More than 100 more terracotta warriors have been unearthed at the tomb of China’s first emperor in Xian province. Some paint colors remain on the statues, along with burn marks. “It was hard work to restore the clay warriors as they were broken into pieces. It took us at least 10 days to restore one,” said Xu Weihong, head of the research team. 

Advances in the study of modern and ancient genes will allow scientists to test theories about human evolution and migration. “In the next five years, we will see a whole spectrum of discoveries,” said Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.  

A team from University College London and the University of Manchester claims that Easter Island’s road system was primarily ceremonial, and was not solely built for the transportation of Moai. “They lead – from different parts of the island – to the Rano Raraku volcano where the Moai were quarried. … Volcano cones were considered as points of entry to the underworld and mythical origin land Hawaiki,” explained Colin Richards of the University of Manchester.  

Graves in Pydna, an ancient city in Macedonia, contained gold jewelry, vases, and ivory beds in the fourth century B.C., but 100 years later, the offerings were much less elaborate. “At the close of the fourth century, a decree issued by Cassander’s commander in Macedonia-occupied Athens forbade the building of elaborate funeral monuments and limited spending on ceremonies. It was like the period we are going through today – one that will probably be found by and archaeologist of the future,” said Manthos Besios, deputy supervisor of the Pydna excavations.  

Nineteenth-century photographs helped archaeologists locate an aqueduct that was built in 1320 and carried water from Bethlehem to Jerusalem for 600 years. The same route has been used to carry water for 2,000 years.  

Chunks of mortar falling off Rome’s Colosseum have renewed concerns about the condition of other archaeological treasures in the city. “It is very difficult because these are not pieces and artifacts that are inside a museum, they are outside in the open with the rain and the noise and all these tourists walking around. So these are places that need even more money than most people can imagine,” said Darius Arya of the American Institute for Roman Culture.  

A late nineteenth-century neighborhood in downtown Seattle will be excavated before the Washington State Department of Transportation begins moving underground utilities and other construction projects. The neighborhood was torn down to build a rail yard for the Union Pacific Railroad 100 years ago. Archaeologists expect to unearth plenty of trash, building foundations, and other infrastructure. 

Here’s a slideshow of photographs from recent headlines in archaeological news.

Excavation of the Avenue of the Sphinxes in Luxor, Egypt, has uncovered a fifth-century Coptic church and a Nilometer, a cylindrical structure that was used to measure the level of the Nile River during floods. The church had been built with limestone blocks taken from Ptolemaic and Roman temples.

Archaeologist Mike Morwood and rock art specialist June Ross hired a helicopter and flew across the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, searching for rock art sites made by the first Australians. They found 54 potential sites. Flooding has washed away any traces of debris from cave floors, but the pictures themselves are well preserved. “The paint remains in the rock as a stain. And the rock surfaces are dense quartzite and sandstone, which are hard, very resistant to weathering and break down very, very slowly,” said Ross. 

In Guatemala, archaeologists have unearthed a jadeite mosaic miniature ceremonial head at the Maya city of Tak’alik Ab’aj.  

Archaeologists Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase of the University of Central Florida have used an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging), or airborne laser signals that can penetrate jungle cover, to map the Maya site of Caracol over an area of 80 square miles. “We know the size of the site, its boundaries, and this confirms our population estimates, and we see all this terracing and begin to know how the people fed themselves,” said Arlen Chase.  If you aren’t registered at the New York Times you can read about the laser mapping project at UCF Today.  

Underground construction in the densely populated Netherlands means that it is not always possible to preserve archaeological finds in situ. “We are heading towards a situation in the Netherlands in which there’s no more archaeology to be done here. That worries Dutch archaeologists,” said Jasper de Bruin of Leiden University.  

Ph.D. candidate Ann Raab is investigating the Civil War in Bates County, Missouri, where Union troops forced civilians off their land and burned their homesteads. 

Here’s more information on the chunk of ancient plaster that fell of Rome’s Colosseum, through the 30-year-old wire safety net, and to the ground on Sunday. 

What would you look like as a Neanderthal?   And Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, has some thoughts about recent Neanderthal research.