Administrators of the University of California system have reportedly told scientists that they are not permitted to study two 9,000-year-old skeletons discovered in the 1970s on property owned by UC San Diego in La Jolla, California. “Administrators are doing everything they can to ignore the scientific value of the specimens. They are trying to illegally repatriate them to a lobbyist for a dozen San Diego County tribes,” accused UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White.

Irrigation techniques in Nubia may have contributed to the spread of parasites and disease. “Our study suggests that, just like people today, these ancient individuals were capable of altering the environment in ways that impacted their health,” said Amber Campbell Hibbs of Emory University.

New radiocarbon dates for textiles and rope discovered in Peru’s Guitarrero Cave make them the oldest known textiles in South America. “By dating the textiles themselves, we were able to confirm their antiquity and refine the timing of the early occupation of the Andes highlands,” said Edward Jolie of Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania.

South Carolina’s state archaeologist, Jonathan Leader, is assisting police in the search for Brandy Hanna, who disappeared six years ago. Police detectives found a tennis shoe that might have belonged to the missing woman on the former Charleston Naval Base, prompting the dig.

Archaeologists offered tours of Danger and Jukebox caves to a few lucky people during Utah’s Archaeology Week. Between 1949 and 1953, Jesse D. Jennings of the University of Utah uncovered seeds, nuts, brush, hair, basketry, and leather and wood artifacts in dry Danger Cave. Coprolites, quids, arrowheads, bone tools, and grinding stones were found in Jukebox Cave in the 1980s.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, May 24, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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