In a quiet patch of forest about a mile east of Monticello, 13 [Washington & Lee University](http://www.wlu.edu “Washington & Lee University”) students are uncovering the story of a figure largely forgotten since the days of Thomas Jefferson.

As part of a six-week course, the students are excavating thousands of tiny artifacts that illustrate the life of [Edmund Bacon](http://books.google.com/books?id=5RBKqtYTiCsC&q=Edmund+Bacon&source=gbs_keywords_r&cad=5_2#search_anchor “Google Book Search: Jefferson at Monticello: The Private The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson”), who supervised Jefferson’s slaves from 1806 until 1822.

Much of the previous archaeological research at Monticello and other historic estates has focused on the elite property owners and their slaves. Little has been done, however, to discover what life was like for that era’s middle-class white workers, such as Bacon, who played key roles in the day-to-day operation of plantations such as Monticello.

[Read](http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/clues_to_the_common_man/40578/ “Read the Article”) (Charlottesville Daily Progress)

Until recently, evidence for dinosaurs in the northeastern United States was sparse, but over 900 theropod, sauropod, ankylosaur and ornithopod fossilized footprints have now been found just a short drive from the nation’s capital, according to new studies.

The finds, which also include tracks for pterosaurs, a dino-era mammal and other vertebrates, suggest that Maryland was a hotbed for dinosaurs during the Cretaceous from around 98 to 121 million years ago.

Read (Discovery Channel)

A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history.

Aside from illustrating that consumption of one’s own species isn’t exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth about 30,000 years ago.

Read (Discovery Channel)

Stone Age paddy fields tended by the world’s earliest known rice farmers have been uncovered in a swamp in China, scientists say. The researchers found the land was deliberately managed for rice growing.

Fire was used to clear scrub, while flood-prevention measures helped keep brackish water from getting into the fields.

The discovery shows rice growing began in the coastal wetlands of eastern China some 7,700 years ago.

[Read](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070926-china-rice.html “Read the Story”) (National Geographic)

Paleontologists have discovered a new small gliding reptile in 220 million-year-old sediments of a quarry on the Virginia-North Carolina border. The new creature is named Mecistotrachelos apeoros, meaning “soaring, long-necked” and is about the size of a blue jay from head to tail. The Triassic Period reptile probably fed on insects, scuttling up tree trunks and foraging on the way, before gliding onto neighboring trees.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19192440/ “Read the Story”) (MSNBC)

A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida’s largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats — and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again.

Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found.

The state has alerted the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of the bones, but no decision has been made on their fate. No studies have been done on the human remains, but they likely are 500 to 1,000 years old, or possibly older.

[Read](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19046682/ “Read the Story”) (AP via MSNBC)

Researchers have found chicken bones of Polynesian origin at a site in what is now Chile. Radiocarbon dating of chicken bones at the site on the Arauco Peninsula in south central Chile indicated a range of A.D. 1321 to 1407, well before the Spanish arrival in the Americas.

The researchers were able to obtain DNA from some of the bones of these early birds, and found they were identical to ancient chicken bones previously found in Tonga and Samoa.

[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=220&sid=1157891 “Read the Story”) (AP via WTOP)

The Old West is said to be dotted with ghost towns, shells of once-thriving communities abandoned because of blight, economic necessity or just changing times.

In rural Maryland, towns have vanished so completely that not even the husks remain.

There are dozens of lost villages in Carroll County alone – communities that exist only in the fading memories of older residents. An 1877 county map lists more than 30 post offices in towns and villages, and nearly as many small communities that did not have a post office. In 2007, there are less than a dozen post offices and the handful of surviving unincorporated towns exist, at best, in name only.

[Read](http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1151519 “Read the Story”) (AP via WTOP)

House buyers today usually peruse properties with a checklist of desired features in mind. This aspect of human behavior has apparently not changed much over the millennia, according to a new study that found prehistoric cave dwellers in Britain did exactly the same thing when choosing their homes.

The recently released three-year-long survey of approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District determined that people there from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C. selected caves based on at least five criteria.

“There was a higher frequency of prehistoric usage of those caves with larger entrances and deeper passages, also of caves that were higher in altitude and caves with entrances that faced towards the east or to the west,” co-author Andrew Chamberlain of the University of Sheffield’s Department of Archaeology told Discovery News. He added that most of the caves linked to human activities tended to have level areas outside of the entrances.

Read (Discovery Channel)

U.S. army archaeologists believe they have located a very early English settlement known as “Henrytowne,” which they say historical accounts and artifacts suggest was contemporaneous with Jamestown — America’s first permanent English colony.

While Jamestown, founded in 1607, probably predates Henrytowne by at least a few years, the newly identified Virginia Beach Cape Henry site could have been home to one of the nation’s earliest English colonies.

[Read](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/02/01/henrytowne_his.html?category=history&guid=20070201113000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000 “Read the Story”)(Discovery Channel)

Seeds and plant remains preserved in a well at America’s first permanent English settlement suggest the Jamestown colonists were not just gentlemen with few wilderness survival skills, as they are often portrayed, but tried to live off the land by gathering berries and nuts.

At least one tobacco seed, possibly representing the earliest known evidence of the cultivation at Jamestown of the cash crop that helped the settlement survive financially, was also discovered among samples from the 17th-century well.

While more research needs to be done elsewhere at Jamestown, the lack of plant material from Europe in this well suggests the settlers adapted to the environment by using local food resources as they learned what was edible from their contact with Indians.

Seeds from blueberries were the most commonly found. Other evidence of wild food colonists gathered included blackberries, huckleberries, persimmons, passion fruit, cherries, grapes, hickory nuts, beech nuts and walnuts.

[Read](http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/01/10/jamestown_arc.html?category=archaeology&guid=20070110093030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000 “Read the Story”) (AP via the Discovery Channel)

The brazen looting of ancient native-American artifacts, Civil War mementos, and other valuable relics is reaching epidemic proportions. Looters are taking mementos and other valuable relics at the rate of $500 million a year.

[Read](http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0426/p03s03-ussc.html) (Christian Science Monitor)