In southern Utah, archaeologists have finished excavating the North Creek Shelter Site, which was inhabited periodically beginning 11,000-years ago until about 100 years ago. “We were totally surprised by what we found,” said Joel Janetski, now retired from Brigham Young University.

In Tennessee, human remains turned up when a homeowner dug a trench as part of flood repairs. The bones are thought to be between 500 and 1,000 years old. “They’ve basically been put on notice that there’s a cemetery in their yard,” said state archaeologist Mike Moore.  

Steven Smith of the University of South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology will identify and evaluate the condition of battlefields and camps associated with General Sherman’s march through South Carolina during the Civil War. He will also look for two prisoner of war camps. “Most of the work at this level is information gathering,” he explained.  

It turns out that Ohio’s Indian Mound Park is just named after American Indian burial mounds, but doesn’t actually contain any of them. Contract archaeologist Ryan Weller determined that the park’s mounds are natural formations.  

Here’s a bit more information on the recovery of a box thought to hold records related to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. 

Cuneiform tablets describing a trade deal hashed out 4,000 years ago have been found in Turkey at Kultepe-Karum.   

A late Roman cemetery has been unearthed in Kent, England, outside what had been the Roman town of Durolevum. Roman settlement of the area could date to the invasion in 43 A.D.  

The hobbit wars are heating up again. Robert Eckhardt of Penn State University and Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide argue that the specimen discovered in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores had a tiny brain and asymmetrical skull because of abnormal development.

More than 500 repatriated artifacts have been put on display at Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  There’s more to the story of the rescue of the 4,400-year-old statue of King Entemena. “Now he’s going back where he belongs,” said John Russell of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Russell authenticated the sculpture when it was recovered in a sting operation in the United States.

For the past 10,000 years, cultural changes have shaped human evolution, according to Ben Potter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Timothy Taylor of Bradford University would add that the invention of the baby sling by Stone Age women spurred human evolution. ”The invention of the baby sling, which allowed more babies to successfully mature outside the female body, instantly removed the barrier to increased head and brain size,” he said.  

A wooden box removed from a cairn in the Canadian Arctic could contain records left by the Franklin Expedition in 1845, or perhaps papers written explorer Roald Amundsen, who navigated the Northwest Passage in 1905. The box will be opened at the Canadian Conservation Institute.  

Four years ago, a man dug up a 1,200-year-old psalter in an Irish bog. Now scientists think that the book’s leather cover may have come from Egypt. “The cover could have had several lives before it ended up basically as a folder for the manuscript in the bog,” said Raghnall O Floinn of Ireland’s National Museum.  

What remains of the 2,000-year-old port of Leukaspis, also known as Antiphrae, could soon be open to tourists. Located on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast at the modern resort town of Marina, the ancient city was home to wealthy wheat and olive merchants until a tsunami in 365 A.D. washed it away. “I am quite happy it still exists, because when I was involved there were big plans to incorporate this site in a big golf course being constructed by one of these tycoons. Apparently the antiquities authorities didn’t allow it,” said Polish archaeologist Agnieszka Dobrowlska.  Here’s a photograph of three reconstructed Roman pillar tombs at the site.  

The Theban Desert Road Survey investigates caravan routes and oasis settlements across Egypt’s desert. Two weeks ago, the announcement of the discovery of a 3,500-year-old administrative, economic, and military center at Kharga Oasis marked its “most spectacular find.” “The desert was not a no man’s land, not the wild west. It was wild, but it wasn’t disorganized,” said John Coleman Darnell of Yale University.  

The family of a World War II air raid warden has revealed rare, color home movies of London during the Blitz.  And a German bomber will be retrieved from Britain’s southeastern coast.  

A Saxon boat hollowed out from a piece of oak and five animal skulls were found in the River Ant in Norfolk, England.  

Two gold bracelets crafted during the Bronze Age were rescued from a pile of dirt in Kent, England. The earth had been removed from a trench by archaeologists and volunteers in a large-scale excavation ahead of a road construction project.  

Three shipwrecks discovered in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes could offer researchers new insights into the transition from medieval to modern shipbuilding. “The real import of those vessels were they just happen to be from that period when you’re moving from those oared vessels that had guns on them to sailed vessels that had guns on them,” said Jeffrey G. Royal of Florida’s RPM Nautical Foundation.