Microscopic flax fibers were discovered in clay samples taken from Dzudzuana Cave in the Republic of Georgia. “It’s impossible to know exactly how they were used, but some of them are twisted. This is a very old principle of making rope and cord,” said Ofer Bar-Yosef of Harvard University. The fibers are more than 30,000 years old.

An image of a menorah was found engraved in stone at the site of a synagogue near the Sea of Galilee. The engraving is thought to be 2,000 years old, and one of the earliest depictions of the seven-branched candelabra.   This article from Israel National News contains an aerial photograph of the synagogue.  

The floor and timber beams of a 2,000-year-old roundhouse were uncovered at an Iron Age settlement in Birnie, Scotland. “People tend to think they were scratching around living difficult existences and staying in huts, but this is no hut. This was a huge and impressive building,” said Fraser Hunter of the National Museums of Scotland.  

Here’s a composite side-scan sonar image of the U.S. Navy patrol boat found off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.  

Underwater treasure hunting is big business-and there is no gloss of archaeology on it in this article. “There are billions of dollars worth of valuable and interesting things laying on the ocean floor waiting for us to find. That is our business plan in a nutshell,” said Mark Gordon, president of Odyssey Marine Exploration. 

Disabled veterans living in Augusta, Georgia, will soon be cataloging artifacts from Army Corps of Engineers projects. “You probably have 20 years of work cataloging the objects,” said archaeologist Sonny Trimble, who wanted to help the soldiers who defended him while he was digging in Iraq.  

Officials from Greece, Egypt, and Italy attended a meeting in Baghdad, offering international support to conserve Iraq’s heritage.  

The Economist examines UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, and its ability to protect the 900 sites on its list.  

The stone tools found in the now-dry basin of Botswana’s Lake Makgadikgadi could be the world’s largest hand axes.  

Students from the University of Montana are excavating a ghost town in the Garnet Mountains.

A small stone figurine was discovered at Turkey’s Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük last week. The reclining man sports a bushy beard and a big nose.

The bones of a woman who had been sacrificed more than 2,000 years ago were unearthed in northern Peru. Known as the “Lady of Pacopampa,” her legs had been bound, and she had been buried with gold pendants, necklaces, and plates.  

The excavation of mass graves at the World War I battlefield in Fromelles, France, will end on September 14. Scientists will identify as many of the British and Australian soldiers as they can. “What is most important is that these men are laid to rest with the full military honors and the dignity they deserve,” said UK Veterans Minister Kevan Jones.  

Here’s more information on the cache of coins found in the Judean hills. The coins are thought to have been hidden by Jewish fighters in the Bar-Kokhba revolt against the Romans.  

National Geographic News has more information on the mysteriously inscribed stone mug unearthed in Jerusalem earlier this year. “Personally, I believe these were used for ritual purification of hands before a meal,” said study leader Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina.  

There’s also more information on the 1,000-year-old campsite discovered along a creek in Texas.  

Stone tools from a lake bed in Botswana suggest that early people took advantage of seasonally dry weather. “It shows that humans have adapted to climate change and variability in a sustained way,” said David Thomas of Oxford University.  

Human bones uncovered at the University of South Carolina could be the remains of cadavers used by the anatomy school in the nineteenth century.  

A Navy patrol boat sunk by a German submarine in 1942 has been found beneath 325 feet of water off the coast of Hatteras, North Carolina. The untouched wreck is believed to be a war grave, since six of the 24 men aboard were lost.   

Fairy tales may be older than previously thought. World-wide variants of Little Red Riding Hood, for example, may have shared a common ancestor more than 2,600 years ago. “We don’t know very much about the processes of transmission of these stories from culture to culture, but it is possible that they may have been passed along trade routes or with the movement of people,” said Jamie Tehrani of Durham University.