The oldest-known Roman military fortification in Germany has been found in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The fort was constructed in the line of site of a Celtic settlement inhabited by the Treveri. “It is quite possible that Treveran resistance to the Roman conquerors was crushed in a campaign that was launched from this military fortress,” said Sabine Hornung of Johannes Gutenberg University. Large sections of the buried camp, which dates to the late 50s B.C., have been destroyed by years of farming.

Two outdoor monuments in Greece, Hadrian’s Arch and the Temple of Zeus, have not received the usual restoration work this year due to the 50 percent budget cuts at the Ministry of Culture. The cuts have also impaired the ministry’s ability to protect Greece’s antiquities from theft. These austerity measures have been taken in order to qualify of European bailout funds, and further cuts could be on the way. “We used to have guards on the lookout for possible illegal excavations that we don’t have any more—only 500 seasonal guards were hired this year, while last year the number was 2,500,” said Despina Koutsoumba, head of the Association of Greek Archaeologists.

A new study of the Vasa, the seventeenth-century Swedish warship that sank in Stockhom’s harbor on its maiden voyage, shows that its carved timbers are deteriorating faster than scientists had anticipated. The ship was raised in 1961 and is a top tourist attraction.

Excavators are uncovering human remains from Florence’s Convent of St. Orsola, where they believe Lisa Gherardini, the woman thought to have been the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, was buried. Lisa Gherardini died in 1542, and as a wealthy widow living at the convent, was probably buried beneath the church’s altar. Another woman was presumably interred on top of her in 1609. “The method of burial used during this period for secular people was to stack graves one above the other,” said Silvano Vinceti, head of the project.

Engineering student David Knowles of Cambridge University won a prize for the supportive frame he designed for a mummy case undergoing conservation at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The mummy case, which was made of layers of plaster, linen, and glue, had been damaged by humidity sometime since it was discovered in the late nineteenth century. Knowles also created internal supports for the stabilized case using LEGO bricks, making the design light and easily adjustable.

John Chuchiak IV of Missouri State University has translated documents that record the opening of a trial that took place in sixteenth-century Mexico City. Pedro Ruiz Calderón, a Catholic priest, was prosecuted for practicing black magic. “He really typifies all the major types of learned magic, from summoning and conjuring demons, to exorcising demons to the powers of cloaking himself, making himself invisible. He could hypnotize people, too; it’s one of the earliest, I think, descriptions of hypnotism, mesmerizing people,” he said. Calderón was eventually sent back to Spain.

Chinese scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) measured “Peking Man” fossil skulls unearthed at Zhoukoudian Locality 1. They found that although the basic shape of the skulls remained stable over some 300,000 years, the skulls did increase in size. “The Homo erectuscrania from Zhoukoudian may represent an isolated population, and as a result, lacked evidence of gene flow from outside populations,” said Xing Song of the IVPP.

A lion’s head carved from stone has been found in a cave in the mountains of southern Bulgaria. It dates to the second or first century B.C., and may have been connected to a Thracian fertility rite. The sculpture was spotted by some German ornithologists who were studying local birds.