Goodreads' Users Choice awards for the "best" books of 2016 are out. The history category is, uh, well it exists. The winner being a ghostwritten celebrity death cash-in is not great. Oddly the only book on this list I'd heard any buzz about at all this year was White Trash, which I didn't get around to reading.

This Mozart 220 CD collection is being tooted as the "best selling album of 2016." Don't believe it - it's only because they're counting EACH CD as an individual sale, so any other album has to sell 221 copies to make up for one of these doorstoppers. It's not even the #1 classical album on Amazon for pete's sake. Sloppy journalism.

The Great Beethoven Natural Sign Debate got even spicier after last week. I am pretty invested now.

• Human remains found at 'internationally important' prehistoric site in Wales: The site could revolutionize how we view the origins of Welsh agriculture

• Archaeology sheds light on Mongolia’s uncertain nomadic future. As a herding lifestyle practiced for millennia is threatened by contemporary climate change, archaeology offers a long-term perspective.

• 6,000-Year-Old Cranial Amulet Discovered in Kozareva Mogila Prehistoric Settlement near Bulgaria’s Black Sea Coast

• Deserted Irish Village Investigated—There is no local memory of it, but before the 1840 Famine there was a vibrant community of some 40 houses here on Achill Island. The 1-room houses had drystone walls over 3 ft thick with a single door facing the bay.

• Secrets of the paleo diet: Discovery reveals plant-based menu of prehistoric man - More than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago

• Neolithic Syrians were first to domesticate cereals: Researchers discover oldest evidence of the domestication of three species of cereal, one of barley and two of wheat (spelt and farrow), at the Tell Qarassa North archaeological site in Syria

• Separate but unequal: the sad fate of Aboriginal heritage in Western Australia - More than 3,000 Aboriginal sites have lost registration status as part of sweeping changes in classifications in the Aboriginal Heritage Register

• Researchers Confident Mysterious Pair Of Mummified Knees Belonged To Queen Nefertari

• Researchers find overwhelming evidence of malaria's existence 2,000 years ago

• The Cholula pyramid and the fight for its preservation

• Looted Palmyra relics seized by Swiss authorities at Geneva ports: Confiscated objects date from the third and fourth centuries and include a head of Aphrodite and two funereal bas-reliefs

• Hi-tech replica to bring prehistoric art of Lascaux within reach: £48m recreation of the French cave, complete with the famous Paleolithic art, will let visitors experience magic of the ‘prehistoric Sistine chapel’ for first time in decades

• Mexico Is Hiding (not really) The World’s Largest Pyramid. In the city of Cholula in central Mexico there stands a hill with a giant church on top which hides a manmade pyramid filled with secrets.

• Researchers may have found first polluted river from before Bronze Age

• Texas Archaeologist Cracks the Code of a 4,500-Year-Old Mural

• 1,000-Year-Old Viking Toolbox Found at Mysterious Danish Fortress. A Viking toolbox found in Denmark has been opened for the first time in 1,000 years, revealing an extraordinary set of iron hand tools that may have been used to make Viking ships and houses, according to archaeologists.

• The United States government returned a collection of stolen artifacts to Egypt on Thursday, including an ancient wooden sarcophagus, a mummy shroud and mummified hand

• Representatives from dozens of countries meet in Abu Dhabi on Friday to discuss the creation of a $100-million fund to protect and restore heritage sites threatened by extremism and conflict

• Skeletons found in Leicester could be the earliest examples of African people living in the famously diverse city. The University of Leicester found 83 skeletons in a Roman graveyard dating back as early as the 2nd Century

• Turkey will nominate Göbeklitepe, branded the world's oldest temple, for the UNESCO World Heritage List

• Scientists discover new material from Sutton Hoo ship burial. Scientists have discovered a new material to add to the collection of treasures from the Sutton Hoo ship burial - bitumen from the Middle East.

• Ice Age hunters destroyed forests throughout Europe

• Circular Temple to God of Wind Uncovered in Mexico City

• Analysis of Iron Age ceramics suggests complex pattern of Eastern Mediterranean trade

A recent panel discussion held by C-SPAN with 3 authors of solid recent books(with a refreshingly informed familiarity with both sides of the Pacific) on Pearl Harbor for the 75th Anniversary, ranging from the background, planning, reactions on both sides of the Pacific, as well as historiography and dealing with Prange's massive shadow, as well as what the whole episode can offer to today's audience as well.