Enlarge / Stonehenge as viewed from the northeast, showing the post-and-lintel construction of the Sarsen Circle. (credit: Timothy Darvill) Stonehenge was an important place for thousands of years before people placed the first stones, according to a recent study. Archaeologists used the microscopic remains of insects, pollen, fungal spores, and ancient DNA preserved in the […]
Enlarge / Analysis of the residue inside this shard from the ceramic vessel indicates it may have been used as a new hand grenade. The shard was excavated from a site in Jerusalem in the 1960s, and dates back to the 11th or 12th century CE. (credit: C. D. Matheson et al., 2022) Archaeologists have […]
Enlarge / Georgia Tech’s Alexandre Locquet (left) and David Citrin (right) with an image of the 16th-century funerary cross used in their study. (credit: Georgia Tech-Lorraine) In 1843, archaeologists excavated the burial grounds associated with Remiremont Abbey in Lorraine, France (the abbey was founded in the 7th century). It was medieval custom to bury the […]
Enlarge / Conservation efforts for the shoe included careful reshaping and freeze-drying. (credit: Secrets of the Ice ) Sometime between 200 and 500 CE, someone crossing a high mountain pass in Norway discarded a shoe. More than 1, 500 years later, an unusually warm summer melted centuries of accumulated snow and ice , revealing the […]
A VR simulation showing what a Palaeolithic plaquette looks like under the flickering light of a fire. Several horses are engraved on this plaquette. As the firelight moves different horses are illuminated, giving a sense of dynamism to the art. (Izzy Wisher, CC-BY 4.0) A VR simulation showing what a Palaeolithic plaquette looks like under […]
Enlarge (credit: Nicholas Skopal) Hundreds of huge stone jars lie partially buried on hillsides and ridges in northeastern India. A recent survey found 65 jars at four previously undocumented sites, and the survey’s leaders say there are probably many more sites still hidden in the area’s mountainous forests. The jars are part of a whole […]
Enlarge / An artist’s sketch of what the 300-200 BCE temple complex at San Bartolo looked like in its heyday. (credit: Stuart et al. 2022) Amid rubble buried beneath a Maya pyramid in Northern Guatemala, archaeologists found a broken bit of plaster with a glyph painted on it. A bar-and-dot symbol for the number “7” […]
(credit: Sican National Museum) Archaeologists recently unearthed an unusual tomb in a temple complex at the Huaca Las Ventanas archaeological site near Lambaeque, in northern Peru. The site belonged to the Sican culture, one of the several complex societies that flourished prior to the rise of the Inca Empire (around 1400 CE) in northern Peru. […]
Enlarge / Fragment of the Antikythera mechanism, circa 205 BC, housed in the collection of National Archaeological Museum, Athens. (credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Image) The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over […]
Enlarge (credit: German Archaeological Institute) All that’s left of the ancient boat today is the bitumen, a black tar that once coated its framework of reeds, palm leaves, or wood. That fragile organic material is long gone, leaving behind only ghostly imprints in the bitumen. But there’s enough left for archaeologists to tell that in […]