France has returned more than 250 artifacts to the African nation of Burkina Faso. The 3,000-year-old objects were stolen by a French couple, and intercepted by customs officials in Rouen last December.

Rising sea levels are threatening Egypt’s ancient cities, including what’s left of Alexandria. “One of the issues we are facing is not just the sea level rising, but the violence in the sea and the waves affecting the cornice, the wall surrounding the Eastern Harbor,” said Emad Khalil,  an underwater archaeologist at the University of Southhampton.  

Emory Kemp of the Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology at West Virginia University announced that the world’s first commercial oil well was drilled at Oil Springs, in Ontario’s Lambton County, in 1858, and should be designated a World Heritage site. “Despite the great publicity given to the Drake well (in Pennsylvania) there’s no doubt it was drilled a year after the first Oil Springs well opened,” he said.  

A funerary lekythos, or oil flask, was returned to Greece from a private collection in Switzerland.  

In Kent, England, the remains of a turf wall built along the edge of the River Medway by the Romans in 70 A.D. were uncovered last winter.  

Australia’s National Trust is considering offering an amnesty for the return of Ned Kelly’s skull. Archaeologists think that they may have found the rest of the outlaw’s bones in a mass prison grave, but it is rumored that his head was taken in 1929 when his body was exhumed and moved.  

Maciej Henneberg of Australia’s University of Adelaide has published a popular book claiming that the so-called Hobbit bones, otherwise known as Homo floresiensis, belong to a modern human whose teeth had been cared for by a dentist in the 1930s. University of New England’s Peter Brown, who was part of the Hobbit discovery team, called the book “complete lunacy.”

A complete portico from the temple of Khnum was spotted during an underwater survey of the Nile River, along with other large objects that Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, thinks fell into the river during transport.

Even more information on the new investigation of the tomb of Seti I is available at National Geographic.  

Colossal statues of Amenhotep III will be re-erected at the site of his funerary temple in Thebes. Two sphinxes, 84 statues of Sekhmet, and a statue of Tiya, Amenhotep’s wife, have also been found.  

The new field of archaeoseismology will help scientists identify earthquake damage to an ancient site and put a date on it.  

The Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Mount Pleasant, Michigan, wants the University of Michigan to hand over its collection of tribal remains and artifacts for reburial.  

In California, development of a known archaeological site has turned up 87 sets of human remains and artifacts. American Indian officials have complained to state officials about the company’s alleged lack of documentation and unwillingness to rebury everything that has been unearthed. “This is so he can hurry up and get a burial and get the OK to finish building and selling homes to make a profit,” said Anthony Morales, who lodged a complaint.