Rescue excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of the Ilisu Dam uncovered an Assyrian governor’s palace dating to 900 to 700 B.C. Five elaborate cremation burials and 20 bronze vessels were discovered beneath the stones of its courtyard.

A mound atop a Bronze Age cremation burial was found in Bulgaria. The ashes had been placed in a pot that had been buried with gold bead jewelry, two gold spindle-shaped objects, a gold and silver tile, a silver ring, and a bronze and stone knife.  

A traditional African religious artifact was discovered on an early eighteenth-century street surface in Annapolis, Maryland. The clay “bundle” had been wrapped in leather or cloth, and filled with some 300 pieces of metal and a stone ax head whose blade sticks out of the clay. “The bundle is African in design, not African-American,” explained Mark P. Leone of the University of Maryland.  

Indiana’s oldest bone tool is a 10,400-year-old awl fashioned from the leg bone of a white tail deer, according to archaeologists from the University of Indianapolis.  

An Israeli journalist and treasure hunter has found trash he says is from Kristallnacht in a garbage dump north of Berlin. Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, occurred after the deadly anti-Jewish riots of November 9, 1938.  

The unmarked graves of 27 Confederate soldiers killed during the Battle of Valverde are thought to be in an abandoned cemetery on private land in New Mexico. Civil War buffs want the soldiers exhumed and reburied, but the landowner would rather not. “I’d rather leave everything the way it is,” she said.  

Iraq’s National Museum will remain closed until security in Baghdad improves. “If everything goes well and there are no unexpected developments, then it can reopen after between one and two years from now,” Amira Eidan, director of the museum, said in an interview.  

Maori archaeological sites have been damaged as New Zealand’s coastline is developed without sufficient monitoring.  

Ipiutak artifacts have been discovered at the 1,000-year-old village of Nuvuk, suggesting that these ancestors of Eskimo culture migrated farther north than had previously been thought. The artifacts date between 310 and 380 A.D.  

“At what point do you take an artifact and … just lock it away in a dungeon and never let anyone see it?” asked Paul R. Tetreault, producing director of Ford’s Theater. Conservators want to protect the coat worn by Abraham Lincoln the night he was shot at the theater from exposure to light. 

In an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Quetta Kaye of University College London, and Scott Fitzpartrick of North Carolina State University, say that the bowls and tubes they found on the Caribbean island of Carriacou were used to inhale hallucinogenic drugs between 400 and 100 B.C.

Construction of Fort Phillip began in New South Wales in 1804, but with only three of the six walls finished, all work stopped in 1806. Guns mounted on the walls facing the town of Sydney indicate that the colonial rulers “were more worried about an attack from inside the colony,” said archaeologist Caitlin Allen.  

Examination of the pump in the H.L. Hunley suggests that the hand-cranked Confederate submarine was not taking on water when it sank in 1864. “Whatever occurred, occurred quickly and unexpectedly. It appears they were either unconscious because of the concussion (from the attack on the Housatonic) or they were unconscious because of a lack of oxygen,” explained South Carolina state Senator Glenn McConnell.  

A fragment of an eleventh-century spindle inscribed with runes was unearthed near the Althingi parliament building in Reykjavik, Iceland. “This find could tell us a lot about the development of runes in Iceland because it can prove to be an important piece of the puzzle. One could even say that we’ve discovered the missing link,” said archaeologist Vala Gardarsdóttir.  

South Korean and American officials will search the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea for the remains of 15,000 troops believed to be buried there.  

A piece of sandstone carved with three figures holding musical instruments was found on the bank of a pond near Sura Masjid in Bangladesh. The artwork is thought to date to the Gupta era, between 300 and 500 A.D.  

Five historic shipwrecks have been spotted along the proposed route of an underwater natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, along with everything from refrigerators to old cars.  

An archaeologist working at St. Kilda in Scotland found a slab of stone inscribed with a cross that probably came from a chapel or cemetery. “I was literally just watching where I was putting my feet, and there it was, clear as daylight,” said Strat Halliday.  

A Japanese team of researchers claims to have found yeti footprints on Dhaulagiri IV in the Himalayas. “We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the locals tell make us sure that it is not imaginary,” said team leader Yoshiteru Takahashi.  

Jefferson High School in Marshall hosted the 2008 Texas Bigfoot Conference over the weekend. Students sold raffle tickets to raise money for the prom and other projects.