Italian authorities are investigating a curator at the Princeton University Museum of Art for allegedly assisting a Princeton alumnus and art dealer by exporting and laundering stolen artifacts.

Police in Albania stopped smugglers who were trying to carry ancient artifacts and more recent objects into Macedonia. They also confiscated money, weapons, and cars. 

Artifacts seized by U.S. Customs Officials last year were returned to Peru today. 

Britain has reportedly rejected a request from the Archaeological Survey of India for the return of artifacts carried away during British colonial rule. “As efforts so far to reclaim stolen treasures have proved futile, UNESCO support is required for launching an international campaign to achieve this end,” said ASI director Gautam Sengupta.  

Christie’s has been asked to withdraw three artifacts linked to convicted art dealer Giacomo Medici from an auction scheduled for next week. “Christie’s knows they are selling objects that appeared in the Medici archive,” said Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri.  

The Italian farmer who owns the land at the head of the Aqua Traiana is reportedly digging for Roman treasure and allegedly damaging the fragile site. He closed off access to the grotto and spring when the aqueduct was discovered five months ago.  

A shipwreck exposed by winter storms on the North Carolina coast could date to the early years of the seventeenth century. The ship was very large, built without metal fasteners, and probably carried valuable cargo. “It has a very unusual design. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw that thing,” said Bradley A. Rodgers of East Carolina University.  

Here’s more on the recent study of oyster shells from Jamestown and the record drought endured by the English colonists in the seventeenth century.  

The foundation of an eighteenth-century almshouse was found near a retaining wall at New York City’s City Hall.  

There’s more on the supposed “brain food” eaten by early humans at National Geographic Daily News.  

A mountaintop-removal mining operation is planned for West Virginia’s Blair Mountain, site of a violent, five-day confrontation in 1921 between coal industry forces and miners who wanted to unionize. Preservationists are trying to keep the as-yet undisturbed site on the National Register of Historic Places. “The activists are all wearing red bandannas around their necks, just like the miners did in 1921,” said Brandon Nida of the University of California, Berkeley.  

Volunteers can assist archaeologists at the Roman fort of Vindolanda, located in northeastern England.  

And will the Roman chariot racetrack in Colchester make the UNESCO World Heritage list?

Members of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery who are looking for Amelia Earhart hope to recover DNA from artifacts they found on the island of Nikumaroro. They think she might have crashed into the sea and died a castaway.

An ochre powder production site estimated to be 58,000 years old has been unearthed at a rock shelter in South Africa. Project leader Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand found four cement hearths made of ash, where ochre powder could have been ground or stored and then heated in order to turn it red.  

Here’s a better photograph of what could be the world’s oldest rock art, discovered in a rock shelter in Australia.  

Brigham Young University archaeologist Bruce Bachand spoke with Utah’s Deseret News about his excavation of a Zoque burial of a royal couple that could be the oldest pyramid tomb in Mesoamerica.  

Indonesia is still undecided as to whether to ratify the UNESCO convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage. The government attempted to sell artifacts salvaged from a 1,000-year-old shipwreck last month, but there were no bidders.  

Archaeologist Graham Keevil talks about the discovery of a 600-year-old window on the grounds at Rochester Cathedral in Kent, England, in this video.  

An Armenian church in Los Angeles has filed a civil lawsuit against the Getty Museum for the return of seven pages of the Armenian Orthodox Church’s Zeyt’un Gospels, which date to 1256. The museum acquired the pages in 1994 from a private collector who asked to remain anonymous. The church claims the pages were stolen during the Armenian Genocide of 1915.  

Eighteenth-century artifacts uncovered in a dusty warehouse crate will be returned to the Nez Perce tribe. “Every now and again, you still find one of those boxes that hasn’t been paid much attention to. We get surprised, just like anybody else,” said Leah Evans-Janke of the University of Idaho.  

Arthur Demarest of Vanderbilt University explains his work at the Maya city of Cancuen, in northern Guatemala, and the importance of ethical archaeology, in New Scientist.