Turkeys were domesticated by both the pre-Aztec people in south-central Mexico and the Ancestral Puebloans on the Colorado Plateau, according to studies by Camilla Speller and Dongya Yang of Washington State University. The birds were initially kept for their feathers, and only became an important food source for the Ancestral Puebloans around 1100 A.D.

A Utah antiquities dealer has received an initial payment and monthly payments for secretly recording transactions with other collectors and sellers, as part of the FBI sting operation that ended in the arrest of 26 individuals. The informant has no felony or misdemeanor convictions or charges pending against him.    Charles Denton Armstrong has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for threatening the informant.   

Egypt has instituted stiffer punishments for the theft and smuggling of antiquities. Egyptians who own ancient objects will also have to report them to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. “Parliament agreed on article eight that forbids trade in antiquities but allows possession of antiquities with some individuals, on condition that they cannot use them to benefit others, or to damage and neglect them,” said Zahi Hawass, who heads the Council.   

Mitochondrial DNA testing of a skeleton unearthed in a Roman cemetery in southern Italy has revealed a maternal East Asian ancestry. Here’s more information on what scientists are calling “tantalizing evidence” of “globalization, human mobility, identity, and diversity in Roman Italy.”   

The three Neanderthal teeth discovered in a cave in Poland are still in the news today. Mikolaj Urbanowski of Szczecin University says that the teeth are the first bodily remains of Neanderthals to be found in the country.  

Writer Kent Ewing reviews the claims that the tombs of two rival generals, Cao Cao and Liu Bei, have been discovered in China.

 Three Neanderthal teeth have reportedly been discovered in a cave in Poland, along with stone and bone tools and the bones of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceros.

Machu Picchu will be closed until the railway and roads can be repaired after massive flood damage. The last of the stranded tourists were flown out by helicopter late Friday afternoon. “There are no travelers here now and we have nothing to do. Everyone is leaving because there’s no work. Without tourism there’s no reason to be here,” said Jadira Mendez, a local resident who is waiting for the helicopters to return and take her to Cuzco.    

German archaeologist Ernst Pernicka has tested a collection of gold artifacts held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and he has found that the finely crafted artifacts, purchased more than 40 years ago from an antiquities dealer, are similar to the gold treasures excavated by Heinrich Schliemann from Troy in the 1870s.   

Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Department of Antiquities, is planning a press conference for later this month, when he will announce the results of DNA testing on Tutankhamun. Apparently waiting for the news has become news in and of itself.  

Writer Paul Sussman shares his experiences working on the Amarna Royal Tombs Project in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.  

Photographs of a few of the 6,000 personal objects recovered from Fromelles, France, are shown at BBC News. The remains of World War I soldiers who were killed in battle and buried in mass graves have been exhumed and will be reburied in a new military cemetery.   Here’s an article on the reburial of the first of the unidentified men.  

Visitors to the World Heritage Site of Borobudur will be asked to refrain from wearing hard sandals and high heels, or carrying umbrellas with metal heads. The new measures should protect the stones of the ninth-century Buddhist temple. Priests have also asked visitors cover up their legs as a sign of respect.  

There’s a digital reconstruction of a tomb containing human sacrifice victims in northern Peru at National Geographic Daily News. The tomb is part of an eighth-century temple complex built by the Lambayeque.  

The German secret service is said to have collected testimony that in 1999, lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta attempted to sell artifacts from Afghanistan to an archaeologist at the University of Gottingen.