Archeology

Archeologists working near Stonehenge in England have discovered what appears to be an ancient religious complex containing a wealth of artifacts that may finally illuminate the lives and religious practices of the people who built the mysterious monument 4,600 years ago.

They died young and apparently in love. Two 5,000-year-old skeletons found locked in an embrace near the city where Shakespeare set "Romeo and Juliet" have sparked theories that the remains are from a far older love story. Archeologists unearthed the Neolithic Age skeletons outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's tragedy.

Cleopatra was a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman with a protruding chin, and her paramour, Mark Antony, no great looker, according to University of Newcastle scholars, who have unveiled a coin depicting both unflattering profiles. "The image on the coin is far from being that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton," said Lindsay Allason-Jones, director of archeology museums at the university, recalling the 1963 film "Cleopatra," which ignited the tempestuous romance between the two actors.

Thousands of years before ketchup, mayonnaise or Grey Poupon, there was the red-hot chile pepper. Researchers have found evidence that farmers in the Americas, stretching from the Bahamas to Panama to Peru, domesticated the spicy fruit about 6,100 years ago, making it perhaps the oldest condiment in the history of cooking.

A rare double wooden statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe and his wife has been found in their tomb south of Cairo, Egypt's chief archeologist said Monday. The double statue, dating from around 2300 BC, was among five wooden statues found at the tomb in Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, said Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The official was Ka-Hay, who kept divine records, and his wife, Spri-Ankh.

The wily prehistoric hunters long considered the first people of the Americas were almost certainly latecomers to the continent, researchers have concluded. For 80 years, scholars were convinced that the people known as the Clovis colonized North and South America via a land bridge from Siberia, perhaps pursuing the mammoth they preyed on so skillfully.

Archeologists have solved the mystery of the Thirteen Towers, a line of low stone structures that have spanned an arid Peruvian slope like a massive set of prehistoric teeth for 2,400 years. The towers lined up outside the citadel at Chankillo are a massive solar observatory that marks not only the summer and winter solstices, but also the days and weeks of the year.

A shipwreck off the North Carolina coast believed to be that of famous pirate Blackbeard could be fully excavated in three years. "That's really our target," said Steve Claggett, the state archeologist, while discussing 10 years of research conducted since the shipwreck was found just off Atlantic Beach. The ship ran aground in 1718, and some researchers believe it was a French slave ship Blackbeard captured in 1717 and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge.

The Autry National Center has received a $340,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitally catalog 15,000 California Indian objects. The two-year project, to be announced Monday, will deal with ethnographic objects, archeological artifacts and sound recordings collected by the Southwest Museum, which merged with the Autry in 2003. "This grant fits very well with two of our initiatives," NEH Chairman Bruce Cole said on a recent visit to the Autry.

Take a backcountry tour into Navajo history at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, a landscape of soaring red-rock canyon walls and 1,000-year-old ruins in northeastern Arizona. THE DEAL: A special lodging-and-exploration package, called a Magical History Tour, will be available April 1 to Oct. 31 and will combine accommodations for two nights with an off-road, six-wheel drive tour.