A new species of Australopithecus has been discovered in South Africa. The fossilized bones of the juvenile male and adult female share a mix of primitive features of ape-like Australopithecines and more advanced genus Homo fossils. But is Australopithecus sediba really an ancestor of modern humans? “As in most matters to do with interpretation of the hominin fossil record, history will be the judge,” commented Peter Brown of the University of New England.  This article has a description of the fossils and a rotating digital image of the juvenile skull.  Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand and his son, Matthew, tell the story of their discovery of the fossils in this video from BBC News.

At the site of Tell Tayinat, in southeastern Turkey, Timothy Harrison of the University of Toronto has unearthed a cuneiform tablet that delineates a treaty between an Assyrian king and his vassal states. The text, written ca. 670 B.C., resembles the story of Abraham’s covenant with God in the Hebrew Bible, which is thought to have been written at about the same time. “The language in the (Assyrian) texts is (very similar) and now we have a treaty document just a few miles up the road from Jerusalem,” he said. 

The scheduled Superfund cleanup of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York, will be preceded by an archaeological assessment, although dredging by the Army Corps of Engineers has probably destroyed any archaeological evidence. The supplies used to build Brooklyn in the nineteenth-century were carried along the canal, which later became polluted with sewerage, coal tar, and the wastes from chemical and dye manufacturers.  

In Britain, commercial archaeologists produce reports that often go unpublished, making it difficult for some academics to keep up with the new information. “Archaeological information is being treated as a commodity to which developers control access,” according to Gary Cunliffe of the University of Oxford, who wrote about the problem in British Archaeology.  

A team from Indiana University traveled to Virginia to document changes made by Thomas Jefferson to the grounds at Monticello. They used remote sensing equipment to locate two lost roads and took soil cores in order to examine the fill that Jefferson brought in to shape the landscape.  

Here’s more information on the 500-year-old Maori site uncovered recently in New Zealand. “The fact that this site has survived with all its archaeological materials intact in this heavily modified urban setting makes it amazing, unique and rare,” said archaeologist Bev Parslow.  

Here’s the latest on the gathering in Cairo of culture officials from around the world seeking the repatriation of looted artifacts. “Every country is fighting alone, every country suffered alone, especially Egypt. We will battle together,” Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the delegates. 

Four more defendants in the Utah illegal artifacts-trafficking case have surrendered their collections of artifacts to authorities.

A two-day conference begins in Cairo today. Antiquities officials from various countries will discuss “the protection and restitution of cultural heritage,” according to Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.  The BBC also has an article on the conference.

The name of the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus has been found inscribed in a cartouche on a victory stele in the Temple of Isis at Philae. Such an inscription would indicate that Augustus was treated as a pharaoh by the Egyptians after his defeat of Cleopatra. “The priests needed to see him as a pharaoh otherwise their understanding of the world would have collapsed,” said Martina Minas-Nerpel of Swansea University in Wales. 

Volunteers are working to free a sixteenth-century shipwreck from the sands of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. This article documents their efforts with photographs, video, and an article. 

The state of Rhode Island wants to preserve a tract of land containing an intact Narragansett Indian village as an archaeological park, but it doesn’t have a fund to purchase the $10 million property from its current owner. “Our position is that the government can take land for parks and roads, but they have to pay for it,” said William R. Landry, a lawyer for Downing Salt Pond Partners, which owns the land and wants to develop it. The company’s permit to build was revoked after an archaeological survey in 2006.  

A 500-year-old Maori adze and the bones of an extinct moa were found in a large fire pit. Such “first settlement” sites are rare in New Zealand.  

The Neolithic skeletal remains of “Charlie,” a three-year-old child, will remain on display at the Alexander Keiller Museum in Avebury, England. The Council of British Druid Orders had requested that English Heritage rebury the bones for religious reasons. 

Archaeologists and volunteers are restoring a garden where Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton took tea in 1802. 

A team from Exeter University wants to analyze the tree rings of the enormous kauri trees preserved in New Zealand’s peat bogs. The trees could act as 30,000-year-old records of climate changes.