The most-read national stories at The Washington Post all speak to the fear of hidden evil.

"The victims were probably looking for shelter in the cryptoporticus, in this underground space, where they thought they were better protected."

From "Bodies of man and his slave unearthed from ashes at Pompeii" (AP). 

Judging by cranial bones and teeth, one of the men was young, likely aged 18 to 25, with a spinal column with compressed discs. That finding led archaeologists to hypothesize that he was a young man who did manual labor, like that of a slave. The other man had a robust bone structure, especially in his chest area, and died with his hands on his chest and his legs bent and spread apart. He was estimated to have been 30- to 40-years-old, Pompeii officials said. Fragments of white paint were found near the man’s face, probably remnants of a collapsed upper wall, the officials said. Both skeletons were found in a side room along an underground corridor, or passageway, known in ancient Roman times as a cryptoporticus, which led to to the upper level of the villa....

Here's the Wikipedia article "Cryptoporticus" — with various photographs, none from Pompeii.

Archaeologists find the temple of the Flayed Lord — Xipe Totec.

NPR reports.

"Priests worshipped Xipe Totec by skinning human victims and then donning their skins. The ritual was seen as a way to ensure fertility and regeneration"... The temple was recently uncovered in excavated ruins of the Popoloca Indians in the state of Puebla in central Mexico.... Authorities believe the victims who lost their skin were involved in gladiator-style combat and were later flayed.

"Drought Reveals Giant, 4,500-Year-Old Irish Henge."

"The circular structure in the Boyne Valley was discovered by drone photographers searching for signs of hidden Neolithic sites" (Smithsonian).

So why do these ancient structures stand out during times of drought? The henges are actually a series of concentric circles created by placing large posts in the ground. When the henge fell out of disuse or was burned down, the underground portions of the posts rotted away, changing the composition of the soil in the posthole, causing it to retain more moisture. During a drought, while the surrounding crops yellow, the plants over the post holes have a slight advantage. “The weather is 95 percent responsible for this find,” Murphy tells Best. “The flying of the drone, knowledge of the area, and fluke make up the rest in this discovery.”

Listen to the oldest melody in the world — 3400 years old.

"The hymn was discovered on a clay tablet in Ugarit, now part of modern-day Syria, and is dedicated the Hurrians’ goddess of the orchards Nikkal...."

The clay tablet text, which was discovered alongside around 30 other tablet fragments, specifies 9 lyre strings and the intervals between those strings – kind of like an ancient guitar tab..... The notation here is essentially a set of instructions for intervals and tuning based around a heptatonic diatonic scale.

"This may be the first time that such routine fossil damage has been interpreted as evidence of tree dwelling and death by falling."

"For good reason. If palaeontologists were to apply the same logic and assertion to the many mammals whose fossilised bones have been distorted by geological forces, we would have everything from gazelles to hippos, rhinos, and elephants climbing and falling from high trees."

From "Archaeologists are fuming over a new study about how early hominin Lucy died."

"Using Google Earth, satellite imagery and drones, researchers have discovered a monumental structure amid the world-famous ruins of Petra, Jordan."

"It was apparently 'hiding in plain sight' — a structure the size of an Olympic-size pool 'just south of the city center, and archaeologists have missed this for 150, 200 years'...."

"A major Native American site is being looted. Will Obama risk armed conflict to save it?"

There's a clickbait headline. It goes to The Washington Post, so you might not want to use up your free views if you don't have a subscription. But this is a very interesting story about the potential for Obama, acting alone, to designate 1.8 million acres of Utah — to the southeast of Canyonlands and Glen Canyon National Parks — as Bear Ears National Monument. There is, we are told, a problem of people looting and vandalizing ancient archeological sites. And there are also "ATVs and motorbikes tearing through the desert terrain."

But what's the risk of armed conflict?

In a state where the federal government owns 65 percent of the land, many conservatives already resent existing restrictions because they bar development that could generate additional revenue. Out-of-state militias came to San Juan County two years ago, when Commissioner Phil Lyman helped lead an all-terrain-vehicle protest ride through a canyon the Bureau of Land Management had closed to motorized traffic in 2007. Lyman is appealing the 10-day jail sentence he received in connection with the protest, and he argues that his case shows how BLM officials place the priorities of environmentalists over those of local residents.

“I would hope that my fellow Utahans would not use violence, but there are some deeply held positions that cannot just be ignored,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the veteran Republican lawmaker, said in an interview....

[S]ome lawmakers have suggested that unilateral action by the president, under the 1906 Antiquities Act, could provoke the same sort of resistance that led to the 41-day armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon earlier this year. “There is a lot of conflict that has escalated into being on the precipice of violence that is unnecessary and unwarranted,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who opposes the designation.

Much more at the link.

"Islamic State militants have destroyed Palmyra's ancient temple of Baalshamin..."

"Syria's head of antiquities was quoted as saying the temple was blown up on Sunday," BBC reports.

The ancient city, which is a Unesco World Heritage site, is famed for its well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins, and the Baalshamin temple, built nearly 2,000 years ago, is one of the city's best-known buildings....

"The cella (inner area of the temple) was destroyed and the columns around collapsed," he said.

Emma Loosley, a professor at Exeter University who lived near the ancient city for three years, said the temple's cella was "pretty much perfect." "I can't think of another temple as beautifully preserved as the temple of Baalshamin...."

From the Wikipedia article on the temple:

In Sanchuniathon's main mythology the god he calls in Greek 'Uranus'/'Sky' has been thought by some to stand for Ba'al Šamem...  As in Greek mythology and Hittite mythology, Sky is castrated by his son, who is in turn destined to be opposed by the thunder god....

Here's a picture of the temple as it appeared before Sunday's explosion:

"He was very connected to his city and to the antiquities, and he was old. Where would he want to go at that age?"

"He said that whatever was going to happen to the people would happen to him."

The beheading of "Mr. Palmyra."

"This is the wave of the future in archeology."

The new archeology is the archeology of all the stuff that's accumulated within the collections of archaeology departments.

"Experts are puzzled by the unexpected find of such a large number of skulls at what appears to have been a small, unremarkable shrine...."

"The heads were carefully deposited in rows or in small mounds, mostly facing east toward the rising sun, sometime between 660 and 860 A.D., a period when the nearby city-state of Teotihuacan had already declined but the Aztec empire, founded in 1325, was still centuries in the future."

[Georgia State University archaeologist Christopher] Morehart said some of the skulls were found with finger bones inserted into the eye sockets. “It was common enough that it was intentionally placed there in the eye socket,” Morehart said, though the ritual significance of that remains unclear.

"Archaeologists in Bulgaria are chuffed today..."

I love the word "chuffed." And "boffins": "Tomb-raid boffins find golden hoard of the warrior Thracians/Spartan-arse-kickers who produced Spartacus..." (How's that for a headline?)

"Sunday's travel theme here in Rome was death."

"OK, for an anthropologist you have to imagine this is more cheerful than it sounds...."

It is not the distance of time that touches me about these people. I study bones that are tens or hundreds of thousands of years old, distances so vast as to be unimaginable in human terms. Yet the bone persists. The individual is marked in it, and touching her bones creates an immediacy of connection, like traveling through time.

17 lost Egyptian pyramids spotted from space.

"More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings."

The 2,500-year-old bowl of noodles.

Cold now, but awesome.

"[A]rchaeologists have unearthed the upper half of a double limestone statue of a powerful pharaoh who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago."

A news item that would be so much better with a photograph.

UPDATE: Pic.

At the Faux Archaeology Café...

... you can display what you've unearthed lately. Me, I excavated the grave of a sticks and stones man who was, it seems, buried in a landslide that preserved the horror of death on his face for all time.

(Enlarge: 1, 2.)

Timberhenge.

Discovered, without digging, near Stonehenge.

Does my lake look Stonehenge-y to you?

"So is there a North American version of Stonehenge just sitting up there beneath the glacial waters of a small northern bay in Lake Michigan?"