New research into the burial sites of 17th- and 18th-century whalers on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is providing rare insight into the lives of these individuals and the impact of climate change on Arctic archaeology. Project leader Lise Loktu tells us more.
Analysis of arrowheads from Bronze Age Europe is uncovering new details about an ancient battle that took place in the Tollense Valley.
Japanese sword found in Berlin Excavations in the Molkenmarkt area of Berlin are uncovering a set of 20th-century basements that were backfilled after the Second World War. Amid the rubble, archaeologists found a heavily corroded sword, which was initially interpreted…
Excavations in the ancient city of Artaxata have uncovered the remains of a church dating to the early days of Christianity in Armenia. Artaxata was the capital of the Kingdom of Armenia from the early 2nd century BC, and remained…
Research at a site in northern Morocco is uncovering evidence for the oldest and largest Neolithic society that has yet been found in Africa outside the Nile valley. Evidence of prehistoric activity at Oued Beht was first noted in the…
Analysis of the brains of individuals from 17th-century Milan indicates that they were utilising the coca plant (Erythroxylum spp.) several centuries before the drug was previously believed to have reached Europe. The coca plant originates in South America, where it…
A remarkably well-preserved 6th-century burial chamber has been discovered near Riedlingen, in south-west Germany. The burial chamber lies beneath a huge burial mound, which measures 65m in diameter and currently survives to a height of 2m, although it probably once…
Excavations at a Moche site in north-central Peru have uncovered a throne room believed to belong to a previously unrecognised female ruler. The site of Pañamarca was first rediscovered in the 1950s, and since 2018 has been the subject of…
As summer comes to an end, it is the perfect time to reflect on any heritage-filled travels, archaeological projects, or visits to historical sites around the world. Dig out your best photos on an archaeological theme – these can be…
The Silk Road has long been seen as a conduit for exotic goods travelling both east and west. But taking a wider perspective reveals how extraordinary objects and ideas were moving much more widely, as Sue Brunning and Luk Yu-ping told Matthew Symonds.
On a cold March day in 1995, fortune blessed me. I had written to the ancient historian N G L Hammond to see if he might meet me. He was 87, so it was a long shot. Not only did…
Once home to Celtiberians, Romans, Visigoths, and Moors, the ancient city of Valeria is now the venue for an archaeological project focusing on investigating the imperial Roman forum. Catalina Urquijo and Dionisio Urbina share their surprising discoveries.
Pilgrims once flocked from across the Inca Empire to Pachacamac. But just how ancient and rigorously planned was the layout of the cult complex that attracted them? Krzysztof Makowski reveals the remarkable results of recent excavations at the site
Around 2000 BC, a successful and prosperous Bronze Age culture in Southeast Arabia suddenly collapsed. Traditions and settlements that had developed over centuries disappeared, apart from in one small enclave towards the north of their former territory. Derek Kennet told Matthew Symonds how attempts to hold on to the past ushered in a new era.
Your observations, your objections, and your opinions: send them to cwaletters@world-archaeology.com
Archaeological work around the ring sanctuary of Pömmelte in Saxony-Anhalt has uncovered a landscape rich in ancient monuments and settlements. Franziska Knoll tells us more about the discoveries.
I would like to dedicate these pages to my PhD supervisor, Eric Higgs. After studying at the London School of Economics, he bought a hill farm in Shropshire at the outset of the Second World War, and spent the following decade rearing sheep and cattle, with the objective, he once told me, of breeding miniature versions of the former.
New research indicates that windows with glass panes may have been present in Viking Age buildings in Scandinavia.
A new exhibition takes visitors on a journey through 1,000 years of life in south-west Germany.
Archaeologists, like most people, have an urge to grasp the world through something tangible or, even better, countable. There can be a great comfort in numbers, and numbers also convince; many have been the attempts to define cities by countable characteristics: an area of at least 10ha, 10,000 inhabitants, a certain number of public meeting places, a particular thickness of city walls in metres.
A reproduction of a type of Bronze Age vessel known as a ‘Magan Boat’ has just completed its maiden voyage off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The ‘Magan Boat’ is named after an ancient region in present-day Oman and the…
What is it? This ornate bronze hanging oil lamp, 60cm in diameter and weighing 57.72kg, comes from the Etruscan civilisation. It is decorated with a unique combination of iconography that has been the subject of discussion since its discovery. In…
In 1418, Captain ‘One-eyed’ Zarco sailed out from Lisbon to plant the flag of Portugal on the islands first of Porto Santo and then of Madeira. In doing so, he not only claimed for Portugal a useful harbour and a staging post that would enable explorations further out into the Atlantic – first to the Azores and then to Brazil – he also secured a fertile, well-wooded, and well-watered island where sugar cane flourished, making Madeiran landowners and the Portuguese Crown extremely rich for a century by selling ‘white gold’ through the markets of Venice, London, and Antwerp.
REVIEW BY PAUL NEWSON This lavishly produced A4 book is one outcome of a recent major exhibition jointly organised by the Netherlands and Lebanese antiquities services, and held in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden during the winter of 2022…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH In recent years there has been a lot of interest in unearthing the secrets of the diverse landscapes of the eastern Arabian Peninsula – lands that form the modern United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unsurprisingly, much of…
REVIEW BY GEORGIA FRANK This rich collection of essays explores the behaviour, experiences, and memories of travellers who visited shrines and sacred centres around the Mediterranean in antiquity. Looking beyond literate travellers’ descriptions of sacred places, these essays also attend…
REVIEW BY ROBERT PORTASS It is not every day that one encounters a book that aims to overturn a paradigm and establish in its place the foundations of a new one; rarer still is it to find that the author…
Bronze Age fossil collecting An object discovered in an ancient basement storeroom at Mycenae during excavations in the 1970s has just been identified as the fossilised astragalus (ankle bone) of an extinct genus of rhinoceros, thanks to recent analysis by…
New research is exploring how ancient Pueblo communities in the Southwest United States may have been connected by sound. Chaco Canyon in north-west New Mexico was once a bustling ancient Pueblo settlement, occupied c.AD 850-1150. Among the items found in…
New analysis of rock-art sites in Indonesia has identified the earliest narrative art currently known anywhere in the world. Research in recent years had already revealed that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is home to some of the oldest figurative…
Excavations in south-eastern Norway have uncovered a unique prehistoric burial field containing graves belonging almost exclusively to children. In November 2023, archaeologists from Norway’s Museum of Cultural History working in the municipality of Fredrikstad came across 41 circular formations composed…
New research suggests that one of Stonehenge’s famous megaliths may have come from the very north of the UK. The Altar Stone is a six-tonne sandstone slab that currently lies in the middle of the famous stone circle. It was…
Archaeological work in Kenya has uncovered the earliest evidence for plant farming in equatorial east Africa. As a crossroads for various population movements throughout history, many of which included the transmission of crops, the region encompassing Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda…
The biggest dig at Pompeii in a generation is working to expose nearly an entire block of the ancient city. Archaeologists are making astonishing discoveries that shed powerful new light on life and death in the shadow of Vesuvius, as Giuseppe Scarpati and Sophie Hay told Matthew Symonds.
Ancient Egypt owed many debts to the creatures that lived in and beside the Nile. Both wild and domesticated animals offered an abundance of food, raw materials, and inspiration. But just as animals helped shape ancient Egypt, so too humans had an impact on the species roaming the Nile valley, as Gina Criscenzo-Laycock and Juliet Spedding told Matthew Symonds.
What can artificial intelligence bring to archaeology? Maurizio Forte introduces recent work dedicated to reconstructing ancient landscapes, and weighs some of the risks and rewards.