There are many fakes in the collection of antiquities dealer Leonardo Patterson, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. German authorities seized more than 1,000 artifacts from Patterson in 2008.

Utah’s artifacts-trafficking raids by federal agents, and the subsequent suicides and trials, have become international news. Chris McGreal of The Guardian spoke to Winston Hurst, who grew up in Blanding, Utah, and became an archaeologist. “There’s quite a bit left. That’s why it’s still a fight,” he said.  

A new website, “Dig for Shakespeare,” promises to keep “visitors young and old” up-to-date on the discoveries made at New Place, Shakespeare’s last home in Stratford-on-Avon, England. Excavation began three weeks ago, and will continue until September.  

The Panathenaic Stadium in Athens has been reopened to the public.  

Scientists will reportedly test hairs from baboon mummies found in Egypt in order to try and pin down the location of the mysterious “Land of Punt.” Ancient Egyptians imported luxury goods and baboons from Punt, but their texts only offer vague references to its location. However, if the baboons had been kept in Egypt for more than a year, “the chemical signal associated with their origin will be completely obliterated,” said Nathaniel Dominy of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Biological anthropologist Gwen Robbins of Appalachian State University has examined bone fragments taken from the hearth at the Donner Party campsite at Alder Creek, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She found no human bones that would support the claim made by newspapers in the late 1840s that the survivors had eaten their dead while trapped in the snowy mountains. She did indentify the bones of cattle, deer, horse, and dog, however.

The remains of a British pilot and his World War II bomber plane have been discovered in a small German village. A young man with a metal detector found the plane after hearing stories about the crash from neighbors.  

There are a few more details about the tomb of an ancient Egyptian royal scribe that was unearthed at Tell el-Maskhuta, east of Cairo. The settlement had contained a garrison that supplied and armed the Egyptian army.  

Chemical analysis of a stalagmite in West Virginia suggests that American Indians regularly cleared and burned trees 2,000 years ago, and therefore had a greater impact on the environment than previously thought. “They had achieved a pretty sophisticated level of living that I don’t think people have fully appreciated,” said Gregory Springer of Ohio University.  

The grave of the “Old Leatherman,” a “mysterious vagabond” who traveled the hills of Connecticut and New York in the late nineteenth century, may need to be moved. If it is, researchers may be able to determine his ancestry. Some think the “Old Leatherman” was of French-Canadian and American Indian descent, since he was said to have spoken with a French accent.