DNA preserved in Maori kiwi-feather cloaks is offering information about a previously unknown trade in feathers between New Zealand’s North and South islands. “The ability to trace these old feathers back to a geographic origin is a significant achievement, displaying the kind of detailed insights that can be obtained when you let a molecular biologist into a museum collection,” commented Morten Allentoft of Murdoch University in Australia.

Sediment cores from the bottom of Lake Marcacocha indicate that the Inca used llama droppings to fertilize their maize crops, helping them to grow in the high altitude of the Andes Mountains. “I think these were very motivated farmers and that somehow there was a big push to grow maize,” said Alex Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima.

A press release from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced that six tombs in South Saqqara will be opened to the public.

The discovery of wooden clubs, fractured human bones, and horse remains suggest that there was a major battle in Germany’s Tollense Valley during the Bronze Age. “We have a lot of violence from blunt weapons without any healing traces, and we have also evidence of sharp weapons. There are a lot of signs that this happened immediately before the victims died and the bodies are not buried in the normal way,” said Harald Lubke of the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology.

A builder’s plaque that was looted from a World War II destroyer sunk off the coast of Okinawa has been returned. The USS Emmons was scuttled by the U.S. Navy after it was damaged by kamikazes in 1945.

A port hole from the USS Maine that was stolen from a California park has been recovered. Two men tried to sell the Spanish-American War artifact for scrap.

Bones and a skull have been found beneath the St. Ursula convent in Florence. They may have belonged to Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the woman thought to be the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, May 23, 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.