Experts were alerted by the local government to looting near the northern Peruvian town Zaña and quickly moved to the area before any destruction occurred, a press release from the Field Museum in Chicago said.

In June, the team began studying the Otra Banda, Cerro Las Animas archaeological site. They excavated a 33-foot square plot of land at a depth of six feet, where ancient walls formed from clay and mud were identified.

“It was so surprising that these very ancient structures were so close to the modern surface,” Luis Muro Ynoñán, a research scientist at the Field Museum who led the team, said in the release.

Further digging revealed one section of a large temple. According to Ynoñán, “one of the most exciting things” was a small theater “with a backstage area and a staircase that led to a stage-like platform. This could have been used to perform ritual performances in front of a selected audience.”

Flanking one of those staircases was elaborately engraved mud panels featuring a bird-like creature. Perhaps more importantly, they resemble depictions of mythological creatures dating to the Initial Period (2,000 BCE to 900 BCE).

“The Initial Period is important because it’s when we first start to see evidence of an institutionalized religion in Peru,” Ynoñán explained. The find, he continued, “tells us about the early origins of religion” in the area.

Several large murals were also found painted on the walls. Pigment samples from these works can also be used to help with identifying the age of the site using radio carbon dating.

“We still know very little about how and under which circumstances complex belief systems emerged in the Andes, and now we have evidence about some of the earliest religious spaces that people were creating in this part of the world,” said Ynoñán.

These discoveries predate the country’s most well-known archaeological site, Machu Picchu, by approximately 3,500 years. Machu Picchu was an ancient city built by the Inca Empire in the 15th century CE. The site also predates the pre-Inca Moche and Nazca cultures.

“We don’t know what these people called themselves, or how other people referred to them. All we know about them comes from what they created: their houses, temples, and funerary goods,” Ynoñán added. “The people here created complex religious systems and perceptions about their cosmos. Religion was an important aspect of the emergence of political authority.”

WAIT AND SEE. The cultural sector in France was relieved, when the final results of the parliamentary election were announced on Sunday, reports The Art Newspaper. The left-wing New Popular Front won 182 seats, the highest number, but failed to win an overall majority, leaving France to face a hung parliament. The threat lies in Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which came third after President Emmanuel Macron‘s centrist coalition. Before the election, one thousand doctors, scholars and researchers urged the public to “reject the obscurantism”, followed by 800 artists and culture leaders who called on voters “to preserve the France of the Enlightenment”. The French committee of art historians warned against the “xenophobic hold up of cultural heritage” and the union of art gallery owners said its “values are not those of the National Rally”. The art world, which is heavily dependent on public support, raised concerns about potential cuts to state subsidies by a National Rally government. For now, no-one really knows what will happen next.

THE TRUMAN SHOW. Actor Jim Carrey, known for his onscreen work in Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, moonlights as an artist. As a collector, he has amassed some significant piece of fine art and modern design. On July 25 Bonhams L.A. will sell some of the items that Carrey has acquired over nearly 30 years. The 35 lots include Adam Kurtzman’s 2004 work Pair of Hands (estimate: $2,000–3,000) and Martin C. Herbst’s 1965 stainless-steel work, Sphere ($3,000–5,000), a lily pad-shaped coffee table by Paula Swinnen ($6,000–8,000), and a cloud-shaped table by Joris Laarman ($60,000–80,000), evocative of the actor’s taste for organic forms. There is also a group of 1960s designs by French sculptor Philippe Hiquily. A console co-designed with Jean-Claude Farhi ($20,000–30,000), an armchair crafted out of brass and steel ($20,000–30,000), and a rug dotted with hummingbirds, handwoven with metallic thread and silk by Alexander McQueen ($15,000–20,000).

THE DIGEST

Claudine Colin Communication, France’s leading arts and culture communication agency created 1990, has been acquired by the US-based marketing firm Finn Partners, joining the company’s Polskin Arts division in its art-related interests. Its team includes 25 people and its clients Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Louvre-Lens, Lyon’s Contemporary Art Biennial. [The Art Newspaper]

Ten duos, each formed by an artist and an art critic, have been awarded the Ekphrasis grant, including Nicolas Boulard & Camille Viéville, Lucie Douriaud & Hélène Meisel, Collectif Grapain & Jil Gasparina, Ludovic Landolt & Estelle Nabeyrat… The texts written on each artist will be published monthly in Le Quotidien de l’Art in 2025. [Le Quotidien de l’Art]

Christie’s has announced that an “emblematic work” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, unseen in public since 1931, will be offered at auction this fall. The work, made with grease pencil and graphite on cardboard, is a preparatory study for the lithograph “Divan Japonais”, and is estimated to fetch between  $2.7 million and $3.8 million.” [Barrons]

Thomas Austin, a professional engineer and retired U.S. Army Colonel, recently began his appointment as Architect of the Capitol (AOC), taking over from interim AOC Chere Rexroat who took power in February 2023 after the 12th AOC, amid controversy over his personal use of a taxpayer-funded vehicle and questions about his adherence to agency policies. Austin is now responsible for preserving and maintaining 18.4 million square feet of buildings and 570 acres of campus grounds throughout Washington, D.C. [The Architect’s Newspaper]

At the Vatican Francesca Peacock came across a by the late 14th-century Florentine painter Cenni di Francesco di Ser Cenni featuring a pregnant Madonna, which seemed odd at first, because most familiar depictions of the Virgin don’t show her pregnant. Could this be because it doesn’t depict a clear biblical story? A couple of theories intertwine. [Apollo]

THE KICKER

ACTION! American actor Willem Dafoe has been appointed the Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale theater department for 2025 and 2026, which was founded in 1934 as an independent department of La Biennale di Venezia, following the departments for art (1895), music (1930) and cinema (1932). Its previous directors include Renato Simoni, Luca Ronconi, Franco Quadri, Carmelo Bene and Lluís Pasqual, and it is programmed yearly alongside major cultural events like the Venice Film Festival. “Theater taught me about art and life. I worked with the Wooster Group for twenty-seven years, and I have collaborated with great directors from Richard Foreman to Bob Wilson. The direction of my Theatre program will be charted by my personal development. A sort of exploration of the essence of the body.” [La Biennale]

Per the report, the bill introduced by Israeli politician Amit Halevi seeks to redistribute power over the West Bank archaeology’s sector, which currently resides with a unit in the Civil Administration, an Israeli governing body managed by the military. The bill states, according to the Times of Israel, that it is based on the premise that historical artifacts discovered there “have no historical or other connection to the Palestinian Authority.” The Palestinian Authority (PA) maintains civilian control in the West Bank.

“The discussion of the political status of the regions of Judea and Samaria has no relevance to Israel’s responsibility for the archaeological findings belonging to its people,” states the bill, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. 

In July 2023, the Palestinian Authority (PA) accused Israel of plans to expand its powers over archaeological sites in Palestinian territory, citing multiple raids by Israeli military and settler militias on the Roman-era archaeological village of Sebastia in the northern city of Nablus. The PA called on UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, to intervene, given the UNESCO-supervised renovation project underway in Sebastia’s public plaza.

“This is an attack that falls within a plan to take over Palestinian archaeological sites throughout the West Bank and to impose Israeli control over them and annex them,” the PA’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement to the Middle East Monitor.

Archaeology in the occupied West Bank is frequently politicized as part of territorial disputes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. In September of 2023, UNESCO added Tell es-Sultan—a prehistoric site in Jericho—to its World Heritage List, drawing ire from some right-wing Israeli politicians and organizations. The two parties protested the designation at a meeting at Hasmonean Palaces, one of several archaeological sites near Jericho under Israeli control and a new “touristic settlement” formed for the purported defense of world history.

ARTnews has reached out to the Palestinian Authority and the Israel Antiquities Authority for comment.

Standing nearly 7 feet tall, the well-preserved statue was found during excavation work at the former city of Heraclea Sintica. Despite its size, Bulgarian archaeologists believe it was carefully buried.

Located near the Greek boarder, Heraclea Sintica was founded by Philip II of Macedon between 356 BCE and 339 BCE. The city was later destroyed by an earthquake in 388 CE. Not long after, Heraclea Sintica rapidly declined before it was abandoned altogether in 500 CE.

Hermes was a known as a messenger to the gods in the Ancient Greek pantheon. Around the time of the earthquake, the statue may have been placed in the sewer, experts believe. It is unclear, however, if this was done in an effort to preserve the ancient deity or as a symbolic rejection of pagan practices, which had fallen out of favor due to the rise of Christianity.

“Its head is preserved,” Lyudmil Vagalinski, who led a team of archaeologists from Bulgaria’s National Archaeological Museum, told CNN. Vagalinski described the statue, a Roman copy of a Greek original, as being in “very good condition. There are a few fractures on the hands.”

“Everything pagan was forbidden, and they have joined the new ideology, but apparently they took care of their old deities,” he said.

This newly discovered artwork is now heralded as the oldest known cave painting, surpassing the previous record-holder by some 10,000 years, per a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“The method is a significant improvement over other methods and should revolutionize rock art dating worldwide,” Maxime Aubert, archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and one of the lead authors of the study, told Reuters. 

According to the study, the scene in the Leang Karampuang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region of South Sulawesi province features a pig measuring 36 inches by 15 inches. The pig depicted standing upright by the group of people. Several smaller images of pigs were also found in the cave, and were similarly dated using a laser to assess a crystal called calcium carbonate that develops organically on the pigment. Barring any future discoveries, the paintings represent the earliest example of narrative storytelling in visual art. 

“The three human-like figures and the pig figure were clearly not depicted in isolation in separate parts of the rock art panel,” Griffith University archaeologist Adam Brumm, a fellow study leader, said in a statement. The relationship between the humanoids and the pig, however, is still unknown. 

“Two of these figures are holding objects of some kind, and at least one figure seems to be reaching towards the pig’s face. Another figure is positioned directly above the pig’s head in an upside down position,” Brumm said. 

The mystery only deepens, as scarce information is known about the people who painted the Sulawesi cave, though the study leaders have guessed carbon dating could reveal them as the first Homo sapiens to ever pass through the region during their migration from Africa to Australia, some 65,000 years ago. 

The Leang Karampuang painting, the study added, predates famous cave paintings of Europe, the oldest of which was found at El Castillo in Spain and created around 40,800 years ago.

“This discovery of very old cave art in Indonesia drives home the point that Europe was not the birthplace of cave art, as had long been assumed. It also suggests that storytelling was a much older part of human history, and the history of art in particular, than previously recognized,” Brumm said.

The space is set to measure 103,000 square meters (1.1 million square feet), and will be designed by architect Paolo Desideri. It will be located within the former Albergo dei Poveri, a building also known as the Palazzo Fuga. This new institution will serve as a sister museum to the Museo Nazionale Archaeologico Napoli (MANN) and will therefore be known as MANN 2.

The building has sat empty for decades, and the new museum is part of a larger city-wide revitalization effort meant to improve tourism. A vast collection of artifacts that have otherwise been sitting in storage, due to insufficient exhibition space, will now be housed in the previously abandoned site.

A section of the museum will be focused Pompeii, which was preserved in ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The museum has more than 40,000 objects from the ancient city’s excavation in its holdings.

The showcase will spotlight remains from the city and chart their discovery in the 18th century. There will also be a series of exhibitions honoring historically notable archaeologists such as Giuseppe Fiorelli, Vittorio Spinazzola, and Amedeo Maiuri. Additionally, there will be interactive rooms and areas devoted to research.

“In Palazzo Fuga we do not want to replicate a collection already well told in the MANN itself: rather, we are going to create a space dedicated to the history of the rediscovery of the Vesuvian sites through artefacts, but also reconstructions, panels, and multimedia supports”, Massimo Osanna, Italy’s director general of museums, told the Collector.

Parts of MANN 2’s building will also house a branch of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the city’s National Library; more than half of the building will operate as classrooms for the University of Naples Federico II. A bookshop, café, and panoramic terrace will also be part of the renovation.

Funded at €158 million ($170 million), the project is expected to be completed in mid-2026.

The ancient long barrow, located at the border of the villages Dlouhé Dvory and Lípa in the country’s eastern Bohemia region, measures roughly 620 feet long and 50 feet wide at its largest point. It is believed to date to the 4th millennium BCE, making it one of Europe’s earliest known funerary monuments. The structure may also be the longest of its kind in the region.

“Mounds of this type are found mainly in northwestern Bohemia. They have not yet been reliably documented in Eastern Bohemia,” Petr Krištuf, a professor in UHK’s department of archeology at the faculty of arts, said in a statement. “In addition, the examined specimen represents the longest prehistoric mound not only in our region, but probably in the whole of Europe.”

The posthole and gutter of the long barrow’s entrance have been uncovered thus far on the D35 highway between Plotiště and Sadová. Therein, they found two central burials. The first contains a human skeleton, with a ceramic vessel offering, while the second has another human body, with five chipped flint artifacts; both were laid on their left side facing north.

Despite these finds, however, the grave was disturbed by what is believed to be a younger burial pit. Further analysis on the pit is needed to determine if it was ever used as a grave, as no human remains have been found there. Alongside the central burials and pit, another grave was also uncovered. Though it contained human remains, the skull was very badly fragmented.

“Similar burial mounds in Central Europe usually consist of only one, maximum two, burials. From this point of view, it will be interesting to see how the discovered graves are related to each other and whether they represent the burials of relatives,” Krištuf added.

There are an additional 30 graves nearby the burial mound. Researchers think graves were added around the long barrow over time, making it a fairly substantial monument to the dead during its time. The team is currently studying grave samples to better understand these burials.

The D35 highway project is currently undergoing repairs as well as construction to connect Liberec and Lipník nad Bečvou.

A team of experts from Nelson Mandela University and the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity used optically stimulated luminescence dating on the purported artwork, which was previously mistaken for a symmetrical rock formation along South Africa’s coast near Still Bay in 2018. Findings suggest an ammoglyph, or tracing made in sand that subsequently hardened into stone, a theory supported by the rock’s symmetrical features and surface grooves.

Per the new theory, some 130,000 years ago, a human traced a stingray found on the shore. The cultural significance of the animal is still to be determined: Stingrays could have been a valuable source of food, or a symbol that aided in early storytelling.

Further analysis is required but based on this discovery, the impulse of human creativity and expression began much earlier than previously anticipated.

The team believes the stone was created in the Middle Stone Age, which predates previous examples of figurative art by approximately 85,000 years. Prior to this discovery, a cave painting of a pig in Indonesia was the oldest recognized representational art, dating back 45,000 years. With this study, the team suggests a connection between abstraction and realism made in these early depictions.

The find was announced this week by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which said that Italian experts also took part in the dig.

Per the National, the 33 tombs that were found date to ancient Egypt’s Late Period, the Ptolemaic period, and the Roman period, meaning that the graves could be as old as the 7th century BCE and as recent as the 7th century CE.

Human remains were found inside some of the tombs, and archaeologists believe that some of the people buried within died young. Patricia Piachenti, a professor of Egyptian archeology at the University of Milan and an expert who worked on the dig, said she believed some of the people in the graves had died of orthopedic diseases.

One tomb even contained the bodies of two people, which the archaeologists believe may be a woman and a child. Further studies will be undertaken to determine the relationship between these people. Clay figurines, wooden coffins, and other items were also found during excavations.

Abdul Moneim Saeed, an Egyptian archaeologist who worked on the dig, said that the people buried here likely belonged to the middle class. Upper-class people would have been buried elsewhere in the necropolis.

A man from Kazakhstan reportedly carved “Ali” on light plaster in the House of the Ceii when he was caught on Saturday/ The wall is part of an ancient villa believed to have been owned by the magistrate Lucius Ceius Secundus.

The vandal will have to pay for the necessary restoration work to remove the graffiti from the ancient wall, according to Italian authorities.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, has called these kinds of incidents “an uncivilised act. Thanks to the new law supported by Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, the perpetrator of the crime will have to pay for the restoration of the wall.”

Adding, according to the Daily Mail, “Well done to the ministry collaborators and the Ales company who promptly intervened. Excellent collaboration with the police, who we thank for their promptness.”

A rare example of a late Samnite period (2nd century BCE) residence, the House of the Ceii is a tetrastyle atrium and impluvium filled with lavish frescos of wild animals set in an Egyptian-style landscape along the Nile Delta. These themes are believed to be linked to the cult of Isis, which was popular leading up to the city’s destruction in 79CE.

Pompeii is an Ancient Roman city that has been preserved in ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

This is hardly the first time someone has been caught denigrating ancient structures. Last year, for instance, a tourist carved his and his girlfriend’s names into the Colosseum in Rome.

Italian authorities are expected to be monitoring historical sites, as we move into peak tourist season.