Archaeologists believe that the royal tomb of Lady K’abel, a late seventh-century queen, has been discovered in Guatemala in the Classic Maya city of El Perú-Waka’. Lady K’abel was a Maya Holy Snake Lord and a supreme warlord, making her the most powerful person in the kingdom during her lifetime. The tomb was found in an area known for its shrines, altars, and offerings, and was identified by an alabaster vessel carved with the head and arm of an elderly woman and four glyphs claiming it as Lady K’able’s possession. “In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that the people of Waka’ buried her in this particularly prominent place in their city,” said expedition leader David Freidel of the University of Washington in St. Louis. This tomb is one of only five Maya tombs whose occupant has been identified.

Excavations at Zominthos, a Minoan settlement in the mountains of Crete, have uncovered a 3,500-year-old building that was probably leveled by an earthquake. It was two or three stories tall, and had as many as 80 luxurious rooms. The building probably served as a summer residence and administrative center for local leaders. Artifacts from the site include copper and ivory ornaments, a scepter decorated with snakes, a copper cup, and two copper statues.

Pakistan is struggling to protect its archaeological resources from looters. Many of those sites are from the Gandhara kingdom, which flourished in the Swat Valley in the isolated, northwestern section of the country. “We are facing a serious problem because Pakistan is a vast country, and we have very meager resources,” said Fazal Dad Kakar, head of the department of archaeology and museums. Penalties for looting are a maximum of a year in prison and an $800 fine.

In southeastern London, more than 500 skeletons dating to the medieval period have been unearthed at a construction site where a recreation center and swimming pool will be built. “The churchyard is likely to have been here since at least 1086, if not earlier,” said archaeologist Chris Constable. Another 500 bodies had been removed from the cemetery in the late nineteenth century during road construction.

A mass grave has been found near the Polish village of Dworzysko. Researchers suspect that the victims, who appear to have been shot in the back of the head, may have been members of the National Armed Forces, a Polish group that resisted communist rule from the end of World War II until 1956.

Based upon the skull and lower jaw bone, archaeologists from Austria’s Museum of Ancient History say that a grave containing metal-working tools belonged to a Bronze Age woman. It had been thought that such work was performed only by men during this period. “It was normal in those days for a person to be buried with the items that were part of their daily working lives,” explained Ernst Lauermann.

Archaeologists excavating the basement floor of an abandoned convent in Florence have uncovered two more skeletons, bringing the total number to seven. They are looking for the remains of Lisa Gherardini, thought to be the model for Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, Mona Lisa. “If everything goes as planned, we will find Gherardini and with her skull we will be able to reconstruct her face thanks to sophisticated, new technology,” said Silvano Vinceti, head of Italy’s National Committee for The Promotion of Historic and Cultural Heritage.

There’s more information on the reopening of the Serapeum at Saqqara at Al-Ahram. As the burial place for the sacred bulls believed to be manifestations of the god Ptah, the Serapeum consists of the Simple Vaults, where the tombs of the Apis bulls were kept between the Eighteenth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties, and the Great Vaults, which consists of a long corridor lined with 24 vaulted tombs for the Apis bulls that lived from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty to the Greco-Roman period. Development for tourism, quarrying, and military training all contributed to the damage that forced the Serapeum to close in 1986.

British aviation archaeologist Tony Graves talks about his attempt to identify a RAF Lancaster bomber that was shot down over Normandy on D-Day in this video at The Telegraph. All eight crew members were killed, but no human remains were ever found at the crash site. He’s hoping the engine and propeller blades they’ve uncovered will provide proof of the identity of the aircraft.

Two ancient Egyptian false toes of different designs have been confirmed as the world’s oldest prosthetics. Two volunteers missing their right toes wore replicas of the ancient prosthetics during tests conducted by Jacqueline Finch of the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology. She found that one particular false toe helped one of the volunteers wear ancient Egyptian-style sandals. “Interestingly, the ability to push off using the prosthetic toe was not as good when this volunteer wasn’t wearing the sandals,” she noted.

Tests indicate that soil samples taken from a site in Roseville, Michigan, are free of any traces of human remains. After receiving a tip, police officers collected the samples, thinking that Jimmy Hoffa may have been buried there after his disappearance in 1975. “If this guy was standing there watching this, and it was Jimmy Hoffa, he would have been in the hole with him,” Andy Arena, a former FBI special agent, said of the tipster.