There has been a fire in a barracks building at the former Nazi death camp of Majdanek, located in eastern Poland. Some 10,000 shoes belonging to Holocaust victims had been stored there. “The damage to these irreplaceable items is a loss to a site that has such historical value to Europe, Poland, and the Jewish people,” said Avner Shalev, director of the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel. The fire is thought to have started at a camp kitchen in the building.

Students learning to use geophysical equipment at the Roman fortress of Caerleon in south Wales discovered several large buildings that may have been baths, markets, administrative buildings, or temples. “Caerleon is one of the best known Roman sites in Britain, so it was a great surprise to realize that we had found something completely new and totally unexpected,” said Peter Guest of Cardiff University.  

The bones of newly dead adults at Teotihuacan were often sculpted into tools, according to the analysis of 5,000 bone fragments by scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  

Police recovered 380 artifacts and arrested five people living in Sofia and Vratsa, Bulgaria, for treasure hunting after searching their homes.  

Students from the University of Tennessee searched for signs of Indian Camp, which was home to enslaved African Americans in the eighteenth century. “Chances are it’s out there, it’s just a question of finding the spot,” said their professor, Barbara Heath.  

“Thunderstones” are back in the news. Archaeologists think the Vikings believed Stone Age ax heads and bits of prehistoric flint resembled Thor’s hammerhead and could act as “lightning repellent” or offer other protection. Such thunderstones have been found in graves in Scandinavia and Iceland, where flint does not occur naturally. “It shows that these stones had very special significance and suggests that these people were highly superstitious,” said Olle Hemdorff of the University of Stavanger.  

A mathematical study of stones carved by the Picts has suggested that the images could be symbolic and meant to convey information. But linguists are not sure if the mathematical method is valid. “The line between writing and drawing is not as clear cut as categorized in the paper,” concludes French scholar Arnaud Fournet.  

A wooden tablet dated bearing the date 730 A.D. has been found in Japan, at the site of what is thought to have been a foundry for the country’s first currency. Coins, molds, and other tools have also been uncovered.  

An Idaho woman was sentenced to three years federal probation for digging at an archaeological site in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. She will also have to pay restitution.  

Vulcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo thinks that high temperatures, and not suffocation by ash and gas, killed the residents of Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted.  

There’s a bit more information about the artifacts unearthed at the Star Carr site in northeastern England, home to what archaeologists are calling the oldest house in Britain.

A Thracian temple has been found during excavations at the site of Heraion-Teikhos in western Turkey. “According to the data we have, we thought that the temple burned down in a fire. We have so far removed statues of gods including Kybele, Eros and Aphrodite as well as bronze coins, amphora and similar pieces from the temple,” said Nese Atik from Ahi Evran University.

A Roman settlement has been spotted in aerial photographs taken from a police surveillance plane flying over eastern Italy.  

What defines modern humanity? Alix Spiegel writes about the power of symbols for NPR’s series on human evolution.  

A 10,500-year-old circular structure in at the Star Carr site in North Yorkshire is being called Britain’s oldest house. “We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence. Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape,” said Chantal Conneller from the University of Manchester.  

Vandals have damaged Bronllys Castle in Wales by loosening stones from the structure and throwing them off the top of it. “Closing a monument is always the last resort, but if vandals are determined to continue to damage the castle we have no other choice,” said Wayne Evans, the visitor services manager.  

A circle of stones, originally unearthed in the Yorkshire Dales in 1896, has been uncovered again. Archaeologists think the stones may have formed part of a communal bread oven.  

The monks of Ireland’s Skellig Michael may have moved into a “pre-existing citadel” around the eighth century, according to independent archaeologist Michael Gibbons. He has also found previously unidentified sets of steps carved into the island’s rocks. “The different staircases may indicate a far more complex pattern of settlement than previously documented, or they may also indicate a far more daring pilgrimage circuit was created on the island, at a time when it was a pilgrimage site,” he explained.  

American and Irish students will work together to excavate a Lowell, Massachusetts, settlement site inhabited by Irish workers in the early nineteenth century. Early nineteenth-century homes in Northern Ireland, where many immigrants lived before coming to the U.S., have also been investigated. “We are hoping to find artifacts from their everyday life as clues to their lifestyle. That’s the story to be told: How did they live?” said Frank Talty of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.  

Last week, the National Park Service refused to reverse the decision to remove the site of West Virginia’s Battle of Blair Mountain from the National Register of Historic Places. In 1921, 10,000 striking coal miners fought police and guards on the mountain for a week, when federal troops arrived and imposed martial law. Blair Mountain could now be destroyed by strip mining.  

A trading post and harbor dating to the twelfth century are being excavated in northern Iceland.  

An English team has built a robot to send into a shaft in the Great Pyramid at Giza. “We are trying to gain evidence for other people to draw conclusions,” said Robert Richardson of the Leeds University School of Mechanical Engineering.