A 3,000-year-old oak barrel full of butter was discovered in a bog in County Kildare. “It’s a national treasure, you can’t be going hacking bits of it off for your toast!” joked Carol Smith, a conservator at the National Museum of Ireland.

The market for American Indian artifacts is reportedly “cloaked in a fog of fear and uncertainty,” after the federal crackdown on looting and trafficking in the Four Corners region.   

Meanwhile, a 78-year-old dealer and his wife in Durango, Colorado, are surrendering their personal collection of artifacts to federal authorities. He has been indicted on charges of trafficking, theft, and grave desecration.  

American Indians and English settlers clashed at New Hampshire’s Oyster River Plantation in 1694. Archaeologists and volunteers are excavating the Field-Bickford garrison, where Thomas Bickford survived the battle.  

Poor ventilation and tourist traffic will destroy the pharaonic tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, according to Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. “The levels of humidity and fungus are increasing because of the breath of visitors and this means that the tombs could disappear between 150 and 500 years,” he said. Plans are underway to build exact replicas of the tombs for tourists.  

Egypt’s director of scientific research for the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Tarek el Awady, spoke with reporters after his examination of an Egyptian mummy housed in a museum in Hyderabad, India. He has made recommendations to care for the mummy, and found that it is 2,000 years younger than had been thought.  

Australia’s Defense Personnel Minister Greg Combet defends the work done at the mass graves of World War I soldiers in Fromelles, France. “On all available advice the government has received, whether it is from my department, the Fromelles Management Board, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, or independent experts overseeing the project, that the project is being conducted in a very professional and dignified manner,” he told parliament.  

Evidence of a 1,600-year-old port has been found in the ancient city of Bathonea, near Istanbul. Archaeologists began their search when local people claimed that they saw a “minaret” in the lake. The “minaret” is actually one of the three most important lighthouses in the ancient world.  

Explore Istanbul’s Italian influences in the Galata and Pera neighborhoods.  

The fossilized bones of extinct animals, and stone artifacts, have been found in an underwater cave off the coast of the Dominican Republic. Scientists from Indiana University estimate that their finds are between 4,000 and 10,000 years old. “We’re looking at some of the earliest extinctions of animals when man came into the Caribbean,” said Charlie Beeker of IU’s Office of Underwater Science.  

So, did humans cause the extinction of the pygmy hippo in Cyprus 12,000 years ago?

Gold artifacts, including rings and coins, have been found in a burial mound in southeastern Bulgaria.   They’ve also found a bronze candlestick.

A fifth-century skeleton was uncovered at a Byzantine cathedral in northeastern Syria.  

A 16,000-year-old mother goddess figurine has reportedly been unearthed in Direkli Cave, located in southern Turkey.  

The controversy continues over the exhumation of 300 British and Australian World War I soldiers from a mass grave in Fromelles, France. There has been “a tremendous amount of confusion about what is happening and we really need more transparency,” said battlefield archaeologist Tony Pollard, who led the original evaluation dig of the site in 2007.  

National Geographic News has picked up the story on London’s oldest timber structure.  

Archaeologists have developed a floor plan of Scotland’s Scone Abbey, and they say that they can now estimate where the coronation of Scottish kings would have taken place. “Almost all other medieval monasteries have upstanding remains: this is the only one that doesn’t,” said medieval archaeologist Peter Yeoman.  

Evidence for occupation during the Iron Age and the Roman period has been unearthed in Impington, England. “We can now see the origins of the village going back over 2,000 years,” said Chris Thatcher of Oxford Archaeology East.  

More than 1,000 cannonballs were discovered at a school in south India. “They are 150 years old and belong to the British Army,” said Chenna Reddy, Archaeology and Museums director.  

Egypt’s head of research for the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Tarek El Awady, has recommended that an air-tight showcase be purchased for the conservation of a mummy at a museum in Hyderabad.  

Here’s more on a new study of the so-called Hobbits by Debbie Argue of Australian National University. “We’re looking at a very archaic being indeed, one that appears to have gone its own evolutionary way long before our species emerged,” she said.  

A new study of the official death registers for Vienna in the winter of 1791 suggests that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died of a kidney complication from a strep throat infection. An epidemic of strep throat may have begun in the city’s military hospital.