Archaeology News

Jun 25, 2025 by News Staff

Rice was a staple crop in the ancestral Austronesian regions of Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia, but it was unknown in any of the Pacific Islands at the time of European encounters, with the exception of the unique case of Guam and the Mariana Islands. New research by scientists from Guam, China and Australia confirms the presence of abundant rice husk and leaf phytoliths adhering to red-slipped pottery found in Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam, dated...

Jun 24, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists in Bolivia have discovered an ancient complex roughly 215 km (130 miles) south-east of Tiwanaku’s historical site, where a large, modular...

Jun 23, 2025 by News Staff

Discovery of human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, was a notable step in understanding the initial...

Jun 18, 2025 by News Staff

Pre-contact Central and South American dogs (Canis familiaris) — all dogs preceding contact with European settlers — descended from a single...

Jun 10, 2025 by News Staff

China has long been considered one of the locations for original domestication of wild boars (Sus scrofa) but tracking the initial process has always been...

Jun 4, 2025 by News Staff

Determining by means of paleography the chronology of ancient handwritten manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls is essential for reconstructing the...

Jun 4, 2025 by News Staff

The use of fire marks a critical milestone in human evolution, with its initial purposes debated among scholars. While cooking is often cited as the primary...

May 27, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have examined a large sample of worked bone objects from 26 Paleolithic cave and rockshelter sites in the Cantabrian region of Spain and...

May 27, 2025 by News Staff

The Gobi Wall is a 321-km-long structure made of earth, stone, and wood, located in the Gobi highland desert of Mongolia. It is the least understood section...

May 13, 2025 by News Staff

The ancient stone relief depicts Ashurbanipal, the ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 699 to 631 BCE, two deities and other figures, according to a...

May 13, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have explored the use of obsidian — a volcanic glass used for tools and ceremonial objects and one of the most important raw materials...

Apr 23, 2025 by News Staff

Jewelry in a treasure hoard found in Thetford Forest, East Anglia, indicates that Thetford was pagan until the 5th century CE — significantly later...

Apr 22, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have discovered and analyzed three hearths at the Upper Paleolithic site (45,000 to 10,000 years ago) of Korman’ 9 on the right bank of...

Apr 10, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

A 190,000- to 10,000-year-old fossilized mandible found in the Penghu Channel, Taiwan, in the 2000s belonged to a male Denisovan, according to an analysis...

Apr 9, 2025 by News Staff

The discovery of stone tools, hearths, and cooked food waste at the cave site of Latnija on the Mediterranean island of Malta shows that hunter-gatherers...

Apr 2, 2025 by News Staff

Since its discovery during Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at the legendary fortress city of Troy, the depas amphikypellon — a cylindrical goblet...

Apr 1, 2025 by News Staff

While the Middle Paleolithic period is viewed as a dynamic time in European and African history, it is commonly considered a static period in East Asia....

Mar 17, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Who the first inhabitants of Western Europe were, what their physical characteristics were, and when and where they lived are some of the pending questions...

Mar 5, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have documented a bone tool assemblage from a single horizon dated to 1.5 million years ago at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. These bone...

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

New research led by Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology scientists challenges conventional ideas about the habitability of ancient tropical forests...