PARIS, FRANCE—According to a Live Science report, near the village of Chamborêt north of the French city of Limoges, archaeologists have uncovered a freshwater spring likely dating to between 4,500 and 6,000 years ago below the remnants of a Roman-era pool. The Roman ruins, which date to the third century A.D., probably formed a landscaped basin surrounded by a wall of granite stones. A team of archaeologists from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have also recovered Late Roman pottery sherds, coins, and a ceramic fragment that potentially de ..read more

JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI—According to an Atlas Obscura report, a “porcelain gallbladder” has been identified among a woman's 100-year-old bones exhumed from the cemetery at the site of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, which operated from 1855 to 1935. A porcelain gallbladder forms through calcium build-up in the wall of the organ, which causes it to harden. Upon initial examination during the course of excavations, researchers did not know what the object, which was approximately the size of a quail egg, was. “Someone thought it was a calcified cyst, someone else thought it was a gallstone, a ..read more

WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA—The foundation of an eighteenth-century house was uncovered during an excavation at Colonial Williamsburg, according to a WAVY report. The Colin G. and Nancy N. Campbell Archaeology Center is scheduled to be built on the site. Archaeologist Jack Gary of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation said that the house had plaster walls, casement windows, a chimney on at least one side, and a cellar. The thousands of artifacts recovered during the excavation will be conserved, housed, and exhibited in the new facility. The new building may also be constructed so that visitors can ..read more

CUMBRIA, ENGLAND—An excavation conducted in northern England ahead of a road improvement project along an ancient pathway has uncovered flint tools dated to the Upper Paleolithic period, according to a Newsweek report. The tools could be between 10,000 and 14,000 years old, when the climate would have been colder. Hunter-gatherers likely followed herds of reindeer, wild horses, and wild cattle over a wide range, said archaeologist Stephen Rowland. The tools were found in a pit that had been sealed by soil that washed down a nearby slope. The researchers will look for traces of an encampment th ..read more

CAIRO, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that a fragment of a sculpture of Ramesses II stolen some 30 years ago was handed over to Egyptian authorities by Swiss officials. The 3,400-year-old carving, which shows the pharaoh’s face, was taken from the Ramesses II temple in Abydos. The sculpture originally featured Ramesses II with a group of deities. It was recovered in Geneva during a criminal proceeding. To read about recent finds at the temple of Ramesses II in Abydos, go to "Ram Heads for Ramesses ..read more

WROCŁAW, POLAND—IFL Science reports that a team of researchers led by Tomasz Płonka and Andrzej Wiśniewski of the University of Wrocław has examined an engraved bear bone with microscopy and X-ray computed tomography. Discovered in the 1950s in southern Poland’s Dziadowa Skała Cave, the bone has been dated to between 115,000 and 130,000 years ago, and is thought to have been engraved by Neanderthals. The researchers determined that the marks on the bone are orderly, and do not resemble marks made by butchery or accident, or as a side-effect of another activity. Experiments aimed at recreating ..read more

MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA—According to a Washington Post report, two bottles containing liquid and some surviving cherries have been uncovered in the dirt basement of George Washington’s plantation home. The excavation was conducted as part of a project to conserve the mansion’s foundation. Archaeologist Jason Boroughs said that much of the liquid in the bottles may be groundwater that entered the vessels after their corks had deteriorated. While emptying the bottles, members of the research team found pits, stems, cherries, and gooey residues. “It actually smelled like cherry blossoms when we go ..read more

KRAKOW, POLAND—Live Science reports that an eighteenth-century palatal obturator has been found with the remains of a man with a cleft palate who was buried in a crypt at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Krakow in the eighteenth century. The prosthesis measures about an inch long and consists of a woolen pad sewn to a metallic plate that would have fit into his nasal cavity and blocked substances in the mouth from entering it. The wool pad is thought to have been coated in silver iodide and then covered with a thin sheet of copper and then gold and silver, based upon analysis with a scan ..read more

GUSTAVIA, SAINT BARTHÉLEMY—According to a Miami Herald report, a collection of small cannonballs known as grapeshot has been unearthed at Fort Gustav, a military outpost on the Caribbean Island of Saint Barthélemy, by researchers from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research. Construction of the fort was begun by the French in the mid-eighteenth century to protect ships headed to Europe from pirates, but the island was soon traded to Sweden for trading rights. Saint Barthélemy was eventually returned to the French in 1878. Such rounds of grapeshot would have been fir ..read more

YAKOHAMA, JAPAN—A new genetic study conducted by Xiaoxi Liu of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences and his colleagues suggests that modern Japanese people are mostly descended from three ancestral groups, according to a Live Science report. Those three groups include Jomon hunter-gatherers; a group thought to be the predecessors of the Han people of China; and an unidentified group with ties to Northeast Asia. It had been previously thought that the Japanese were descended from the Jomon and Yayoi farmers who migrated to the islands of Japan from continental Asia. The new study a ..read more