A reporter from Newsweek spoke with archaeologist Amira Edan al-Dahab at the Iraq Museum.

South Africa has donated $8 million to save the ancient libraries of Timbuktu. “It is often thought that there was not writing in Africa but the manuscripts prove otherwise. Before and during our colonization there was writing,” said Mohamed Gallah Dicko, director-general of the Ahmed Baba Institute. 

Here’s more information on the discovery of 5,000-year-old pottery fragments at the altar to Zeus on Greece’s Mount Lykaion. The pottery “suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient,” and “very likely predates the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world,” said David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Turkish archaeologists from Ankara University will travel to Yemen to assess castles, fortresses, mosques, forts, and bath houses built by the Ottomans. 

If you’re going to be in West Yorkshire, England, this weekend, swing by the town of Castleford for a free Roman hairdo. The town sits on the Roman settlement and military fort known as Lagentium or Legioleum.

A 300-year-old note listing the cost of decorating pigments was discovered within an eighteenth-century Chinese vase at Fairfax House in northern England.

Human remains from the Woodland period (2000 B.C. to 1000 A.D.) were uncovered during the construction of a drywall plant along the Tennessee River. The bones will be moved to an undisclosed site. 

The New York Times asks why the smuggled-artifacts-for-tax-breaks scandal rocking California museums is such a big deal, even suggesting that “to the average observer the operation might be dismissed as low-stakes international intrigue.” Joyce C. White of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology answers the question. She examined Southeast Asian artifacts seized by federal agents and testified before a grand jury. 

Three German U-boats that were scuttled at the end of World War II have been found at the bottom of the Black Sea near the coast of Turkey. “It is quite an incredible story. To get to the Black Sea these boats had to be taken across the land, and once they got there they had no way out,” said marine engineer Selcuk Kolay, who established the boats’ positions through research and interviews. 

Renovation of Washington Square Park continues in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and more human bones have been dug up. The park was created in 1850, but before that, the land was used as a potters’ field. “The bones were mixed in with nails and other construction debris, which indicates that they have been dug up in previous excavations and used to fill construction sites,” according to a statement from the Parks Department.