Retired soldier Chris Roe is now studying archaeology at Fort Glenn, on Umnak Island in the Aleutian Islands. He’s found evidence of segregation at this remote Army base during World War II.

The six-month-long museum show featuring the Lucy fossils at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle lost about $1.25 million. Museum officials blame the recession, bad weather, and the presidential election for the lack of patrons. 

Some 5,000 people have signed petitions protesting a proposal to shift control of Italy’s ancient archaeological sites from the state to a civil protection committee.   

Prehistoric debris has been excavated from a midden near Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida. “The site was probably at one time significantly larger,” said Thomas Penders, cultural resource manager for the 45^th Space Wing. The site was damaged in the 1960s when it was used to launch meteorological rockets, and fill from the site was used to stabilize nearby roads.  

Stone tools and seashells are among the 4,000 artifacts recovered from Vietnam’s Xom Trai Cave.  

A Han Dynasty (202 B.C. to 220 A.D.) stone block carved with human faces on all four sides was unearthed in eastern China.  

The bronze dragon-head sculpture taken from Beijing’s Summer Palace in 1860 may be in the hands of a collector in Taiwan.

Here’s a photograph of Idaho State University archaeologist Richard Hansen with one of the Maya friezes he discovered at El Mirador in Guatemala.   

There’s also more information on the recreation of an ancient Egyptian sailing vessel. Scientists are learning more about how the Egyptians traveled to the “Land of Punt,” where they obtained live animals, gold, ebony, ivory, leopard skins, and frankincense.  

Turkish police recovered 16 Ottoman and Byzantine artifacts and arrested three smuggling suspects earlier this week.  

Classicist Mary Beard talks about fourth-century B.C. Roman jokes with a reporter from The Guardian. “Interestingly they are quite understandable to us, whereas reading Punch from the nineteenth century is completely baffling to me,” she said.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, March 13, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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