54 articles from Phys.org, Medium, The Art Newspaper and more. Refreshed every few hours.
The first definitive evidence of when post-Roman lead production began in one of Europe's largest medieval lead-producing regions, the Derbyshire Peak District in central England, has been uncovered by archaeologists after centuries of mining had erased much of the archaeological evidence. The work has been published in Antiquity.
Between 1880 and 1912, no official excavations took place at Kish. Yet museums from London and Paris to New York were somehow acquiring brand-new tablets from the legendary old city. As it turns out, local Iraqis had been excavating the site years before the "official" excavations at Kish resumed. But while the official excavations are remembered and celebrated, the local Iraqis have been erased from their own history.
Discover five real mysteries from the past, including a book nobody can read, a missing colony, a lost treasure, and a ship found without… Continue reading on Medium »
An ancient object does not carry a label saying when it was made, buried, burned, abandoned, repaired, or reused. Archaeological dating is… Continue reading on Medium »
Egypt unveiled Sunday a restored version of the "Tondo of the Two Brothers," a prized second-century painting from the famed Fayoum portraits.
As archaeologists find treasure trove along new floodplain, conservationists say another Nova Kakhovka would be ecocide On a warm September day, a group of underwater archaeologists and researchers were boiling water for tea on their campfire on the banks of the Dnipro River, tents pitched on the sandy shoreline. They were three weeks into an archaeological expedition of the waters around Khortytsia – a rocky island 12.5km long and 2.5km wide that lies just downstream of the city of Zaporizhzhia
There is even more evidence that Neanderthals were far from the simple cave dwellers we once thought them to be. The discovery of a clublike artifact and other wooden tools from an archaeological site near Barcelona, Spain, suggests they may have been skilled woodworkers.
Museums are increasingly using digital technologies to create more interactive and accessible experiences for visitors. Technologies such as three-dimensional (3D) digital models, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) allow visitors to explore artifacts in new ways, both online and during visits to physical museums.
Russian authorities have quarantined a hospital and are monitoring contacts of an employee at a plague research institute in Siberia who contracted pneumonia of an "unknown" cause. Local state TV said the woman died last week.
"The sculptures ask us to consider what happens when artificial beings become old enough to have ancestors..." Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Pre-Columbian Archaeology Meets Science Fiction in Max Lehman’s Quirky Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.
The sun had barely risen, but diving volunteer Elizaveta Bodrova was already raring to plunge into the cold waters of Lake Issyk-Kul, where the ruins of a once-thriving city have lain submerged for centuries.
Fresh analysis of First Dynasty mass burials finds signs of fatal blunt force trauma on 39 percent of skulls
Over 500 years before the building of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, First Dynasty kings were buried in a tomb surrounded by many burials of household officials and artisans—many of which seem to have taken place at the same time, a suspiciously high number of simultaneous deaths.
An ancient city, a forgotten civilization, and secrets that have survived for more than 4,000 years. Continue reading on Medium »
Deep in Peru's Acarí Valley lie the ruins of Tambo Viejo, an Inka provincial center where excavations have uncovered tasseled sacrificial llamas and brightly adorned guinea pigs. But save for a few seeds and some stored leaves, evidence of how the Inka used one of their most sacred plants in rituals remained elusive. Now, archaeologists have discovered coca leaves still stuck in the wool of some sacrificed llamas.
𝗔𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗞𝗲𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲… Continue reading on Medium »
The distance in the march from the American Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence is almost beyond comprehension. But leaders of the Smithsonian Institution are using AI to bridge the divide.
Also: Spooky action at the LHC, Ice Age psychoactive use, yeast for building homes on Mars, and more.
It's a really cold and misty morning in Delhi today. Anyone would barely leave bed, let alone wake up for an early morning walk. But… Continue reading on Medium »
Authorities are scrambling to protect more than 10,000 coastal archaeological sites as experts accuse them of insufficient planning despite warnings
Community-led archaeology has uncovered the remains of an early medieval monastery in Argyll, western Scotland, identifying it as the high-ranking ecclesiastical center of Lios Mòr, previously known only from historical references and local traditions.
Although it is not always obvious, sound guides how we experience the world around us. And the latest archaeoacoustic techniques show that even the world's earliest architects understood this.
For centuries, historians have drawn the boundaries of where ancient people lived based on the evidence they left behind. By studying their remains, burial practices and other archaeological clues, they can determine the types of relationships they had with other people in the area. However, this can all change when new archaeological evidence is found.
Mexican authorities have moved 47 structures affected by the construction of the Maya Train track to a four-hectare “memory park”
Beneath the ruins of the Baths of Trajan, a giant mosaic and unusual fresco remind us of the continual discovery of the wondrous: Rome’s ongoing lesson.
Many fear the real reason for Ali Tabar’s and Amir Al-Jumaili’s arrests are their campaigns against a controversial investment law
Dirk-Pieter Mellema is a Dutch psychologist who spends his nights mapping 3,300 years of Jewish and Christian history in the Land of… Continue reading on Medium »
In 1967, a Malawian farmer stumbled upon a hidden hoard of eight copper ingots buried beneath a tree. Now, more than half a century later, scientists have traced the metal to its source: a copper mine nearly 800 km (500 miles) away.
In 2023, in preparation for the construction of an underwater gas pipeline, divers were sent to clear a cluster of anomalies in the Bay of Greifswald, a sheltered lagoon in northern Germany. But as they dove deeper into the murky depths, they discovered things they had not expected: shoe soles, pulley blocks, and a rusty anchor.
Low Catton, East Yorkshire: It was King Harold’s last taste of victory. How chilling it is to visit this unassuming spot and imagine the bloody scene back in 1066 The field with freshly sprouted winter wheat sloping down to the River Derwent looks ordinary; however, today feels anything but. Just standing here, strange chills are swarming through my body and converging in my chest. It happened here. Continue reading...
A severely deformed 1834 British silver sixpence preserves physical evidence most consistent with an unusual minting anomaly, according to an IA STUDIO study published in npj Heritage Science. The coin was individually marked £8 in a mixed coin album at a flea market in Greater Manchester. The album was later acquired as a bulk lot, rather than the sixpence being purchased separately for £8.
As climate change and development place growing pressure on archaeological sites, drones are providing a faster, cheaper way to track damage and guide conservation efforts
An ancient wall discovered in central Paris was hailed as a "major breakthrough" on Wednesday, as the archaeological find may have settled a long-standing debate about the location of the city's original settlement.
About 100 years ago, archaeologists unearthing pottery sherds in Tampa Bay found something unexpected. Some of the fragments they recovered had designs nearly identical to decorated pottery found hundreds of miles to the north. At least on the surface, the pottery appeared to be Mississippian, a culture that emerged more than 1,000 years ago and brought social, economic and political transformation across southeastern North America. For years, archaeologists excluded peninsular Florida from maps
Analysis of a "rusty treasure" excavated during industrial gravel extraction at Deinham, Austria, reveals it is the largest mass find of prehistoric iron bars in Europe, pointing to iron production and trade during the Iron Age on an unprecedented scale.
From Hittite settlements and the kings of Pontus to Roman roads, Byzantine fortifications, Ottoman princes, and the city we know today Continue reading on Medium »
For two weeks in September, everyone wants to be Italian—at least judging by the crowds at the annual Feast of San Gennaro in New York City's Little Italy.
For decades, an idea has grown in paleontology that, long before scientists began digging up and reconstructing dinosaur bones, the Indigenous San and Basotho in southern Africa noticed them too, incorporating them into songs, myths and immortalizing them on cave walls. But under closer scrutiny, these claims begin to crumble.
The massive burial site containing human remains and rich offerings likely belonged to Chimú elites
Ancient Chinese authorities used many creative ways to punish people, often with methods designed to mark them for life. One brutal example mentioned repeatedly in historical texts is cutting off a person's nose. However, archaeologists in China have never found skeletal evidence to prove that it occurred. But that may have changed following the discovery of a skeleton of a woman who lived in China about 700 years ago.
Douglas Seiler painstakingly sourced papyrus and reed pens from Egypt and traditional lampblack ink from Japan, then paid some high school students to inscribe the papyrus with lines from Star Wars and the Bible and a quote from the '60s sci-fi TV show The Outer Limits.
Researchers believe that humans may have walked across the sea from Wales during the last Ice Age and made art
For many, the Bayeux Tapestry conjures images of clinker-built ships, prancing horses, the Normans feasting on chicken on the eve of the Battle of Hastings, and the arrow in King Harold's eye that ended centuries of Anglo-Saxon rule.
Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller—illicitly prized by Catholics in the Reformation—as belonging to Gage, exposes the split loyalties of one of Tudor England's great survivors.
Archaeologists have analyzed insect remains preserved in the 7th to 9th centuries AD funerary cave of Cruz de la Esquina, Gran Canaria, and found that it was used by the island's Indigenous people for food storage before being adapted into a burial site. The findings have been published in the journal Antiquity.
Even a handheld XRF scanner is sufficient to determine most promising scrolls for further analysis.
The Molino de Aliaga, the Peruvian capital’s earliest colonial structure discovered to date, was built by the Spanish conquistador Jerónimo de Aliaga in the 16th century
X-ray technology and artificial intelligence—along with the discovery of lead in the ink of fragments from a collection of ancient Roman scrolls—could soon help scientists read long-lost texts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, according to a study published Sept. 16, 2026, in the journal PLOS One by Douglas Seiler, an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley, U.S.; Jacob Michael LaManna of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S.; David Kreimer of the
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