ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeologists investigate the material evidence of past human lives—the objects, homes, and monuments that people from every stratum of society leave behind. In this year’s not-to-be-missed “Top 10 Discoveries of 2023,” you will read about the lives

It didn’t rain frequently in ancient Egypt, but when it did, says Sapienza University of Rome archaeologist Aneta Skalec, it could come down so violently that it led to legal quarrels between neighbors. Skalec examined a papyrus known as the Demotic

The heart of an ancient Greek city was the agora, a public gathering place for commercial, cultural, political, and religious activities. In Athens, the Agora formed a backdrop for the city’s vibrant daily life, the practice of democracy by its citiz

On the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, researchers led by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Liat Oz excavated a shaft tomb constructed in the late fourth or early third century b.c., during the Hellenistic period, after Alexander the Great

King Harald Bluetooth, who reigned from his royal seat in Jelling during the tenth century a.d., is a towering historical figure, credited with having established the state of Denmark. New research finds that his mother, Queen Thyra, about whom littl

A new study of maize kernels is upending assumptions about Native American agriculture. It was thought that Iroquoian people living in the northeastern United States needed to move their villages every 20 to 40 years because their fields became less

Three Indigenous tracking experts from the Ju/’hoansi group of the San people have worked with archaeologists in western Namibia to analyze recently discovered rock art dating to the first millennium b.c. The images were carved by hunter-gatherers an

People who lived throughout Europe during the Ice Age may have practiced ritual cannibalism. Between 23,500 and 13,500 years ago, these hunters left traces of their culture, known as Magdalenian, on the landscape, including cave paintings, bone harpo

Ancient Mesopotamians believed that if they followed a proper set of instructions, they would have dreams that included contact with the gods. Assyriologist Aino Hätinen of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich has studied a set of cuneiform tablets

In northern Peru’s Shonquilpampa Valley, pictographs on boulders are offering a glimpse of Andean peoples’ changing relationship to wild camelid species such as guanaco, groups of which were domesticated sometime around 5,000 years ago and became lla

Cutting tools known as Acheulean hand axes, made by Homo erectus and other early human species from about 1.76 million to 130,000 years ago, represent humanity’s most enduring technology. They are particularly plentiful at the Tanzanian site of Isimi

A team of archaeologists led by Piotr Dyczek of the University of Warsaw unearthed ceramic vessels for drinking wine and hundreds of personal belongings at the Roman frontier camp of Novae in northern Bulgaria, where Roman legions were stationed from

Beneath tangles of tree roots and lush vegetation, Cueva de Ambrosio, or Ambrosio Cave, harbors more than 70 red-and-black drawings of geometric shapes as well as mythological and human figures scattered throughout its five interconnected galleries.

FLORIDA: A construction crew in downtown St. Augustine unearthed a well-preserved 19th-century ship lying around 8 feet beneath the current street level. The single-mast, flat-bottomed boat, which would have measured around 28 feet long, was probably

Rarely has a single find changed scholars’ views of the capabilities of people of the past as radically as the discovery of the world’s earliest known wooden architecture, which dates to nearly half a million years ago. The pair of interlocking logs

Nestled on a mountain ridge in the Urubamba Valley, Machu Picchu was built as a palace that was part of a larger royal estate belonging to the Inca emperor Pachacuti (reigned ca. 1420–1472). A team of retainers—skilled workers including craftspeople

Near a royal tomb complex dating to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 9), archaeologists discovered the remains of more than 400 sacrificed animals—including the first complete skeletons of a giant panda and a tapir to have ever been found in a

June 4, 1942 At 1:25 p.m., the crew of the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Kaga removed the portrait of the Japanese emperor Hirohito from its place in one of the mess rooms. They knew their ship was doomed. Several hours before, Kaga had suf

THE GLEAMING ACROPOLIS of the ancient city of Pergamon rises high atop a promontory that looks out over Turkey’s Bakırçay Plain. With Pergamon as their capital, the Greek monarchs of the Attalid Dynasty (283–133 b.c.) came to rule much of western Ana

Among the most important cities the Attalid Dynasty (283–133 B.C.) ruled over was Ephesus, a politically and militarily strategic Aegean port. Scholars have traditionally regarded the period under the Roman emperor Augustus (reigned 27 B.C.–A.D. 14)

THE GREAT BASIN OF North America is a 200,000-square-mile depression that extends from the scorched soil of Death Valley in southern California to the shores of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Its dry desert valleys are divided by more than 560 long, paralle

How do builders ensure that they don’t run a pipeline through the remains of a Paleoindian encampment that holds the key to early migration patterns, or pave over an ancient cemetery, or build a skyscraper atop a historic shipwreck? According to the

Giovanni Torlonia, an Italian noble who had followed his family into the banking business, began to renovate and upgrade his sprawling estate just beyond Rome’s Aurelian Walls on the Via Nomentana, an ancient road leading north out of the city, in 19