The marble head, right arm, and lower legs of a colossal sculpture of Marcus Aurelius have been unearthed in the Roman baths at Sagalassos, in southern Turkey, where parts of statues of Hadrian and Faustina have also been found. The room was probably a gallery for sculptures of members of the second-century A.D. Antonine dynasty. Look for a full report and photos soon on our Sagalassos Interactive Dig.

A team of British and American experimental archaeologists spent three years fashioning stone tools, and found that those used by Neanderthals were no less efficient than tools developed by Homo sapiens. “Technologically speaking, there is no clear advantage of one tool over the other. When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of ‘stupid’ or ‘less advanced’ and more in terms of different,'” said Metin Eren of the University of Exeter.

Computer images, historic photographs, and descriptions of shipwrecks removed from the bottom of the Thames Estuary are available at This is London. The wrecks were salvaged to protect the hulls of large container ships that now use the port.

Two shofarot found in London have been radiocarbon dated to the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. The Jewish community was expelled from England in 1290, and excluded until the 1650s. Archaeologists had wondered if the ritual instruments crafted from rams’ horns had ever been used, and if they dated from the earlier or later period.

A Byzantine, glass votive holder was uncovered in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. The glass was in a small niche in the wall of a church, near pieces of an iron cross.

Archaeologists are urging the cash-strapped state of Illinois to turn the management of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site over to the federal government and the National Park Service. “The descendents of the Cahokians are all over the Great Plains. It should be a national park,” said Timothy R. Pauketat of the University of Illinois.

The lawsuits between Lee Spence and treasure hunter Clive Cussler and his organization, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, have been dropped or dismissed. Spence wanted credit for the discovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which he claims he snagged the on a fishing net in 1970, but the judge said he did not file the lawsuit in time.

American Indian artifacts were stolen from their display case at the Beech Island Historical Society in South Carolina. “I would beg whoever took them to please return them, leave them on our doorstep or call me or whatever,” said Jackie Bartley, who works at the Society.

The melting Schnidejoch glacier in the Swiss Alps has yielded Neolithic artifacts, including an arrow quiver made of birch bark and parts of shoes and pants, suggesting that the Alps were accessible to humans 5,000 years ago. The finds correspond with calculations made by climate specialists that the Earth was going through an especially warm period. “Now with Schnidejoch we know they were rather keen on mountaineering,” said Albert Hafner, chief archaeologist with the canton of Berne.

New dates for the eastward migration of Canada’s Thule people have ruled them out as the people who scared the Vikings away from L’Anse aux Meadows. “As far as we can tell, Thule never made it onto the island of Newfoundland,” said Max Friesen of the University of Toronto.  

Japanese engineers will travel to Greece to study the earthquake-resistant Parthenon. “The ancient Greeks apparently had very good knowledge of quake behavior and excellent construction quality,” explained Maria Ioannidou, who is the archaeologist in charge of conservation on the Acropolis.  

Descendants of refugees who fled Franco’s Spain in the 1930s returned to give DNA samples that will be used to try to identify bodies in mass graves. The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory has information on as many as 400 graves, where the bodies of some 5,000 people who disappeared under Franco’s regime could be buried.  

The remains of a stone building have been uncovered in Russia’s Novgorod Kremlin. Its walls are thought to date to the fourteenth century.  

A lead seal belonging to Tsar Simeon, who ruled Bulgaria in the ninth century, was found in Veliki Preslav, the capital of the first Bulgarian empire.  

Turkish fashionistas are wearing copies of Iron Age bracelets and rings.  

Meet Vic Armstrong, Harrison Ford’s stunt double in the first three Indiana Jones movies, in this article from CNN.