BU’s Professor Saturno has announced spectacular new finds from the Maya site of Xultun, including the oldest-known Mayan astronomical tables, pre-dating other Mayan calendars by centuries. Click here to see high res pictures of one of the murals.
Hebrew University archaeologist finds the first evidence of a cult in Judah at the time of King David. ASOR member, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, announced the discovery of objects from the archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, that for the first time shed light on how a cult was organized in Judah at the time of King David.
You can read more on the Khirbet Qeiyafa announcement here and here.
In Jerusalem, possible site of ancient church’s ‘miracle’ is revealed. In “The Buildings of Justinian,” the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote at length about the churches the emperor built in the 6th century. He related a miracle that occurred during the construction of the Nea Church, in what is now the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, and now archaeologists may have found the site he wrote about.
Shards of pottery with traces of mare’s milk, mass gravesites for horses, and drawings of horses with plows and chariots: These are some of the signs left by ancient people hinting at the importance of horses to their lives. But putting a place and date on the domestication of horses has been a challenge for archaeologists.
Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe. Scholars are now looking into this potential case of ancient industrial espionage.
The Ministry of Defence is facing a legal battle and parliamentary questions after letting a US company excavate a British 18th-century warship laden with a potentially lucrative cargo.
British archaeologist Howard Carter, the man responsible for discovering the lost tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, was honored with a Google Doodle on his 138th birthday.
In the first exhibition of its kind, the Fitzwilliam Museum will relate the story of the quest for immortality and struggle for imperial legitimacy in ancient China’s Han Dynasty.
Since the discovery of James Fort, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, excavations have revealed remarkable insights about the earliest successful English colony in America. But because much of the original fort is buried underneath a Confederate earthwork called Fort Pocahontas, these discoveries forced a painful historical and archaeological trade-off.
Italian archaeologists have recently inaugurated new flower gardens in the ruins of ancient Roman palaces on the Palatine Hill in a colourful reconstruction of what the area may have looked like 2,000 years ago.
University of Nevada, Reno researchers G. Richard Scott and Simon R. Poulson discovered that very small particles of plaque removed from the teeth of ancient populations may provide good clues about their diets.
Traces of blood and fragments of muscle, tendon, skin and hair found on 2,000-year-old stone knives have given researchers the first conclusive evidence that the obsidian blades were used for human sacrifice so long ago in Mexico.
An article in the latest issue of theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics shows how the Near East was a major source of replenishment when huge areas of European territory became habitable again after the Last Glacial Maximum, up to 19,000 years ago.
What evolutionary forces drove the dramatic increase in brain size that makes modern humans so unique? A new analysis suggests that human brain evolution may have been shaped by changes in the female reproductive system that occurred when our ancestors stood upright.
The Olympic flame has been lit in a ceremony at the Temple of Hera in Olympia.
