Sediment cores taken from lakes on Sanak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska show that glaciers from the last Ice Age may have retreated 1,500 to 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Massive ice sheets would have prevented travel from Asia into North America and South America, but the earlier dates coincide with coastal migration models and the dates for early archaeological sites such as Monte Verde in Chile and Huaca Prieta in Peru. “Glaciers would have retreated sufficiently so as to not hinder the movement of humans along the southern edge of the Bering land bridge as early as almost 17,000 years ago,” said Nicole Misarti of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Stonehenge could have been constructed on sacred land as a sign of peace and understanding between people from the east and west of England, according to a new study conducted by the Stonehenge Riverside Project. “Stonehenge itself was a massive undertaking, requiring the labor of thousands to move stones from as far away as west Wales, shaping them and erecting them. Just the work itself, requiring everyone literally to pull together, would have been an act of unification,” said Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.

Three glass beads discovered in a fifth-century tomb near Kyoto, Japan, are thought to have been made in Italy sometime between the first and fourth centuries. “They are one of the oldest multilayered glass products found in Japan, and very rare accessories that were believed to be made in the Roman Empire and sent to Japan,” said Tomomi Tamura of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

The Toledo Museum of Art will return a 2,500-year-old water jug, or kalpis, to Italy. The museum purchased the artifact in Switzerland in 1982. “The right thing to do is to return this object. We knew we’d likely lose this. We’ll miss it,” said museum director Brian Kennedy.

Scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, say that people from either Egypt, Israel, or Syria mixed with people from Ethiopia some 3,000 years ago, based upon a genetic study of very diverse, modern Ethiopians. “By analyzing the genetics of Ethiopia and several other regions we can see that there was gene flow into Ethiopia, probably from the Levant, around 3,000 years ago, and this fits perfectly with the story of the Queen of Sheba,” said researcher Chris Tyler-Smith.

There are photographs of items from two treasure hoards recently unearthed in Israel at National Geographic Daily News. The first hoard was uncovered in the ruins of a home in Megiddo, concealed within a ceramic vessel some 3,000 years ago. “You can infer that, in this situation, they didn’t have enough time to bury it under the floor. …Then the house was put to the torch, and these people never came back,” said Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University. The second treasure was hidden 2,000 years ago near the city of Qiryat Gat, during the Bar-Kokhba Revolt. The silver and gold coins, silver implements, and jewelry were found buried in a residential courtyard. “Bar-Kokhba was the most violent [Jewish] revolt against the Romans,” said Emil Aladjem of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Nine sets of human remains that were excavated from England’s Eynsham Abby in the late 1980s and early 1990s will be reburied tomorrow in a special ceremony. It is thought that the bones belonged to five medieval monks and a family of four who had continued to practice Roman Catholicism during the post-Reformation period. “When I found out these bodies were still in a storeroom I felt very strongly that they should be reverently buried,” said Father Martin Flatman of St Peter’s Church in Eynsham.

An analysis of fat residue on pottery shards from North Africa suggests that people may have been eating yogurt 7,000 years ago. The fermented milk product may have made dairy products more digestible at a time when not many adults possessed the genetic adaptation necessary to digest the lactose found in unprocessed milk. The pottery shards were discovered in Libya’s Takarkori rock shelter, which is decorated with undated rock art depicting cattle and milk cows.

Additional portions of the Calvert House  foundation and cellars have been uncovered in St. Mary’s City. The house was the home of Maryland’s first governor, Leonard Calvert, and it also functioned as an inn, a court house, and the first state house, beginning in 1662. The site was discovered in the 1980s.

A rare Egyptian artifact has been identified at Swansea University, where Carolyn Graves-Brown, curator of the Egypt Centre, had been studying a collection belonging to another school. The faience bell is in the shape of Bes, a dwarf god that protected children and pregnant women, and may have been worn to fend off evil spirits or left at a temple as a gift to the gods. “Faience is very often used for objects that have a magical or religious significance in ancient Egypt,” she explained.

The construction of a gas pipeline across Germany has uncovered a treasure trove of artifacts, including nearly four pounds of gold in Lower Saxony. The gold had been fashioned into wires and linked as chains, then wrapped in linen and buried some 3,300 years ago. “Using a mass spectrometer, we examined more than 20 trace elements, allowing us to determine the fingerprint of the metal. The gold vein must have been created deep in the mountains of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, or Uzbekistan over a period of millions of years,” said Robert Lehmann of the University of Hanover. But not everyone agrees with his analysis, since he was able to compare the treasure’s fingerprint to only a few Scythian gold coins.