In New Mexico, police raided a chop shop dealing in stolen auto parts and drugs, only to find a 1,000-year-old pot. “I was thankful I didn’t trip with it because I carried it around like it was just a regular pot at the time. I had no idea,” said Detective Timothy Fassler.

Green beads may have been used as amulets to protect Neolithic farmers in the Near East. Such beads were found in Israel, and had been made from minerals imported from northern Syria, Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia. “We propose that the green color mimics the green of young leaf blades, which signify germination and embody the wish for successful crops and for success in fertility,” Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer of the University of Haifa, and Naomi Porat of the Geological Survey of Israel, wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  

This article from Shipwreck World has more images of the HMS Ontario, found sitting on the bottom of Lake Ontario. The British warship was built in 1780, but never faced an American ship before it went down in a storm.   But could the ship belong to Canada, and not the British Admiralty?  

Wyoming’s county coroners are supporting a new bill that would clarify how human bones discovered in unmarked burial grounds during construction projects should be handled. “Right now there’s no real protection for prehistoric American burials in the state unless they are on federal land. It’s up to the individual whims of the county coroners and county sheriffs,” said Deputy State Archaeologist Danny Walker.  

In the eighteenth century, Acadian farmers living at what is now Prince Edward Island National Park of Canada traded for goods from around the world. “They have surpluses that they’re trading with Louisbourg, with New England, and they’re bringing commodities in from Europe. Everything from English ceramics to Chinese porcelain is showing up on these sites,” said Parks Canada archaeologist Rob Ferguson.  

An administrative building and silos dating between 1665 and 1569 B.C. and a columned hall that may have been part of a governor’s palace between 1786 and 1665 B.C. were uncovered in the southern Egyptian town of Edfu by archaeologists from the University of Chicago.  

High humidity created by the waters of the Sivand Dam has caused cracks in the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great, according to Amir-Teimur Khosravi, the mayor of Pasargadae, Iran. More than 130 pre-Islamic archaeological sites were submerged.  

Conservation problems continue at Iran’s Shush Castle, as well. The late-nineteenth-century building stores some 90,000 archaeological artifacts. “The storerooms are not only humid but are inhabited by snakes, scorpions, and insects like termites,” an anonymous source told a Persian news service.  

National Geographic News weighs in on Jordan’s “oldest church,” which has been making headlines around the world. Ghazi Bisheh, former director general of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, calls the claim “ridiculous,” and says that archaeologist Abdel-Qader al-Housan, who found the cave, “has a tendency to sensationalize discoveries.”  

Scotland’s “Stone of Destiny” is surrounded by controversy. Is it the coronation stone housed in Westminster Abbey for 700 years? Is it a copy? “It’s like the Loch Ness monster, it’s certainly a puzzle and a mystery which is best not definitively answered,” said First Minister Alex Salmond.

“Shipwreck enthusiasts” Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville have found the HMS Ontario, a British Revolutionary War ship, intact on the bottom of Lake Ontario. They have no plans to raise the ship or retrieve artifacts from it, since it is considered a war grave and the property of the British Admiralty.

A fragment of a shell cup with engraved lines was unearthed at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Illinois. Excavators are looking for the path of a defensive log stockade that surrounded the Central Ceremonial Precinct.  

Charges were dropped against Yves Lebourgeois, who had been accused of attempting to smuggle antiquities out of Yemen. The archaeology department at Sana’a University had determined that the objects in question are fakes.   A photograph of the artifacts seized from Lebourgeois is available in this article on Yemen’s crackdown on smuggling.  

Scientists have analyzed the teeth from more than 30 skeletons from a 7,000-year-old mass grave in southwest Germany. They found that no local women had been buried with the group, leading them to conclude that the women had been captured. “Our analysis points to the local women being regarded as somehow special and were therefore kept alive,” said Alex Bentley of Durham University. Was the capture of the women the motivation for the attack?  

A Mughal-period building was uncovered by the Archaeological Survey of India near the Taj Mahal.  

Archaeologists think they have discovered a warehouse at the Roman fortress of Caerleon in Wales. Excavations this summer should tell them more about storage facilities, provisioning, and the supply of Roman soldiers in Britain.  

Preservationists in Bangladesh are struggling to protect the country’s monuments, but the government isn’t interested. “In fact, nothing has been done so far to protect these sites. Businessmen and the rulers have consistently destroyed our heritage and cultural properties,” said historian Muntasir Mammon.  

Here’s a review of “The Lost Pyramid,” due to air on the History Channel.