A round-up of three Archaeological news stories from around the world, including the discovery of a chariot near Pompeii, new Dead Sea Scrolls in the Judean Desert, and early rock art in Australia.
Early visitors to Easter Island recorded strange designs of a mysterious being. Now, using the latest technology and ancient records, Paul Horley, Georgia Lee, and Paul Bahn have restored glorious colour to the sacred site of Orongo, home of the mystical birdman.
Abydos was not only the earliest brewery and the forerunner of the great royal cemeteries... it was also the birthplace of the funeral wake and possibly too of the mass hangover.
Researchers in Australia have used wasp nests on a cave wall to identify the earliest known example of in situ rock art in the country: a painting of a kangaroo created over 17,000 years ago.
While the kangaroo is the oldest known painting in Australia so far, there may even be older paintings yet to be discovered.
Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.
A massive incised rock has recently been discovered at the northern end of the Bay of Skaill in Orkney.
Hundreds of thousands of vibrant images painted on rock faces in the Serranía La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon.
Survey and excavation in a remote region of Mongolia are revealing a wealth of information about an extraordinary concentration of rock art.
We, as modern humans, tend to look at ancient art with a 21st-century mindset. It is all too easy to stare (in wonder) at Palaeolithic rock art and conceive some idea, however complex, and consider it to be a plausible interpretation.
Archaeologists now believe that they have found a painting on the island of Sulawesi that pre-dates all other examples in the region, and may even be the earliest piece of representational art currently known.
A Sulawesi warty pig painted in red ochre on an Indonesian cave wall may be the world’s oldest known representational image of an animal, dating back at least 45,500 years, according to a study recently published in Science Advances. Archaeologists…
When the many islands that are scattered across the waters of Oceania were first settled, how, and by whom are questions that have generated much discussion over the centuries. It is such questions and responses to them that Nicholas Thomas,…
Cave painting is one of the earliest forms of human culture, one of the first outlets of our creativity. But the meaning that these paintings had to the communities who created them remains a bit of a mystery. Who painted…
On the strength of stylistic comparisons, researchers have dated the feline to around 200 BC.
COVID-19 restrictions have not stopped the Sligo Community Archaeology Project, which can boast of some very exciting prehistoric discoveries in the county over the past few months. This initiative (undertaken in partnership with the Heritage Council) aims to connect archaeologists…
When the UK locked down against COVID-19 last spring, many archaeologists were unable to work as normal – but Rob Wiseman found a silver lining. He brought together more than 100 furloughed archaeologists to create a volunteer task force that has shed light on sites all over the country, spanning prehistory to the present day. Here, he shares some of the project’s highlights.
As far as I could tell, every minor contour of the original has been replicated, as of course have the paintings themselves.
A possible 14th-century shrine adorned with medieval carvings has been discovered in a cave following a landslip near Guildford. The initial discovery was made by rail workers from Osborne carrying out repair works on behalf of Network Rail, after which…
What is it? This unique Nordic bronze piece was discovered in Denmark and dates to the Early Bronze Age, c.1400 BC. It illustrates the eternal journey of the sun, as depicted by a divine horse pulling an ornate golden disc,…