September/October 2024

ARCHAEOLOGY

ARCHAEOLOGY magazine brings the ancient world to life.

ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Archaeology
Editor in Chief Jarrett A. Lobell Deputy Editor Eric A. Powell Executive Editor Daniel Weiss Senior Editors Ilana Herzig Benjamin Leonard Editorial Assistant Malin Grunberg Banyasz Creative Director Richard Bleiweiss Maps Ken Feisel Contributing Edit
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Houses Of The Holy
There are countless places that people have transformed into sacred spaces where they can express their devotion to a god or gods, to their family and ancestors, or to the Earth. In this issue, you will discover a fascinating array of locations where
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Learning Together
Fall brings archaeologists in from the field and back into the classroom brimming with tales of unexpected discoveries, new insights, and local collaboration. Some of these stories may find their way into Archaeology magazine, one of the ways the Arc
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
From Our Readers
A possible reason that early people put giraffe images on pottery (“Sticking Their Necks Out,” July/August 2024) is that, while they are beautiful animals, they are the bane of any hunter trying to put meat on the table. Because the giraffe’s eyes ar
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
DIGS & DISCOVERIES
Archaeologist Joanna Ostapkowicz of the University of Oxford has spent countless hours combing through documents stored in the two miles of shelves at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) of the Smithsonian Institution. “It’s an incredible res
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Toothy Grin
Researchers have highlighted a unique way that some Vikings permanently marked their bodies, perhaps as a way of secretly identifying themselves with a specific group. Archaeologists examined the skulls of 130 men who were buried across the Viking wo
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Seahenge Sings
In British folklore, the cuckoo’s song is the symphony that accompanies spring, but when the summer solstice arrives, the bird falls silent. As the days descend into winter, the cuckoo returns to the underworld, dragging the Earth’s warmth along with
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Shackleton’s Last Try
The wreck of the final ship belonging to legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton has been located 1,280 feet down in the Labrador Sea. Shackleton acquired Quest, a Norwegian-built schooner rigged steamship, in 1921, intending to explore the Ar
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Gallic Steeds
Archaeologists excavating a small ridge in Villedieu-sur-Indre in central France (part of ancient Gaul) unearthed a dozen pits containing more than 30 horse skeletons that have been radiocarbon dated to the Late Iron Age or early Roman period, betwee
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Location Is Everything
Did a medieval hermit named Guthlac make a plundered prehistoric monument in the Fens of eastern England his home? For generations, scholars inspired by an early eighth-century a.d. account known as the Life of Guthlac have searched for the repurpose
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Moving Day
While digging in the center of the Belgian city of Antwerp, archaeologists from the urban archaeology department made an unexpected discovery. Hidden within the earthen rampart of a nineteenth-century fortress was a very, very large dark red metal bo
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Cosmic Ray Calendar
Archaeologists have dated the lakefront Neolithic (7000–3200 B.C.) settlement of Dispilio in northern Greece using a method that involves detecting evidence of bursts of cosmic radiation in ancient wood samples. In 2012, physicist Fusa Miyake first i
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
A Nightcap For The Ages
When they first opened a 2,000-year-old glass burial urn in 2019, archaeologists were astonished to find it filled to the brim with more than a gallon of reddish liquid. The urn, which was protected by lead casing and also contained the cremated rema
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
From Hunter To Marathoner
Marathon runners today may be able to thank ancient hunters for their ftness routine. According to anthropologists Eugène Morin of Trent University and Bruce Winterhalder of the University of California, Davis, humans evolved to maximize stamina and
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
Barrancas River Valley, Argentina
Humans have been passing through the Barrancas River Valley in what is now western Argentina since at least the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago. But excavations starting in 2012 turned up only scant traces of early hunter-gatherers, mo
ARCHAEOLOGY12 min read
Hunting For The Lost Temple Of Artemis
ERETRIA, ONE OF ANCIENT GREECE’S most prominent and infuential city-states during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., lay just off the mainland on the island of Euboea. Meaning “town of rowers,” Eretria was among the first Greek cities to establish c
ARCHAEOLOGY8 min read
Trees Of The Sky World
IN THE CENTRAL TABLELANDS of southeastern Australia’s Wiradjuri Country, the tough exterior bark of a yellow box tree, a type of eucalyptus, has been chiseled away to create a smooth canvas into which geometric patterns have been etched. Undulating p
ARCHAEOLOGY11 min read
The People Before the Book
AS THE NILE FLOWS NORTH out of Sudan into Upper, or southern, Egypt, it passes a small island that was a crossroads of exchange between Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years. Such great quantities of ivory were traded on the island that t
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Ancient DNA Revolution
Each cell in a plant, animal, or person contains millions, or even billions, of DNA base pairs—molecules connected by hydrogen bonds that are the building blocks of DNA. These base pairs collectively make up an organism’s genome, the complete set of
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Maya Power Plants
Adecade ago, archaeologists might have recorded a dark stain in the soil beneath a ball court dating to the turn of the first millennium a.d. in the ancient Maya city of Yaxnohcah, but it would have yielded little information about Maya ways of life.
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
A Bronze Age Family Tree
Ancient necropolises often provide clues about the lives of the dead, with grave goods helping determine what was valued by people in the past. Traditionally, however, archaeologists could only speculate about relationships among the deceased. Were t
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
The Empire’s Genome
Archaeologists know a great deal about the Roman Empire. They know its dates: Octavian assumed the title of emperor and the name Augustus in 27 b.c. The last Western Roman emperor was forced to abdicate in a.d. 476, while the last Eastern Roman emper
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Wild And Woolly Ancestors
For the Indigenous Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwest, woolly dogs played an extremely significant cultural and spiritual role. The Coast Salish prized the dogs for their distinctive fur, which has soft guard hairs making up the outer coat
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Coffee’s Epic Journey
Coffea arabica, the flowering evergreen plant whose vibrant red berries, when dried and roasted, are used to make millions of cups of coffee each morning, originated in the forests of Paleolithic East Africa. For millions of years, two other species
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Danish Turnovers
For thousands of years beginning at least 10,000 years ago, a population of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers sharing the same genetic lineage lived in what is now Denmark. Then, around 5,900 years ago, they were replaced wholesale by Neolithic farmers wit
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Modeling Assyrian DNA
Cuneiform tablets list myriad plants imported from around the Near East that were cultivated in the gardens of Mesopotamian kings during the first millennium B.C. Since the Akkadian and Sumerian names for these plants differ from those used by modern
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
A Stranger In A Strange Land
Archaeologists digging near the village of Offord Cluny recently unearthed the isolated burial of a man who, according to radiocarbon dating of his remains, lived between a.d. 126 and 228, during the Roman period. The man, designated Offord Cluny 203
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Ancestors Of The Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy is today made up of four bands. The traditional lands of three of them, the Blood (Kainai), Piikani, and Siksika First Nations, are on the plains of southern Alberta, Canada, while the Blackfeet Tribe’s homeland is in northe
ARCHAEOLOGY12 min read
Strongholds Of The Taiga
From a sandy spit of land rising more than 20 feet high in the boreal forest of the Lower Ob River region, the vast expanse of the West Siberian Plain stretches to the horizon. The taiga landscape, thick with stands of Siberian pine, spruce, and larc
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Archaeological Institute Of America
At the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), we believe that archaeology has the power to provide a better understanding of the past, that it is relevant to the present, and that it can influence the future in a positive way. The AIA provides a
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
From The Field
The AIA’s Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin (AFOB) helps thousands of students and volunteers search the world for fieldwork experiences. In addition to in-depth project descriptions, the AFOB contains information about funding sources,
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Artifact
Why do people wear clothes, and when did they start doing so? To answer this fundamental question, archaeologist Ian Gilligan of the University of Sydney went back to the beginning. “There’s little archaeological evidence of clothing, and certainly n
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Photo Credits
COVER—AdobeStock; 1—Courtesy Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei; 3—(clockwise, from top left): Courtesy LNER/Archaeological Service, City of Antwerp; © Dispilio Excavations, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki; Universal History Archive/UIG/Bridg

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