An assemblage of objects discovered at Peñico on the north-central coast of Peru, dating to 3,800 years ago, provides new evidence for the continuity of the Caral culture. Caral is considered the oldest known ‘advanced’ civilisation in the Americas, emerging…
Analysis of two votive offering vessels from Pompeii is enhancing our understanding of Roman domestic rituals.
Excavations at Bulford have revealed the remains of a 5,000-year-old structure suggesting that the solstice was celebrated on Salisbury Plain centuries earlier than thought. CA reports.
Iván Ghezzi, Alcides Alvarez, and Cecilia Camargo discuss the unique site of Chankillo in Peru.
A c.12,000-year-old stone pillar decorated with a human face has been found at the archaeological site of Karahan Tepe in Turkey. Karahan Tepe is a Pre-pottery Neolithic ritual complex that forms part of the Taş Tepeler group of prehistoric sites…
French researchers using AI to analyse more than 500 intact early graves at the cemetery of Adaïma (8km south of Esna) have revealed an evolution in funerary practices that helped to shape early Egyptian statehood. The earliest First Dynasty burials…
REVIEW BY ROB IXER This is the second of two recent, non-mainstream Stonehenge books (the other is Mike Pitts’ publication on the technicalities of building the circle), both of which must be on the required reading list for this monument.…
Stonehenge is famous for its association with the sun, and particularly with the summer and winter solstices – but did the movement of the moon also influence its design? Carly Hilts spoke to Dr Amanda Chadburn and Dr Heather Sebire about an ongoing project exploring the impact of a once-in-a-generation lunar event.
REVIEW BY GERALD PONTING The subtitle of this book is ‘A Guide to the Standing Stones’, but it is not a conventional guide-book. A detailed and considered tour of each part of Calanais – centre stone; circle; chambered cairn; east,…
There has been much debate about the exact nature of the perceived link between the Milky Way and the goddess Nut. A new study, published in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, suggests that rather than the Milky Way…
In the middle of Louisiana State University’s campus stand two earthen mounds, each c.5.5m tall. The LSU Campus Mounds have long been known to be among the c.800 mounds created by ancient indigenous communities in this region, but archaeological investigations…
Recent geochemical research has found that most of the sarsen stones come from the same geographical area
It is a matter of debate as to whether Captain James Cook was really the first European adventurer to set eyes on the Hawaiian archipelago. According to some historians, the 1778 arrival of the British seafarer's ship, HMS Resolution, in the waters of the North Pacific island chain may have been preceded by a visit from the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542 – more than 200 years earlier. What is more clear-cut is the effect Cook's arrival would have on the islands' original inhabitants, who had themselves crossed the Pacific to reach these shores many centuries before. With colonisation rapidly taking hold, large numbers of immigrants from Europe and America introduced new diseases to which the locals had no resistance. This lead to a calamitous fall in the native Hawaiian population, from approximately 300,000 in the 1770s to fewer than 40,000 in the 1890s, barely a century later.