The people living in South Africa’s Border Cave up to 200,000 years ago knew how to make a cozy home. Excavations that took place between 2015 and 2019 have revealed that the cave’s residents slept on bedding that was made by piling broad-leafed grass on top of a layer of ash from the many fireplaces within the cave. The ash may have kept crawling insects from disturbing sleepers, says Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand. Wadley believes that this type of bedding was very common in the distant past, but that it rarely survives in the archaeological record. The research team removed layers of the cave’s sediment in blocks and excavated them in the lab, which enabled them to examine their contents under a microscope. This meticulous approach revealed tiny pieces of ash and plant fibers that made up the bedding used by the cave dwellers between 200,000 and 35,000 years ago.

On the morning of August 27, 1782, Continental forces led by John Laurens—aide-de-camp to General George Washington and friend of Alexander Hamilton—clashed with 140 British soldiers in a minor skirmish on the shores of the Combahee River, about 50 miles south of Charleston, South Carolina. Two days earlier, General Mordecai Gist had prevented foraging British troops and their 18 vessels from landing on the east side of Combahee Ferry, 12 miles upriver of the battle site. On the evening of August 26, Gist dispatched Laurens, along with 40 men and a howitzer, to launch a surprise attack at a spot called Tar Bluff. “For Laurens, Tar Bluff, with its 20-foot elevation overlooking the river, was the best tactical location for the placement of his howitzer,” says archaeologist Mike Yianopoulos of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust.

Having spotted Laurens’ column departing from Combahee Ferry with the howitzer, the British anticipated his plan and ambushed his contingent. In the ensuing battle, Laurens was killed, and the British captured the howitzer. With the aid of historical accounts and metal detectors, Yianopoulos and his team have now pinpointed the battle’s exact location. A crude map drawn by a British officer marks the battle lines between two creeks connected by a smaller creek, which the researchers identified in dense forest using lidar. “Mapping the coordinates of dropped and fired musket shot and cannon grapeshot then allowed us to graphically see the pattern of troop positions and movements through the battle,” Yianopoulos says.

From the medieval period to the twentieth century, there was a thriving Jewish community in the Polish market town of Leżajsk, and beginning in 1635, its dead were buried in the town’s Jewish cemetery. But in 1939, the Wehrmacht occupied Leżajsk, deported its Jews to the Soviet Union, and began to destroy the cemetery. In recent months, during reconstruction of the town’s Market Square, many Jewish tombstones, or matzevot, have been found, some still bearing their painted gold and red lettering. “The only thing that saved the inscriptions and the polychrome was that they were buried facing down,” says archaeologist and regional monuments conservator Ewa Kedzierska. “I was really shocked. We expected maybe a few tombstones because some had been found during road renovation nearby, but no one expected there to be more than 150. Some are complete, others are in fragments. Some are modest, others have colorful inscriptions and beautiful carvings. They look wonderful.” By studying the inscriptions, Kedzierska hopes to learn more about Leżajsk’s former Jewish residents, their professions, and the roles they played in the greater community. According to Jewish custom, the matzevot cannot be put back into the ground, explains Kedzierska, and are thus now in the care of the Leżajsk city authorities, who, in consultation with the larger Jewish community, will decide how best to display them in a way that properly honors the dead.