more on Liubov Golovanova’s idea that Neanderthals in western Asia and Europe were wiped out by at least three volcanic eruptions 40,000 years ago. Golovanova is affiliated with the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.  

A project to build a natural gas pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon will disturb cultural resources, according to some tribal nations. However, because the pipeline does not cross tribal boundaries, the tribal nations were not consulted ahead of time. “Adequate consultation is something that should have been done at the beginning – they’re trying to do it now, but the last thing should have been the first thing,” said Warner Barlese of the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe.