Archeology is a scientific discipline within the broader field of the social and historical sciences that investigates past human societies primarily through their material remains, including artifacts, features, ecofacts, and constructed landscapes. It employs systematic field methods such as survey, excavation, and stratigraphic recording, combined with laboratory analyses including radiometric dating, bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and material characterization techniques. Archeology formulates and tests hypotheses about cultural processes, technological systems, subsistence strategies, social organization, and long-term human–environment interactions, integrating theoretical frameworks from anthropology, history, and related disciplines to reconstruct and interpret cultural sequences and transformations over time.
A new study provides experimental evidence that wild capuchin monkeys use more than just physical cues when selecting stone tools; they also rely on visible signs that a stone has previously been used for this purpose.
Plants & Animals
Aug 5, 2026
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11
Facing wind and cold, with only half as much oxygen to breathe as in the valley, a German-Turkish research team surveyed the glacier on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey for the first time in July, at more than 5,000 meters ...
Earth Sciences
Jul 31, 2026
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Analyzing ancient DNA from more than 500 mammoth bones, an international team of researchers found that Ice Age humans selectively targeted female woolly mammoths. The results of the study, published in Current Biology, show ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jul 30, 2026
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86
The modern Colorado moose is often considered just that: modern—brought to the state by wildlife officials in the late 1970s, preceded by very occasional reports of moose sightings in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Plants & Animals
Jun 23, 2026
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284
The bond between humans and dogs is one of nature's most enduring partnerships, but exactly when it began has long been a mystery. Now, a new study has turned back the clock. The study, titled "Dogs were widely distributed ...
Evolution
Mar 28, 2026
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47
A new study involving researchers from Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences has finally solved the mystery of what caused the collapse of an Ancient Chinese civilization—finding that widespread flooding was to blame. The ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 8, 2026
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76
Researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) have led a study, recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution, on the diet of individuals at the Sima de los Huesos site (Sierra ...
Evolution
Jan 27, 2026
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51
The Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region spanning modern-day Middle Eastern countries, is considered the cradle of civilization and where farming first emerged. But little is known about how climate change influenced ...
Imagine a remote Galapagos beach, where iguanas stomp around between fishing nets, flip flops, baseball caps and plastic bottles. Stuck in the sand is the empty packet for food sold only in Ecuador, the nearest mainland hundreds ...
Environment
Nov 13, 2025
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23
Models help scientists understand everything from the particles that make up the universe to massive superstructures of galaxies at the beginning of time. But sometimes they model more mundane, though perhaps even more complex, ...
Space Exploration
Nov 10, 2025
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