William Jackson Palmer was a Civil War hero, railroad magnate, and founder of Colorado Springs. He was also a connoisseur of the cutting-edge technology of his day, evidence of which has been found during an excavation of a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century dumping ground on land that once belonged to his Colorado Springs estate, Glen Eyrie. Among the artifacts recovered from the site, on a creek bed roughly half a mile from Glen Eyrie’s castle, are fragments of early dry-cell batteries that Palmer used to power electric gates on the estate. “Palmer was on the forefront of technological advancement as well as self-sustainability,” says Sara Millward of Alpine Archaeological Consultants. Her colleague Mike Prouty adds that Palmer also ran a power plant on the property, designed reservoirs to supply running water to the house, and would likely have taken care to dispose of waste in a manner that would neither spoil the physical beauty of the estate nor interfere with his many engineering projects. Other objects found in the dump reveal Palmer’s taste for high living, including fine English ceramics, imported shellfish, and liquor bottles, whose contents the teetotaler Palmer presumably used to entertain his guests.

According to ancient Greco-Roman sources, Celtic warriors living in France more than 2,000 years ago practiced a gruesome ritual. They would remove the heads of their fallen enemies and proudly carry them home as trophies to be put on public display. Archaeological evidence of this practice has come in the form of human skulls discovered at several Celtic sites. An intriguing new study now confirms the sources’ assertion that the decapitated heads were embalmed. Chemical analysis of third-century B.C. skull fragments from the Celtic site of Le Cailar in southern France has detected the presence of conifer resins. Experts believe the pleasant-smelling resins may have been heated and mixed with plant oil before being applied to the heads as an embalming agent. “We don’t know the precise process, but this is the first time that we have scientific proof of embalming,” says archaeologist Réjane Roure of Paul Valéry University. The embalming mixture would have acted as an aromatic agent, and its antibacterial properties would have prevented decay and preserved the individual’s appearance, making the vanquished enemy recognizable for a long time.

On the island of New Guinea, archaeologists have discovered several ornately decorated stone statues at a cemetery that may be more than 3,000 years old. Erlin Novita of the Papua Archaeological Center led a team that found the statues at Mount Srobu on the island’s north coast, in Indonesia’s Papua province. Here burials were hewn into limestone bedrock and covered with shell mounds by people of the megalithic cultures who likely made the statues. Most megalithic human depictions are simple, but the three-foot-tall statues unearthed by Novita’s team are complex. The bodies are posed in a crouching position, similar to statues known from Polynesia. Novita believes the statues represented important ancestors and were objects of worship. She notes that they are visually similar to the smoked mummies of Papuan chiefs that are traditionally preserved in a crouched position and that continue to be venerated in some parts of New Guinea to this day.