Scientists are studying how certain microbes are damaging the world’s ancient monuments. “Whether it’s Angkor Wat or the Mayan sites in Mexico or the Native American archaeological sites in the West in this country, they are all under threat. And the question is, can we preserve them?” said biologist Ralph Mitchell of Harvard University.

Warming temperatures threaten the graves of the Scythians, buried in the Altai Mountains, which run through Siberia and Mongolia. “Right now we’re facing a rescue archaeology situation. It’s hard to say how much longer these graves will be there,” said German archaeologist Hermann Parzinger.  

British archaeologist David Cemlyn chained himself to an historic cast-iron lamppost and went on a hunger strike to protest the Bristol City Council decision to transplant dozens of the streetlights to more affluent areas and sell the rest. “We have temporarily suspended these works pending further communication with the residents,” said a council spokesman.  

Meanwhile, in Kent, a man admitted to damaging multiple protected archaeological sites.  

Construction workers happen upon skulls from time to time while digging foundations, but rarely while repairing a roof. In Tooele City, Utah, a skull was revealed beneath two layers of shingles on the roof of a house built in 1910. “How can you describe something like that?” asked the homeowner.  

The first phase of the re-installation of the Aksum Obelisk in Aksum, Ethiopia, has been completed. The remaining two blocks will be erected next month.  

The British newspaper Observer announced over the weekend that the uncontacted Amazon tribal people photographed last month were not “undiscovered,” but had been known about by the Brazilian government for 100 years.  Live Science recounts the hoax of the Tasaday, presented to the world by politician Manuel Elizalde in 1971 as a peaceful, cave-dwelling people in the Philippines. But any misunderstanding about the Amazon tribes seems to have been created by the media, in this case.    On June 2, José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, who works for Brazil’s Indian affairs department, was quoted as saying, “We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist. This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence.” It doesn’t seem like he claimed to discover a “lost tribe.”

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York, and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, scoured The Odyssey for astronomical clues to come up with the date of April 16, 1178 B.C. for Odysseus’ homecoming. “It still does not prove the historicity of the return of Odysseus. It only proves that Homer knew about certain astronomical phenomena that happened much before his time,” Magnasco said.

The Sukhumi Institute, a Cold War nuclear lab in the former Soviet region of Abkhazia, once housed 250 German scientists. Vladimir Kunitsky is the current deputy director of the institute, and he would like to preserve its crumbling buildings as a sanatorium where patients could receive radioactive treatments.  

Historical archaeologist Kathleen Gilmore was awarded the Texas Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation. Gilmore, who specializes in Texas missions, also discovered Fort St. Louis, built by French explorer La Salle. “She is one of the pioneers of historical archaeology in the country,” said Jim Bruseth, director of the archaeology division at the Texas Historical Commission.  

In Bangladesh, an employee of the department of archaeology reportedly sold 15 pieces of gold found by workers. He had told them he would turn the gold over to the museum.  

George Bey told USA Today columnist Dan Vergano about his work on the story of the Maya collapse in this interview.  

Easter Island is experiencing a boom in tourism. “More tourism, more deterioration. More visitors, more loss,” said archaeologist Susana Nahoe, former liaison between Chile’s National Tourism Service and the island’s scientists.  

According to this article, London mayor Boris Johnson had a cigar case belonging to former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz. The new mayor was a TV personality in 2003, and he took the case from Aziz’s ransacked villa. The Metropolitan Police force considers the red leather object a piece of Iraqi cultural property.