According to an official Egyptian press release, “The American-Egyptian mission from Yale University has stumbled upon what appears to be the remains of a substantial settlement.” For more on the site, in the Kharga Oasis of Egypt’s western desert, see the widely circulated AP report.

Remains of a prehistoric child have been recovered from an underwater cave in the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The 10,000-year-old bones were found by divers who “stumbled” upon them.

Here’s more about “Odysseus’ palace.” This report has proper cautions: Palace? Yes, and that is neat. Odysseus? Don’t think so.

While planting jasmine in his garden in Georgetown, South Carolina, David Bertrand unearthed “a most unusual find.”

Excavations in Columbia, Pennsylvania, have yielded Native American artifacts from two different periods as well as a variety of historical finds (tin- and salt-glazed pottery, pipe fragments, buttons, etc.) from the Wright’s Ferry Mansion.

The residents of Kibworth, a village in Leicestershire, England, joined a dig as part of an upcoming BBC series. Among the finds were Roman-era pottery, prehistoric flint blades, and Saxon artifacts.

The debate about the Chinese warlord Cao Cao’s tomb is on. Experts at an academic forum in Suzhou have declared that the tomb is a fake. But the Shanghai Daily (subscription only) says “members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have denounced doubts swirling about the authenticity of the recently unearthed tomb” as unscientific. For background, see “The Tomb of China’s Most Notorious Villain, or Just a Tourist Trap” in our September/October issue (lengthy abstract online here).

Cholera or murder? A ghost story has led to the discovery of human remains in Malvern, Pennsylvania, perhaps of 57 Irish immigrants who may have met violent deaths there after a cholera epidemic struck in 1832.

Archaeologists excavating on the border of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia continue to uncover remains of Beaubassin, one of the largest Acadian settlements in the New World.

Looters are targeting Native American burial grounds along Tennessee’s Cumberland River that have recently been exposed by flood erosion.

Speaking of looting, here’s a review of the book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archeological Plunder and Obsession. Author Craig Childs looks at the problem in the American Southwest and globally.

Greek archaeologist Thanasis Papadopulos says he has found “the ruins of a three-level palace with a staircase carved into the rock” on Ithaka. He believes the remains match Homer’s description of the palace of Odysseus.

An ancient wall has been found near the Temple of Apollo in Didim, Turkey. Discovered in an excavation prompted by illegal digging, the wall may belong to the Temple of Artemis.

Russian and Korean archaeologists are digging at Koksharovka-1 in search of evidence for the origins of the ancient Bohai nation-state, the first documented state in the Far East.

The first professionally trained Jamaican archaeologist, Anthony Aarons, has died. Trained at Cambridge and Texas A&M University (in nautical archaeology), Aarons was for many years the government archaeologist before becoming director of the Port Royal Project Centre for Archaeological and Conservation Research.

Boris A. Litvinsky, dean of Central Asian archaeology and excavator of numerous sites, has also passed away.