Construction of a new boardwalk at Florida’s Turtle Mound is giving archaeologists a rare chance to study the 35-foot-tall, two-acre, oyster-shell pile. “It is one of the most significant archaeological sites in this country,” said Margo Schwadron of the Park Service’s Southeast Archaeological Center.

Independent archaeologists spoke to National Geographic News about what they saw within the key-hole-shaped tomb of Japanese Empress Jingu.  

Forensic anthropologist Andi Simmons is investigating the tales she heard as a child about Belle Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant woman who may have killed more than 30 people on her farm in northern Indiana in the early twentieth century. “When you look at the numbers, she should be a household name,” Simmons said.  

German archivists are painstakingly reassembling bags of shredded papers from Stasi secret police offices across East Germany. Now a new computer system may help them complete the task. “It’s the biggest puzzle in the world,” said engineer Bertram Nickolay.  

Microfossils of plant material were discovered in the dental plaque of Neanderthal teeth from Iraq. “The finding suggests that characterizing Neanderthals as obligate meat-eaters may be wrong, but there is still a lot more work to be done on this issue,” said Amanda Henry of The George Washington University.  

Were sunflowers domesticated in the Northeastern U.S., in Mexico, or in both places?  

Archaeologists uncovered a homemade mortar shell dating to 1948 at Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza. Police removed the weapon and detonated it.  

A nine-year-old boy called in the professionals when he and his grandfather spotted some silver coins in a ploughed field in southern Sweden. They helped the archaeologists unearth more than 7,000 silver coins from Denmark and England dating to 1300 A.D.

The American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting became a battlefield in the Hobbit Wars. Dean Falk and Angela Schauber of Florida State University both presented papers refuting claims that Homo floresiensis was a pygmy Homo sapiens who suffered from a growth disorder.

Subway construction in Cologne, Germany, has uncovered a first-century Roman gate and part of the city wall. Nero’s mother was born in the city, and it is thought that the emperor paid for its fortification.  

Seventeen boxes of artifacts recovered in Syria were returned to the Iraq National Museum, where they were displayed during a ceremony for officials over the weekend. The museum remains closed because of the poor condition of the building and violence.  

The Natural Bridge Battlefield, listed as one of this year’s ten most endangered Civil War battlefields, could be purchased by the state of Florida.  

Scientists from Turkey and Australia agree that the submarine HMAS AE2, which was scuttled in the Sea of Marmara during the Gallipoli campaign, should be preserved in place.  

Eight pots dating between 300 B.C. and 100 A.D. were found in India’s southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. Three of the pots contained human bones.  

Seventeen individuals of Canada’s Champagne and Aishihik First Nations have been shown to be direct descendants of Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi, or Long Ago Person Found, whose frozen body was discovered at the foot of a melting glacier in northern British Columbia nine years ago. The man is thought to have died sometime between 1670 and 1850.  

Visit New England’s petroglyphs with writer Steve Grant of the Hartford Courant.  

Residents of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, have formed a historical society to protect a 2,300-year-old burial mound that they say has suffered from “decades of disrespect.” The local government wants to remove trees and debris from the base of the mound and erect a fence, but society members say the construction would damage the mound.   

The search for the Amber Room and other valuables looted from Russia by the Nazis is in the news again.