Fossil pollen and charcoal deposits taken from the Nile Delta have preserved a record of climate catastrophes in ancient Egypt. Researchers from the US Geological Survey and the University of Pennsylvania found less wetland pollen and more charcoal in several different layers of the sediment cores, indicating times of drought in four different periods. The severe droughts led to famine and may have contributed to political upheaval.

A large Iron Age wheelhouse and a Norse settlement have been found at the site of Bornais, on the Scottish island of South Uist. The wheelhouse had been built directly on top of the remains of a house that had burned down. It contained an elaborate hearth decorated with cattle bones. An astragalus and a bone dice were also found pushed into its dirt floor. “These bones are thought to have been used in gaming and the dice is marked with numbers one, four, six, and three. But they may also have been used in trying to predict the future,” said Niall Sharples of Cardiff University. When the Vikings moved into the site, they brought a piece of green marble thought to have been imported from Greece.

Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Günay revealed that a large panel of sixteenth-century Iznik tiles that had been stolen some ten years ago had been recovered and returned to Turkey. The tiles were taken piecemeal from the Sinan Pasa Mosque, located in the northwestern province of Bursa, on three separate dates, but most of the tiles were found in England and handed over to the Turkish ambassador. The panel has been reassembled and is on display at the Ankara Ethnography Museum.

More than 450 Roman and Byzantine coins, ornaments, and weapons parts were seized by Bulgarian officials at the Lesovo customs checkpoint near the Turkish border. Two people traveling by car told officials they had nothing to declare, but their Jeep was selected for closer examination. An x-ray revealed two plastic bags full of artifacts hidden inside a front seat. Two more bags of artifacts were found on the driver.

The SS Terra Nova has been found off the southern coast of Greenland by a crew from the U.S.-based Schmidt Ocean Institute, which was testing its acoustic sonar on the rugged seafloor topography of that area. The three-masted ship was built in 1884, and was best known for carrying British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his expedition to Antarctica in 1910. Scott and four of his men died in 1913, but the ship was put to other uses until it sank in 1943.

Archaeologists think they may have found the outer stockade wall trench for the first fur trading fort constructed in Edmonton, Canada. “It’s actually one of the earliest non-native structures in the entire city,” said archaeologist Nancy Saxberg. Artifacts that may have been used by the Blackfoot tribe have also been discovered at the construction site. The fort was built in 1802.

Conservation biologist Joshua Drew studied weapons made from sharks’ teeth by the people of the Gilbert Islands in the nineteenth century. He identified three species of shark that no longer live in the waters around the Gilbert Islands. There’s no evidence to suggest that the people who lived on these remote islands traded for the teeth. He thinks later commercial fishing in the early twentieth century may have wiped the sharks out. “They’re large fish, they grow slowly, they don’t give birth until they’re fairly old, and when they do give birth they don’t give birth to a lot,” he explained.

A male skeleton has been found in a three-chambered burial complex at the Atzompa Archaeological Zone in Oaxaca, Mexico. The 1,200-year-old burial chambers were located above ground and one of them is decorated with a mural of a ball game, which is unusual in Zapotec burial practices. “We are dealing with a building where the remains of people with a very high status were placed. Who they were and what role they played in Zapotec society is still to be determined based on the findings that are being made and their later analysis,” said Nelly Robles Garcia of Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute.