A large Harappan cemetery has been found in India, near Delhi. Scientists will attempt to extract DNA from the bones of the 73 skeletons.   More information on the Harappan village near the cemetery can be found in The Times of India.

Two buildings linked to commercial smelting in the third century A.D. were unearthed in Malaysia’s Bujang Valley. Temples had been the only buildings found at the site. “This finding is solid proof that the prehistoric civilization depended on basic knowledge, trade, and large-scale industrial production,” said Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak of the university that sponsored the dig.  

Chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle, a lowland forest in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, modify their termite-fishing tools during use, in order to maximize the catch. “They have invented a way to improve their termite-fishing technique,” said Crickette Sanz of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology.  

Political maneuvering derailed plans to preserve the 3,000-year-old American Indian farming site discovered in Draper, Utah. Now the site could be developed as a transit hub surrounded by a commercial and residential village.  

Urbanization also threatens Ninevah, Iraq’s ancient Assyrian city, located near Mosul. “There are new houses going up and you can see that even as you drive through,” said Suzanne Bott, a conservation expert with the U.S. State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Ninevah. Digging water lines and sewer lines with deeper foundations causes the most damage.

A tomb said to belong to Isisnofret, a granddaughter of Ramses II, has been discovered in Saqqara by a team of Japanese Egyptologists. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told reporters he thinks the tomb may be older.

Will the proposed underwater museum in Alexandria’s harbor be built? “You can’t build an underwater museum in hotel meeting rooms. You have to get down there and do the scientific work to see what is practical and what isn’t,” said Ashraf Sabri, who runs a local dive center.  

Scholars are trying to crack the bizarre southwest script found on Iron Age tablets in southern Portugal. “We have a lot of doubts. We can read characters and see the phonetics in action, but when we try to understand what they actually mean we have a lot of problems,” said Amilcar Guerra of the University of Lisbon.  

An archaic American Indian farming site could be destroyed by the development of a commuter rail line in Draper, Utah. Corn pollen suggests that corn was grown 3,000 years ago, possibly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. Cooking pits were also found. “It could reshape our understanding of the development of agriculture in the West,” said consulting archaeologist Matthew Seddon.  

George Washington’s boyhood home was finally found last year. This article tells how archaeologists solved the mystery, using a painting in a private collection and an inventory of the house taken in 1743.  

A Chamorros village is being excavated in Guam before the expansion of a U.S. naval base. Fish hooks made of shell, adze heads, and pottery have been found.  

Seven skeletons and bits of pottery were unearthed during the construction of a waste water treatment plant in Aztec, New Mexico. “Unfortunately we haven’t got any of the original context left. This is where things become more complicated. Not knowing where they were, how they were laying, what kind of grave they were in, the only thing we can do is look at what we have, which is the human remains, ” said contract archaeologist Peter Carter.  

Here’s a quick wrap-up of what different countries are doing to reclaim their lost archaeological treasures.  

An Alabama woman found a military dog tag and small metal emblem that may have adorned a Zippo cigarette lighter while walking near her home. A Blue Angels jet had crashed there 50 years earlier, killing the pilot. “I stood there and the sun was setting and I held this in my hand and I said, ‘No one has touched this since it was around his neck, and I’m touching it,'” she said.