With its cold climate, short growing season, and dense forests, Michigan's Upper Peninsula is known as a challenging place for farming. But a new Dartmouth-led study provides evidence of intensive farming by ancestral Native Americans at the Sixty Islands archaeological site along the Menominee River, making it the most complete ancient agricultural site in the eastern half of the United States.The findings are published in Science.

Field and pot fertilization experiments on foxtail millet and common millet further suggest that the millet grain δ¹⁵N values can serve as reliable indicators of manuring practices, and the relationship between manuring levels and the δ¹⁵N values of archaeological millet remains was proposed. The δ¹⁵N values of ancient millet grains suggest widespread and intensive manuring practices in prehistoric North China.

The Mindoro Archeology Project, an international research initiative co-undertaken by the Ateneo de Manila University, has found evidence that the Philippine Islands were likely part of a vast and technologically advanced maritime network, whose people were capable of building sophisticated boats that could cross deep seas and regularly catch open-sea fish.

An AI program trained to study the handwriting styles of centuries-old manuscripts from the Middle East suggests that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls might be older than previously thought, according to a study published June 4, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Mladen Popović from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and colleagues. This method could give researchers a new way to place undated manuscripts into the timeline of ancient history.

In the rugged landscapes of Papua New Guinea—where more than 800 languages echo across valleys and coasts—a remarkable discovery has brought new clarity to one of humanity’s greatest migrations. In a new study, researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have recovered the first ancient genomes (aDNA) from Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago—unlocking genetic insights from a region as culturally rich as it is historically pivotal.

Published in Robot Learning, this study reviews recent advances in heterogeneous aquatic robot systems, which integrate underwater, surface, and aerial robots to perform coordinated tasks in complex marine environments. It highlights key developments in communication, sensing, navigation, control, decision-making, and energy management. Real-world applications—from ocean monitoring to underwater archaeology—are discussed, along with technical challenges and future directions. This work offers a roadmap for building intelligent, collaborative robotic systems to support sustainable marine exploration.