Archeaology

A Vanderbilt University-led team of archaeologists has made a remarkable discovery in Peru: thousands of 15,000- to 10,000-year-old artifacts, including stone tools, elaborate hand-woven baskets and the remains of maritime and terrestrial foods, from two mound sites in the Chicama Valley on the north coast of Peru reveal that early …

A long-held archaeological mystery has been solved as researchers have revealed the exact location, extent and character of a huge winter camp of the Viking army at Torksey, Lincolnshire, of CE 872-873. A 21st-century view looking east across the River Trent to the prominent bluff and the Viking winter camp. …

Archaeological deposits from a cave on Barrow Island, a large limestone continental island located 60 km off the Pilbara coast of Western Australia, reveal some of the oldest evidence for Aboriginal occupation of the continent. The discovery is reported in the online edition of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. Barrow …

Researchers digging at the Cerutti Mastodon site, an archaeological site from the early late Pleistocene epoch near San Diego, California, found animal remains and stone tools that show the first humans were living in North America much earlier than previously thought. A concentration of fossil bone and rock at the …

Israeli archaeologists excavating near the city of Beit Shemesh have unearthed an extensive complex of ritual baths and underground refuges used by Bar Kokhba’s rebels. An underground chamber near the city of Beit Shemesh, Israel. Image credit: Assaf Peretz / Israel Antiquities Authority. The newly-discovered settlement, whose ancient name is …

Neanderthals’ cognitive abilities are a hotly debated topic, but a bird bone fragment found at a Middle Paleolithic site in Crimea, Ukraine, features two notches that may have been made by our extinct cousins intentionally to display a visually consistent pattern, according to a new study. The raven bone fragment …

The desertification of the Sahara — the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world — has long been a target for researchers trying to understand climate and ecological tipping points. A new paper by Seoul National University geoarchaeologist David Wright challenges the conclusions of most studies …

A rare megalithic structure, dating back 4,000 years, has been discovered at the Shamir Dolmen Field on the western foothills of the Golan Heights. The 4,000-year-old ‘multi-dolmen,’ the Shamir Dolmen Field, Israel. Image credit: Gonen Sharon, Tel Hai College. The newly-discovered megalithic stone structure is a unique, monumental, multi-chambered dolmen: …

Archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) University Museum have uncovered a toy dating back as far as 1153 CE in an abandoned well in Ørland, Norway. The 850-year-old carved wooden boat from Ørland, Norway. Image credit: Åge Hojem, NTNU University Museum. “A thousand years ago, for …

A team of archaeologists led by Geoffrey Braswell, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, has found a remarkable artifact at a Maya archaeological site in Belize: a large piece of carved jade once belonging to an ancient Maya king. The Maya jade pendant is inscribed with …