Archaeology News & Discovery Roundup

Two mammoth-ivory bird figurines less than an inch long, about 40,000 years old, were found in the same layer at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany. Nicholas Conard of Tübingen notes they show early artists could carve delicate motifs in miniature, possibly by the same hand.

About 120 Latin inscriptions from the first and second centuries CE have been recorded in Cova Dones, southeastern Spain, interpreted as a Roman cult sanctuary used especially by women. Women’s names, Domina dedications, spindle whorls, and other offerings appear with the graffiti.

A lidar survey covering more than 1,700 square miles of Amazon forest has revealed hundreds of previously unmapped earthworks and geometric geoglyphs. The finds add to growing evidence that pre-Columbian Amazonian landscapes were densely modified, not empty wilderness.

Excavation led by Murat Cekilmez of Adnan Menderes University has brought to light a mosaic featuring a hippocampus in western Turkey. The find adds a marine mythological floor to the region’s Roman and late antique decorative repertoire.

INAH researchers digitally reconstructed a charcoal mural in an arched vault at Calakmul showing Juun Ajaw with a day marker from the 260-day ritual calendar. Style and dating suggest the structure may belong to about 400–200 BCE, earlier than some prior estimates.

University of York researchers argue that as Mohenjo-daro matured, house-size gaps shrank rather than widened, with investment in shared drainage and streets instead of royal monuments. The Antiquity study challenges the idea that early urban growth must concentrate wealth.

Six pyramid-shaped copper bells (c. 1300–1536 CE) were found in a circular stone qollqa at Yoroma in Bolivia’s Oroncota Valley. Different clappers of copper, shell, or stone would have produced distinct tones, and the cache sat with maize imagery and other offerings.

A new study of 21 fossil footprints from the ancient Lake Turkana shoreline (about 1.43 million years ago) attributes them to Paranthropus boisei individuals roughly six feet tall. Researchers interpret the trackway as a party of about eight males moving together.

Excavation at Vindonissa in northern Switzerland has traced an early Roman fortification phase at the legionary base. The work clarifies how the site’s defensive layout developed before later stone phases of the well-known castrum.

Conservation work at Pompeii’s House with Bakery has restored a painted ceiling that returns a Dionysus and Ariadne scene to public view. The project highlights how ceiling painting, not only walls, shaped elite domestic display in the buried city.

Ambassadors, UN representatives and development partners visited Ethiopia’s Rock-Hewn Churches, reaffirming commitment to protecting UNESCO World Heritage sites.

An international team analyzed teeth from 152 formerly enslaved Africans buried on St. Helena, tracing origins and Atlantic slave-trade routes through isotope and DNA evidence.

Archaeologists in Nova Scotia uncovered foundations of an 18th-century barracks at Fort Anne, adding structure to the fort’s poorly documented military layout.