Thirty fragments of ivory engraved with signs of the zodiac have been unearthed from a cave in Croatia. The 2,000-year-old instrument, when complete, would have been used by an astrologer to show clients the positions of the planets and other heavenly bodies at the time of their births.

Archaeologists from Brigham Young University will excavate the foundation of the original Tabernacle, a house of worship and gathering place constructed in Provo, Utah, by Mormon pioneers in 1867. “It had three levels, had a large belfry on top of it and a large stone foundation with adobe brick walls,” said project leader Richard Talbot.

The Global Heritage Fund has named 2012 “The Year of the Maya.” CNN lists a few key Maya sites where visitors can celebrate the close of the thirteenth Maya b’ak’tun, a 144,000-day cycle.

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon region has revealed large earthworks in geometric shapes that were built between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. Nearly 300 earthworks have been identified in the state of Acre alone. Some scholars think Amazonia may have been more densely populated and actively farmed before the arrival of Europeans than had been thought. “If one wants to recreate pre-Columbian Amazonia, most of the forest needs to be removed, with many people and a managed, highly productive landscape replacing it,” said William Woods of the University of Kansas.

While “digging” through an old wooden cabinet at the British Geological Survey, paleontologist Howard Falcon-Lang of the University of London discovered glass slides containing fossils collected by Charles Darwin and his companions on the voyage of the HMS Beagle. “To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens  from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary. We can see there’s more to learn. There are a lot of very, very significant fossils in there that we didn’t know existed,” he said.

The 3,000-year-old tomb of a female singer has been discovered intact in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

Contractors uncovered what could be the remains of victims of Ireland’s Great Famine in north Galway. The people probably lived at a nearby workhouse that had been built in the late 1840s.

Culturally unidentifiable human remains  that have been held in the collections of American universities and other institutions may soon be handed over to American Indian tribes, in response to a rule that was finalized by the Department of the Interior in 2010. The bones of an estimated 160,000 people would be eligible for transfer to tribes whose current or ancestral lands once contained the burials.

The remains of more than two dozen freed slaves and their children have been removed from a dried-up lake bed in Texas and reburied at another cemetery. “I’ve done a lot of research, and I have a good idea of who could be buried there, but I don’t know for sure,” said Bruce McManus of the Navarro County Historical Commission.

A second-century Roman villa built around a cobbled courtyard has been unearthed in eastern England. “It became clear that this was a very grand villa and every day we were finding more,” said Rebecca Casa Hatton, Peterborough’s city council archaeologist.

Archaeologists and treasures hunters are battling over possible changes to Alabama’s Cultural Resources Act. “If an object is removed from its context with no understanding of its intrinsic informational value, there is a substantial loss to the archaeological record – and the heritage of Alabama,” said Teresa Paglione, president of the Alabama Archaeological Society.