Archaeologists excavating a Bronze Age Assyrian city in Iraqi Kurdistan have unearthed a cache of almost 100 cuneiform tablets. Led by the University of Tübingen’s Peter Pfälzner, the team discovered the archive under the remains of a large public building that had been deliberately destroyed in antiquity, most likely during an enemy attack. Dating to about 1250 B.C., most of the tablets were in a ceramic pot that had been buried in a thick layer of clay, probably after the city was sacked. “We think the tablets were originally stored in that building, and that they remained in their original position after the structure was destroyed,” says Pfälzner. “They could have protected them somewhere else, so there must have been some importance behind keeping the archive there.” Most of the tablets are badly worn and have not yet been deciphered, but one fragment that has been translated mentions the temple of Gula, a Mesopotamian goddess of healing, a hint that the building may have been that deity’s sanctuary.

Gabriel Prieto originally planned to excavate next to a church in Huanchaco, on Peru’s north coast. Three days before he was to begin, he was notified that it was no longer possible—Pope Francis would be visiting in January 2018 and preparations needed to be made. After first digging in the middle of a street, where he found mostly looted burials, eventually Prieto secured a new site in a nearby schoolyard. There, in layers undisturbed by either looters or modern activity, he excavated a cemetery more than 10 feet deep in which he found evidence of some of the least-known periods of ancient Peruvian history. “This unplanned discovery proved to be the best discovery I have made in the last five years,” says Prieto.

Some burials date to the Gallinazo or Viru period (200 B.C.–A.D. 550), a time when locals competed with the Moche for territory and resources, explains Prieto. The richest deposits date to the Salinar period (400–200 B.C.). These contain gold artifacts, ritual paraphernalia, and a stone mace head, as well as skeletons exhibiting severe injuries. “Salinar was a period of violence and social conflict,” says Prieto, “but this unusual concentration of high-status burials suggests that even at fishing settlements like Huanchaco, social differentiation was evident.”

A villager in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi was renovating a house when he was shocked to discover it was built over an ancient tomb. Archaeologists called in to excavate the site dated it to the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960–1127) and found that the burial chamber had been decorated with tile carvings depicting horses and flying deer, as well as an elaborate fresco of a lavish family feast. “It’s a glimpse of real life during the Song Dynasty,” says Zhong Longgang of the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, who supervised the dig. “We think the party fresco depicts the people who were actually buried in the tomb, and it gives us a look at the clothing, diet, and etiquette of the period.” Many of the tiles recovered from the tomb have impressions of palm prints, which may have served as the signatures of the artisans who made them.