Skeletal remains excavated in Gloucester, England, in the 1970s turn out to have belonged to a large man born east of the Danube River. Historians theorize that he was a Goth mercenary in the Roman Army ca. 400 A.D.

Here’s a little more information on the two middens discovered along the banks of New Zealand’s Whanganui River.  

Are you planning a trip to western Ireland? Be sure to visit Ceide Fields, a Neolithic farming village preserved in a peat bog.  

Easter Island is suffering from too many visitors–the environment is threatened by their sewage and trash.   

A dozen pre-Columbian graves and earthen enclosures made by the Killke culture were discovered in Cuzco, Peru, by archaeologists from the National Institute of Culture. Five of the burials had been looted.  

Prehistoric human remains unearthed in a Nebraska pasture will be handed over to the Santee Sioux Tribe. The area is an acknowledged historical tribal burial site.  

The remains of a Civil War soldier uncovered during construction work in Franklin, Tennessee, will be laid to rest tomorrow. “We don’t know if he’s a Confederate or Union soldier,” commented Franklin Mayor John Schroer.  

France’s culture minister says the Louvre Museum will return five fragments of a burial fresco to Egypt. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, says the images were chipped from the walls of a tomb by thieves in the 1980s.  

Meanwhile, in the United States, federal prosecutors want a 3,000-year-old wooden sarcophagus in Miami to be returned to Egypt.  

More photographs of the artifacts recently returned to Afghanistan from Britain are now available. “We lost a lot of things from our museum and from illegal excavation in different parts of Afghanistan. This is very important,” said Omara Khan Massoudi, director of the National Museum.

Happy Columbus Day!  The news will return Tuesday, October 13.

 The French government has agreed to relinquish five wall-painting fragments that Egyptian antiquities officials say were looted from a tomb in Luxor. Yesterday, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told the press that Egypt would no longer cooperate with the Louvre Museum until the murals were returned.   There’s more information on the dispute and a photograph of the tomb at CBS News.

Iran adds that it is ready to cut all ties with the British Museum if the Cyrus Cylinder is not loaned to the National Museum of Iran. “We are currently monitoring the political situation in Iran, but we hope that we’ll be able to honor that commitment as soon as possible,” said Hannah Boulton, head of press at the British Museum.

  Analysis of carbon isotopes in the soil where the Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were found, and the teeth of other animals that lived at about the same time in the same area, indicate that the 4.4 million-year-old hominid lived in a wooded landscape. “Multiple lines of evidence now suggest that they were beginning to leave the trees before they left the forest,” said Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois.   

In Ireland, a man digging up some potatoes for dinner uncovered a 6,000-year-old ax head.  

See photographs of the excavation of “Mini-Stonehenge” and a sketch of what it may have looked like at National Geographic News.  

Rhesus macaque mothers and infants share similar behaviors with human mothers and infants. Scientists think that smiling, exaggerated gestures, kissing, and mutual gazes could have originated with a common ancestor some 25 million years ago.  

Hikers in Ohio will travel the same route between Chillicothe and Newark as the Hopewell people did nearly 2,000 years ago. A “Great Hopewell Road” may have connected the two ceremonial sites with a straight line.