Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a “busy, noisy, dirty Roman district” at the site of a new campus for England’s University of Worcester. A hospital had also been built on the site in the eighteenth century, which was in use into the 1950s.

A well-organized medieval cemetery was unearthed in the center of the English market town of Reepham. “In the medieval period it was better to be seen and therefore remembered and then you could be prayed for whilst you waited in purgatory for the judgement day,” explained Pete Crawley of Norfolk Property Consultants. A road built over the burials sometime between 1500 and 1700.  

Fifty-five sets of human remains will be repatriated from the American Museum of Natural History in New York to Vancouver Island. The remains will be handed over to the Tseycum First Nation in a traditional ceremony on June 11.  

Modern Pueblo people are showing archaeologists at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center traditional methods of dryland farming. Using traditional seeds, they planted corn, beans, and squash. “Understanding how the people made a living on the landscape is fundamental to understanding the archaeology,” explained Crow Canyon’s Mark Varien. 

Chile is challenging Peru’s claim to be the 7,000-year-old home of the potato. “It’s true that 75 percent of the varieties grown outside of the Andes come from Chile and its archipelago, but it’s also true that the genetic evidence shows that the ‘andigenum’ tubers of the Andes and the ‘Chilotanum’ ones have a common origin,” replied a representative from Peru’s International Potato Center.   

Pakistan’s culture minister Sherry Rehman told the National Assembly that 30,907 rock carvings and inscriptions would be removed from the Karakoram Highway before the proposed Basha-Diamir Reservoir is completed.   

American and Japanese researchers are looking for the remains of 2,500 Japanese soldiers buried in mass graves on the Aleutian island of Attu during World War II.  

Here’s an article on what happened at the Battle of Fromelles, including a photograph of D Company, 31^st Battallion of the Australian army. Many of these World War I soldiers were buried in the mass grave now being excavated in France.  

More information on the identification of Tharu, the largest-known fortified city in ancient Egypt, is now available from National Geographic News.

Fire threatens La Corona, a Maya site in the jungles of Guatemala. The fires are thought to have been lit by illegal settlers hired by drug smugglers, who clear the land and build airstrips. “At our archaeological base camp we have guards and that creates a problem for these people. That kind of permanent presence could detect what they are doing,” said Tomas Barrientos, head of the La Corona project.

Greek women may have inherited high-status and power along with men, according to research conducted by scientists from the University of Manchester. DNA tests reveal that a man and woman buried together in a male-dominated cemetery at Mycenae could be brother and sister. “The implication is that she was buried in Grave Circle B not because of a marital connection but because she held a position of authority by right of birth,” said team leader Terry Brown.  

Here’s an update on the search for the remains of 400 Australian and British soldiers who died during the Battle of Fromelles in 1916, and were buried in a mass grave behind enemy lines.  

Forensic anthropologists are excavating a mass grave in Putis, Peru, where they have found the remains of more than 100 people, many of them children. The village was abandoned after soldiers shot the villagers on December 13, 1984, during Peru’s internal war.  

Historian Paolo Greer is trying to track down the “treasures of the Incas” discovered in the nineteenth century by German businessman Augusto R. Berns. Some think that Berns reached Machu Picchu 40 years before Hiram Bingham, and that the artifacts he removed from Peru came from the mountain citadel.  

Have you seen the photograph of Amazon Indians firing arrows at a helicopter? “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,” said José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior, who works for Brazil’s Indian affairs department.   

A Civil War-era shell was removed from Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill County Historical Society. “As soon as I picked it up, and saw it was a Hotchkiss with the date of 1862 on it, I wasn’t sure if it was an active round or what they call a canister round,” said historian J. Stuart Richards. He advised the society to call the bomb squad.