News by Subject Archaeology

A unique bark shield, thought to have been constructed with wooden laths during the Iron Age, has provided new insight into the construction and design of prehistoric weaponry.

Which came first, the pigs or the pioneers? In Barbados, that has been a historical mystery ever since the first English colonists arrived in 1627 to encounter what they thought was a herd of wild European pigs. A Simon Fraser University researcher is shedding new light on the mystery and the altering of New World environments.

An international team, lead by researchers from the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, has shed light on a mysterious 5000-year-old mass grave in Poland. Despite being killed brutally, the victims were buried carefully. Ancient DNA has revealed the mass murder to be that of a large family. The new research results shed light on a particularly violent era in European prehistory of which little is known. The study has just been published in the American journal PNAS.

The deepest layers of carbon-14 dated ice found in the French Alps provide a record of atmospheric conditions in the ancient Roman era. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the study, led by an international team and coordinated by a CNRS scientist, reveals significant atmospheric pollution from heavy metals: the presence of lead and antimony is linked to mining activity and lead and silver production by the ancient Romans.

A joint research team led by CHEN Fahu from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and ZHANG Dongju from the Lanzhou University reported their studies on a human mandible found in Xiahe, on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau.