Ted Dan Gardiner, 52, was the informant who helped federal officials in the Utah artifact sting. He reportedly died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Monday.  “He had a passion for Southwestern archaeology and Native American culture. It was something he didn’t want to see destroyed or disrespected,” said his son, Dustin Gardiner. 

The 4,000-year-old burial chamber of an Egyptian queen has been unearthed in Saqqara. The mummy of Queen Behenu has been destroyed, but hieroglyphics in her tomb are well preserved.   There’s more on Queen Behenu and her burial chamber at Reuters.  

Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet has been working at forgotten kingdoms in Sudan since 1965. “At the time I was told: you are wasting your time, there is nothing in Sudan. Today, no one says that anymore,” he said.  There’s more on Sudan from the AFP.   

A bronze box containing some 250 silver Hellenistic coins has been discovered in northern Syria. The man who dug them up handed them over to the authorities, who passed them to the Aleppo Department of Archaeology and Museum.   

Plans are being made for the permanent display of the Anglo-Saxon treasure known as the Staffordshire Hoard at two English museums connected by a heritage trail. “We are confident this would become a major tourist attraction, allowing visitors to learn not just about the hoard itself, but also about the historical background and the area from which it originates,” explained Rita McLean, head of museums and heritage at Birmingham city council.   

Deb Bennett, an authority on fossil and living horses, examined the saddled, skeletal remains of a small horse discovered in California’s Samuel P. Taylor State Park last fall. “I can’t specify a cause of death. But, however it occurred … the poor horse,” she said. State parks senior archaeologist Breck Parkman wants to identify the remains and figure out what happened.

 A cache of ostrich eggshells etched with geometric patterns has been uncovered in South Africa. The shells date to about 60,000 years ago. “The diversity of design motifs is impressive. It is an important new addition to the corpus of evidence for the development of modern human symbolic and artistic expression in Africa,” explained Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  See close-ups of the eggshells at Wired Science.

Archaeologists are digging up a late nineteenth-century Wild West town in Sandpoint, Idaho, complete with Chinatown, saloon, brothel, jeweler, blacksmith, and courthouse jail. Prehistoric artifacts will also be removed before highway construction begins.  

The public has contributed some £500,000 to the campaign to keep the Staffordshire Hoard in England’s West Midlands.  

Most of the 600 terracotta horses discovered in the tomb of Qinshihuang were modeled after geldings, according to Yuan Jing, an archaeologist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  

On the island of Ilheu de Pontinha, archaeologist Bryn Walters is said to have found a large nail, along with three skeletons and three swords, one of which is inscribed with the cross of the Knights Templar. The nail is thought to have been revered by the Knights as a holy relic of Christ’s crucifixion.