SEATTLE, WASHINGTON—Komo News reports that a private citizen in Seattle has stepped forward to return a collection of artifacts to Mexico. The objects, including pottery, knives, and figurines, have been verified by scholars at Mexico’s National Heritage Museum, who determined that most of them came from the Cintalapa region of Chiapas and were made between A.D. 100 and 600. “These items were illegally taken from Mexico, and they’ve been passed around from generation to generation, and ultimately somebody said, ‘Hey look, we need to do the right thing and return them,’” said Robert Hammer, Hom ..read more

WASHINGTON, D.C.—According to a report in The Guardian, Ian Christie-Miller, a former visiting research fellow at London University, examined a first draft of slaveowner George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights with infrared imaging and found a watermark showing the Hanover crown and the emblem of King George III. “It is ironic that paper bearing the arms of the king was used by George Mason for his first draft declaration, which was to lead to the overthrow of English power in the American colonies,” Christie-Miller said. The document, now held in a secure vault in the Library of Co ..read more

EXETER, ENGLAND—Devon Live reports that excavations in southwestern England have uncovered traces of the sixteenth-century Columbjohn mansion on the grounds of the Killerton estate, which once belonged to the Acland family. Unused musket balls found at the site may have belonged to the troops loyal to King Charles I who were garrisoned there during the English Civil Wars. The mansion was later taken over by Parliamentarians, who used it as a headquarters during the siege of the city of Exeter between December 1642 and January 1643. Oliver Cromwell is thought to have stayed in Columbjohn in Oct ..read more

BURGOS, SPAIN—Nature News reports that a new dating technique has revealed that traces of hearths found in the same layer of soil at El Salt, a Neanderthal site in western Spain, came from fires made over a period of more than 200 years some 50,000 years ago. Because the hearths were all found in the same layer of the archaeological site, it had been previously thought that they had all been made by a single group of Neanderthals. But archaeologist Ángela Herrejón-Lagunilla of the University of Burgos and her colleagues analyzed magnetic minerals in the hearths and then compared the magnetic m ..read more

MANX, ISLE OF MAN—According to a Witchita Eagle report, a metal detectorist on the Isle of Man discovered a silver ingot thought to be about 1,000 years old. Vikings arrived on the Isle of Man in the ninth century and eventually settled there. “Ingots like this were used in the Viking world for trade,” said archaeologist Allison Fox of Manx National Heritage. Each ingot would have been weighed and tested to confirm its silver content before it would be accepted in trade anywhere in the Viking world, Fox explained. This uncut ingot, which weighs less than an ounce, has been put on display at th ..read more

TOULOUSE, FRANCE—According to a Science News report, molecular archaeologist Ludovic Orlando and his colleagues analyzed the genomes of 475 ancient horses and 77 modern ones. The oldest remains were dated to some 50,000 years ago. The researchers then combined the genetic data, carbon dates, and archaeological information to determine that horses were domesticated some 4,200 years ago on the steppes of what is now southwestern Russia. Domestication was identified through the decrease in the period of a generation from seven years to about four years, and evidence of the mating of closely relat ..read more

BASEL, SWITZERLAND—According to a statement released by the University of Basel, an international team of scientists has analyzed proteins recovered from residues in two 2,700-year-old bronze cauldrons discovered in northern Mongolia. The test results indicate that the vessels were used to process animal blood, mostly from sheep and goats, and milk, mostly from domestic cattle and yaks. The researchers, led by Shevan Wilkin of the University of Basel, suggest that nomads in Mongolia collected the blood as part of the process of making sausages. Milk was likely fermented in the vessels. “This s ..read more

WROCŁAW, POLAND—According to a Science in Poland report, the graves of more than 200 monkeys, dogs, cats, and calves have been recently unearthed by an international team of researchers led by Marta Osypińska of the University of Wrocław in the pet cemetery at Berenice, a port city built on the coast of the Red Sea in the first century A.D. by the Roman emperor Tiberius. Previous research has shown that many of the monkeys buried in the cemetery were rhesus macaques and bonnet macaques imported from India. Osypińska said that most of the monkeys had been wrapped in fabrics and placed in the gr ..read more

GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS—According to a statement released by Antiquity, new dates and stable isotope analysis for the bones of cattle, sheep, and pigs from the Swifterbant site indicate that animal husbandry in what is now the Netherlands dates back to about 4240 B.C. “What is more, these early farmers had different herds of cattle that were fed and herded in different ways,” said Nathalie Brusgaard of Leiden University. The chemical composition of the cattle bones shows that one group had grazed in forests, while the other group had been kept on manured fields or salt marshes. “These early ..read more

LONDON, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by Antiquity, a new study of rock engravings along the Atures Rapids on the Orinoco River in Colombia and Venezuela suggests that they may have been used to communicate territorial boundaries more than 2,000 years ago. Philip Riris of Bournemouth University and his colleagues worked with local guides to map artworks at 14 sites in the river basin with drone photography. Some of these rock art sites had been previously identified, but a few of them were discovered during the project. The images, including depictions of snakes measuring more than ..read more