The New York Times has more information on the damage done to Aleppo and its Old City during the continuing conflict between Syrian government forces and the insurgents. Within the Old City’s walls, a medieval Citadel rests on top of Bronze Age and Roman remains, and a 5,000-year-old structure known as the Temple of the Storm God. For more information on this ancient temple and pictures of the reliefs mentioned in the Times, read “Temple of the Storm God,” right here at ARCHAEOLOGY.

Squatters have built some 50 shacks along Peru’s 1,500-year-old Nazca lines, where they are living and raising pigs in corrals. Reports also indicate that a Nazca-era cemetery has been destroyed. In Peru, when squatters occupy land for more than a day, laws intended to protect the poor and landless give them the right to a judicial process before eviction. “The problem is that by then, the site will be destroyed,” said Blanca Alva, director of Peru’s culture ministry.

An Egyptian man was arrested by the Tourism and Antiquities Police at Cairo International Airport for attempting to leave with 11 artifacts, including terra cotta statuettes depicting Egyptian and Roman deities, two painted lamps, and three amulets made of faience and copper. He claimed that the objects were replicas. They were taken to the Egyptian Museum where scholars will try to determine their origins.

The excavation of an area surrounding a small shed at an historic home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, has uncovered more than 30,000 artifacts dating back 1,000 years. Records at the Massachusetts Historic Commission indicate that the shed was used as a slave quarters in the early eighteenth century. “There is very good evidence of slaves at the site [such as a tamarind jar and colonoware]…but I would need a lot more evidence of African folkways and African-influenced material culture artifacts,” said archaeologist Craig Chartier. The shed may also have been used as an outhouse or as a debt-collection office for Colonel George Watson, the merchant who lived on the property with his slaves.

The construction of a watch factory in Jura, Switzerland, uncovered a major archaeological site. Because archaeologists had not been consulted at the planning stage, they were forced to work side-by-side with the construction crew in order to maintain the project’s tight schedule. This article discusses how the regulations requiring archaeological assessments ahead of construction projects vary with local Swiss governments. “Discussions about who finances archaeology need to be resolved at the federal level. But to defend their profession, archaeologists also need to become lobbyists,” said Marc-Antoine Kaeser, director of the Laténium archaeological museum.

In 1995, after a long search, the French supply ship La Belle was discovered in the waters of Matagorda Bay by a team from Texas A&M University. The ship sank during a storm in 1687, while explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle was looking for the mouth of the Mississippi River with four ships and 300 French colonists. “When La Belle sank, that doomed La Salle’s colony and opened up the door for Spain to come in and occupy Texas,” said Jim Bruseth of the Texas Historical Commission. Now a giant freeze dryer at the old Bryan Air Force base is ready to accept the ship’s wooden timbers. Once the timbers have been safely dried out and preserved, La Bellewill be reassembled and put on display at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

A Roman mosaic floor was uncovered during the repair of a Victorian sewer line in York, England. The new section of floor may be part of a mosaic that was recovered in the nineteenth century. “It had been thought that the Victorian sewer had largely removed the earlier Roman remains here, but the work has demonstrated that some sections were tunneled and pockets of archaeology survive above these sections,” said archaeologist Richard Fraser.

Plans are being made to protect an undisturbed, high-altitude site in Colorado on private land. Tools and imported materials have been found, and they indicate that the site was repeatedly occupied over a period of 8,000 years. “The rarity of well-preserved archaeological sites in the mountainous settings such as in Pitkin County makes them particularly valuable for understanding this very interesting, yet still not well-known, aspect of our state’s prehistory,” wrote state archaeologist Richard Wilshusen in a letter to the county’s open space and trails director.

Musician and computer scientist Richard Brock wants to keep a massive replica Stonehenge standing on Ireland’s Achill Island. Constructed of concrete, Achill-henge, as it is known, was built without permission and is scheduled for demolition. Brock argues that the structure could be useful to the study of archaeoacoutics.