Archaeology News

January 24, 2025

Top Headlines

Ancient Genomes Reveal an Iron Age Society Centred on Women

Jan. 15, 2025 — A groundbreaking study finds evidence that land was inherited through the female line in Iron Age Britain, with husbands moving to live with their wife's community. This is believed to be the first time such a system has been documented in European ...

World's Oldest 3D Map Discovered

Jan. 13, 2025 — Researchers have discovered what may be the world's oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris ...

Cleopatra's Sister Remains Missing

Jan. 10, 2025 — anthropologists have analyzed a skull that was found in the ruins of Ephesos (Turkey) in 1929. It was long speculated that it could be the remains of Arsino IV, the sister of the famous Cleopatra. However, the latest anthropological analyses show ...

DNA Adds New Chapter to Indonesia's Layered Human History

Jan. 7, 2025 — A new study has outlined the first genomic evidence of early migration from New Guinea into the Wallacea, an archipelago containing Timor-Leste and hundreds of inhabited eastern Indonesian ...

Latest Headlines

updated 5:54pm EST

Lead Pollution Likely Caused Widespread IQ Declines in Ancient Rome, New Study Finds

Jan. 6, 2025 — Lead exposure is responsible for a range of human health impacts, with even relatively low levels impacting the cognitive development of children. ...

Ancient DNA Unlocks New Understanding of Migrations in the First Millennium AD

Jan. 1, 2025 — Waves of human migration across Europe during the first millennium AD have been revealed using a more precise method of analysing ancestry with ...

Butchered Bones Suggest Violent 'Othering' of Enemies in Bronze Age Britain

Dec. 16, 2024 — Analysis of the remains of at least 37 individuals from Early Bronze Age England finds they were killed, butchered, and probably consumed before being thrown down a 15m-deep shaft. It is the ...

Unique Insights Into Lives of People Who Lived Over 5,600 Years Ago Near Kosenivka, Ukraine

Dec. 11, 2024 — A new study sheds light on the lives of people who lived over 5,600 years ago near Kosenivka, Ukraine. Researchers present the first detailed ...

A New Timeline for Neanderthal Interbreeding With Modern Humans

Dec. 12, 2024 — Neanderthal genes make up 1-2% of the genomes of non-Africans. Scientists analyzed the lengths of regions of Neanderthal DNA in 58 ancient Eurasian genomes of early modern humans and determined that ...

Earliest Deep-Cave Ritual Compound in Southwest Asia Discovered

Dec. 9, 2024 — A cave in Galilee, Israel, has yielded evidence for ritualistic gathering 35,000 years ago, the earliest on the Asian ...

Getting to the Bottom of Things: Latrine Findings Help Researcher Trace the Movement of People and Disease

Dec. 6, 2024 — A researcher has uncovered evidence of intestinal parasites in a 500-year-old latrine from Bruges, Belgium, and while the finding may induce ...

DNA of 1,000 Year-Old Maize Sheds Light on Origins of Globally Important Food Crop

Dec. 5, 2024 — Researchers have tested ancient DNA from corn found at archaeological sites in Arkansas, shedding new light on the dispersal of one of the world's ...

Mammoth as Key Food Source for Ancient Americans

Dec. 4, 2024 — Scientists have uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food. Their research sheds new light on both the rapid expansion of ...

Herodotus' Theory on Armenian Origins Challenged by First Whole-Genome Study

Nov. 25, 2024 — Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically inhabiting the Armenian highlands, were long believed to be descendants of Phrygian settlers ...

Early Mesoamericans Trapped Fish Far Earlier Than Previously Thought

Nov. 22, 2024 — Archaeologists have collected data which indicates the presence of a large-scale pre-Columbian fish-trapping facility. Discovered in the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary (CTWS), the largest inland ...

Innovating Archaeology: Scholars Utilize Immersive 3D Tech to Document and Study the Human Past

Nov. 21, 2024 — Archaeology studies the human past through the excavation of things people made and used thousands of years ago -- from architecture to objects like pottery bowls and animal bones from meals. ...

Oldest Known Alphabet Unearthed in Ancient Syrian City

Nov. 20, 2024 — Researchers have discovered evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history. The writing was etched onto clay cylinders discovered during a dig at an ancient Syrian ...

Scientists Use Ancient DNA to Shed Light on Adaptation of Early Europeans

Nov. 19, 2024 — Leveraging a unique statistical analysis and applying it to ancient DNA extracted from human skeletal remains, a team of researchers has revealed new insights into how ancient Europeans adapted to ...

The Chilling Sound of the Aztec Death Whistle

Nov. 19, 2024 — The Aztec skull whistle produces a shrill, screaming sound. A study shows that these whistles have a disturbing effect on the human brain. The Aztecs may have deliberately used this effect in ...

Earliest Evidence of Humans Using Fire to Shape the Landscape of Tasmania

Nov. 16, 2024 — Some of the first human beings to arrive in Tasmania, over 41,000 years ago, used fire to shape and manage the landscape, about 2,000 years earlier than previously ...

Egyptians Drank Hallucinogenic Cocktails in Ancient Rituals, Study Confirms

Nov. 15, 2024 — Scholars for the first time identified chemical signatures of the components of a liquid concoction contained in a Bes mug. A new technique helped identify a sample flavored with honey, sesame seeds, ...

12,000-Year-Old Stones May Be Very Early Evidence of Wheel-Like Technology

Nov. 13, 2024 — A collection of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be spindle whorls, representing a key milestone in the development of rotational tools including wheels, according to a ...

DNA Evidence Rewrites Story of People Buried in Pompeii Eruption

Nov. 7, 2024 — Researchers have used ancient DNA to challenge long-held interpretations of the people of Pompeii. Contrary to physical appearances, the DNA evidence revealed unexpected variations in gender and ...

Into the Great Wide Open: How Steppe Pastoralist Groups Formed and Transformed Over Time

Oct. 30, 2024 — With the 'time-traveling ability' of archaeogenetic studies it has become possible to shed light onto the dynamic past of human populations world-wide. Integrated with archaeological and ...

The 'Urban Revolution' Was Slow in Bronze Age Arabia

Oct. 30, 2024 — Settlements in northern Arabia were in a transitional stage of urbanization during the third to second millennium BCE, according to a new ...

Bones from Tudor Mary Rose Shipwreck Suggest Handedness Might Affect Collarbone Chemistry

Oct. 30, 2024 — A new study of human skeletal remains from the wreck of the 16th century English warship Mary Rose suggests that whether a person is right- versus left-handed may influence how their clavicle bone ...

Scientists Create Geochemical Fingerprints

Oct. 28, 2024 — Using new technology, researchers have been able to confirm the location of the world's oldest ochre mine and trace how ochre from the mine was dispersed to nearby ...

'Well-Man' Thrown from Castle Identified from 800-Year-Old Norse Saga

Oct. 25, 2024 — A passage in the Norse Sverris Saga, the 800-year-old story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes a military raid that occurred in AD 1197, during which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg ...

'Paleo-Robots' to Help Scientists Understand How Fish Started to Walk on Land

Oct. 23, 2024 — The transition from water to land is one of the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. Now, a team of roboticists, palaeontologists and biologists is using robots to study how the ...

Genomic Study Identifies Human, Animal Hair in 'Man-Eater' Lions' Teeth

Oct. 11, 2024 — Scientists analyzed hairs extracted from the broken teeth of two 19th century 'man-eater' lions. Their analysis revealed DNA from giraffe, human, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra as ...

UNH Helps Community Document Skeletal Remains Found on Historic 'Poor Farm'

Oct. 10, 2024 — On a bright autumn afternoon, a plain wooden box crafted by a local cabinet shop containing skeletal remains was returned to its final resting place during a simple reburial ceremony in Brentwood. ...

Fossils and Fires: Insights Into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Oct. 10, 2024 — Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pa Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of archaeologists further insights into some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens ...

Underwater Caves Yield New Clues About Sicily's First Residents

Oct. 9, 2024 — Archaeological surveys suggest that coastal and underwater cave sites in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the ...

Microscopic Study of Milk Teeth Reveals Mystery of Death of Iberian Culture Newborns Buried Inside Homes

Oct. 9, 2024 — A new study concludes that the Iberian culture (8th to 1st centuries BCE) newborns buried within domestic spaces died of natural causes, such as complications during labor or premature births, and ...