Ten men were buried alive while they were illegally digging for artifacts in a village located north of Luxor, Egypt. Two men who survived the collapse of the hole have been arrested.

Spain will return eight artifacts to Egypt that had been looted in 1999, from the tomb of the sixth-dynasty official Eimb Hur in Saqqara. Police in Barcelona seized the objects from suspected smugglers in September 2010.

American archaeologists Elizabeth Stone and Paul Zimansky of Stony Brook University returned to southern Iraq for the first time since the 1990 Gulf War. They started excavating Tell Sakhariya, where they unearthed a herders’ encampment dating to 1800 B.C., human burials, a platform, and parts of inscribed bricks. “It’s very tentative, but the site may be Ga’esh, a place where Ur’s kings went every year for a festival renewing their rulership,” said Stone.

Five sets of human remains found in a mass grave at Duffy’s Cut, located near Philadelphia, were reburied last week. The four men and one woman were just a few of the 57 Irish railroad workers who died shortly after their arrival in America. It was long thought that the immigrants died of cholera, but some of the remains show signs of violence. “They’ll get a real burial that they didn’t have in 1832, that’s for sure,” said historian Bill Watson.

In Japan, clay “haniwa” figures are thought to have been made for ritual use and then buried with the dead, beginning in the fifth century. Archaeologists have discovered fragments of early haniwa figures depicting wrestlers, warriors, a seated person, and horses in the Ishiya burial mound, which is located on Honshu Island, along the coast of the Sea of Japan.

In Brooklyn, New York, members of the Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus are working with archaeologists to find the burial place of more than 200 Revolutionary War soldiers who were killed during the Battle of Long Island in 1776. The activists are concerned that the cleanup of the canal could turn up the grave. “We have to do a thorough search of British military records,” said archaeologist Chris Ricciari.

Skeletal remains of 167 people have been recovered from a cave in southern Mexico. The bones could date to the eighth century.

A popular Turkish television show has been accused of damaging an archaeological site within Yarimburgaz Cave by the Culture and Tourism Ministry. Yarimburgaz Cave, which is located near Istanbul, contains the earliest traces of human habitation in Turkey. The producers of the show had reportedly not filed the necessary permits.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 12, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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