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Unusual religious monument uncovered in Egypt
Excavations at the ancient Egyptian port city of Pelusium (modern-day Tell el-Farama) have uncovered the remains of a unique 2,000-year-old temple that is believed to have been dedicated to the local deity Pelusius.
Archaeologists from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities first uncovered a section of the temple in 2019, and subsequent excavations have revealed the site in its entirety. The complex is dominated by a huge circular basin measuring 35m (115ft) in diameter, with a square stone pedestal in the centre that is believed to have once held a statue of the sanctuary’s god, probably Pelusius. A series of drainage channels and cisterns surrounding the basin would have allowed the Pelusiac branch of the Nile Delta to fill the pool. It appears that this monument was exceptionally long-lived: having been constructed in the 2nd century BC, it was used continuously, with little architectural change, until the 6th century AD.
Iron Age mass burial reanalysed
The remains of 77 Iron Age individuals who had been buried in a pit at Gomolava, on the Pannonian Plain of modern-day Serbia, have been reanalysed, revealing that they were not the victims of an epidemic as had been first assumed, but instead appear to have been deliberately killed.
Initially discovered in 1971, the human remains all date to the 9th century BC, and were accompanied by grave goods including small, bronze personal ornaments, ceramic vessels, quern stones, burnt seeds, and the bones of between 50 and 100 animals. Recent analysis of the human skeletons by an international team of researchers (the results of which were recently published in Nature Human Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562025-02399-9) established that they represent one infant, 40 children, 11 adolescents, and 24 adults, and the majority of the group (at least 51 individuals) were female. Many of these people also showed evidence of violent injuries inflicted at or around the time of death, specifically blunt force trauma to the back of the head. This suggests a mass-killing event, but DNA and isotope analyses revealed that none of the individuals were closely related and they all came from different locations. It appears, then, that these people had been brought together from disparate places, perhaps forcibly, and killed.
Meteoric discovery in China
Analysis of an axe-like object found in a pit at the Bronze Age site of Sanxingdui in south-west China has revealed that it is made of iron obtained from a meteor. A few other meteor-made artefacts are known from the Chinese Bronze Age, but most were crafted from a mixture of meteoric iron and bronze, while this example appears to have been made entirely of iron. The object was found alongside other artefacts that appear to have been burnt, and it is believed that they may have been deposited in some sort of ceremonial context. The full results were recently published in Archaeological Research in Asia (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2026.100692).
Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Image: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
