An eighth-century Islamic vase has been found in Heijokyo Palace, making it the oldest one known in Japan. Archaeologists think the vase was used to transport spices from the Islamic world to the capital, Nara, a terminus on the maritime trade route.  

A 1,500-year-old royal tomb decorated with frescoes has been unearthed in China’s Hebei province. The paintings line a long passage, and depict honor guard officials for the deceased, Gao Xiao Xu, an heir to the Qi dynasty.  

This report from China claims that archaeologists have discovered Xanadu, the city built by the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan in 1256.  

Archaeologist Bernardo Arriaza of the University of Tarapaca has suggested that the Chinchorro suffered from arsenic poisoning. Tests of 7,000-year-old Chinchorro mummies support the idea.  

Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have all ended their export credit support for Turkey’s Ilisu Dam project. The dam would flood the site of the ancient city of Hasankeyf.  

Prehistoric artifacts turned up in Nebraska along the route of a future oil pipeline.   

The 23 cenotes of Cara Blanca in Belize were Maya portals to the underworld, Xibalba. A team of expert divers and scientists has been mapping the area and looking for artifacts in the sulfur-rich waters. “The truth is we don’t really know what was going on at the cenotes, which is why we are exploring them,” said Andrew Kinkella of California’s Moorpark College.  

Four members of an artifact smuggling gang were arrested in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh.  

A team of 20 FBI and Bureau of Land Management agents and Interior Department archaeologists filled two moving vans with ancient artifacts that they removed from the Utah home of Jeanne Redd and her late husband, Dr. James Redd. Jeanne Redd and her daughter have pleaded guilty to felony artifact trafficking.  

Spain’s Queen Sofia, who holds a degree in archaeology, was on hand to open the new National Research Center on Human Evolution, or CENIEH, in Burgos. 

An amateur fossil collector found a 15-inch-long prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach two years ago, but only recently realized it was engraved with a mammoth or mastodon. University of Florida anthropologist Barbara Purdy says the 13,000-year-old artwork is the real deal. A Florida State University archaeologist checked out the site in June, eyeing a full dig there next year.

King Tut and Indy car racing head to Ontario: a golden image of the boy pharaoh will once again be featured on the cockpit of the #34 Conquest Racing car of Montreal driver Alex Tagliani with additional King Tut branding on the front wing.

Excavation beneath a staff tearoom in Cambridge revealed Medieval, Anglo-Saxon, and Roman artifacts, plus an 11th-century guard dog.

Switzerland is nominating its lake dwellings of the Neolithic and Bronze Age as UNESCO heritage sites. Brief article has link to interview with Zurich cantonal archaeologist Beat Eberscwhweiler.

This plug for an upcoming tv show has interesting information about Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, infamous for his armor-plated last stand, and an excavation in search of evidence of the 1880 shootout in Glenrowan.

Archaeologists in Newport, Rhode Island, have found close to 10,000 artifacts, including pig’s jaws, pipestems, and combs on property owned by Thomas Richardson II, an 18th-century merchant, captain and slave trader.

Archaeologists in Miami have recovered scattered remains of about 20 people from dirt excavated during affordable-housing construction. Are they evidence of a much larger cemetery? ”It’s honestly very curious to us how a cemetery and all records of it could just vanish,” says an attorney representing the developers.

The Israel Antiquity Authority announced yesterday that archeologists may have unearthed a stone quarry used to build a number of famous structures, including the Jewish Temple and the Western Wall. Dimensions of the largest stones cut from the quarry, about 9 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet, are close to those used for the Temple and Wall.

Protein collagen in a 40,000-year-old human skeleton from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing suggests fish was on the menu. No mention of any fish remains from the site.