Palaeoanthropologist Russell L. Ciochon of the University of Iowa has taken a team to the Solo River at Ngandong in Java, Indonesia, to learn more about the 14 Homo erectus fossils discovered there in the early 1930s. Could these individuals have been alive at the last part of the Ice Age?

Parks Canada officials announced that they have found the HMS Investigator, which was abandoned in 1853 during the search for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition.  

DNA taken from the hip bone of Oetzi the Iceman has been mapped by a team of scientists. “We now have access to the complete genetic profile of this world-famous mummy,” said a statement released by the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy.  “We are dealing here with old DNA which in addition is heavily fragmented,” adds Albert Zink of the EURAC Institute for Mummies.  

The Italian government is still looking for private sponsors to help pay for the restoration of Rome’s Colosseum. “If all goes to plan, by 2013 the Colosseum will have been cleaned from top to bottom but even more important, it will be fully accessible to visitors,” said Francesco Giro, undersecretary for Italy’s heritage ministry.  

Archaeological sites in the marshes of Grand Bay, Mississippi, were damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and could be further damaged by oil from the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Archaeologists are rushing to learn what they can. “Oil will contaminate the material in the middens, leaving them unfit for scientific investigation,” said Ed Jackson of the University of Southern Mississippi.  

A human skeleton was found in Ocala National Forest, located in northeastern Florida.  

European funds have paid for an early-warning system at Rhodiapolis in southern Turkey. “Because of this project, smoke and forest fires will be detected early. When floods and fires advance, this system will accelerate the decision making process,” said Enis Cetin of Bilkent University.  

English teenagers found a searchlight emplacement from 1940 while doing a survey for school. The searchlight was intended to help the Royal Artillery protect munitions factories in Birmingham and Coventry from German aircraft.

Alejandro Terrazas of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology has reconstructed the face of a woman who lived on the Caribbean coast between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. He says she resembles people from southeastern Asia. “This indicates that the Americas were populated by several migratory movements, not just one or two waves from northern Asia across the Bering Strait,” he claims.

A new expedition will create a 3D map of the RMS Titanic. “For the first time, we’re really going to treat it as an archaeological site with two things in mind. One is to preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of the Titanic itself. The second part is to really understand what the state of the ship is,” said David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  

Archaeologist Nick Luccketti talks about keeping a contract archaeology firm afloat during a recession. 

Students are assisting with the investigation of Whitehall House in Middletown, Rhode Island, one-time home to eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley. The building was also a tavern, a tea house, housing for British soldiers, and a tenant farm. “Whitehall is one of those iconic Rhode Island houses that we should know more about, but don’t,” said James C. Garman of Salve Regina University.  

Here’s an update with photographs on the eighteenth-century ship unearthed at the World Trade Center site. “It’s lovely to look at, but we’ll get much more information by taking it apart,” said contract archaeologist Diane Dallal.  

Two fragments of clay tablet unearthed at the site of Hazor in northern Israel are said to be inscribed in cuneiform with a 3,700-year-old code of law. The excavations are being conducted by archaeologists from Hebrew University.  

Chinese archaeologists will reportedly search for a ship that sank off the coast of Kenya 600 years ago. Scholars think the ship will provide information about early contact between Ming Dynasty China and East Africa, and the legendary explorer Zheng He.  

How did hands and tool making interact to make us human? “Everything that made us human was arguably given this big push by using stone tools, and so I’m trying to see what it is about our anatomy that allowed us to be good at it compared to other species that weren’t good at it,” said Erin Marie Williams of George Washington University.  

Three antiques dealers and a professor have been arrested in South Korea for dealing in stolen cultural artifacts.  

There’s more information on the Temple University excavation of an African-American town in central New Jersey, known in the early nineteenth century as Timbuctoo. “These people had to deal with Jim Crow, they had to deal with slavery, they had to deal with economic oppression, racism. That’s what we’re really trying to find,” explained archaeologist Chris Barton.  

Four archaeological sites are being excavated in the Rhodope Mountains, near the Greek-Bulgarian border. “It is too early to speak about great finds but I think that these are sites are very promising,” said archaeologist Georgi Nehrizov. The area is slated for the construction of a new road.