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Archaeology news
Native Americans were making dice, gambling, exploring probability millennia before their Old World counterparts
A new study in American Antiquity presents evidence that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago at the end of ...
Archaeology
1 hour ago
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Thirty previously unpublished verses by Empedocles discovered on a papyrus from Cairo
A 2,000-year-old papyrus fragment, discovered in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, reveals 30 previously unpublished verses by Empedocles, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the fifth century ...
Archaeology
6 hours ago
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Tracking the footsteps of West Africa's prehistoric metalworkers
The discovery of a 2,400-year-old metalworking workshop in Senegal provides new insights into the history of iron production in Africa. Despite decades of archaeological research, the origins of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan ...
Archaeology
Mar 31, 2026
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The Earth is rearranging history
Deep below the surface of Murujuga, soil expands and contracts from the passage of water. Each wetting cycle is like a sodden breath from lungs holding fragments of stone and shell. Stone artifacts from millennia of Aboriginal ...
Archaeology
Mar 31, 2026
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Lost mosaic reveals first image of female beast-fighter from the Roman era
When you think of a fight between an animal and a human in ancient Roman sports, the mental image is usually of a big man vs. an animal in a big arena filled with cheering spectators. In a new study, Alfonso Manas, a researcher ...
Tasmanian tiger lives on in Arnhem Land rock art
The striped dog-like marsupial we know as the Tasmanian tiger has long been surrounded by mystery, and the subject of scientific curiosity. Now, newly discovered rock art depicting Tasmanian tigers and Tasmanian devils in ...
Archaeology
Mar 30, 2026
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Sacrifice before the cataclysm: The aromas of Pompeii's household altars
The destruction of Pompeii preserved ash residues on the household altars of its inhabitants. An international research team has scientifically investigated for the first time what was burned in Roman incense burners from ...
Archaeology
Mar 30, 2026
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Scandinavia's largest 'burial mound' may be a monument to catastrophe, not a king
New LiDAR analysis suggests Raknehaugen may have been built in response to a devastating landslide, not to honor a high-status individual. The study by Lars Gustavsen, published in the European Journal of Archaeology, challenges ...
Ancient DNA finds 15,800-year-old dogs in Anatolia, buried like humans
Evidence of some of the earliest dogs has been identified at two University of Liverpool/British Institute at Ankara archaeological excavation projects in central Anatolia, Turkey. Shedding new light on the development and ...
Archaeology
Mar 28, 2026
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Ancient bones show dogs have been woven into human life for nearly 16,000 years
Odin was a kelpie. Attentive and protective, with a happy smile and an endless hope for food, he succumbed to a terminal disease late last year. At his death, a deep sense of grief ripped through the household of one of us ...
Archaeology
Mar 27, 2026
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Scientists testing new scanning technology discover mysterious structure beneath an ancient Egyptian city
Archaeologists working in Egypt's Nile Delta may have discovered a tomb or temple dating back around 2,600 years while testing a new technology designed to locate structures buried deep beneath the surface. The team was studying ...
How Neanderthals used a lakeshore in Germany to hunt, butcher and survive
In 1948, a group of amateurs led by a local headmaster in Lehringen, Germany, uncovered the skeleton of a straight-tusked elephant—the largest land mammal known to have roamed Europe—in 125,000-year-old sediments from the ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2026
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Israel's 'Stonehenge' no longer stands alone: Satellite technology opens archaeological frontiers
For decades, the massive stone circles of Rujm el-Hiri in the Golan Heights were considered a singular, mysterious anomaly—often dubbed "Israel's Stonehenge." However, new research led by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2026
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AI learns to read ancient Japanese pottery with 93% accuracy
Classifying ancient pottery has always depended on the trained judgment of an archaeologist. Identifying the subtle differences between piece types takes years of experience, and two experts will not always agree. Now, a ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2026
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'Coral houses' are dotted throughout the Pacific. Now, scientists know exactly when they were built
The Mangareva Islands are about 1,600 kilometers southeast of Tahiti in French Polynesia. They get their name (which means "floating mountains") from the way the sea spray breaking on the surrounding coral atolls, or motu, ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2026
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Medieval DNA reveals trans-Saharan connections, rapid genetic mixing and leprosy in Islamic Ibiza
Medieval Ibiza was far from a quiet Mediterranean backwater. New DNA evidence shows that the island was part of a dynamic world linking Europe, North Africa and even the Sahel zone, south of Sahara. An international research ...
Archaeology
Mar 26, 2026
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Samuel Pepys censored his links to slavery, new study reveals
The fact that Samuel Pepys owned at least two enslaved people in 17th-century London is no secret. In some of his personal letters he was unashamedly open about this. In September 1688, he told a ship's captain that neither ...
Archaeology
Mar 25, 2026
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Advanced dating method reveals age of Pacific coral architecture
Application of an advanced dating technique establishes the first precise construction timeline for houses built out of coral in French Polynesia. The findings reveal previously hidden patterns of architectural development ...
Archaeology
Mar 25, 2026
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How archaeology is preserving evidence of the Yahidne war crime
Archaeology is not just a powerful tool for revealing insights into the ancient past, but it can also be applied to more recent events. In a new paper published in the journal Antiquity, scientists reveal how archaeological ...
What's for dinner? Tooth enamel reveals what early Mesopotamians really ate
We can learn a great deal about the lives and social structures of civilizations thousands of years ago by studying what they ate. While actual food remains are few and far between, scientists can reconstruct ancient menus ...
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