An Ottoman-era pipe, adorned with the phrase “Heart is language for the lover,” has been found in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. “Pipes were also used as a piece of jewelry that could be worn on a garment, and smoking itself was popular amongst both men and women,” said Shahar Puni of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Customs officials in Jakarta seized two eighteenth-century cannons at Soekarno Hatta Airport. The people in possession of the cannons claimed to have purchased them in an antiques shop, but the items were not licensed to leave Indonesia. The authorities are continuing to investigate the case.

Japanese businessman Yuzo Yagi has promised to donate one million euros for the restoration of a brick and marble pyramid that was constructed in Rome in 12 B.C., after the conquest of Egypt, as the burial place for Gaius Cestius, a Roman magistrate.

Some 2,000 timbers and hundreds of artifacts have been recovered and restored from the medieval ship discovered in Newport, Wales, ten years ago. “When you go to see the ship in a museum in five of six years, rebuilt, you’re not going to need any imagination. It’s going to look like a ship and it’s going to blow you away,” said Toby Jones, curator of the project.

In Bulgaria, archaeologists say they have discovered the original East Gate of Apollonia Pontica  in the center of the modern Black Sea town of Sozopol.

Here’s an update on the continuing excavation of a Sicán burial pit located next to the Huaca Las Ventanas pyramid in northern Peru. Bioarchaeologist Haagen Klaus of Utah Valley University thinks that the many skeletons in the pit represent mass ritual sacrifice. The styles of the ceramic vessels in the pit suggest that the bodies were deposited in three stages over a period of 200 years.

A Bronze Age burial chamber containing eight skeletons has been found in Aleppo, Syria. The oval-shaped tomb also held pottery, decorated bone, bronze awls, a spear tip and a hamper, a bull-shaped figurine, and jewelry.

This video shows the excavation of American whaling ships that were found in the sand on Western Australia’s Shipwreck Coast. The vessels will eventually be reburied.

Colosseum director Rossella Rea has denied reports that bits of masonry fell off Rome’s first century A.D. arena last week. Restoration funded by a private company is set to begin in March.