Archaeology Magazine - January/February 2025

In this issue

This issue features our annual list of the Top 10 Discoveries of the Year, including a Moche queen’s splendidly painted throne room, the surprising origins of the Scythians, and petroglyphs carved alongside 140-million-year old dinosaur tracks in Brazil. We also bring you on a trek into the mountains of Guatemala, where Maya artists created murals depicting elaborate dance performances. Follow along as researchers decipher passages from lost Greek tragedies that were preserved on a discarded papyrus. And dive down to a medieval ship carrying precious marble bound for England’s grandest cathedrals. In these stories—and so many more—this issue of ARCHAEOLOGY brings the past to life.

BAD MOON RISING

The British Museum houses around 130,000 clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia written in cuneiform script between 3200 B.C. and the first century A.D.

2 mins

COLONIAL COMPANIONS

The ancestry of dogs in seventeenth-century Jamestown offers a window into social dynamics between Indigenous people and early colonists.

1 min

NAZCA GHOST GLYPHS

From the 1940s to the early 2000s, geoglyphs were discovered in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru depicting animals, humans, and other figures at the rate of 1.5 per year.

1 min

ISLAND OF FREEDOM

Many of the enslaved Africans sent to Brazil beginning in 1549 were from what is now Angola, where one of the most widely spoken languages was Kimbundu.

1 min

ORIGINS OF PERUVIAN RELIGION

While investigating looters' holes at the site of La Otra Banda in northern Peru's Zaña Valley, archaeologist Luis A. Muro Ynoñán of the Field Museum and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru spotted carved blocks around seven feet below the surface.

1 min

TOP 10 DISCOVERIES OF 2024

ARCHAEOLOGY magazine reveals the year's most exciting finds

10+ mins

Unearthing a Forgotten Roman Town

A stretch of Italian farmland concealed one of the small cities that powered the empire

10+ mins

Medieval England's Coveted Cargo

Archaeologists dive on a ship laden with marble bound for the kingdom's grandest cathedrals

10+ mins

LOST GREEK TRAGEDIES REVIVED

How a scholar discovered passages from a great Athenian playwright on a discarded papyrus

8 mins

DANCING DAYS OF THE MAYA

In the mountains of Guatemala, murals depict elaborate performances combining Catholic and Indigenous traditions

10+ mins

Read all stories from Archaeology

Archaeology Magazine Description:

Each issue of Archaeology offers the grit, and the magic, of archaeological discovery with an up-close view of sites around the world. Readers can look forward to the latest news, vivid storytelling, and compelling photography. Archaeology brings the human past to life.