A new genetic study of dogs suggests that they were first domesticated in Africa, and not East Asia, as had been thought.

A field school at a self-sufficient medieval monastery in County Meath, Ireland, unearthed a deep defensive ditch and a thirteenth-century foundation. Waste near the foundation included animal bones and oyster shells, leading investigators to believe the building was a guest house, since the monks only ate fish.  

Coastal erosion threatens Skara Brae, a Neolithic village in Orkney, and thousands of other sites around Scotland.  

In Morven, Scotland, a man found bar shot, or two metal balls linked with an iron bar, in his garden. The ammunition may have come from one of two warships that attacked the town in 1746 before the Battle of Culloden. “The ships were certainly landing men in Morven and what they were doing was checking the settlements for Jacobites,” said Colin Martin, a retired marine archaeologist.  

Human bones were uncovered during road construction in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. “We’re not getting any indication that (the remains are) anything recent,” said Lt. Bill Flood of the local sheriff’s department.  

A chunk of the first highway funded by the national government was removed intact from Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The road, completed in 1820, traveled across southwestern Pennsylvania and connected Cumberland, Maryland, and Wheeling, West Virginia.  

The Archaeological Survey of India and the Agra Development Authority have different ideas about what sort of development is acceptable in the area around the Taj Mahal.  

Make a virtual visit to the Maya site of Palenque.  

Here’s more information on the 2,000-year-old inscribed pottery discovered in Jerusalem.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, August 4, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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