The musketeer D'Artagnan was made famous by the pen of Alexandre Dumas from the 19th century, but a recent discovery has reminded everyone that Charles de Batz-Castelmore, the Count of Artagnan, was actually a knight of flesh and blood during the 17th century. Precisely because the remains of his body could have been located under a church in Maastricht. The fate of the protagonist of The Three Musketeers has been a mystery for centuries.

In July 1348, there was a terrible massacre in the Jewish quarter of Tàrrega. We know its scope from the documentation of the Royal Chancellery, the account of Josef ha-Kohen, The Valley of Tears, and the excavations in the mass graves carried out in 2007 at the Roquetes site. Both children and women, adults and the elderly died, and in that indiscriminate and furious attack, swords, axes, other types of bladed weapons and tools, and stones were used. The bone remains show extreme violence and atrocious beatings. For the first time, we also have the origin and composition of their DNA. A study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)  promoted by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which has been published in Genes, has for the first time traced the genetic history of a medieval Jewish community in the Iberian Peninsula. Until now, none had been done for this community before their expulsion in 1492.

There is scientific evidence that Viticulture was already present among Europeans 11,000 years agoBut there are many things we don't know about how that crop was grown. Now, a study published in the journal Nature Researchers have been able to trace the origins of Pinot Noir grapes back in time thanks to the genome of 54 archaeological grape seeds, including 47 samples from France and 2 from Ibiza, dating back 4,000 years. This in-depth analysis has led to several conclusions. One of the discoveries made by the team led by Ludovic Orlando, director of the Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics (CAGT) in Toulouse, is that the Pinot Noir variety has remained unchanged for 600 years, indicating continuous cultivation. The medieval sample, found in Valenciennes, is exactly identical to the modern variety.

A claw, a chair, a laundry paddle, a plume, a printing press, a dress, an urn, or a corset. These are some of the 25 objects that journalist Sílvia Marimon Molas, Culture Editor at ARA, has featured in the book Inventory of silenced stories (Eumo Editorial), an essential and highly educational journey through everyday objects that have been crucial in shaping our society today. Objects that Marimon links to both renowned and anonymous women who have too often been forgotten in history books.

Years ago, deciphering a manuscript or artifact was much more difficult. Scientific advances and new technologies have allowed archaeological discoveries to provide us with far more information, giving each relic a rich history that overturns what many books say. This year, Babylonian texts have been deciphered, a new date has been established for the discovery of fire, a rigorous report has been compiled on how the Counts of Urgell died, and we have been able to see what the temple where Cleopatra worshipped Isis looked like. However, none of this would be possible without human curiosity and the determination to find traces of our past. Without it, for example, we would never have been able to find Kissa.

Pla de l'Estany is one of the regions with the richest archaeological heritage in Catalonia. The Neolithic site of village of La DragaDating back some 7,000 years, this site is one of the most important on the Iberian Peninsula and is very close to the Serinyà burial caves and the Roman settlement of Vilauba, both of great interest. In recent times, exceptional remains, often remarkably well-preserved, have been discovered at all these locations, having remained hidden beneath the pond's waters for centuries. Now, all these finds will be exhibited in the renovated Banyoles Regional Archaeological Museum (MACB), which, after nearly 16 years of museographic redesign and renovations, is reopening its doors to help visitors understand 45 million years of history. The new space, spread across the upper floors of several heritage buildings in the town center, features more than 1,600 original pieces, many of which are being shown to the public for the first time. The previous museum displayed numerous replicas for security and conservation reasons. Bones of fauna dating back 40 million years, such as crocodiles and marine sirenians, or exceptional Neolithic objects containing organic material like wood or cord, fill the display cases of the renovated Banyoles museum.

The small Romanesque church of Santa Bárbara de Pruneres, in the Alta Garrotxa region, became a space dedicated to science and history. During a well-attended gathering held on a Sunday in mid-October, a piece of whale rib, approximately two meters long, was the object of veneration and analysis by a team of archaeologists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), while more than a hundred worshippers witnessed the scene. The immense bone was taken down from the side chapel where it has been displayed since 2004 and placed in the center of the altar, from where the UAB scientists ceremoniously extracted samples for analysis.

The multidisciplinary team that has worked until this month at the Baza-1 site, in the province of Granada, has extracted new records of mammoths and an extinct species of mastodon. These remains make this Andalusian site the richest in Europe in fossils of this type of extinct elephant, in addition to having fossils of at least three mammoths, rhinoceroses, two species of three-toed horses, antelopes, giant bones and the last cofe.

What were the hands of ancient hominids like? And what could our ancestors have done with them? Analysis of fossils found in northern Kenya has shed some more light on these questions. These are the remains of a hand from Paranthropus boisei, one of the four species of hominids –along with theHomo habilis, heHomo rudolfensisand theHomo erectus– that coexisted in East Africa between 2 and 1 million years ago. Analysis of this primate's bones has revealed that it had grip strength similar to that of gorillas and tool-making skills similar to that of humans.

The first evidence of mummification dates back more than 10,000 years and has been located in the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies of Southeast Asia, according to new research from the Australian National University. At the time, funerary culture dictated that bodies be placed in hyperflexed positions and, before burial, they be subjected to a long process of smoke-drying over fire "at relatively low intensities." Archaeologists claim that "they represent the oldest known cases of this type of artificial mummification in the world."

Archaeologists from the University of Girona (UdG) have located the platform of an ancient Roman temple at the site of the Santos Médicos in Sant Julià de Ramis, in Gironès. According to the researchers, the structure was built between 130 and 120 BC on the remains of an Iberian settlement, allowing them to accurately date this monumental construction to the Roman Republican era. With this discovery, the archaeologists conclude an excavation campaign that began in 2011, which has brought to light a wide range of archaeological remains spanning from the Iberian world to the medieval period.

A 51-year-old Scottish tourist has been reported for stealing several stone fragments from the archaeological site of Pompeii in southern Italy, the Archaeological Park reported in a statement on Thursday. The incident occurred during a guided night tour, one of the activities the site offers to view the archaeological remains under artificial lighting and with fewer people than during the day. According to the same source, one of the guides noticed the visitor picking up pieces of stone from the pavement and putting them in his backpack. The alert led to the mobilization of security services and the notification of the Carabinieri, the Italian security force.

Two fires, one at the mosque in Córdoba (Andalusia) on Friday night and another on Sunday at the Las Médulas site (Castile and León), where the remains of a gold mine from the 1st and 3rd centuries are located, have put experts and heritage lovers on alert. These are two of the fifty sites in Spain registered in the UNESCO World Heritage ListBut that hasn't made them immune to the flames.

Archaeological excavations in the cloister of the Monastery of Santa Maria, at the Ciutadella de Roses site, have confirmed the existence of a large funerary complex from the 4th to the 6th centuries AD, beneath the monastery's structures. These works, carried out within the framework of the 7th International Course on Medieval and Modern Archaeology and promoted by the Rosas Chair of Archaeology and Archaeological Heritage, have revealed an ancient Christian community in Roses that was "much more important and rich" than previously speculated, according to archaeologists.

The arid desert conditions and the practice of embalming and mummification, which was widespread socioculturally during the periods of various Egyptian dynasties, make obtaining DNA from human remains extremely difficult. It should be noted that the liquids used in the mummification process degrade and destroy the genetic material of all soft tissues, which remain as leather. Inside a rock-cut tomb in the ancient necropolis of Nuwayrat (a town about 265 kilometers from Cairo), a large sealed clay tub was found, containing the unembalmed body of an adult man.

One of the piles being built for the future BSM parking lot in Barcelona's Ciutadella district came across something unusual: a blackened wooden skeleton. When archaeologists began excavating less than two weeks ago, they found the side of a boat that had sunk between the 15th and 16th centuries. The wreckage revealed almost intact pine cones, as well as seeds from hazelnut trees and other fruit trees. The remains, which once uncovered must be constantly soaked with sponges, paintbrushes, and rags soaked in salt water, may help explain one of the most fascinating aspects of Barcelona's history: its relationship with the sea.

On 10 March 1908, many houses in the Barcelona neighbourhoods of the Cathedral, Ribera, San Pedro, Santa Caterina and Sant Cugat del Rec were demolished to make way for the Via Laietana. Many residents were displaced far from the city centre, and others, such as Francisco Cambó, made a lot of money from the construction of this new urban road. 595 properties were affected, of which 270 were completely demolished (with around 2,200 homes in total) between 1908 and 1913. It is estimated that the works affected 10,000 people. There are photographs of the last days before the works that completely changed the urban landscape but not much documentation. Archaeology can help to construct another story, because the Barcelona Archaeology Service has unearthed five of these houses.

Nearly two thousand years after the explosion of Vesuvius, Dionysus is once again displaying his bonhomie and ecstasy in Pompeii. The god of wine, parties and orgies has reappeared in the Roman city thanks to excavations at the archaeological site, which have revealed a large frieze dating from between 40 and 30 BC depicting Dionysus with his usual entourage of dancers, huntresses and satyrs.

More than a century after the excavations began, the Empúries site continues to provide surprises. This year's discovery was unique, not only because it is unprecedented in Empúries, but also because there have been very few similar finds in the whole of the Mediterranean. A Greek kitchen from the second half of the 6th century BC has been discovered, that is, from the foundational period of the neapolis, according to ACN. "We are talking about a kitchen with specific structures that we had never found before," says the head of the Archaeology Museum of Catalonia-Empúries, Marta Santos. It is made of baked clay and was made up of a stove (with a vault that has not been preserved) and a small hearth, which was fed with embers from the bottom. Apart from the structure, what makes it special is also the amount of culinary remains that archaeologists have found inside the room where it has been located. Mixed with the earth that covered them, and where pieces of Greek pottery have also appeared, Marta Santos explains that "thousands of cockle shells", remains of fish and fragments of bears have been found. From these lands, archaeologists have collected samples that have been sent to specialized laboratories to try to discover what dishes were prepared in this kitchen