In our recent cover survey, we also asked for your feedback about what you like and dislike in Archaeology and on Archaeology.org. We received hundreds of responses—thanks to everyone who gave us their input. We are now going through your comments and suggestions, but I thought you might like a quick take. Some people took the [...]

 Sediment cores taken from Indiana’s Appleman Lake reveal that megafauna declined 15,000 years ago, during a time of major environmental changes. “We can’t resolve the climate versus human debate but we have eliminated one of the main hypotheses for each camp,” said Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Three skeletons were revealed during excavation [...]

A Union gunship, the USS Westfield, has been recovered as part of the preparations to deepen a shipping channel near Pelican Island, Texas. The ship exploded on New Year’s Day, 1863, while its crew prepared to scuttle it, killing 14. What remains will be conserved at Texas A&M University.   The Archaeological Institute of America, ARCHAEOLOGY’s parent [...]

 When sixteen mummies with surviving heart and blood tissue from the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo were given CT scans, nine of them were found to have hardening of the arteries. “We were struck by the similar appearance of vascular calcification in the mummies and our present-day patients,” said Dr. Michael Miyamoto of [...]

 Thousands of Mesolithic flint tools and flakes have been unearthed in Leicestershire, England. Charcoal, burned animal bones, postholes, and arcs of stones that may show the positions of dwellings were also found. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team has recently excavated a mass grave outside a cemetery in Buenos Aires. At least 13,000 Argentinians “disappeared” between 1976 [...]

 Two men fled the scene as sheriff’s deputies approached an ancient graveyard near Ohio’s Little Miami River. The men had been digging at the site. The skeletal remains of 12 Maoris were repatriated to New Zealand from the National Museum of Wales after a special ceremony. The bones have been in boxes at the museum since [...]

One of the first archaeology books I read was Brian Fagan’s Corridors Through Time, an engaging introduction to the subject. Perhaps you have read something by Fagan. Committed to bringing archaeology out of academia and to the general public, he’s written many books geared toward a “popular” audience. These works, combining authoritativeness and accessibility, have [...]

 Two out of five Japanese subs sunk by the U.S. off the coast off the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1946 were located earlier this year. “In their time, they were very revolutionary,” said military historian, retired Col. Robert D. Hackett. U.S. technicians studied the subs, which were sunk in order to keep the technology [...]

 A cache of coins that was burned during the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D. has gone on display for the first time in Jerusalem. “These really show us the impact of the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century,” said Gabriela Bijovsky of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Veteran Don Chalmers has returned a [...]

 A 4,500-year-old circular city has been found in Syria on the banks of the Euphrates, in an area due to be flooded by a dam project.   Traces of the home of a wealthy Roman have been unearthed beneath Marlowe Theater in Canterbury, England. The house dates to the late second or third centuries.   Here’s more information on [...]

 A mural at the Maya site of Calakmul, Mexico, depicts scenes from the lives of ordinary people, and reveals the words for “maize,” and “salt.” “This is the first time that we’ve seen anything like this,” said Simon Martin of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The murals had been protected with a layer of clay [...]

 Researchers from Italy’s University of Lecce say they have found the army of Persian king Cambyses II, buried in Saharan sandstorm in 525 B.C. “We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus,” explained Dario Del Bufalo. The 11,000-year-old bones of two young gomphotheres, distant Ice-Age relatives of elephants, [...]

In 1925, the British explorer and surveyor Percy Fawcett set off into the Brazilian jungle in search of a remnant of Atlantean civilization. Along with him in this ill-fated mission were his son Jack and his son’s best friend. None of them returned. A Hollywood version of this pathetic story—due out next year and starring [...]

By Heather Pringle I’m very happy to be back blogging here in this space.  Starting today, I’ll be posting here on the last Friday of every month.  Before I begin, however, I’d like to thank the readers who tracked me down and sent me emails asking why I stopped.   I’ll try not to disappear again. The story [...]

Our special Egypt issue is now with the printer! While working on it, I took some books off my shelf and read what various 19th-century travelers and ex-patriots said about Egypt and the emotional impact its monuments had on them. Of course I turned to Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (1869) first. Surprisingly, the humorist was [...]

The announcement this week that ancient footprints were found beneath a 1,700-year-old mosaic in Lod, Israel, raises some interesting, if not always serious, thoughts. Basically, the mosaic (covering about 180 square meters) was being lifted from the ground for conservation and eventual display. In the mortar bed in which the mosaic tiles were set, conservators [...]

It’s hard to put the Blanding, Utah, looting and antiquities trafficking case in perspective. Here are the bare numbers: some $336,000 spent by an informant to acquire artifacts during an investigation that lasted more than two years; two dozen people arrested, most from Blanding and half in their 60s and 70s; and two suicides. On September [...]

For an adventure in armchair archaeology, you can do worse than turn to a good dictionary, do a little searching online, or even consult a good atlas. From words in our day-to-day vocabulary to names and places, the ancient past is embedded in language, and sometimes in surprising or humorous ways. Foods often have names with [...]

With our January/February 2007 issue we began compiling and publishing a list of what we think are the top ten archaeological discoveries each year. Choosing them is an interesting exercise here at our office. We all have our favorites, and there’s always debate over whether some new find is really important or simply flashy. Now [...]

Maybe you saw one or two of the press accounts about the excavation of a Civil War battlefield site in advance of the construction of a “Sorority Village” at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. If not, have a look at this Knoxnews.com article or this one at WBIR.com . Both reports draw on the [...]