The tombs of four ancient kings were destroyed by fire in Kampala, Uganda, sparking riots among the Buganda people and clashes with police. At least three people are dead. The Kasubi tombs were a UNESCO World Heritage Site.   BBC News offers photographs of the destruction. 

Segments of the sandstone gorge at the entrance to Jordan’s Nabataean city of Petra are at risk of collapsing. A rock has already fallen from the walls, and a crack has spurred the creation of an emergency committee to find a way to prevent another rock from falling. “The site is over 2,000 years old, it is very fragile,” said Fawwaz Khraysheh, committee head and director of Jordan’s Department of Antiquities.  

Leslie Cecil of Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas suggests that the minerals used to make “Maya Blue” pigment were widely mined, in addition to being traded, in an article for the Journal of Archaeological Science.  

Hadrian’s Wall was lit up by volunteers wielding torches this past weekend. “It’s magnificent,” commented tourist Matthias Fabian of the Netherlands.  

National Geographic has more information on the 51 headless Vikings unearthed in Weymouth, England.  

Excavation of a metro line in Sofia, Bulgaria, uncovered a twelfth-century church, other early medieval buildings, and graves.  

A polished and carved walrus tusk has been stolen from Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the historic home of Theodore Roosevelt.

 Two red-granite statues have been unearthed in Luxor, Egypt, near the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. Last month, archaeologists found a colossal carving of the pharaoh’s head.

A seventh-century building in northern Israel has been re-identified as the Al-Sinnabra palace, used by the Umayyad caliphs during the winter months.  

Modern humans and Neanderthals did not coexist on the Iberian Peninsula, according to the results of a new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution. In a large-scale excavation of the Cova Gran site, researchers from the Centre for Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage Studies of the University of Barcelona found that archaeological materials left by Neanderthals and modern humans were separated by sterile strata of sediment.  

Here’s an introduction to the mummies of China’s Tarim Basin.   

Australian Private Harry Willis is among the soldiers identified by DNA samples from the mass graves at the World War I battlefield at Fromelles, France. His story is told in The Age.