ARCHAEOLOGY

When we started planning our special feature “Mapping the Past,” we knew we wanted to bring you a wide range of maps from diverse cultures and time periods. We also wanted to broaden the concept of what constitutes a map by taking into account whatev

Shortly after a 1793 epidemic of yellow fever ravaged Philadelphia, the nation’s capital at the time, the architect and engineer Benjamin Henry Latrobe described the city thus: “The backyards of most of the houses are also depositories of filth to a

As an artist who also works with horses, I was captivated by the carved horse image on the stone tablet from Rocher de l’Imperatrice (“Art at the End of the Ice Age,” March/April 2019). The carving appears to be a careful study done from a dead anima

More than a decade ago, archaeologists Andrew Chamberlain of the University of Manchester and Mike Parker Pearson of University College London began taking measurements at Stonehenge as part of their research at the site. They determined that the Neo

Kakadu National Park in Australia’s Northern Territory, a roughly three-hour drive southeast from the territory’s capital, Darwin, is one of the greatest rock-art landscapes in the world. Recent archaeological excavations have pushed back the earlies

Arichly furnished grave excavated in 1878 near the Viking town of Birka in eastern Sweden had long been assumed to hold a powerful male warrior. The grave was equipped with an arsenal of weapons, as well as a set of gaming pieces and a gaming board,

CANADA: Several unassuming rock walls along the shore of Quadra Island are actually the ruins of ancient clam gardens constructed by First Nations peoples thousands of years ago. The walls were erected within intertidal zones to create sandy terraces

THE NEBRA SKY DISC DATE: ca. 1800 B.C. MATERIAL: Bronze and gold DIMENSIONS: 1 foot diameter, weight 4.6 pounds FOUND: Saxony-Anhalt, Germany When the Nebra Sky Disc was buried, it had already been in use for 200 years. While its raw materials were i

In northern China’s Shaanxi Province, the Tuwei River winds its way through the undulating terrain of the Loess Plateau. This Yellow River tributary bisects a stark landscape. To the west are rows of rolling sand dunes that gradually taper off into t

In ancient egypt, the passage to the afterlife was an arduous one. Even at the end of the journey, the deceased could be turned away from the paradise of the Field of Reeds if their heart tipped the scales when weighed against a feather. Often elemen

In 563, an Irish monk named Columba came to the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, along with a group of followers—12, according to legend—and founded a monastery that grew into one of the most important religious sites in the British Is

Standing by a trench at the south end of the tidal island of Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England, archaeologist David Petts gestures dismissively at the seemingly expansive ruins of a priory dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries t

The Lindisfarne Gospels is among the most finely crafted early medieval illuminated manuscripts to have survived to the present day. Remarkably, it is believed to have been produced by a single individual: Eadfrith, the bishop of Lindisfarne from aro

When Christopher Donnan began studying the art created by Peru’s Moche culture more than 50 years ago, he wasn’t sure how much it reflected ancient reality. From about A.D. 200 to 850, the Moche lived in the arid valleys of Peru’s northern coast, whe

The Dead Sea includes the lowest point on Earth, at more than 1,400 feet below sea level, and lies in a long and narrow desert valley that runs through Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank. The sea itself is nearly 1,000 feet deep and covers more than 2

The year 2018 marked the 20th anniversary of the ancient city of Troy’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located in the Çanakkale province in Turkey, Troy is the famous site of the Trojan War as first described in Homer’s Iliad. Over the cent

archaeological.org After five years at the helm of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), Ann Benbow is stepping down as Executive Director. Throughout her time at the AIA, Ann has been an inspiring leader. She tackled many of the Institute’s

For thousands of years and across much of the world, tattoos have been markers of identity used, for example, to make statements about gender, ethnicity, and status, but evidence for tattooing among the indigenous cultures of the American Southwest i