A well-preserved gladiator burial ground may have been found in York, England.

Dozens of skeletons found beneath the garden of a former 18th Century mansion are probably those of professional fighters who fought, and died, for the entertainment of the ruling Romans.

The remains of around 80 people were discovered during building work at a site to the west of the city centre in 2004, but their likely origins are only now being revealed thanks to extensive forensic analysis.

Almost all the corpses are of robust young males, many of whom met their death by decapitation between the late first and fourth centuries AD.

Archaeologists initially suspected that they were Roman soldiers loyal to Emperor Severus who were executed in the bloody aftermath of his traitorous son Caracalla’s coup in 211 AD.

But researchers from the York Archaeological Trust, which is leading the investigation, have now discovered tantalising evidence that the men were actually Gladiators brought to Britain from across the Mediterranean to fight at an as-yet-undiscovered amphitheatre.

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Two caskets which may date back to the 1800s were unearthed during a site excavation for the construction of a modular prison unit in Pennsylvania.

Work was halted immediately at the site as prison officials called in county Coroner Wallace Miller and well-known forensic anthropologist Dennis Dirkmaat to examine the remains and check the area for any other caskets, prison spokeswoman Betsy Nightingale said Monday.

“We have no idea yet on how old the caskets are, but we think they possibly date back to the 1800s, when this land was the site of the Somerset Poor House and then the Somerset State Hospital. It may have been a pauper’s grave site,” Nightingale said.

Dirkmaat could not be reached for comment, but Miller said they had been to the site with the anthropologist’s special equipment trying to find other caskets or remains.

“But we didn’t find any, and the contractor will be allowed to resume work,” Miller said.

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During the Mayan Classic period (250-900 A.D) the commoners would regularly destroy their homes every 40-50 years, and rebuild them on top of the remains. They would use markers to identify the locations of important areas and provide ballast for a new plaster floor.

Maya royals recorded their history in writing and in imagery carved on monuments, Lucero said. “But the commoners had their own way of recording their own history, not only their history as a family but also their place in the cosmos,” she said.

“These things are buried, not to be seen, but it doesn’t mean people forgot about them,” she said.

“They are burying people in the exact same spot and removing bones from earlier ancestors to place them somewhere else, or removing pieces of them and keeping the pieces as mementos.”

This “de-animation” and reanimation of the home marked the passage of time and the cyclical nature of life, Lucero said.

Anthropologists have known for decades about such rituals, but Lucero chose to look more closely at how the arrangement, color and condition of the buried artifacts lent them their symbolic meaning.

She and her crew found about a dozen human remains in the two homes they excavated in a small Maya center called Saturday Creek, in central Belize. These homes were occupied from about A.D. 450 to 1150.

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20 Christian sarcophagi, dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries, have been uncovered in Georgia.

Ancient graves were found in the Urbnisi village of the Kareli region during the construction of a highway. About 20 sarcophaguses were discovered dating back to the 4th and 5th centuries.

Road department representatives invited a group of archaeologists from the Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University to the area to examine the findings. The relevant activities are being implemented by the group chaired by Vakhtang Licheli.

According Licheli, 20 Christian sarcophaguses were found.

“Investigation of this area alone is not enough because many graves have been destroyed in the Urbnisi village and all of them require further study. So this requires funding,” Licheli said.

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A 4,000-year-old burial chamber which belongs to an ancient Egyptian queen has been found outside Cairo.

The necropolis of Saqqara outside Cairo has yielded a string of new discoveries as 10 different teams excavate a previously untouched area of these burial grounds were used continuously for more than 2,000 years until Roman times.

French mission head Philippe Collombert said the mummy of Queen Behenu was destroyed, but the chamber contained green hieroglyphics picked out on white stone known as the “Pyramid Texts.”

“We are excited because the texts are well conserved,” he told The Associated Press, adding the queen’s titles were written on the walls of the 33 by 16 foot (10 metre by 5 metre) burial chamber inside her small pyramid.

The text is primarily concerned with protecting the queen’s remains and her transition to afterlife.

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