Satellite imagery and aerial photography have revealed several previously undocumented structures a little more than a mile southwest of Petra in Jordan, a major center of the Nabataean culture, famous for its elaborately decorated buildings carved into pink sandstone cliffs. The new survey, conducted by Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Chris Tuttle of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, shows clusters of previously unknown archaeological features, including remnants of two buildings and a trench that was dug by archaeologists in 1929 but whose location had been forgotten. Perhaps the most significant discovery is a 184-by-161-foot platform with a 28-foot-square building foundation atop it. Pottery sherds found there indicate that it was built before the second century B.C. Strangely, the platform is not in a place easily accessible from Petra’s city center. How it might have been used is a mystery.

Treasures from the Roman era have emerged from the waters of the ancient Mediterranean harbor of Caesarea in Israel—the largest underwater find in the country in 30 years. The spectacular discovery includes a bronze lamp depicting the sun god Sol, a figurine of the moon goddess Luna, a lamp in the shape of the head of an African slave, fragments of three life-size bronze statues, and a figurine of the god of wine, Dionysus. The archaeologists also recovered two metallic lumps composed of thousands of coins bearing the images of the Roman emperors Constantine and Licinius, and holding the shape of the pottery vessels that once enclosed them. According to Jacob Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the cargo comes from what was probably a large merchant ship that sank around 1,600 years ago, and may have been slated to be recycled had the ship reached port. “The cargo gives us some important clues on commerce at that time,” he says. “We can date it to a short time after Constantine the Great won the battle against Maxentius, and made economic changes and declared Christianity the religion of the empire.”

As early as 700 B.C., the Zapotec people of Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley were ruled by lords living in the city of Monte Albán who practiced public rituals that reinforced their vast power. But around A.D. 700, Monte Albán’s influence began to wane. Now archaeologists excavating at a wealthy residence at the site of Dainzú-Macuilxochitl have found evidence that, around that time, Zapotec nobles were practicing private rituals that celebrated their personal power. A team led by Field Museum archaeologist Ronald Faulseit unearthed a temple connected to a noble residence where they found two pierced human mandibles, one of them carved. The bones likely belonged to venerated ancestors and were worn as adornments during rituals that focused on the importance of hereditary power. “They were stressing their own noble lineage,” says Faulseit, “and emphasizing their political and economic independence.”