Archaeological headlines

by JESSICA E. SARACEN

In northern Peru, archaeologists have uncovered what they say is a ceremonial hall decorated with murals where the Moche carried out the ritual killings of prisoners of war.

A long-term occupation site on the eastern shores of Lake Huron has yielded everything from stone tools to copper trade items from the nineteenth century. Dog burials have been found, so there may also be human burials.

The upper-right jawbone of a dog unearthed in Swiss cave in 1873 has been radiocarbon dated to between 14,100 and 14,600 years ago. “The Kesslerloch find clearly supports the idea that the dog was an established domestic animal at that time in central Europe,” said Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen. Other scientists disagree—some think that dogs were domesticated much earlier, and others that the Kesslerloch fossil represents an “incipient dog.”

A new organic molecule may be the culprit behind the blue sheen covering stone tools and other artifacts housed in an old armory in Verona, Italy, according to Gilberto Artioli of the University of Padua.

Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University thinks that the circular structure discovered near Stonehenge is more likely to be a barrow, or tomb, rather than the remains of a wooden henge.

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