While excavating an underground storage system cut into bedrock at Wadi el-Jarf, nearly 110 miles south of Suez and close to the Red Sea, archaeologists discovered fragments of boats, ropes, and pottery. The artifacts date to the reign of the 4th Dynasty King Khufu, or Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, who ruled from 2551 to 2528 B.C.

Beginning on the shore and continuing underwater, an assembly of large blocks and limestone slabs inscribed with Cheops’ name form the remains of an L-shaped jetty. Limestone anchors from numerous large ships testify to voyages launched to export copper and stones from the Sinai Peninsula to the Nile Valley. “Ancient inland harbors are known on riversides, but the jetty of Wadi el-Jarf predates by more than 1,000 years any other known structure of this kind,” says expedition leader Pierre Tallet, a University of Paris-Sorbonne Egyptologist, about the 4,500-year-old harbor.

Tallet and colleagues also found 10 very well-preserved papyri among hundreds of fragments. The documents, which are proving difficult to reassemble, are the oldest papyri ever found in Egypt. One fragment is a diary written by Merrer, an Old Kingdom official involved in the building of the Great Pyramid. Though actual details of the pyramid’s construction are scarce, Tallet says, "the journal provides a precise account for every working day."

Six different accounts from Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in the New World, describe episodes of cannibalism among colonists. Former Jamestown president George Percy wrote in 1625 that, during the brutal 1609–1610 winter that caused mass starvation among 300 settlers, “notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe … as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them.”

William Kelso, an archaeologist with Preservation Virginia who has excavated Jamestown since 1994, doubted Percy’s horrific descriptions—until this spring, when his team found the butchered skull of a 14-year-old girl buried in a trash pit along with the remains of horses and dogs, other sources of food for the desperate colonists. Jane, as the girl is now known, was originally thought to have been an upper-class settler, but recent analysis found her skeleton has low lead levels. The rich at Jamestown ate from pewter dishes, essentially giving themselves lead poisoning.

Jane’s remains are the first physical evidence of cannibalism at any American colony. “There’s no doubt cannibalism happened,” says Kelso. “It says how close to failure this colony came.”

Fieldwork can be uncomfortable for long-legged humans, but burrowing animals are built for digging. Furry creatures have provided invaluable assists at two different European sites. In northern Germany, a badger discovered nine remarkable 900-year-old burials, including that of a richly outfitted warrior. “There was no knowledge of these graves and no reason to investigate without the badger’s assistance,” says archaeologist Felix Biermann, who continues to dig the site. In Cumbria, England, burrowing moles have pushed up ancient objects at second-century Whitley Castle, uncovering invaluable evidence of Roman life at the fort. There have only been two previous digs, and Whitley Castle is now a protected site that human archaeologists can never explore. And not to be outdone by their terrestrial counterparts, specially trained mine-hunting dolphins discovered a nineteenth-century Howell torpedo off the coast of San Diego. Only 50 Howells were made, and only two had previously been found.