Like builders everywhere, the ancient Zapotec made the most of valuable real estate by building up, rather than out. At Atzompa, near the southern city of Oaxaca, Mexican archaeologists discovered three burial chambers stacked one on top of the other. Dating from a.d. 650 to 850, the unusual vertical design allowed builders to take advantage of the tombs’ breezy hilltop location, with the lowest tomb built into the ground and two later chambers erected above it. The upper tombs were stripped of human remains, probably in antiquity, but whoever had ventured into the complex seems to have missed the basement tomb—it was sealed off with boulders and mud bricks, says archaeologist Eduardo García of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. In the lowest tomb, archaeologists found a skeleton, apparently that of a male, and funerary offerings including a ceramic head painted in a vivid red pigment. Ceramic offerings showed little variation across levels, suggesting to García they may have held three successive generations of rulers. But the tomb’s most dazzling feature is a mural with designs representing a jaguar paw print and an I-shaped ball court—another sign that Atzompa, with at least three ball courts, was an important center for the sport, in which men bounced hard rubber balls off their hips. The mural “is exceptionally well preserved,” says García. 

The Black Death, brucellosis, leprosy: The pathogens that cause these diseases have been identified in ancient remains by their DNA. But the presence of such DNA doesn’t necessarily mean that the person who carried it was sick. For example, one can carry the bacterium that causes tuberculosis for years without suffering from a serious cough, fever, and weight loss.

In the case of three well-preserved 500-year-old mummies found in 1999 on high-and-dry Llullaillaco peak in Argentina, forensic examination and DNA tests suggested that one of them—a 15-year-old girl known as the “Llullaillaco Maiden”—suffered from a lung infection. But the DNA was degraded and the finding wasn’t definitive. Recently, forensic pathologist Angelique Corthals of Stonybrook University noticed what looked like traces of blood and mucus around the maiden’s mouth. She and her colleagues used swabs to take samples, hoping to determine where in the body the blood had come from. The team employed a technique called shotgun proteomics, used in modern medicine to look for biomarkers of diseases such as cancer, which involves separating and identifying specific proteins. “Lo and behold, we actually found a lot,” she says. “We didn’t expect so many proteins would survive 500 years. We saw a whole profile of the body’s immune system.” 

Samples from the maiden showed the presence of several proteins strongly associated with severe, chronic lung inflammation. Alongside the DNA and other tests, the protein profile clearly showed the maiden suffered from a lung infection at the time of death, caused by the genus of bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

Proteomics has several advantages over DNA testing in identifying ancient diseases. Proteins degrade more slowly than DNA. The technique is also cheaper and less susceptible to contamination by modern sources. And because proteomics shows immune response to active disease, it can in some cases be used to infer cause of death. But not for the maiden—she was a sacrifice. 

After 14 months of planning, a crew has recovered two iron anchors from the wreck of a German ship that, in 1916, attempted to deliver arms to Irish Republicans. The Aud carried one million rounds of ammunition and 20,000 arms for use in the Republicans’ Easter Rising to free Ireland from British rule. When the Aud mistakenly landed more than 60 miles south of its intended destination, the British navy seized the ship. After being caught, the German captain chose to scuttle the boat off the coast of County Cork.

“Very little of the Aud actually survives, as it was depth-charged and used for target practice a number of times in the past,” says archaeologist Laurence Dunne, who helped lead the recovery effort. All that remains intact besides the anchors—one of which weighs half a ton, while the other is just less than two tons—is a section of the bow and a boiler. Dunne estimates it will take three to four years to complete conservation work on the anchors.