CATEGORIES

PREVENTING THE RETURN OF THE DEAD

An archaeological team excavating a necropolis at the site of Sagalassos in southwest Turkey uncovered an unusual and very eerie tomb.

DRAMATIC ENTRANCE

Four miniature terracotta masks found in the Roman city of Jerash in Jordan shed light on its theater district in the second century A.D. Excavators from the University of Jordan unearthed the masks in a doorway of a structure.

PIZZA! PIZZA?

When Pompeian authorities recently unveiled a new wall painting, it launched an international debate.

ROYAL WHARF

During excavations in Oslo's Bjørvika neighborhood, archaeologists have uncovered a portion of the foundations of a medieval wharf.

SUNKEN CARGO

Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) archaeologists have begun to investigate 44 tons of marble building materials that a swimmer spotted in shallow water 600 feet off the coast of the ancient Roman port of Caesarea after they were exposed by a recent storm.

RAM HEADS FOR RAMESSES

While exploring the surroundings of the temple of the pharaoh Ramesses II (reigned ca. 1279-1213 B.C.) in the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos, archaeologists from New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World uncovered an enormous collection of mummified animal heads in an ancient storage area.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE BUDDHA

While working in the village of Gada Balabhadrapur on the banks of the Daya River in India's state of Odisha, archaeologists unearthed a three-foot-tall sculpture of an elephant dating to the third century B.C., a time when Buddhism flourished in the area.

NOSE TO TAIL

Los Angeles' first Chinatown was settled starting around 1880, south of the city's historic center, the Los Angeles Plaza. Over the next two decades, the densely populated neighborhood expanded to the northeast and became home to a range of Chinese-owned businesses. These included markets that sold fare such as plum sauce for seasoning roast meat and restaurants that served up delicacies such as bird's nest soup and century eggs.

An Elegant Enigma

The luxurious possessions of a seventeenth-century woman continue to intrigue researchers a decade after they were retrieved from a shipwreck

AFRICA'S MERCHANT KINGS

The early Christian kingdom of Aksum was at the heart of a great maritime trading network

DEFENDING THE CANYONLANDS

Rare shields from the American Southwest are a legacy of a turbulent time in Native history

Inside a Magnificent Celtic Tomb

New investigations of an Iron Age burial in France reveal the source of one woman's exceptional power

Rise of the Persian Princes

In their grand capital Persepolis, Achaemenid rulers expressed their vision of a prosperous, multicultural empire

OFF THE GRID

One of Mexico's most important archaeological sites is hidden in plain view in the Tlalpan borough of southern Mexico City.

BIG GAME HUNTING

Archaeologists rarely unearth the remains of large predators such as leopards, lions, and bears. But University of Haifa archaeologist Ron Shimelmitz and his colleagues wondered if, by looking at a large number of sites over thousands of years, they could identify evidence showing that ancient people hunted these fearsome creatures.

HYBRID HOARD

A hoard of silver and gold items buried in the Netherlands 800 years ago-possibly for safekeeping during a time of war-was recovered by a licensed metal detectorist.

BULLISH ON THE STORM GOD

In southern Turkey's Amuq Valley, a curious one-inch-tall lead figurine unearthed at a rural Bronze Age site is giving archaeologists a glimpse of how villagers living around 2000 B.C. responded to a period marked by increasing drought.

A SURPRISE IN SUDAN

Beneath the ruins of the medieval village of Old Dongola, on the Nile in northern Sudan, a team from the University of Warsaw was surprised to find stone blocks that may date to the time of the pharaoh Taharqo (reigned ca.690-664 B.C.).

THE PALACE ON TABLET HILL

At the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu A in present-day Tello, in southern Iraq, In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French archaeologists excavated tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets there.

VIKING SUPPORT ANIMALS

The warriors of the Viking Great Army who campaigned in Britain from A.D. 865 to 878 worshipped gods often associated with animal companions, such as Odin and his eight-legged horse Sleipnir.

UPDATE - TEMPLE TIMES TWO

A team led by archaeologist Jessica Ortiz Zevallos has returned to the Temple of the Painted Pillars at the site of Pañamarca in northwestern Peru, where they have discovered new well-preserved, brightly colored paintings.

BOG TOGS

A piece of fabric found in a Highland peat bog in the early 1980s has now been determined to be the oldest example of true tartan ever located in Scotland.

A NEW DAY FOR THE ANCESTORS' MOUNDS

In fall 2007, Glenna Wallace, chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, visited the Octagon Earthworks in the central Ohio city of Newark while attending a lecture series at the Ohio State University in nearby Columbus.

LETTER FROM THE AMERICAN SOUTHEAST SPARTANS OF THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI

Unearthing evidence of defiance and resilience in the homeland of the Chickasaw

The Man in the Middle

How an ingenious royal official transformed Persian conquerors into proper Egyptian pharaohs

Rituals of the Cattle Raiders

Rock art in the mountains of South Africa tells the story of how the Khoe and San peoples resisted enslavement

Peru's Great Urban Experiment

A millennium ago, the Chimú built a new way of life in the vast city of Chan Chan

REUSING THE PAST

Archaeologists discover how an embattled Assyrian king fortified Nineveh

LOST ROMAN RESORT

In the Bay of Naples, miles of ruins recall the splendor of ancient imperial holidays

AROUND THE WORLD

Researchers determined that a mastodon living in the Pacific Northwest 13,900 years ago was wounded when it was struck by a spear.