Maya children’s teeth with jade inlays reveal rare ancient practice, study finds
Archaeologists have made a surprising discovery in Maya cultural traditions: decorative jade dental inlays, a practice previously thought to be exclusive to adults, have now been found…
Excavations reveal a Maya mission town’s defiant stand in early colonial era
In the countryside of northern Yucatán, archaeologists uncovered the remnants of Hunacti. This short-lived 16th-century mission town tells a complicated story of cooperation, resistance, and cultural survival…
Ancient Siloam Dam shows early engineering response to climate change around 800 BCE
A large water system in the City of David has been precisely dated to nearly 2,800 years ago, a discovery that sheds new light on the engineering…
Farming spread through migration, not local adoption, ancient DNA reveals
Around 10,000 years ago, human groups experienced one of the most important changes in the history of humanity: the shift from gathering and hunting to farming. The…
Treasures resurface from Egypt’s sunken city of Canopus, the ancient port lost to the sea
During the past quarter-century, three gigantic ancient monuments have been brought back from beneath the Mediterranean off Abu Qir, Egypt. Their recovery has reawakened global attention to…
Tiny Viking game piece reveals first portrait and 10th-century hairstyles
A small figurine carved more than a thousand years ago is rewriting the history of the Vikings. The three-centimeter-high artifact depicts a bearded male with a well-styled…
Largest Bronze Age hoard in Upper Lusatia unearthed near Görlitz, Saxony
Archaeologists in eastern Germany have unearthed one of Saxony’s most significant Bronze Age discoveries. Uncovered in the suburb of Klein Neundorf in Görlitz, the 310 pieces of…
Conservation Soft Box offers affordable and innovative protection for cultural heritage
Some years ago, when a team from Eurac Research explored the warehouses of the National Archaeological Museum of La Paz, Bolivia, they discovered more than 50 mummies…
Ancient Egyptian rock art reveals early kingship, divine claims, and violent power
Rock inscriptions recently studied in the desert east of Aswan are shedding new light on how Egypt’s earliest rulers exercised authority over 5,000 years ago. The inscriptions,…
Medieval Murder Map reveals patterns of urban violence in 14th-century England
A new project is reframing beliefs about violence in the Middle Ages. While nearly everyone today imagines medieval towns as places where arbitrary bloodshed lurked around every…