human remains

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Early ear surgery

Analysis of the remains of an elderly woman buried at the Dolmen of El Pendón, in northern Spain, has identified the earliest known evidence of successful ear surgery, 5,300 years ago. The skull was discovered by researchers from the University…

Links of noltland

This week: Links of Noltland

The perfectly preserved Stone Age village of Skara Brae is perhaps Orkney's most celebrated ancient site, offering stunning proof that these northerly islands were once at the cutting edge of Neolithic civilisation. But Skara Brae was only inhabited from about 3200 to 2200 BC – after which date, according to the traditional view, Orkney's fortunes slipped into a decline from which they were slow to recover.

Bronze Age Settlement geograph.org.uk

This week: Cladh Hallan

Archaeologists have long been drawn to the Outer Hebrides, the windswept island chain that lies off Scotland's north-west coast. For decades, the chief source of their fascination was to be found on the Isle of Lewis, where a number of prehistoric ritual sites were found to be clustered around the village of Callanish. More recently, however, attention has also been diverted to the island of South Uist, where in 2003 an extraordinary discovery was made.

BELOW These megalithic monuments are found across an area of northern Laos known as the ‘Plain of Jars’.

Dating the Plain of Jars

It is evident that the sites were reused over time, well into the historic period, and had retained some kind of ritual significance when the later burials took place in the 9th-13th century AD.

OPPOSITE The peat mummified hand of Old Croghan Man, from Co. Offaly, preserves intimate details including the texture of his skin and the shape of his fingernails. Bog bodies like this are particularly resonant archaeological discoveries, being so recognisably human.

Touching the past: encountering Iron Age bog bodies

Bog bodies are particularly potent archaeological discoveries, representing the recognisable faces of people from the past. Why were so many of these figures consigned to watery graves during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and what are scientific advances adding to our understanding of these enigmatic individuals? Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts explores thought-provoking recent research by Melanie Giles.

World News: Italy, Norway, New Mexico

Victims of Vesuvius Excavations at a large villa in Civita Guiliana, 700m north-west of Pompeii’s city walls, have uncovered two more victims of the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed many settlements in this region of Italy in AD 79. The…

Above More than 350 skeletons were recovered during recent excavation in Leith. Above right Underneath the medieval cemetery was a stand alone crouched burial when and why this woman was buried here remains a mystery.

Unusual burial discovered in Leith

A recent excavation along Constitution Street in Leith, in advance of an extension to the Edinburgh tram line to Newhaven, has uncovered hundreds of human remains from a late medieval cemetery and, underneath it, a mysterious stand- alone burial. The…

LEFT The burial found in Gua Makpan, a cave on Alor Island, is the first child burial from the early mid

Rare child burial in Indonesia

A sub-adult burial dating to the early-mid Holocene, c.8000 BP, has been found in Makpan Cave on Alor Island, south-eastern Indonesia. To date, only a few complete pre-Neolithic burials have been found in Island South-east Asia, despite the region’s vast…