Making money in 18th-century America
Analysis of paper money produced by Benjamin Franklin is shedding new light on the monetary history of Colonial-era America.
World Archaeology
The difference within
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on heterogeneity.
World news in brief: From Iron Age child’s shoe to New Indo-European language
Iron Age child’s shoe Excavations in a prehistoric salt mine in Dürrnberg, Austria, have uncovered a well-preserved shoe – roughly a UK child’s size 12.5 – dated to the 2nd century BC. The discovery was made by the German Mining…
A meteoric discovery
A team of researchers have confirmed that a Bronze Age arrowhead found 150 years ago in Switzerland was made of iron from a meteorite – but not the meteorite they expected. The discovery was made during a recent study of…
Life on an Alaskan lakeshore
Excavations at a site in Alaska have uncovered an ancestral Alutiiq house frozen in time by a fire 3,000 years ago, complete with rarely preserved woven grass mats on the floor. The Nunallerpiaq site sits on the shore of Karluk…
Religious rituals in ancient Arabia
Recent research at two mustatils (prehistoric rectangular open-air structures found across northern Arabia) is uncovering new information about the ritual practices that may have been taking place in the region in the late 6th millennium BC. First identified in the…
Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth
REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Let’s do some biblical archaeology. Nazareth is not well known. Bethlehem, where the Bible tells us that Jesus was born, has a magnificent basilica; Jerusalem has the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; but Nazareth, which was…
In Search of Ancient Tsunamis: A Researcher’s Travels, Tools, and Techniques
REVIEW BY GINA L BARNES As an archaeologist, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book – a personalised adventure into the science of detecting tsunami deposits in the sedimentary record. This detective story begins with investigations into geological tsunami deposits, then…
Megaliths of the World: Volume I
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The burial monumentality associated with the Neolithic is very much a global phenomenon. This desire to bury the dead in an artificial cave covered with an earthen or cairn mound occurs over at least six millennia.…
Life and Afterlife in Ancient China
REVIEW BY BRYAN SITCH This authoritative work by one of the UK’s leading sinologists explores the early history and archaeology of China through 12 tombs and discoveries, some already well known in the West – including Sanxingdui with its otherworldly…
Neolithic necklace
What is it? This impressive necklace from a Neolithic child burial is composed of over 2,500 beads, made from three varieties of stones, four types of mollusc shells, and – in the case of two beads – a rare example…
Christian tattoo in medieval Sudan
Archaeologists have uncovered a rare example of a religious tattoo in a burial near the medieval monastic site of Ghazali, in northern Sudan. The tattooed individual, whose skin was unusually well preserved, was discovered in 2016 during excavations of the…
Reading the Herculaneum scrolls
Efforts to decipher the Herculaneum scrolls have reached an important turning point. The collection of over one thousand papyrus scrolls, carbonised during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, was discovered in 1752 in what is now known as…
Calling all photographers! Current World Archaeology Photo of the Year 2024
As summer comes to an end, this is the perfect time to reflect on memories of your heritage-filled travels or visits to historical sites. Photography offers a wonderful way to capture and experience the sights and splendours of archaeology around…
CWA #121 crossword, and answers to crossword #120
ACROSS 8 Egyptian agrarian culture of 4500-3250 BC (8)9 Son of Daedalus in Greek mythology (6)10 Édouard ….. , French archaeologist noted for his work on the Palaeolithic (6) 11 William ….. , British antiquary and author of Avebury (1743)…
Ancient inscriptions in Saudi Arabia
The mountain of Jabal Ikmah, located 5km north of the ancient city of AlUla in north-west Saudi Arabia, has just been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, which recognises documentary heritage of international significance. This is a significant…
Volos: Archaeology and myth in Thessaly
Looking for somewhere off the beaten track to explore in Greece? Martin Davies is our guide to the rich prehistoric heritage of Volos.
Ventotene: A prison that was a university
A free and united Europe is the necessary premise to the strengthening of modern civilisation… The Ventotene Manifesto (1941).
Ancient Egypt and the dawn of literature: Revisiting the oldest book in the world
Among the many treasures recovered by archaeologists and antiquarian collectors from Egypt are papyrus copies of a remarkable text written more than 4,000 years ago: The Teaching of Ptahhatp. Bill Manley investigates this often-overlooked survival from ancient Egypt and one vizier’s contributions to the dawn of literature.
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure
Rubina Raja and Søren M Sindbæk on the archaeology of waste
Sailing stony seas: Ship graffiti on Malta
A previously unsung facet of Malta’s rich maritime heritage has recently come under the spotlight. An armada of ship graffiti, with examples dating back to prehistory, can be seen sailing across numerous structures. Timmy Gambin and Julia Zerafa examine what these ships are, and why they were carved.
Past masters
When COVID-19 reached New Zealand, all my plans to continue excavating and attend conferences ground to a halt. So I turned my attention to writing my memoir, Digging Deep: a journey into South-east Asia’s past. Having kept a diary since…
Naga: the buried royal city
An exhibition at the State Museum of Egyptian Art (SMÄK) in Munich transports visitors to excavations at the ancient city of Naga in Sudan.
China unearthed: A hidden history of tombs and offerings
Deep underground, the ancient inhabitants of what is now China built remarkable houses and palaces. But these dwellings were not homes for the living. Instead, the dead would be laid there, not to rest, but to live out their afterlife in comfort. The objects and attendants that accompanied them shed light on both the deceased and the birth of a unified China, as Jessica Rawson told Matthew Symonds.
A bitter harvest: Slave labour and sugar on São Tomé
The first archaeological project ever mounted on São Tomé is examining a 16th-century sugar mill. Results are shedding fresh light on the origins of the tropical plantation system, which would go on to shape the Atlantic world at a terrible human cost, as M Dores Cruz told Matthew Symonds.
Extreme cold drove early humans out of Europe
New research is changing our understanding of the climate of Early Pleistocene Europe and what it meant for our early relatives. Hominin fossils and stone tools indicate that archaic humans had reached Europe by around 1.4 million years ago. Surviving…
Analysing ancestry and ancient agriculture
It is less than a decade since scientists developed swift and efficient methods of extracting and analysing ancient DNA from human remains (for which Svante Pääbo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2022) and yet scarcely…
The Scythian Empire
REVIEW BY TIMOTHY TAYLOR Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire represents a major challenge for archaeological understandings of what many pre- and proto-historians have been inclined to see as a merely ‘tribal’ phenomenon. His book is magisterial, presenting a wealth of crucial new…
The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The history of a dangerous idea
REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Edward J Watts, Professor of History at San Diego University, is not a fan of politicians who claim that society is rotten and only they can make it better. This claim, however, is nothing new: the…
Buried Beneath the City: An archaeological history of New York
REVIEW BY META F JANOWITZ Archaeologists who work in New York City often get incredulous looks from people who ask about their careers: You work where? There’s archaeology in NYC? New York City is famous for many things, perhaps especially…
Lucayan Legacies: Indigenous lifeways in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands
REVIEW BY EMILY C KRACHT Lucayan Legacies evaluates the lives of the early Indigenous peoples in the Bahama archipelago and celebrates their legacy, identity, and descendants today. The book presents one of the most comprehensive discussions of Bahamian archaeology to…
A spectacular synagogue
Excavations in Israel have unearthed a 1,600-year-old synagogue, home to an exceptional set of mosaics.
Neolithic water system in China
Excavations in China have uncovered a set of ceramic pipes that represent the oldest water-drainage system ever found in the country, and appear to have been the product of impressive community efforts. Pingliangtai is a Late Neolithic site in what…
Inscribed amphora fragment
What is it? This small sherd of pottery, measuring 6cm wide and 8cm long, comes from the lower part of a Roman amphora once used to hold olive oil. The fragment bears part of an inscription carved into the clay…
World news in brief: From an Ice Age mystery to early cattle in the Americas
An Ice Age mystery In 1999, archaeologists working in Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany discovered the head of a 35,000-year-old ivory figurine, believed to depict a horse. Recent excavations have now produced part of the figurine’s missing body, which…
Ancient stilt village in Albania
Archaeologists have found what may be Europe’s oldest pile-dwelling site, dating to almost 8,000 years ago, preserved by the waters of Lake Ohrid, which straddles the border between Albania and North Macedonia. The discovery comes as part of the EXPLO…