A skull containing a yellow, brain-shaped substance has been found in a pit on prehistoric farmland in York, England. “This could be the equivalent of a fossil. The brain itself would generally not survive. Fatty tissues would be feasted on by microbes,” said Philip Duffey, a neurologist who examined the skull with CT scans.   More images of the find are available here, along with a description of the moment archaeologists realized something was rattling around in the skull.

Italian researchers have analyzed 13 skeletons and layers of volcanic deposits from Pompeii in order to reconstruct the last hours of a family killed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Be sure to view the slide show.   

Two officials from the Archaeological Survey of India were arrested for demanding and accepting a bribe from a contractor.  

U.S. Fish & Wildlife archaeologist Debbie Corbett tries to locate all of the human remains taken from federal lands in Alaska, identify them, and return them, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.  

Archaeologists working ahead of the construction of the Pengze-Hukou Expressway in China’s Jiangxi Province have unearthed stone axes, chisels, and net sinkers, and ceramic kettles, pots, and spinning wheels from the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties.  

A tomb discovered in China’s Hubei province in 1979 contains 43 chariots and more than 100 horses, and probably belonged to a king from the Warring States Period. “The great probability is that the tomb is of King Zhao of Chu, named Xiong Zhen, who was the last king of the state,” said Xu Wenwu of Changjiang University.  

Part of New York City’s colonial-era seawall uncovered during the construction of a new subway station has been reconstituted as a display on the station’s mezzanine.

A hoard of 4,500-year-old copper weapons was recovered from a beach in northern Greece. 

Excavations continue at the first-century A.D. Villa delle Vignacce. The villa was home to Quintus Servilius Pudens, a friend of Emperor Hadrian. “It’s very unusual to find such well-preserved remains in Rome because most of the sites have usually been plundered already and the artifacts stolen,” said archaeologist Dora Cirone.  

The 2,000-year-old skeleton of a woman was unearthed in Incheon, South Korea. She had been buried with fragments of an infant’s skull and jawbone.  

Three 800-year-old graves may mark the location of the church of Bix Gibwyn, in Oxfordshire, England. The church was abandoned in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and lost to local memory.  

In Boyds Corner, Delaware, archaeologists are excavating an early nineteenth-century store that had been owned by Irish immigrant John Boyd. “We know there was a store here in the 1840s. What we don’t know is how much earlier the store had been established,” explained archaeologist Ian Burrow.  

Marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley thinks that six submerged Neolithic villages near Israel’s Carmel Mountains may have inspired the biblical flood of Noah. But Ehud Galili, who has excavated the site for the past 25 years, says that sea levels rose slowly, and that the villages were not destroyed by a catastrophic event.  

Peru has sued Yale University for the return of 40,000 Machu Picchu artifacts removed by Hiram Bingham.  

I don’t know how I missed this one last month: The Friends of the Peruvian Hairless Dog Association has offered to send the Obama family a puppy named Ears to live in the White House. The hairless, and sometimes toothless, dogs were favored by Inca kings. “If we send it to the United States, its official name will be Machu Picchu,” said Claudia Galvez, director of the organization.