A small beehive-shaped tomb partially destroyed by construction equipment was uncovered on the Greek island of Lefkada. “This is a very important find for the area, because until now we had next to no evidence on Mycenaean presence on Lefkada, excavator Maria Stavropoulou-Gatsi said.

One-hundred burials from the Early Bronze Age were found at the Macedonian site of Pella. Some of the bodies had been placed in storage jars. Pottery, marble flasks, silver rings, gold earrings, bracelets and necklaces, bronze clasps, needles, and daggers were also uncovered.  

India is considering an amendment to its Antiquities and Art Treasures Act of 1972 that would allow artifacts to be sent abroad to foreign scholars. “Even if the government has taken adequate steps to protect the objects, which I am sure they would have, why can’t scholars come to India instead of the object going there?” A.G.K. Menon of the National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage asked.  

The return of loaned artifacts from the Guimet Museum in Paris has raised questions about security at the Bangladesh National Museum.  

You’ll soon be able to type in Persian cuneiform, according to this report from Iran.  

A rare photograph of an eight-year-old Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan was donated to the New England Historic Genealogical Society by Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old Massachusetts man. The photograph had been taken by one of his relatives in 1888, while the Keller family was on vacation.  

Mayor Gerard Lalanne of Sarpourenx has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die. The cemetery in the small French village is already overcrowded.  

One-time archaeology-major-turned-cabinet-maker Steve Delk has fashioned a new career making Indian Jones-style fedoras. “I didn’t know much about the movie, but I liked the hat,” he explained.

Another theory has been launched in the Hobbit Wars. Australian scientists published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest that H. floresiensis was not a separate species of human, but H. sapiens suffering from dwarf cretinism, caused by the lack of a thyroid gland and severe iodine deficiency. “Our idea is that this was an environmentally-caused problem,” said Charles Oxnard of the University of Western Australia.   Critics respond to the claim of dwarf cretinism in The Australian.  But Jeremy Austin of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at Adelaide University has the last word. “Collection of fresh, better preserved, Hobbit remains using strict anti-contamination measures currently is the best hope for testing the status of Homo floresiensis using genetic data.”

BBC News reports that a man who had taken 10 Australian tourists hostage in China has been shot dead. The tourists had been traveling on a bus in Xian, home to the Terracotta Army.  

The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is set to open in September.  

Jonathan Jones asks Britons, “Why don’t we care about Stonehenge?” In the end, he blames the experts. “It’s the very people whose job it is to describe the unique nature of Stonehenge who make it sound as if it’s nothing more exciting than all the earthworks they dig up in bogs with a couple of wooden posts stuck in the peat,” he writes.  Archaeologist Dennis Price, however, has brought attention to a skeleton discovered at Stonehenge in 1978. He thinks the bones once belonged to a sentinel at the monument, who was killed in ritual combat. He adds that many of the burials at Stonehenge contain the remains of people who had been seriously wounded, and that weapons such as daggers and maces have also been found.    

It takes a little effort to find a souvenir in Egypt that isn’t made in China.