We’re all aware that looting is a crime, but here’s a new twist seen in U.S. National Parks. “Collectors will dial 911 to draw park resources away and give themselves time to get into areas to quickly pick up their work,” says Mark Gorman, chief ranger at Badlands National Park. Now that’s just low.

The body of a woman who’d been mummified by antiquities smugglers, and then claimed by both Pakistan and Iran, has been kept in a mortuary by the Edhi Trust for the past seven years. Because the body was discovered during a murder investigation in Pakistan, the Edhi Trust must have police permission to bury it. “We have been writing to the authorities in Sindh and Balochistan, but there has been no reply,” said Anwar Kazmi, a trust spokesman.

Pottery uncovered at an altar to Zeus near the top of Mt. Lykaion in southern Greece suggests that worshippers gathered at the site as early as 3000 B.C. “We don’t yet know how the altar was first used,” said David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Three years ago, 128 sets of human remains were discovered in the path of a new subway line in Los Angeles. Some of the bones represent so-called Chinese sojourners, men who immigrated to California in the late nineteenth century. Many Chinese Americans living in the area today want the bones to be studied and samples taken for future DNA analysis. But a citizens’ committee advising the MTA wants the bones reburied in a local cemetery.

“Xuchang Man,” the name given to the 100,000-year-old skull uncovered in Henan, China, could “shed light on a critical period of human evolution,” according to Shan Jixiang, director of China’s cultural heritage administration.

Another cross-shaped cemetery has been unearthed in northeastern Syria.

In Sri Lanka, vandals have destroyed archaeological monuments in the sacred cities of Anuradhapura and Asokaramaya.

A 1,000-year-old, three-ton, inscribed stone will return to Indonesia from Scotland, where it has been kept by the family of Lord Minto since the early nineteenth century. “The Minto Stone is an important historical artifact and a crucial source of information,” said Indonesia’s Culture and Tourism Ministry director general of history and archaeology Hari Untoro Drajat.

 Guillermo de Anda of the University of Yucatan thinks that young boys and men were more likely the sacrificial victims of the Maya than young girls. He has studied the bones from 127 individuals recovered from the bottom of cenotes, but says that Maya mythology itself suggests that males were offered to the rain god, Chaac.

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the discovery of mummies from Egypt’s Roman period in Fayyoum. One of the mummies wore a golden face mask.

This is the first of nine video installments of “Treasure Wars,” produced by National Geographic News. Museum directors, antiquities dealers, cultural officials, and journalists all appear on camera to introduce the issues discussed in the series.

Here’s another article on the three royal tombs uncovered in Yemen. While it contains new information about the tombs themselves, it does not mention anything about the armed guards reported at the site, nor the destruction of one of the tombs.

A team of Chinese archaeologists says they have uncovered a 100,000-year-old skull in Henan province. “More astonishing that the completeness of the skull is that it still has a fossilized membrane on the inner side, so scientists can track the nerves of the Paleolithic ancestors,” said Li Zhanyang of the Henan Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute.   Here’s a second article on the skull from the AFP.

Human bones were found in New York City’s Washington Square Park by utility workers.

Computer-assisted radar tomography is being used to look for the “Lost” sixteenth-century colony on Roanoke Island.