An international team of geneticists compared DNA from modern cows with DNA extracted from the bones of domesticated cattle excavated from archaeological sites in Iran. The scientists concluded that all modern domesticated cows are descended from a single herd of aurochs that lived 10,500 years ago. “A small number of cattle progenitors is consistent with the restricted area for which archaeologists have evidence for early cattle domestication 10,500 years ago. This restricted area could be explained by the fact that cattle breeding, contrary to, for example, goat herding, would have been very difficult for mobile societies, and that only some of them were actually sedentary at that time in the Near East,” said Jean-Denis Vigne of the French National Center for Scientific Research.

After 30 years of restoration, the first floor of the Stoa of Attalos  will reopen at the Ancient Agora of Athens. The space will house 56 sculptures discovered during the Agora excavations.

Highway construction in central Greece has revealed one of the oldest sanctuaries dedicated to Asclepios, the god of healing, ever found. Dating to the fifth century B.C., the sanctuary was written about by the historian Strabon in the first century A.D. It was moved stone by stone out of the highway’s path.

Indiana University archaeologist Cheryl Munson would like to preserve the site of an early nineteenth-century iron foundry as a park, but a highway could be constructed nearby instead.

A bill that would reorganize the Transportation Enhancements Program, which provides funds for archaeology and environmental research projects associated with highway construction, has been passed by the U.S. Senate. Most of the money spent under the program had been used to create walking and biking trails, with archaeological projects receiving less than one percent of the total available funds.

John Jeffrey Santo has been sentenced to 366 days in prison and ordered to pay $7,346 in restitution to Virginia’s Petersburg National Battlefield, where he dug up more than 9,000 Civil War artifacts between 2006 and 2010. Hidden cameras at the park photographed Santo in the act of looting.

Archaeologists are looking for traces of Australia’s only known pirate in a limestone cave on one of the islands of the Recherche Archipelago. Black Jack Anderson was an early nineteenth-century American who robbed whaling ships that passed his island and kidnapped and killed local people.

A total of five, small, eighteenth-century telescopes crafted from cow bone have been found in Amsterdam over the past 40 years, and now they have been examined by Marloes Rijkelijkhuizen of the University of Amsterdam. The luxury eyepieces may have been used as opera glasses, or to get a better look at things on land or sea.

NPR offers an article on Jason De Leon’s research into the thousands of objects left behind in the southern Arizona desert by people who try to cross into the United States from Mexico. Many items get left behind in backpacks when migrants decide they have to drop their luggage in order to blend into a small town. “A lot of times people don’t know what to expect so they don’t know how to pack for it or they want to bring their favorite things,” said the University of Michigan archaeologist. Sometimes, De Leon and the clean-up teams even find human remains.

A construction project is planned in Connecticut at the site of the Battle of Ridgefield, fought in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. “The project area lies to the north of the barricade set up by local Yankees under the direction of Benedict Arnold and saw considerable military action in preventing the British from returning to the ships along Long Island Sound,” explained state archaeologist Nick Bellantoni. The possible graves of 24 soldiers and the remains of Arnold’s horse may be found, although the ground has been disturbed in the past 100 years.

In Germany, archaeologists are excavating a mass grave from the Battle of Lützen, which took place in 1632 during the Thirty Years’ War. There may be 75 sets of human remains in the grave.