A natural gas well could be drilled in Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico, adjacent to the North Ruins. This information was released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, from an internal Interior Department document.  

In 2004, archaeologists recovered a mummified body from a private home that they suspected had been looted from the historic Fort Craig cemetery in New Mexico. Then they tried to find enough evidence to convict the perpetrators.  Look for more on this story in the March/April issue of ARCHAEOLOGY.

Archaeologists from the Australian National Maritime Museum think they have found the wreck of HM Colonial Schooner Mermaid on the Great Barrier Reef. The ship sank on June 13, 1829, on a voyage from Sydney to northern Australia.   Here’s a photograph of the ship’s anchor.  

Scholars are rethinking their reasons why the ancient people of Nazca, Peru, might have collected trophy heads. Here’s another article on the study of 16 heads and 13 mummified bodies that are held at Chicago’s Field Museum.   

Special Correspondent Elizabeth Moore of the Richmond Times-Dispatch investigated what kinds of toys American Indians might have had in the days before European settlement.  

National Geographic News has more information on the theory that microscopic diamonds in the soil mark the impact of comets or meteorites that triggered climate change and extinctions 12,900 years ago.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, January 6, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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