Feature Channels: Archaeology and Anthropology

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PhD student, Cottreau-Robins, is delving into the subject of slavery in post-revolutionary Nova Scotia.

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In St. Lawrence University Associate Professor John Barthelme's anthropology class, "The Neandertals: Fact, Fiction and Fantasy," students make stone-age tools from obsidian, glass found in volcanic rock and used today to make surgical scalpels, and use them to carve up a deer and eat the venison so they better understand how Neandertals lived.

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A team of researchers, including Herman Pontzer, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, has determined through analysis of the earliest known hominid fossils outside of Africa, recently discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia, the former Soviet republic, that the first human ancestors to inhabit Eurasia were more primitive than previously thought.

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Whatever the purpose of an inscription, when writing appeared on ancient Greek pottery, it became performance art.

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Human remains yield secrets. "Tales from the Bog" in the September 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine uncovers some of those secrets, including those unlocked by NDSU's Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson, assistant professor of anthropology.

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University of Oregon archaeologist Julie M. Schablitsky is off to Scotland to lead an exploratory excavation of the grounds on the boyhood home of John Paul Jones, while her husband continues his North Sea search for the lost ship of one of the fathers of the U.S. Navy.

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Archaeologists have discovered a footprint made by the sandal of a Roman soldier in a wall surrounding the Hellenistic-Roman city of Hippos (Sussita), east of the Sea of Galilee. The footprint was discovered during this eighth season of excavation, led by Prof. Arthur Segal from the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa in conjunction with archaeologists from the Polish Academy of Sciences and Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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Researchers in an ongoing U.S.-Cuban archaeological expedition are attempting to learn more about the native people Christopher Columbus encountered on his first voyage to the New World. They hope to find evidence of how the site's former residents were affected by the Spanish conquest of Cuba.

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Two years ago, Timothy Kusky, the Paul C. Reinert Professor of Natural Sciences at SLU, and Jianghai Li, a professor of geological science at Peking University, dug up hundreds of fossilized black smoker chimneys in northern China. Since then, the researchers have been analyzing the samples in several laboratories. The discovery is important, the researchers say, because it lends support to the theory that life on the planet developed on the sea floor.

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Anthropologists working on the slopes of the Andes in northern Peru have discovered the earliest-known evidence of peanut, cotton and squash farming dating back 5,000 to 9,000 years. Their findings provide long-sought-after evidence that some of the early development of agriculture in the New World took place at farming settlements in the Andes.

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Archaeologists have discovered a gold processing center along the middle Nile and a cemetery that show the first sub-Saharan kingdom controlled more territory than previously thought. The remains of the kingdom of Kush (1500-200 BC) are being covered, however, by the rising waters from a newly built dam.

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For the first time, a text has been found in Old Persian language that shows the written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. The text is inscribed on a damaged clay tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, now at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

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UAB scientist races to save Ancient Egypt - Egyptologist using satellite imagery to aid preservation.

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The world's oldest wooden anchor was discovered during excavations in the Turkish port city of Urla, the ancient site of Liman Tepe / the Greek 1st Millennium BCE colony of Klazomenai, by researchers from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies of the University of Haifa. The anchor, from the end of the 7th century BC, was found near a submerged construction, imbedded approximately.1.5 meters underground.

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Rock art, altars, burial mounds and standing stones of Mongolia's Altai Mountains reveal cultural traces of ancient hunters, herders and nomads of the Eurasian steppes. Mapping this archaeology and the significance of its physical settings is the mission of a team at the University of Oregon.

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A Florida State University anthropologist from Tallahassee, Fla., has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years earlier than scholars previously thought.

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A University of Arkansas cultural anthropologist reveals the interrelationship between plants and people that sustains the culture of Little Dixie.

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The arrival of genetically modified crops has added another level of complexity to farming in the developing world, says Glenn D. Stone, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and of environmental studies, at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Ape-like human ancestors known as australopiths had short legs because a squat physique helped males fight over access to females, a University of Utah study concludes. "The old argument was that they retained short legs to help them climb trees," says biologist David Carrier. "My argument is that they retained short legs because short legs helped them fight."

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The 13 Towers of Chankillo are the most outstanding part of a 2300-year-old ceremonial complex excavated by Earthwatch teams in the coastal desert of Peru. A paper in Science by former Earthwatch-supported archaeologist Ivan Ghezzi (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru) and Clive Ruggles (University of Leicester) reveals that the towers mark the existence of sun cults predating the Inca by nearly two millennia.

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A new study provides evidence that the last inhabitants of Christopher Columbus' first settlement desperately tried to extract silver from lead ore, originally brought from Spain for other uses, just before abandoning the failed mining operation in 1498. It is the first known European extraction of silver in the New World.

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Archaeologists are now turning to forensic crime lab techniques to hunt for dyes, paint, and other decoration in prehistoric textiles. Although ancient fabrics can offer clues about prehistoric cultures, often their colors are faded, patterns dissolved, and fibers crumbling. Forensic photography can be used as an inexpensive and non-destructive tool to analyze these artifacts more efficiently.

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After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a human with an abnormally small skull. Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University's anthropology department, in Tallahassee, Fla..

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Earthwatch volunteers working with Dr. Mary Glowacki (Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research) in Peru unearthed a previously unknown cemetery and found a trophy skull from the Wari civilization. The finds give researchers further insight into the rise and fall of the Wari Empire that lived high in the Andes 1,500 to 1,000 years ago.

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Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her crew are once again sharing their work with the world through an online diary, a digital window into day-to-day life on an archaeological dig.

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Maya expert Michael Aakhus had low expectations for the authenticity of Mel Gibson's latest film, "Apocalypto." After seeing the film, he said his expectations were met. "If you like action films, you should enjoy it - but if you are going to learn history, stick to your books," he said.

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A University of Arkansas professor's most recent work addresses the question of how human eating habits have evolved over millions of years.

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In partially solving a mystery that has baffled archeologists for centuries, a Drexel University professor has determined that the Great Pyramids of Giza are constructed with a combination of not only carved stones but the first blocks of limestone-based concrete cast by any civilization.

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Earthwatch teams working with Dr. Charles Higham of University of Otago are unearthing surprises about the indigenous origins of Southeast Asia's most illustrious empire. Excavations in Thailand are featured in the TV documentary, A Year On Earth, on Discovery Kids Channel December 3 and 10.

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University of Arkansas researchers examined the dental landscapes of prehistoric creatures from a South African province and found evidence for a dietary shift that suggests a corresponding change in the type of landscape that surrounded them.

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In this week's issue of Science, researchers suggest an early human-Neanderthal split. The two species have a common ancestry, say the authors, but do not share much else after evolving their separate ways. The study also finds no evidence of genetic admixture between Neanderthals and humans.

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Recent bioarchaeological findings at the ancient Dead Sea settlement of Qumran confirm the existence of a strange communal latrine --located at a remote distance, conforming with extreme hygiene practices described in ancient texts and possibly accounting for a documented early mortality rate at the settlement.

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University of Utah scientists improved a method of testing fossil teeth, and showed that early human relatives varied their diets with the seasons 1.8 million years ago, eating leaves and fruit when available in addition to seeds, roots, tubers and perhaps grazing animals.

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An ancient, untouched Syrian tomb that wowed the archaeological world on its discovery by Johns Hopkins University researchers nearly six years ago is not alone. Additional excavations have yielded a total of at least eight tombs filled with human and animal remains, gold and silver treasures and unbroken artifacts dating back to the third millennium B.C.

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University of South Florida geologists, members of an international team, help find and explain rare, juvenile Australopithecine afarensis fossil remains 3.3 million years old.

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Carved across the surface of a 26-pound stone slab unearthed in Veracruz, Mexico is the oldest known writing ever discovered in the Americas.

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Have you considered how many hands it took to get the broccoli you just purchased from the field to your table? Did you know that it quite possibly came from Guatemala? Did you ever consider that someone grew that broccoli for you so they could send their kids to a better school? Anthropologists Edward Fischer and Peter Benson answer these questions and more in their new book, Broccoli & Desire, tracing the complex connections between the hopes and dreams of Maya farmers in Guatemala and the health and dietary choices made by shoppers in Nashville, Tenn.

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A new study suggests that prehistoric birds of prey made meals out of some of our earliest human ancestors. Researchers drew this conclusion after studying more than 600 bones from modern-day monkeys. They had collected the bones from beneath the nests of African crowned eagles in the Ivory Coast's Tai rainforest.

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Halfway between South America and New Zealand, in the remote South Pacific, is Rapa. This horseshoe-shaped, 13.5 square-mile island of volcanic origin, located essentially in the middle of nowhere, is "a microcosm of the world's situation," says a University of Oregon archaeologist.

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Indiana University archaeologists say they are closer to discovering some of Christopher Columbus' lost ships -- and the answer to a 500-year-old mystery, "What was on those ships?"

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Digging on a remote hilltop in Italy, a Florida State University classics professor from Tallahassee Fla., and her students have unearthed artifacts that dramatically reshape our knowledge of the religious practices of an ancient people, the Etruscans.

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Computer technology brings ancient worlds to life, but archaeologists debate whether it resembles long-ago reality or reality TV. Jeffrey Clark, Ph.D., director of the Archaeology Technologies Laboratory at North Dakota State University, Fargo, notes the technology that creates such virtual worlds allows people to explore historical locations in a unique way.

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New analysis of the language and gesture of South America's indigenous Aymara people indicates they have a concept of time opposite to all the world's studied cultures -- so that the past is ahead of them and the future behind.

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Four Revolutionary War-era ships, believed to be part of a fleet of 13 British transport ships deliberately sunk by British forces defending Newport in 1778, have been discovered in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island.

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MU Researcher Unearths Earliest Known Western Sculptures and Astronomical Alignments in Peru's Temple of the Fox. Andeans Used Myth and Astronomical Markers to Determine Agricultural Calendar.

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Representatives of Bar-Ilan University and the Weizmann Institute of Science have signed an agreement to collaborate on a unique program for multidisciplinary teaching and research in archaeology and the natural sciences.

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The Santorini volcanic eruption occurred about 100 years earlier than previously thought, which means Bronze Age history needs to be rewritten, according to a radiocarbon study led by Cornell's Sturt Manning, published in Science.

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Scientists aboard the research drilling ship JOIDES Resolution have, for the first time, drilled into a fossil magma chamber under intact ocean crust. There, 1.4 kilometers beneath the sea floor, they have recovered samples of gabbro: a hard, black rock that forms when molten magma is trapped beneath Earth's surface and cools slowly.

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A forensic anthropologist at Middle Tennessee State University is one of a select number of scientists to participate in the examination of a 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man that could force historians to rewrite the story of the entire North American continent.

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This summer, Nancy Thomson de Grummond is heading back to Italy "” just as she has done nearly ever year since 1983. Although she will be spending plenty of time in the sun, this is no vacation: De Grummond, Professor of Classics at Florida State University, will be leading another group of FSU students into the Tuscan countryside to learn more about the region's ancient residents, the Etruscans.