This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.
How to Recreate a Sloppy Ancient Greek Drinking Game
Buddhist relic discovered in central China
Unknown earth fortifications discovered in the Subcarpathian province
Ancient burial remains in Okinawa cave may fill void in Japanese ancestry
Organizing trade: The ahis and guilds of Anatolia
Mesoamerican ‘Fool’s Gold’ Mirrors Found in Arizona Reveal Ties to Ancient Mexico - I tracked this paper down because of the image used. It looked like the Epiclassic depictions of people on pseudo-cloisonne vessels from my area of Jalisco. Unfortunately the article didn't include any more pictures (or even the one used by Western Digs). Beekman has emailed him to see if he could see any photos of these pyrite mirrors. It may be the case that the ones who made the mirrors were part of the migrations out of the Bajio, second paper about it.
Ancient Egyptian fortress unearthed in Sinai
Remains of bustling city found near new bridge
Offering to goddess reveals reach of late 15th century Aztec empire
Unusual Metal Recovered from Ancient Greek Shipwreck
Tracking the origin and evolution of maize in the U.S. Southwest
Study of ancient dogs in the Americas yields insights into human, dog migration
Searching for Genghis Khan's lost tomb from space
Archaeologists unearth chariot, horse pits
Michigan Archaeologist interested in shipwreck found by Muskegon divers, unsure if it's the Griffin
This isn't so much "what's new" as in "what's doing the rounds again." The sometimes observable, sometimes not, correlation between castration and living longer is popping around the internet again. As far as I can tell the io9 story is the original impetus this time, but you know how most news is just regurgitation these days, so it's popping around other websites a little bit.
When the Korean eunuchs study originally was published in 2012 this story hit a lot of news outlets, which made sense of course, so I'm a little baffled to see it doing the rounds again two years and some change later, with no real clear reason why. I'm guessing maybe the io9 writer bumped into some old news articles on this while researching eunuchs for Game of Thrones reasons and decided this would be perfect for a slow news day.