Space archaeologists want to make sure that unique places like the moon landing site of the Apollo 11 mission are protected. Could future “moon tourists” loot and destroy this “sacred site of world history?” “Can you imagine someone driving a cart of Neil Armstrong’s first footprint?” asks Peter Capelotti of Penn State University.

Meanwhile, rock art at the Picture Rocks site in Arizona has been vandalized. The 100 petroglyphs, thought to be the work of the Hohokam, are located at a religious retreat that is open without charge to visitors. The area is now posted with signs warning that thieves and vandals will be prosecuted.   

Three men were arrested earlier this month for looting a Chumash burial site in California.  

Australian writer Paola Totaro recounts her experiences as a tourist at archaeological sites, where she has witnessed the sometimes stupid, harmful acts of other travelers.  

An anonymous donor has given the Office of Historical Preservation of the Mohawks several artifacts thought to be 10,000 years old. “Although we know some things about them, I plan on having an archaeologist from SUNY Potsdam come in to take a look at them,” said Arnold Printup, Tribal Historical Preservation Officer.   

DNA taken from bones excavated in southern Greenland indicates that the settlers had both Nordic and Celtic ancestors. “We’ve always known that Norsemen traveled a lot and we also know that the early inhabitants of the Faroe Islands and Iceland had traces of Celtic genes. But now we also have evidence of this in Greenland as well,” said Danish archaeologist Jette Arneborg.  

Archaeology is a contentious undertaking in Jerusalem. PRI’s The World offers a concise explanation of the issues.  

The Morgantina Treasure has returned to Italy from New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it will go on display at the Museuo Nationale Romano before it settles in Sicily.  

Patty Gerstenblith, Director of the College of Law’s Program in Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University and President of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, and James Cuno, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, debate “the finder’s keepers argument for antiquities” for Minnesota Public Radio News. Local callers ask questions, too.

 Archaeologists found stone tools beneath a layer of volcanic sediment, indicating that the Indonesian island of Flores was inhabited one million years ago, or much earlier than previously thought. “We don’t know which hominins made the million-year-old tools because, regrettably, no human fossils were found with the tools,” said Adam Brumm of the University of Woollongong. He thinks the tools may have been produced by ancestors of Homo floresiensis, the Hobbits.   There’s a photograph of the tools, and criticism of the claim that they are one million years old, at National Geographic Daily News.

Human bones unearthed in an English garden have been dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. A medieval settlement is known to have occupied that area of Northumberland.   

Here’s more information on the recent study that found that modern domesticated dogs probably descended from wolves in the Middle East. “Our results show that Middle Eastern wolves were a critical source of genome diversity, although interbreeding with local wolf populations clearly occurred elsewhere in the early history of specific lineages,” according to the article, which appears in Nature.  In addition, Australia’s wild dingo and the New Guinea singing dog are genetically closest to wolves, out of the 85 dog breeds tested in a study conducted by Alan Wilton of the University of New South Wales.  

There’s also more information on the re-identification of a 1,300-year-old building in Israel as the Umayyad palace, al-Sinnabra.  

A 400-year-old shipwreck has been uncovered by winter storms on the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. “It’s going to go to pieces. I would love to see them save it,” said beachcomber Ray Midgett, who discovered the wreck.  

Archaeologists and police officers in Norfolk, England, have teamed up to crack down on illegal metal detecting. “Norfolk has a national reputation as a place to come and filch and steal archaeological material,” explained archaeologist Andrew Rogerson.  

Korean history professor Li Jine-mieung thinks he has identified several more Korean cultural items in the National Library of France that were removed from the Joseon Dynasty royal library in the nineteenth century.  

Once-and-future king Ruben Mita, age 11, pulled a sword out of the ground in his New Zealand backyard. His mom called the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and they put her in touch with the Royal Armories Museum in England in order to try to identify the unusual artifact.