There are many fakes in the collection of antiquities dealer Leonardo Patterson, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. German authorities seized more than 1,000 artifacts from Patterson in 2008. Utah’s artifacts-trafficking raids by federal agents, and the subsequent suicides and trials, have become international news. Chris McGreal of The Guardian spoke to […]

Biological anthropologist Gwen Robbins of Appalachian State University has examined bone fragments taken from the hearth at the Donner Party campsite at Alder Creek, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She found no human bones that would support the claim made by newspapers in the late 1840s that the survivors had eaten their dead while trapped […]