All of the artifacts stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Olympia  last February have been recovered in western Greece. Police arrested an Athens resident at a hotel after he attempted to sell a Mycenaean-era gold ring to an undercover officer. Two of his alleged accomplices were also apprehended, and police are looking for two additional suspects. More than 60 objects had been taken from the museum by masked intruders who overpowered the lone guard and smashed the display cabinets. There was only one guard on duty because of budget cuts and austerity measures.

A black granite statue of a New Kingdom pharaoh  has been unearthed at Monthu Temple in Luxor, Egypt. Archaeologists are searching the temple for additional statues or inscriptions that may help identify the pharaoh depicted in the sculpture. He is shown standing and wearing a short dress with his hands at his sides. Dedicated to the falcon-headed god of war, the temple was also later used for the worship of Apis bulls.

There’s more information on the 700-year-old Hindu temple complex  discovered last summer in a rice field in Bali. Six men would have been needed to move each of the large stones used in the building’s foundations, and its thick walls were made of red brick. “Having this discovery on our property makes me feel really proud and happy, because it is not something you would ever expect. I have lived here all my life and I never knew what history was under my feet. It was just a rice field,” said landowner Chandra Kirawan.

The Archaeological Survey of India ordered the demolition of the more than 300 homes and shops that sprouted up in Hampi Bazaar, a 400-year-old marketplace at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hampi. Those who lost their homes and tourist businesses will be compensated and moved to land outside of the protected area. “We are only increasing the outstanding value of the monument by removing illegal inhabitants and restoring original character and integrity of the monuments,” said archaeologist M. Nambirajan. Critics of the clean up think the monument was better served by having people using the bazaar. The site is also home to the fifteenth-century Virupaksha temple, which is still used as a place of worship, and the remains of the city of Vijayanagara, the capital of a Hindu empire from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries.

A flake of obsidian and a sheep bone found at on a high bluff in northwestern Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest  suggest that the site may have been used for hunting and butchering sheep in prehistory. Archaeologist Larry Todd points out that people have been living in the area for 13,000 years. “The places that were favored and used in the past are the same places that are used today,” he said. In fact, the bluff overlooks a cabin built by Amelia Earhart as a remote retreat.

Scientists analyzed the charcoal found in a burnt mound in Scotland and indentified wood from birch, alder, hazel, and possibly hawthorn or apple trees, indicating that there were more species of trees  in the area during the Bronze Age than there are today. The burnt mound contained a deep pit linked to a nearby stream with a channel. The pit may have been used for bathing or as a sauna.

The last surviving feathered headdress of the Aztecs, the “Penacho,”  has been restored in Austria and displayed at Vienna’s Museum of Ethnology. The artifact was first documented in 1596 in the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II. Some scholars think it was carried to Europe by Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes. Mexico wants the rare headpiece to be returned, but Austrian conservators say it is too fragile to be transported. “Mexico should be able to share the piece, granted that we find the best way to send it to Mexico fully protected of any harm,” said Maria y Campos, director of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Turkeys were first domesticated in 800 B.C. from ancestral wild turkeys in South Mexico. Rob Fleischer of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute compared the DNA of the modern turkey  with samples taken from specimens of nineteenth-century birds at the museum. He found that today’s turkeys have less genetic variation than their ancestors, which was expected, but they are also less genetically diverse than other modern livestock breeds such as pigs and chickens. “Few people know that the commercial turkeys served at Thanksgiving descended from Mexico, where they were discovered during the Spanish Conquest and transported to Europe. During the next 100 years, Europeans created many different varieties of the domesticated turkey,” said Julie Long of the USDA.