Studies of Otzi, everybody’s favorite 5,300-year-old Iceman, continue to produce new theories. Found back in 1991, he was first a lost shepherd, then a murder victim. Now, Rome University’s Alessandro Vanzetti claims the Iceman died nearer sea level and months later was carried to a high mountain pass (10,500 feet) and ceremonially buried.

Meanwhile, Anne Stone of Arizona State University has tried to dampen expectations from the recent successful sequencing of the Iceman’s DNA. She notes, “It is a sample of one. For us to really say something about that period, you need a sample of 25 to 50 individuals.”

Mexican and German archaeologists working at the Maya site of Uxul have found two immense reservoirs capable of holding as much water as 10 Olympic-size pools.

Using ground-penetrating radar, archaeologists have found a British-built Revolutionary War fort in Ebenezer, Georgia, during a study aimed at documenting old cemeteries in the area.

An archaeologist says plans to build homes on a medieval site in Teesdale, England, should be refused because of insufficient research on the tract’s history and too little information about the project’s impact.

An “army of volunteers” is helping archaeologists excavate on the grounds of the Abbey in Kilwinning, Scotland.

Loooting continues in Iraq. “This is an Iraqi problem. The Iraqi people and the Iraqi government should take the first steps and start protecting their cultural heritage,” says Donny George Youkhanna, former Iraqi National Museum director.

Trouble in Onancock, on the eastern shore of Virginia. Workers at a construction site for a wastewater treatment plant allege the project manager pressured them to keep quiet when they turned up human remains last year. Some are now coming forward with bones they kept. No definitive word on the age of the bones.

Here’s a brief overview of Tell Brak in Syria, but no real news.

Why was the Maya site of Kiuic, in the Puuc region of the Yucatán, abandoned so quickly around A.D. 880? Archaeologists have found walls laid out with corner stones but never built; a half-finished plaza, one side stuccoed and completed, the other composed only of rough stones; and pots and grinding stones left neatly in homes.

A National Park Service excavation at L’Hermitage plantation near Frederick, Maryland, has found remnants of two cabins that housed enslaved workers.

Residents of Cheadle, England, have been invited to watch The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit excavate the remains of Cheadle Hall, an 18th-century building on Cheadle Green, in September.

There are many reports online about the excavation of a Roman industrial estate, perhaps used by the Ninth Hispanic legion, in North Yorkshire. Now, study has revealed fibers in the rust on a nail from a Roman sandal found at the site, apparently confirming suspicions that Romans wore socks with their sandals. Earlier evidence for this came in the text of a letter found at Vindolanda, a fort on Hadrian’s Wall, itemizing contents of a “care” package sent to someone on the front, including underpants, socks, and sandals.

Preliminary study of human remains found at a dig at SCI-Laurel Highlands (a minimum security prison in Pennsylvania) last springs shows they represent 21 individuals. The site had been the location of a poor house in the later 1800s and then a mental hospital.

Excavators of Utah’s North Creek Shelter have identified a dietary shift from meat to mush 10,000 years ago. At that time, grinding stones appeared for the first time, evidence seeds were being ground into flour. Before mush-consumption began, the diet included duck, beaver, turkey, sheep, and deer.