An analysis of the minerals in reindeer teeth collected at France’s Jonzac rock shelter suggests that Neanderthals followed their migration patterns. “This sophisticated hunting behavior is something we see much later in the Upper Palaeolithic amongst modern human groups, and it’s really fascinating to see that Neanderthals were employing similar strategies,” said Kate Britton of the University of Aberdeen.

A giant metal ring from the USS Maine has been stolen from a public park in California. The sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 helped to draw the United States into the Spanish-American War.

Archaeologists from the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History used metal detectors and radar to find the nineteenth-century barracks at the Fort Klamath military post.

Dan Sayers of American University is looking for traces of maroon communities, made up of African Americans who escaped slavery, in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, located in southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina. “Many of these began as communities of Indigenous Americans around the 1600s. When maroons started taking refuge in the swamp around the 1700s, they began joining existing communities and also likely formed their own,” he explained.

Photographs of shell beads thought to have been crafted by Chumash children are posted at Discovery News. Many of the unusual beads have more than one hole. “Very likely, Chumash apprentices were learning to make money from their parents, and these were their practice pieces,” said Jeanne Arnold of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The French Archaeology School of Athens will begin a restoration project at Delos, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis in Greek mythology.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, May 16, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.