A 12,000-year-old iron oxide mine in northern Chile is being called the oldest mine in the Americas. Huentelauquen Indians used the iron oxide in rituals and to dye cloth. 

The Morgantina silver has returned to Sicily, where it will be housed at the archaeological museum in the town of Aidone. Archaeologists estimate that the 16 silver-gilt religious and banqueting vessels were looted from the nearby site of Morgantina sometime in the 1970s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City then acquired the artifacts in the early 1980s from an antiquities dealer. “They’re beautiful works of art, they tempted a lot of people, but it’s right that they’ve come back to their proper home,” said a museum visitor.  

The NAGPRA advisory committee has recommended that the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology return a collection of artifacts to the T’akdeintaan clan of southeastern Alaska. This article in The Philadelphia Inquirer has photographs of some of the objects in question. The University is “still hoping to be able to work out a resolution with the claimants,” according to spokesperson Lori Doyle.  

An artifact stolen from the Wisconsin Historical Society museum in the 1990s has been returned. The American Indian knife sheath was taken by a museum curator and recently turned up in a private New York museum.  

While under investigation for artifacts trafficking, dealer Robert B. Knowlton reportedly suggested that public employees were involved in illegal trade. “Those statements and allegations were never substantiated,” commented Megan Castle of the Forest Service.  

Volunteers are assisting archaeologists with the excavation of a colonial-era port in Northern Virginia. Planters brought their tobacco here, where it was loaded onto ships bound for England.  

The bodies of six World War I soldiers were uncovered in France last month. Three of the men may be identified with DNA testing.  

Volcanic ash has covered the Borobudur temple in Indonesia. When it rains, the ash could set up like cement and damage the World Heritage site.  

New dates for the system of wooden fish traps in British Columbia’s Courtenay Estuary reveal that parts of the weirs are 1,400 years old. The testing was paid for by members of the “Stick in the Mud Club.” “There’s no doubt now that this is the biggest, most sophisticated and intense fishing site ever recorded in Canada,” said archaeologist Nancy Greene.  

Alexander Fantalkin of Tel Aviv University is investigating Naukrtis, a Greek trading settlement in Egypt dating to the seventh century B.C.  

Some 15,000 human bone fragments from Ridges Basin, Colorado, have been examined by archaeologist Jim Potter of SWCA Environmental Consultants. “There was evidence of breaking and cutting off flesh, cooking and pulverizing,” he said.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, December 6, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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