Guardian readers speculate on the purpose of a mysterious object unearthed at Norton Disney, near Lincoln I wonder if the object (Mysterious Roman dodecahedron to go on display in Lincoln, 29 April) could be some kind of puzzle (quite apart from being a puzzle to archaeologists). Unless some Roman puzzle book survived, it seems unlikely that a puzzle object would crop up in Roman literature. It is small enough to be held in the hand, and possibly the puzzle was to wrap a string around each protuberance and to go into or come out of one of the holes, without going in or out twice? Tom Wilson Pr ..read more

My husband, Alex Hooper, who has died aged 82 after a long illness, had an extraordinarily varied career, including as an archaeologist, film-maker, merchant seaman, teacher and gallery curator. In the late 1960s, while doing an MA in film studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, Alex became close friends with Peter Gibson of Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts, and the pair made a documentary about the blues musician John Mayall, The Turning Point (1969). Through going on tour with Mayall, and making the film, Alex hung out with musicians such as Fleetwood Mac, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones ..read more

Genetic analysis of Winchester samples shows similar strains of disease and supports theory that fur trade played role in spread Leprosy passed between humans and red squirrels in medieval England, research suggests, supporting the theory that the fur trade could have played a role in the spread of the disease. Leprosy is one of the oldest infectious diseases recorded in humans and is typically caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae ..read more

Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to read what had long been thought unreadable More than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front-page news. Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the library of a Herculaneum villa that was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 ..read more

Advances in fields such as spectrometry and gene sequencing are unleashing torrents of new data about the ancient world – and could offer answers to questions we never even knew to ask. By Jacob Mikanowski ..read more

Suspicious neighboursMuseum of the yearOfstedOne word for the ToriesRoman dodecahedron Arwa Mahdawi can be assured that over-suspicious neighbours are not restricted to New York (It’s not stranger danger you should be afraid of, it’s video doorbell derangement syndrome, 1 May). A local Facebook page went into meltdown about a man who was seen driving down the road in the early hours, stopping regularly and running up people’s drives, clearly looking for easy access. We were urged to be ultra-vigilant. Shortly afterwards, it became clear that the milkman was getting an early start to his day. A ..read more

MP says trade in remains is ‘gross violation of human dignity’, as skulls from Pitt Rivers collection removed An auction house has withdrawn 18 ancient Egyptian human skulls from sale after an MP said selling them would perpetuate the atrocities of colonialism. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, believes the sale of human remains for any purposes should be outlawed, adding that the trade was “a gross violation of human dignity ..read more

My friend Mary Greenacre, who has died aged 77, was an archaeological and museum conservator of distinction, possessing an innate empathy with fragile and precious objects. Mary specialised in ceramics, and came to understand prehistoric pottery, 18th-century terracotta sculpture and Delftware. She became conservator at the South West Area Museum Service in Bristol in 1969, where she met Francis Greenacre, curator of fine art at the City Art Gallery. They married within six months and became the lively hosts of many gatherings. Her studio in the City Art Gallery became a place of work, friends ..read more

Amateur archaeologists discover remains missing hands and feet at former Nazi military headquarters Amateur archaeologists have unearthed five human skeletons missing their hands and feet under the former home of the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in present-day Poland. The remains, believed to be that of a family, were discovered as part of a dig at the site near the north-eastern town of Kętrzyn, where Nazi leaders spent large stretches of the second world war ..read more

There are no known descriptions or drawings of object in Roman literature, making its purpose unclear They are known as one of archaeology’s great enigmas – hollow 12-sided objects from the Roman era with no known purpose or use. Only 33 of these mysterious dodecahedrons have ever been found in Britain and now one, unearthed during an amateur archaeology dig after 1,700 years underground, is going on public display in Lincoln as part of a history festival ..read more