It is well known that early Christianity appealed to women but less is known about how those women were influential in the spread of the new religion. Ken Cooper of the University of Manchester seeks to redress what he sees as a later 'airbrushing' of women out of the history of the Church, in what became a male orientated organisation. One only has to think of monks and celibate priests, deprived of female company, that visualised those glimpses they had of them, as the 'great temptation' – to be avoided if possible. See http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/christians-airbrush…
David Montgomery is a geomorphologist, a geologist who looks to see how geological processes have changed the landscape and topography over time. Hence, he is constantly up to his armpits in uniformitarian theory and yet he has written a book, 'The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist investigates Noah's Flood' (WW Norton:2012) – see http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/new-book-explores-n…
This is a scientist coming to an accommodation with the Bible, focussing specifically on flood deposits (regional events rather than a global flood of impossible proportions). He notes, for example, that few flood myths exist in Africa (also noted by Paul Dunbavin), and assumes that floods in that continent were considered beneficial (referring we may suppose to the annual inundation of the Nile and its role in Egyptian myth). While this ignores the fact that an original great inundation may be the stuff of myth and the lesser annual flooding events the beneficial effects of the Nile, we might also consider that other factors might come into play, a reliance on early anthropologists and missionaries to record such myths.
At http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/jesus-debate-real-p… … which is a quick flick through ideas on whether Jesus was a real person or not. No new information appears to have been discovered.