Mites are to blame for damage to a 1,400-year-old city wall at China’s Hanguang Entrance Remains Museum in Xi’an. The pests feed on bacteria, and have eaten the wall from the inside out. The wall has been treated with an insecticide that has also been sprayed on China’s terracotta warriors.   Here’s a photograph of the infested section of wall.

Samples from ice cores, lake sediments, and coral reefs, and archaeological artifacts indicating changes in fishing habits, suggest that chronic food poisoning, caused by eating reef fish contaminated with ciguatera toxins, may have spurred the Polynesian exploration of the Pacific between 1000 and 1450 A.D. Cooler temperatures are favorable for the growth of ciguatoxins in the microscopic algae eaten by small fish.   

New excavations at the Poverty Point State Historic Site in northeastern Louisiana are looking for earthen circles between 80 and 160 feet wide detected by magnetic gradiometry. “What we want to do here this month is to examine those circles and find out what is causing those kinds of differences in the magnetic field and whether they are structures,” said Diana Greenlee of the University of Louisiana at Monroe.  

A Neanderthal skull fragment has been dredged up from the bottom of the North Sea. It is the first human fossil to be recovered, although the bones of Ice Age animals and stone tools have been found in the past. “Even with this rather limited fragment of skull, it is possible to securely identify this as Neanderthal,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  

A bronze arrowhead, two terracotta figures, and two chariots have come to light after the first days of digging at the tomb of China’s first emperor in Xi’an. “We will strive to protect the colors on the clay figures, and we believe we are technically able to do this,” said archaeologist Yuan Zongyi.   Be sure to view the photos of the excavation that accompany this article from Reuters.   And here’s a video on the excavation from BBC News.

Egyptian authorities say they will soon have enough evidence to prove that the famed bust of Nefertiti was taken out of the country illegally. “There do not appear to be any documents that prove conclusively that Nefertiti left Egypt in a way that was legal and beyond ethical reproach. I think we have good arguments for her return,” said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.  

The Los Angeles Times sums up the sentiments of some of the locals in Blanding, Utah, in the wake of the arrest of 23 people last week for looting archaeological resources.   Utah’s U.S. Senators get in the act, calling for Congress to investigate the federal agents behind the two-year investigation.  “Federal agencies are required to enforce the law,” said Bureau of Land Management director Mike Nedd, in response to the criticism that the BLM acted in a “heavy-handed manner.”  

Excavations will continue this summer at the home of Thomas Richardson II, a wealthy trader of slaves and rum, who lived during the eighteenth century in Newport, Rhode Island. “We’ll find out what kind of clothes he was wearing, what his family was eating, how big his business was,” said Pieter Roos, director of the Newport Restoration Foundation, which owns the property.  

Dealers and collectors are praised in The Phnom Penh Post for “donating” antiquities looted from Angkor to Cambodia’s National Museum. “Cambodia has lost a lot in the last 20 to 30 years. Anything that is given back to them of any value is of great importance,” said one collector. Lighting and wiring in the museum have been upgraded to correct serious fire hazards.   

The Queen of England, the Greek-born Duke of Edinburgh, Gordon Brown, and other British dignitaries have declined their invitations to attend the opening of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. The British Museum has offered to loan the new museum the Parthenon Marbles for three or four months, if Greece agrees to acknowledge the British Museum as owners of the sculptures. “Three months won’t be enough to take them out of their boxes,” replied Greece’s culture minister, Antonis Samaras.

Dr. Jim Redd of Blanding, Utah, was found dead in his car yesterday, the apparent victim of a suicide. Dr. Redd was one of 24 people charged with stealing, buying, or selling artifacts by federal authorities on Wednesday.

Some residents of Blanding, Utah, are wondering why the federal government has bothered to arrest people trading in artifacts taken from public lands. “I don’t know how they pick and choose the few that got arrested. It’s just so common in this town to have things like that. … Those people have just been doing what everyone does,” said one woman whose family members were among the indicted.

What happened to the artifacts in the possession of the 24 people indicted in Utah for stealing and trafficking in American Indian antiquities? “They [the suspects] have to keep track of them as a condition for their pretrial release,” said Melodie Rydalch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.   

Neolithic jade vessels have been unearthed from tombs in Zhejiang Province, located on China’s eastern coast.   

Like Greece and Italy, Albania is campaigning to retrieve stolen archaeological artifacts. Albania is home to the Roman colony of Butrint.  

Thailand’s prime minister returned seven statues taken from Angkor to Cambodia. “The return of these artifacts shows that Cambodia and Thailand enjoy good cooperation and respect each other’s laws,” said Cambodia Foreign Minister Hor Namhong.

Private homeowners in Illinois will benefit from a new trust fund to help them comply with state laws when artifacts are discovered on their properties. The Department of Natural Resources says the fund will be financed by private gifts and grants.  

In Canada, archaeologists want to know if the sunken wooden sailing vessel they’ve found in Lake Ontario is the HMS Wolfe, flagship of British naval commander James Yeo during the War of 1812. The Wolfe participated in the battle against the Americans known as the Burlington Races for control of Ontario and the Great Lakes.  

There are hundreds of shipwrecks in the waters surrounding the Florida Keys. State underwater archaeologist Roger Smith will map one of them, off Key Largo, that may have been a nineteenth-century barge.