During a survey, a team of scientists uncovered 37 large stone tools from the early Paleolithic period spread over three areas at the Liuhuaishan site. The assemblage includes cores, flakes, chunks, choppers, and picks made of quartzite, silicarenite, and siltstone. “With these details, a future study project with a good stratigraphic and chronological control will be conducted to study the human behavior at open-air sites in south China,” said Gao Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.

PhD candidate Mark Sapwell of St John’s College, Cambridge, thinks that a couple of rock art sites in Russia and northern Sweden were used as a means of communication by Bronze Age hunters traveling by boat. “The rock art I’m studying is found near rapids and waterfalls, places where you would have to maybe leave the river and walk around – carrying your animal-skin canoe on your back – natural spots to stop and leave your mark as you journey through, like a kind of artistic tollbooth,” he said.

Petroglyphs at Land Hill in Santa Clara, Utah, have been vandalized with scratched graffiti. “This is probably the work of juveniles who don’t understand the value and significance of these resources,” said Bureau of Land Management archaeologist William Banek. He will increase educational outreach efforts in response to the problem. Land Hill was once home to Ancestral Puebloan people and the Southern Paiute. It is now listed as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern because of looting, vandalism, illegal dumping, target shooting, paintball games, and motorized vehicles.

Six ceramic artifacts that were seized by French customs officials at Paris-Roissy Charles de Gaulle International Airport have been returned to Costa Rica. The pre-Columbian objects, fashioned in human and animal figures, were handed over to Ambassador Carlos Bonilla Sandoval.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, May 18, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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