Skulls and bones representing 80 individuals and textiles woven from plant fibers have been discovered in caves near Machu Picchu. The site, called Salapunku, has been badly damaged by looters. “Finding organic material in the mountains is significant because it’s so scarce. The humidity from rain decomposes individuals and textiles,” said archaeologist Francisco Huarcaya.

Judge Kathleen Watanabe has ruled that Hawaii’s state archaeologist broke the law after 30 sets of human remains were discovered on a beach-front construction site in Kauai. The State Historic Preservation Division must now consult with the interested parties, as required by law, and create a revised burial treatment plan.   

The bones of 600 American Indians unearthed 50 years ago in West Virginia have been sent to the Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex Research Facility in Moundsville. The remains had been stored at Ohio State University. “Our goal is to have them reburied. They’ve been studied enough and have been floating around for 40-some years,” said Putnam County administrator Brian Donat.  

Sir Mark Sykes died of the Spanish flu in 1919 and was buried in a lead coffin. Researchers will exhume his body in an attempt to retrieve DNA from the virus that killed him. More than 50 million people died of the flu at the end of World War I.  

Locals and vacationers have volunteered to re-chalk the Cerne Abbas Giant. Wet weather in Dorset, England, has led to the growth of algae, lichen, and grass in his trenches.  

The site where the first Europeans set up camp in 1829 in West Australia is threatened by a planned road and railway. “What we would lose is the only window of the first few months of European settlement,” said Shane Burke of the University of Notre Dame.  

The foundation of George Washington’s boyhood home has been reburied. “We left all the archaeological elements of the house in place for the next generation,” explained Dave Maraca, director of archaeology for the George Washington Foundation.

U.S. Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement authorities say that smuggling of antiquities from around the world into the U.S. has doubled in the past two years. “This whole market is driven by the demand for all kinds of antiquities, and the demand is constantly increasing,” explained Robert Sharer, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Undercover police arrested four people trying to sell medieval artifacts in Thessaloniki, Greece. More artifacts were found during raids on the suspects’ homes.  

Excavations at Knidos have been suspended since late April because a newly restored column in the city’s stoa collapsed during a storm. The project leader, Ramazan Ozgan, has been accused by the Turkish government of negligence, but two reports by independent experts say that Ozgan could not have known about an internal crack in the base of the column because it was covered in calcite. Ozgan has gone to court to try to overturn the decision to cancel his excavation permit.  

Bulgarian archaeologist Georgi Kitov has died.  

In his family’s ancient pharmacy, Giovanni De Munari found an eighteenth-century recipe to concoct a “digestive drink” promising long life. “My ancestors may not have known the names of the chemicals, but they knew that red wine, and Chianti in particular, had therapeutic properties,” he said.  

Three sarcophagi were uncovered in a tomb during construction work in Larnaca, Cyprus. One of them is said to be marble and shaped in the form of a woman.  

Some of the artifacts recovered from Canada’s South Saskatchewan River are described in this article on the SS City of Medicine Hat, which sank in 1908 when it crashed into a bridge.