A bone arrow point found in a cave in South Africa dates to 60,000 years ago, pushing back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20,000 years, according to Lucinda Backwell of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, Lyn Wadley of Wits University and the Institute for Human Evolution, and Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux, who published their discovery in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Two other bone tools from the site may have been used to work leather.

Three mutilated, partial skeletons were found at the 4,000-year-old site of Bandurria in the Andes Mountains of Peru. “The find of individuals, evidently sacrifice victims, at Bandurria is significant, because there is not currently evidence of human sacrifice or warfare during the Pre-Ceramic [period],” commented Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University.  

Head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawas has re-excavated the so-called Headless Pyramid. Blocks from the top of the pyramid were probably removed long ago to build houses. “Now we are sure that this pyramid is of a style of a pyramid of Dynasty V and belongs to a king called Menkauhor,” he told reporters.   

The Association of Art Museum Directors has issued new guidelines for buying antiquities for museum collections.   

Field school students are digging at the site of an early nineteenth-century cabin and late nineteenth-century mansion owned by the Boxely family in Sheridan, Indiana. “We’ve found ceramics, crockery, pharmaceutical bottles and doorknobs. Finding a whole bottle, intact, is a red-letter day for us,” said Chris Glidden, the archaeological lab director at Indiana University.  

Remnants of a British fort dating to the Revolutionary War and American Indian artifacts are among the discoveries holding up the construction of a casino along Philadelphia’s waterfront. “This area clearly has a history as old and buried and as important as the history of any other part of Philadelphia,” said Daniel K. Richter of the University of Pennsylvania.   

Experts are trying to identify the remains of two people who had been buried together in the early twentieth century. Their bones, coffin fragments, and bits of clothing were uncovered at a construction site in Washington State.

Officials of the Madre de Dios regional government of Peru have decided to protect isolated tribes in the Amazon rainforest from illegal logging and oil exploration, after the Brazilian government released photographs of them taken in Brazil from a helicopter. The people had been pushed out of Peru by the destruction of their habitat.

New radiocarbon dates of rat bones and rat-gnawed seeds suggest that humans didn’t reach New Zealand until 1300 A.D., or about 1,000 years later that some had thought. “As the Pacific rat or kiore cannot swim very far, it can only have arrived in New Zealand with people on board their canoes, either as cargo or stowaways. Therefore, the earliest evidence of the Pacific rat in New Zealand must indicate the arrival of people,” said Janet Wilmshurst, who led the four-year study.  

The International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), based in Sarajevo, lends its expertise in identifying the dead buried in mass graves to countries around the world.  

Here’s an update on the Axum Obelisk, which was returned to Ethiopia in 2005. “This strong granite monolith has suffered a lot of trauma in its life and it is not in very good shape so assembling it is a very delicate and complex operation,” said Nada al-Hassan, who is in charge of the restoration.  

This article from Pakistan on the rock art along the Karakoram Highway says that 30,907 carvings and inscriptions will be submerged by the Diamer-Basha Dam.  

China’s famous terra-cotta warriors reportedly survived last month’s earthquake, according to this article at CCTV.com. Be sure to look at the photograph on page three.