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Archaeology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 28-Oct-2026 08:17 ET (28-Oct-2026 12:17 GMT/UTC)

How dogs evolved differently across the globe to match human traits

Taylor & Francis Group
Book Announcement

We call them ‘man's best friend’, and the evidence supports it. Dogs have been found buried alongside humans in graves dating back 14,000 years. They appear in ancient art from every continent, and they feature in the mythology, religion and folklore of virtually every culture. Archaeological evidence shows they have helped us hunt, protected our homes, hauled our possessions, herded our livestock and provided companionship through the entirety of recorded history.

Well-worn wins: Wild capuchin monkeys prefer stones with a proven track record of cracking nuts

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A new study provides experimental evidence that wild capuchin monkeys use more than just physical cues when selecting stone tools; they also rely on visible signs that a stone has previously been used for this purpose. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of São Paulo investigated how nut-cracking capuchin monkeys choose between stones of different hardness and appearance, examining whether evidence of prior use, as indicated by percussive damage, can override the influence of a stone's intrinsic material properties.

Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

Ancient DNA reveals Ice Age humans preferred female mammoths

Stockholm University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Analysing ancient DNA of over 500 mammoth bones, an international team of researchers found that Ice Age humans selectively targeted female woolly mammoths. The results of the study, published in Current Biology, show that in contrast to the sex ratio among naturally occurring woolly mammoth remains, large bone accumulations associated with ancient human activity are dominated by females.

Journal: Current Biology
Funder: European Research Council, Swedish Research Council, Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse

What sheep's teeth can tell us about life in a medieval Kazakhstan town

University of Michigan
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international collaboration led by University of Michigan researchers studied herd management techniques by examining isotopes embedded in tooth enamel of sheep from a medieval Kazakhstan town.

Journal: Archaeometry

Archaic human parents also had a hard time raising kids

University of Tokyo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Archaic human parents had to look after helpless infants like modern day parents do, according to new research. Human babies are born less developed than those of other great apes, and so are unable to move as freely. A common result of this is deformational plagiocephaly, also called flat head syndrome. Professor Yousuke Kaifu at the University of Tokyo led a team which studied head shapes from scans of living infants, historical Japanese skeletal remains, fossilized specimens of Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis, and compared these to measurements of dry skulls from other great apes. Human head shapes across the ages, as well as the fossilized samples, exhibited a far wider range of deformation. The team sees this as evidence that archaic humans birthed helpless infants, with implications for childcare practices and potentially cooperative social behaviors dating back hundreds of thousands of years.

Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, Child Health and Development Research funding

Three new kings, and a new understanding of the Assyrian King List

University of Chicago Press Journals
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For approximately a century, researchers studying the Assyrian Empire’s history have relied on the Assyrian King List (AKL) as the definitive record of Assyrian monarchs and their chronology, especially for later periods of Assyrian history. But a recent article published in the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, entitled “Three New Kings of Assyria,” posits that the AKL may not be as authoritative or as objective as previously considered, and presents for the first time the identities of three kings whose reigns were omitted from the list, but can now reconstructed from other evidence. Ultimately, write Alexander Johannes Edmonds and Eckart Frahm, “early Neo-Assyrian political history was much messier, but also more interesting, than has so far been recognized.”

Journal: Journal of Cuneiform Studies

Earliest Mediterranean long-distance sea journeys were sustained over at least a millennium

University of Liverpool
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The discovery that remote Mediterranean islands were colonised before the invention of agriculture has upended long-standing views about the maritime capabilities of Europe’s last hunter-gatherers.

New evidence from Malta published today (28 July 2026) in PNAS Nexus now shows that these hunter-gatherers were engaging in repeated long-distance sea journeys of at least 100km, likely between Sicily and Malta for at least a millennium.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

Chicxulub impact dust set the dinosaurs' world on fire

American Geophysical Union
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Friction between the atmosphere and debris falling back to earth from the impact caused an intense heat pulse in the immediate aftermath. A new study in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences has found that a thick, global blanket of dust likely insulated the atmosphere, trapping and radiating enough heat down to the surface to ignite worldwide wildfires and burn even the thickest-skinned animals to a crisp.

Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences

Mesolithic hunter-gatherers on Malta

PNAS Nexus
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The existence of humans on Malta, a tiny Mediterranean island, in the Mesolithic period is puzzling. James Blinkhorn and colleagues model the demographic and subsistence potential of Malta and Sicily during the terminal Pleistocene to Holocene. The authors conclude that the longevity of forager inhabitation on Malta must have relied upon repeated, long-distance sea crossings.

Journal: PNAS Nexus

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