A team of archaeologists and geologists excavating two ancient quarries in the Presili Hills of west Wales has confirmed that these sites are the sources of the 43 “bluestones” erected at Stonehenge. Weighing on average between one and two tons, these igneous and volcanic rocks were transported to Stonehenge sometime around 3000 B.C. But radiocarbon dating of charcoal discovered at quarry-related camps shows that Neolithic workers were active at the two sites some 300 to 500 years before the earliest installation of bluestones at Stonehenge. This suggests that the megaliths may have been quarried and erected in the immediate area long before they were transported to Stonehenge. “We suspect that there is a dismantled stone circle monument somewhere in the area between the quarries,” says University College London archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, who led the team. “We expect to find it and excavate it in 2016.”

Researchers have extracted and characterized viral DNA from decades-old human bones for the first time—and used it to help determine the surprising origins of several long-lost casualties of war. The bones, which belonged to 106 soldiers killed in World War II, were retrieved over the past two decades from the forests of Karelia, in present-day Russia. The researchers found DNA of parvovirus, a common childhood affliction, in the remains of nearly half the soldiers.

The bones included in the study are thought to have all belonged to Finns, but the type of parvovirus found in the bones of two of the soldiers has never been known to occur in northern Europe. A closer look at these soldiers’ own genetic material revealed sequences that tend to be found in parts of Asia and areas to the south, suggesting that the soldiers were part of the Soviet Red Army. “This shows that viral genetic sequences—in addition to human genetic sequences—can be used as a geographical fingerprint,” says Klaus Hedman, a clinical virologist at the University of Helsinki, “providing a means of identifying people’s origins.”

Recent results from a long-term study of pottery residues has revealed that farmers in the Middle East and Europe had been using beeswax for almost as long as they had made pots—but perhaps just not extensively. The discovery was made possible because of advances in techniques for distinguishing different types of lipids, naturally occurring molecules such as fats and waxes, from each other. Of thousands of sherds studied, about 80 were found to contain beeswax, indicating that it may have been a relatively scarce material in the Neolithic period, the time when people were starting to farm and make pottery.

What Neolithic people were doing with the beeswax is a matter of speculation. According to Melanie Roffet-Salque, a biochemist at the University of Bristol and leader of the research group, it may have been used to waterproof the inside of pots, or may have been deposited as wax combs were melted to extract valuable honey—one of the few sweeteners available at the time. The earliest pottery sherds containing beeswax date to the seventh millennium B.C., and were found at several sites in what is now Turkey. One of these, Cayönü Tepesi, is also where the research team previously found a pottery sherd that contains the earliest evidence of milk use.

Roffet-Salque also cautions that the presence of beeswax residue on pots does not necessarily mean that early farmers were beekeepers. They may have been harvesting wild honey and wax. The first solid evidence of beekeeping appears in an Egyptian painting from 2400 B.C., but bee products clearly have a much longer history. A lump of beeswax found among other artifacts in South Africa’s Border Cave is at least 24,000 years old.

Studying pottery using this process has produced important findings about what products Neolithic people used or valued, but it has at least one drawback. “It’s very time-consuming,” says Roffet-Salque. “It’s taken us 20 years for 6,000 sherds.”