News by Subject Archaeology

Skeletal evidence shows that, hundreds of years after the Roman Republic conquered most of the Mediterranean world, coastal communities in what is now south and central Italy still bore distinct physical differences to one another -- though the same could not be said of the area around Rome itself.

It is likely to be one of the oldest prosthetic devices in human history: Together with other experts, Egyptologists from the University of Basel have reexamined an artificial wooden big toe. The find is almost 3,000 years old and was discovered in a female burial from the necropolis of Sheikh 'Abd el-Qurna close to Luxor. This area is currently being studied using state-of-the-art methods.

DNA found at archaeological sites reveals that the origins of our domestic cat are in the Near East and ancient Egypt. Cats were domesticated by the first farmers some 10,000 years ago. They later spread across Europe and other parts of the world via trade hub Egypt. The DNA analysis also revealed that most of these ancient cats had stripes: spotted cats were uncommon until the Middle Ages.

Gihon Spring, was crucial to the survival of its inhabitants, and archaeologists had uncovered the remains of a massive stone tower built to guard this vital water supply. Based on pottery and other regional findings, the archaeologists had originally assigned it a date of 1,700 BCE. But new research conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science provides conclusive evidence that the stones at the base of the tower were laid nearly 1,000 years later.

Using advanced imaging technology, Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered a hitherto invisible inscription on the back of a pottery shard dating from 600 BCE that has been on display at The Israel Museum for more than 50 years.

Archaeologists at The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Sydney have provided a window into one of the most exciting periods in human history -- the transition between Neanderthals and modern humans.

An ancient otter tooth recently discovered in Mexico suggests certain mammals migrated across America during the Miocene geologic epoch. The hypothesized route throws into doubt other theories such as migrations above Canada and through Panama.

Nipponosaurus sachalinensis -- a controversial hadrosaurid dinosaur whose fossilized skeleton was unearthed in southern Sakhalin in 1934 -- is found to be a valid taxon and a juvenile that had not reached sexual maturity.

New finds of fossils and stone tools from the archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, push back the origins of our species by one hundred thousand years and show that by about 300 thousand years ago important changes in our biology and behaviour had taken place across most of Africa.