The Turkish town of Datça sits near the archaeological site of Knidos, and it wants the British Museum to return a statue of Demeter and the eight-ton Knidos Lion, which now sits at the entrance to the museum.

Two naturally mummified bodies of Tiwanaku people from Peru are the first to contain chemical evidence of psychoactive drug use. Trays and pipes used for sniffing hallucinogens, and skulls with nasal damage, have hinted at a widespread cultural practice.  

Egyptian mummies have provided scientists with DNA evidence of the first-known cases of malaria. “We now know for sure that malaria was endemic in ancient Egypt,” said pathologist Andreas Nerlich of the Academic Teaching Hospital München-Bogenhausen.  

Excavations in Montana’s Horseshoe Cave revealed three hearths, 100 stone artifacts, and hundreds of animal bones. “The big question is what sort of group of ancient people was using Horseshoe Cave,” said Jack Fisher of Montana State University.  

In the 1920s, American academic James Madison Carpenter toured England and recorded the folk songs and sea shanties of some 800 people, including those of Mark Page, who was born in 1836. The recordings were recently found in an attic. Be sure to watch the video to see photographs of Carpenter and Page and hear a snip of the recordings.  

In Scotland, a fragment of a gothic column is the first sign of the medieval church of St. Colman to be uncovered. “We believe it is a very important discovery,” said archaeologist Cait McCullagh.  

More information on the tiny gold 4,000-year-old pins found in a Cardiff University desk draw is available at the Telegraph.  

Discover Magazine has posted an article on Sam Osmanagich and his Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun Foundation. Check out the cake!

Russian archaeologists have claimed that baked earthenware was produced 15,000 years ago by the inhabitants of Khabarovsk. “It was the first earthenware on the globe, and though it was primitive, with plain decoration, and poorly baked, yet it was a significant landmark in the history of mankind,” said Andrei Malyavin of the Khabarovsk Archaeology Museum.

Archaeologists found the first lock of the first Welland Canal in Port Dalhousie, near Lake Ontario. If the early nineteenth-century canal is in good shape, it may be restored for modern boaters.  

A historian in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, has been investigating the political slogans painted on the attic wall of a local restaurant. “I find it fascinating, especially in a presidential election year. A hundred seventy years ago they were talking about issues just like today,” said Tim Rockwell.  

One hundred acres of land in Beaufort County, South Carolina, will be preserved as the Altamaha Town Heritage Preserve, once the seventeenth-century home of 2,000 Yemassee Indians.  

The grave of an infant who was born and died on November 29, 1907, was moved to make way for a housing development in South Carolina.  

National Geographic News examines the claim that a carved chalk hedgehog or pig found in the grave of a small child buried at Stonehenge is Britain’s earliest known toy. The artifact “is, as far as we know, without parallel,” said Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology.  

Perhaps it’s time we all clean out our desks. Senior lecturer Niall Sharples of Cardiff University in Wales did just that, and found two tiny, 4,000-year-old gold studs that once decorated a bronze dagger. The studs were discovered at Bush Barrow 200 years ago.