KEW, UNITED KINGDOM—Cosmos Magazine reports that a box of 102 sealed letters written to the crew of the French ship Galatée has been read and analyzed by Renaud Morieux of the University of Cambridge. When the Galatée was captured in 1758 by the British during the Seven Years’ War, the …

MAEBASHI, JAPAN—According to a report in The Asahi Shimbun, a cache of 100,000 ancient coins was discovered in central Japan during a construction project. The coins are thought to have been bundled in groups of 100 pieces with rope made of straw. Of the 334 coins examined to date, the oldest …

VALLADOLID, SPAIN—According to a Live Science report, analysis of a woman’s skull recovered from a Copper Age burial site in southeastern Spain known as Camino del Molino suggests that she had survived two skull surgeries. Scientists led by Sonia Díaz-Navarro of the University of Valladolid estimate that the woman was …

HEILONGJIANG, CHINA—According to a Live Science report, 41 headless skeletons have been found among the remains of 68 people unearthed in northeastern China at the Honghe site by a team of researchers including Qian Wang of Texas A&M University School of Dentistry. The remains have been dated to between 4,100 …

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO—Mexico News Daily reports that the head of a sculpture of a Maya warrior has been uncovered in the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, at the site of the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá. The 13-inch-tall artifact was found in a temple in the Casa Colorada complex during an …

LIÈGE, BELGIUM—According to a statement released by the University of Liège, spear throwers dated to 31,000 years ago have been identified at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal, which is located on the banks of the Haine River in southern Belgium. The dating of the artifacts pushes back the use of …

CARBONDALE, ILLINOIS—A team of scientists led by bioarchaeologist Gretchen Dabbs of Southern Illinois University Carbondale has identified a possible ovarian teratoma in the more than 3,000-year-old burial of a young woman, according to a Live Science report. The woman’s remains were found wrapped in a plant fiber mat in the …

VALLADOLID, SPAIN—According to a statement released by the Nature Publishing Group, a team of researchers led by Teresa Fernández-Crespo of the University of Valladolid and her colleagues examined the remains of 338 individuals recovered from a mass grave in northern Spain. The bones were radiocarbon dated to between 5,400 and …

CAIRO, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that a tomb dated to between the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. has been discovered in an area of the Abusir necropolis reserved for high-ranking officials and military commanders of the 26th and 27th Dynasties. This tomb, according to Miroslav Verner of Charles University in the …

NEWPORT, WALES—According to a BBC News report, oxygen isotope dendrochronology analysis of the timbers of a shipwreck discovered in 2002 in the River Usk indicates that the oak trees used in its construction were felled in the winter of 1457–1458. Some 2,500 pieces of wood were recovered from the muddy …