https://phys.org/science-news/archaeology-fossils/ en-us The latest news on archaeology, archaeological research and archaeological advancements. Dozens of archaeological sites were destroyed by looting during Syria's civil war, which began in 2011 and lasted until 2024. Because the last comprehensive analysis was published in 2017, the extent of more recent damage to cultural heritage sites since 2016—including at UNESCO World Heritage sites such as Palmyra, long-running archaeological excavations like Mari, and the ancient Roman city of Apamea, known for its Great Colonnade—has been largely unknown. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-syria-ancient-sites-widespread-looting.html Archaeology Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:00:01 EDT news704032741 Historians and archaeologists know that maize was a central food source and cultural symbol across the ancient Maya world, but much of what is known has come from studies focused on large Maya cities and elite burials. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ancient-bones-smaller-maya-communities.html Archaeology Sat, 25 Jul 2026 11:20:01 EDT news704029965 Researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) are playing a key role in the summer exhibition wONDERLAND at the Yper Museum. Thanks to interdisciplinary research on more than 1,000 excavated skeletons, they have succeeded in giving the anonymous medieval city dweller a face and a voice once again after centuries. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-migration-lifestyle-health-social-status.html Archaeology Fri, 24 Jul 2026 21:20:01 EDT news704104742 Museums, libraries, archives and heritage organizations face a difficult problem: Many of the objects they preserve are made from materials that naturally deteriorate. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-smarter-greener-ways-fragile-cultural.html Archaeology Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:00:01 EDT news704113611 Today, people speak or sign around 7,500 languages. Yet this figure provides only a snapshot of a constantly changing history. How many languages existed before written records? Did agriculture reduce linguistic diversity by allowing expanding farming populations to replace smaller hunter-gatherer groups? Or did population growth initially create more opportunities for new languages to emerge? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-exploring-lost-golden-age-language.html Archaeology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:20:03 EDT news704035022 The silkworm moth, whose caterpillars have been used in silk production since antiquity, may have been brought to southern Central Asia 4,000 years ago—nearly 2,000 years earlier than previously assumed—according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-silkworm-cultivation-predates-silk-road.html Archaeology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:00:10 EDT news704014982 Human sacrifice was deeply ingrained in Inca civilization. Children and young people were selected for sacrifice to appease the gods and sacred mountain spirits. Being chosen was considered a great honor for both the victims and their families. Now, research into the remains of three individuals sacrificed as part of an ancient Inca ritual is revealing new insights into how they died. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-modern-forensics-uncovers-clues-inca.html Archaeology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:40:08 EDT news704029954 Fish, shellfish, maize, manioc, rice and even chicken eggs. Molecular residues preserved in more than 180 ceramic vessels from southern Brazil have made it possible to reconstruct what different communities were cooking more than a century ago, showing that access to food varied according to the origin and social status of their inhabitants. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ceramic-vessels-reveal-social-inequalities.html Archaeology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 12:20:01 EDT news704021761 New research from the University of St Andrews has shed light on baboons, moonlight and their link to an ancient Egyptian deity. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-moon-baboon-insight-mind-ancient.html Archaeology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:00:01 EDT news704018883 When you first step into Japan's Kyushu tombs, the first thing you notice is nothing at all. "When you enter, you're engulfed by darkness; you can smell earth and stone, and you have the sensation of being enclosed …," said Claudia Zancan, a Ph.D. candidate who examined these sixth to seventh-century tombs. "Without a torch, you can't move at all." https://phys.org/news/2026-07-kyushu-tombs-humans-meant-individuals.html Archaeology Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:08 EDT news703772285 Archaeologists in El Salvador exhumed human remains believed to be nearly 3,000 years old Tuesday, the Ministry of Culture said. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-year-human-unearthed-el-salvador.html Archaeology Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:40:02 EDT news703913541 The GunaiKurnai, an Australian Aboriginal nation, are the acknowledged traditional custodians of Gippsland and the southern Victorian Alps. Within their territory are caves known from 19th-century ethnographic reports and oral traditions to have been settings for magic, healing and cursing rituals by powerful learned women and men called "mulla-mullung," as well as by other spiritual practitioners. Archaeologists have shown that people have been visiting one of these caves, Cloggs Cave, for such activities over the past 25,000 years. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-australian-cave-discovery-grass-magic.html Archaeology Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:03 EDT news703848781 Some 400 years ago, a member of the Indigenous Potano-Timucua tribe scooped up some clay and carefully molded it into a modest vessel, small enough to rest in the palm of their hand. You can imagine their fingers pressing a tight crease around the pot's simple rim and smoothing its dull gray surface, leaving it free of any adornment. We may never know exactly what the pot held or how many hands it passed through before it was excavated, still fully intact, by students at the University of Florida earlier this year. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-students-unearth-rare-centuries-pot.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 18:10:01 EDT news703868282 A team of international scientists led by Dr. Ariel Malinsky-Buller, together with Ph.D. students David Nora, Ioannis Oikonomou and Dominik Rogall from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has uncovered new insights into the strategic decision-making and survival techniques of Middle Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. The study, led by Nora, examined ancient stone tool fragments from Ararat-1 Cave in Armenia. Researchers mapped how early human populations adapted their technology to survive in a rugged and ecologically varied environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ancient-stone-tools-reveal-complex.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:40:04 EDT news703862884 Researchers from the UAB have found the remains of a Roman camp linked to the suppression of the Ceretani revolt that took place in Cerdanya in 39 BCE. The research, based on archaeological surveys and the spatial distribution of recovered materials, provides new evidence placing these violent events within the ancestral territory of the Ceretani. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-evidence-redraws-roman-conquest-conflict.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:20:06 EDT news703857167 Iñaki Intxaurbe, a researcher at the EHU-University of the Basque Country, analyzed the distribution of images in nine caves in the Basque Country using network-based analysis and statistical techniques. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-animals-prehistoric-reveal-hidden-pattern.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:40:06 EDT news703857472 A new exhibition at the University of Nottingham Museum is bringing the prehistoric story of the Trent Valley to life, showcasing archaeological discoveries that are transforming understanding of one of Britain's most significant river landscapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-reveals-years-prehistoric-life-trent.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:40:07 EDT news703849621 A remarkable discovery has been made at the Givati Parking Lot excavations in the City of David, within Jerusalem Walls National Park. Excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University uncovered massive wooden beams that collapsed and burned during the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-burnt-wooden-jerusalem-temple-destruction.html Archaeology Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:00:01 EDT news703851165 Archaeologists have uncovered a rare and intricate polychrome mosaic within the remains of a Roman villa beneath Devon farmland. Made up of thousands of red, white and dark blue-gray cubes, the 12 m2 (129 square feet) mosaic would have been a striking decorative floor feature in the villa when it was likely installed sometime in the 4th century A.D. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-archaeological-reveals-full-extent-roman.html Archaeology Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:20:01 EDT news703759561 Nearly 40% of Canadian workers say they feel burned out often or always, according to a 2025 survey by Mental Health Research Canada and Canada Life. The term has become part of a broader lexicon of modern work, alongside quiet quitting, hustle culture and grindset and "taskmasking." https://phys.org/news/2026-07-burnout-isnt-18thcentury-farm-workers.html Archaeology Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:20:04 EDT news703747801 Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of 7,000-year-old fish traps in the mountains of southern Norway, indicating that fish were intentionally introduced to upland lakes by Mesolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers and showing that human management of nature was not limited to agricultural societies. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-centuries-farming-hunter-fish-norwegian.html Archaeology Sun, 19 Jul 2026 19:00:01 EDT news703144536 The United Nations looks set to list a Biblical site, Lebanese castles, an antelope migration path and the world's deepest lake as world treasures under threat, including from war or climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-sites-danger-conflict-climate.html Archaeology Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:00:01 EDT news703566692 In the mid-19th century, the remote island of St. Helena, located about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) off the southwestern coast of Africa, became a receiving point for thousands of enslaved Africans rescued from illegal slave ships by the British Royal Navy. Tragically, about 8,000 died shortly after arriving and were buried in unmarked graves in Rupert's Valley. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tooth-enamel-reveals-african-slaves.html Archaeology Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:40:04 EDT news703497617 For decades, scientists have disputed the meaning of the weapons found in the burial chambers of some ancient Egyptian princesses. Were they symbolic or practical tools? Now, a reassessment of five royal women's mummies from the Middle Kingdom has shown that some princesses buried with weapons could use them. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-bones-reveal-ancient-egyptian-princesses.html Archaeology Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:02 EDT news703402947 For decades, researchers have debated the subsistence strategies of precolonial societies in the Brazilian Cerrado (tropical savanna): Were they hunter-gatherers or intensive maize farmers, and in either case, how did they organize themselves and interact with the land they inhabited? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-large-precolonial-villages-brazilian-cerrado.html Archaeology Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:00:05 EDT news703325677 Archaeological work conducted at the Coves del Fem (Ulldemolins, Priorat)—located within the Serra de Montsant Natural Park—between May 30 and June 28, 2026, has yielded important new evidence for understanding the prehistory of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. The campaign was conducted by a team of researchers from the Department of Prehistory at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in the Humanities of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC-IMF). https://phys.org/news/2026-07-evidence-transition-hunter-early-farming.html Archaeology Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:00:04 EDT news703326110 A blacksmith, a stable boy, a soldier, a slave: The faces and stories of these and other residents of an ancient Roman city in modern Hungary have been brought to life in remarkable fidelity for a new exhibition in Budapest. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ancient-rome-hungary-forgotten-life.html Archaeology Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:40:02 EDT news703308008 Lithuania was famously the final pagan state in Europe. While the rest of the continent converted to Christianity, Lithuania remained officially pagan until Catholicism was adopted in AD 1387. Despite this, the extent to which Lithuania's population remained pagan or converted to Christianity was unclear, as was the extent of migration from the wider Christian world. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-europe-pagan-state-diverse-medieval.html Archaeology Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:00:02 EDT news702720625 Female farm managers are hidden in plain sight in ancient Roman texts, mentioned in laws, literature and grave inscriptions across five centuries. Modern historians have generally assumed they were housekeepers, in charge of domestic tasks and household meals, and segregated from the productive business of the farm. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ancient-roman-farm-women-wine.html Archaeology Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:40:11 EDT news703245669 Researchers have reconstructed and transcribed a mathematical formula from the site of Xultun, Guatemala, revealing the name of a Maya astronomer for the first time. During the Classic period (250–900 CE), mathematics and astronomy were a key part of Maya society, with complex calculations based on calendar dates and astronomical observations influencing everything from the erection of monuments to the inauguration of kings and queens. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hidden-maya-wall-astronomer-emerges.html Archaeology Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:00:01 EDT news702638642