Some archaeologists think that as many as 20 million people may have once inhabited the Amazonian rain forest. Their wooden cities would have been quickly swallowed by the jungle if the residents had been killed off by European diseases, but they did leave behind heavy, black dirt, called terra preta, which was made fertile when mixed with charcoal, human waste, and other organic matter. “There is a gigantic footprint in the forest,” said Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo of the University of Florida.

Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder will hire a new team of lab leaders for the next phase of research at the 9,500-year-old site of Catalhöyük in Turkey. “I have felt over recent years that the project was getting comfortable with itself and so not challenging each other or me or the assumptions that we were all taking for granted,” he explained.  

Two unmarked graves discovered on the campus of Virginia’s William & Mary College contained the remains of dogs that had been buried during the Colonial period. “When we first identified the sites, we treated the remains as human because they were buried like people,” said Joe Jones, director of the college’s department of anthropology.  

Are there any artifacts at Indian Mound Park in Columbus, Ohio? Franco Ruffini, Ohio’s deputy historic preservation officer, wants an archaeological survey to be conducted before bulldozers continue to clear land for athletic fields.  Artifacts from the Hopewell period and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been found in Etna, Ohio.  

Large doses of tetracycline have been found in the bones of ancient Nubian mummies, who probably imbibed the antibiotic through beer and gruel made from fermented grain. “Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing,” said George Armelagos of Emory University.  

Fossilized bones excavated from a Spanish cave known as Gran Dolina show signs of “gastronomic cannibalism,” or the consumption of other humans by Homo antecessor as a regular food source. Human and animal bones bearing cut marks had been tossed away together for some 100,000 years.

Corpse-eating insect remains have been found in Moche graves in northern Peru, suggesting that the dead were exposed for at least a week before burial. Such insects are also depicted in Moche art. “The Moche deliberately exposed the body to the flies with the hope that the anima or spirit of the deceased would be carried from the maggots into adult flies and through close contact with people, complete the human cycle,” wrote J.B. Hucheta of the Université Bordeaux and Bernard Greenberg of the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Journal of Archeological Science.

Bulgaria’s Unit for Combating Organized Crime raided the homes of three men accused of treasure hunting near the village of Koshava. Coins, bronze vessels, metal detectors, and a pistol were seized.  

The ancient health center in western Turkey known as Alliaoni is due to be covered with sand before it is submerged by the reservoir of the Yortanli Dam. “We have found a sculpture of Asklepios, who was known as the god of health. Alliaoni has 400 surgical instruments, the highest number ever found, proving that the place was a hospital at the time,” defended excavator Ahmet Yaras.  Here’s more information on the controversy over the submersion of the ancient site.  

The Cardy Camp, an 11,000-year-old camp site in Wisconsin, will be donated to the Archaeological Conservancy by the Cardy Family. “As we were picking up the stones, occasionally we’d find an arrowhead at home, and we never thought a great deal about it,” said Darrel Cardy.  

Archaeologists and volunteers in southern Oregon are searching for any traces left of the Applegate Trail. Modern roads may have erased the nineteenth-century pioneer route.  

The Maryland Historic Trust and the Navy continue to work together to excavate a shipwreck that may be the USS Scorpion, which fought the British Navy in the Patuxent River during the War of 1812. Plans are afoot to construct a visitor’s center complete with artifacts from the ship by 2012.  

Canadian and British officials are discussing how to preserve the wreck of HMS Investigator, a nineteenth-century British ship located in Mercy Bay this summer. The ship was abandoned in 1854 during a search for the lost members of the Franklin Expedition.