Innehållsförteckning för March/April 2025 från ARCHAEOLOGY

Exciting stories in archaeology often emerge from the discovery of evidence of an important innovation—either the earliest example known or the first to be found. The first pyramid, a 200-foot-tall, six-tiered edifice, was built from limestone and clay around 2630 B.C. for the pharaoh Djoser at the site of Saqqara near modern Cairo. The earliest pots, made by hunter-gatherers in China some 20,000 years ago, may have been used to cook fish. And the first coin was minted by a Lydian king in western Anatolia in the seventh century B.C. and bore the head of a lion. In this issue, you will read about a host of exciting archaeological firsts covering a vast sweep of time, geography, and cultures. There are stories of what may be the earliest alphabetic writing,…

Before the invention of alphabets, literacy was the purview of Egyptian and Mesopotamian scribes trained in complex writing systems that could take years to master. Proto-Sinaitic script, which uses a set of alphabetic signs adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphics, is the earliest known system to rely on symbols alone to represent sounds and that could be mastered by someone who had never set foot in a scribal school. This early script is known principally from around 30 inscriptions written on monuments near a turquoise mine on the Sinai Peninsula dating to between approximately 1850 and 1700 B.C. Philologists, specialists in ancient writing, have been able to translate many of the inscriptions, some of which invoke the principal gods of the Canaanites, a Semitic-speaking people who lived in the Levant and had…

While reexcavating a Viking burial mound in southwestern Norway, archaeologists from the University of Bergen came across a surprise: a message left more than a century ago by Anders Lorange, one of the country’s first professional archaeologists. In 1874, on a farm called Myklebust, 170 miles north of Bergen, Lorange uncovered the burned remains of a Viking ship containing metal shield bosses and a massive cauldron. Lorange didn’t do much to document the dig, and researchers recently returned to see whether he had left anything unexcavated. To their surprise, the team found a 150-year-old message in a bottle buried in the center of the mound. It included a letter addressed to future archaeologists and Lorange’s business card. Above the bottle were more than 600 nails Lorange had recovered from the…

Some 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, archaeologists and a large team of local workers have revealed the standing remains of a neglected Sasanian-era (a.d. 224–651) site known as the Zindan, a Persian word for prison. In the tenth century a.d., Arab geographer and traveler Ahmad ibn Rustah reported that, according to local folklore, the imposing brick structure once held 7,000 prisoners of the Sasanians, an Iranian dynasty that controlled much of the Near East. In the nineteenth century, archaeologists visited the site, then mostly covered with earth, and suggested that it was actually part of a royal palace complex. Since 2021, archaeologist Ahmed Abdul Jabbar of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage has led a team that has thus far removed some 17,000 tons of soil and rubble…

First settled at least 7,200 years ago, Great Prespa Lake still entices people for many of the same reasons it has since Neolithic times: The climate is pleasant, the freshwater fishing is good, and the hilly terrain protects against unwelcome intruders. Archaeological sites dot the lake’s shores, now split among North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece, but the best-preserved today are on two small islands, Golem Grad, meaning “Big Town,” in the North Macedonian sector of the lake, and Maligrad, or “Small Town,” in the Albanian sector. The sites have yielded substantial finds from nearly four millennia of human activity, from roughly 2200 B.C. to the Ottoman conquest in the late fourteenth century a.d. Golem Grad showcases the life of a village from the ancient to medieval period. Neolithic Prespans fished…

Hunter-gatherers thrived in Florida for more than eight millennia before they began to make pottery around 2600 B.C., during the Late Archaic period. This invention seems to have dramatically changed their daily and ritual lives. These people, who harvested shellfish in enormous quantities, had participated in long-distance trading networks that brought them goods such as stone beads from Mississippi and ornaments called bannerstones from Georgia. Such objects were often buried with high-status members of society, who likely controlled the trade networks. But, with the advent of pottery, people in northern Florida stopped importing such prestigious objects. “Unlike stone beads or other exotic items, pottery was accessible to anyone who could dig clay,” says archaeologist Zackary Gilmore of Rollins College. In northern Florida during the Late Archaic period (ca. 3700–1500 B.C.),…

AS HIS TEAM UNEARTHED a cache of 73 stone steles buried in a mound in southwestern Iran, archaeologist Abbas Moghaddam of the Iranian Center for Archaeological Research added yet one more question to his growing list about the people who lived at the ancient settlement of Chega Sofla some 6,000 years ago. Since he started leading excavations in 2016 at this site amid the rich agricultural fields of the Zohreh Valley, 10 miles north of the Persian Gulf, Moghaddam and his team have found surprise after surprise that have both deepened and complicated their understanding of the farmers who lived there during the Later Village Period (ca. 5000–3700 B.C.). The cache of steles, some of which were carved with depictions of ibexes confronting each other, was found beneath the floor…

In January 2025, the Archaeological Institute of America held our 126th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The meeting’s theme, Archaeology and the Environment, encouraged participants to explore human responses to climate shifts and ecological disasters in antiquity, current threats to the archaeological record, and the discipline’s ever-changing landscape. Toward this end, they shared the results of international collaborations among scientists, museum and heritage professionals, and local communities, as well as novel methods of public outreach and engagement. At the meeting, we celebrated the efforts of archaeologists who work to engage a diverse array of local stakeholders and scholarly communities with several of our annual awards. The AIA’s Outstanding Public Service Award was presented jointly to the FBI Art Crime Team, anthropologist Holly Cusack-McVeigh of Indiana University, and her students. This group…

New analysis of human remains found at the site of Charterhouse Warren in southwest England has revealed shocking evidence of a macabre event that occurred in the Bronze Age (ca. 2500–700 B.C.). In the 1970s, 3,000 fragments of human bone were discovered near the bottom of a narrow, 50-foot-deep cavern, but for the last half century, little has been learned about them. Now, using radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis, researchers have determined that the remains belonged to at least 37 men, women, and children who were violently murdered between 2210 and 2010 B.C. Many of the bones show evidence of blunt force trauma, and that, after the individuals were killed, their bodies were dismembered, defleshed, and tossed into the abyss. There is even evidence of cannibalism, including cut marks and…

The waters of the Bay of Naples may seem a far cry from the deserts of modern Jordan and Saudi Arabia, home of the ancient Nabataeans, a Semitic-speaking people who established a powerful kingdom in the second century B.C. Nonetheless, underwater archaeologists have discovered submerged remnants of a temple dedicated to the Nabataean god Dushara in the bay off the coast of the ancient Roman town of Puteoli, around 12 miles from Naples. Puteoli was one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean beginning in the first century B.C. For two centuries, enterprising Nabataean merchants, as well as traders from Egypt and Phoenicia in the Levant, established communities there to take advantage of the town’s burgeoning trade connections. Along with their business acumen, Nabataeans brought their religious traditions. Archaeologists identified…

ARIZONA: A small cannon likely associated with Spanish conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado’s 1540–1542 expedition through the American Southwest may be the oldest firearm ever found in the continental United States. The weapon, which is 42 inches long and weighs 40 pounds, was discovered at the site of San Geronimo III, where Coronado’s men established a settlement along the Santa Cruz River. The outpost was attacked by the Indigenous Sobaipuri O‘odham in 1541. The Spaniards fled, leaving the gun behind. THE NETHERLANDS: While investigating a 400-year-old building in Alkmaar, archaeologists uncovered an earlier tile floor, which in and of itself isn’t unusual. A number of floor tiles were missing—also not unusual. What was out of the ordinary, however, was that a portion of the surface had been patched with cattle…

In the year 1124, an ambitious prince in northern China named Yelü Dashi faced a pivotal decision—stay and make a final stand with his people, who faced nearcertain defeat, or head for the hinterlands in search of new prospects. Just a decade earlier, Dashi had been a junior member of the Yelü royal clan of the Khitan, the nomadic group that ruled the Liao Empire. The empire had been founded in a.d. 907 by Abaoji, a direct ancestor of Dashi’s. Abaoji united the Khitan tribes, who were based in eastern Mongolia and parts of China, and rallied them to conquer much of northern Asia, from the border of the Korean Peninsula across portions of northern China, southern Siberia, and Mongolia. This territory included both traditionally Chinese areas that were home…

Pork accounts for more than a third of the world’s meat, making pigs among the planet’s most widely consumed animals. They are also widely reviled: For about two billion people, eating pork is explicitly prohibited. The Hebrew Bible and the Islamic Koran both forbid adherents from eating pig flesh, and this ban is one of humanity’s most deeply entrenched dietary restrictions. For centuries, scholars have struggled to find a satisfying explanation for this widespread taboo. “There are an amazing number of misconceptions people continue to have about pigs,” says archaeologist Max Price of Durham University, who is among a small group of scholars scouring both modern excavation reports and ancient tablets for clues about the rise and fall of pork consumption in the ancient Near East. “That makes this research…

PICKING THE RIGHT FLOWER The flowers depicted in the Maya murals found in Chajul, Guatemala (“Dancing Days of the Maya,” January/February 2025), greatly resemble my Christmas cactus plant. The flowers are always at the end of the leafy stems. Donna Krepin Slippery Rock, PA INDUSTRIAL CHALLENGES As a retired manufacturing engineer from the metal casting industry, I was most interested in Artifact in your January/February 2025 issue. I have often marveled at the huge metal castings made in antiquity and it is reassuring to learn that they had the same problems we face today. What is not so reassuring is that we, as an industry with 4,000-year-old roots, still refuse to adopt science-based engineering and design methods. Even today, when we have computer simulations that can predict the quality of…

When the a.d. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius blanketed the southern Italian city of Pompeii in layers of volcanic debris, it preserved the bodies of many individuals who had perished. Since archaeologists began excavating these remains in the mid-eighteenth century, they have speculated about who these deceased Pompeians were and how they were related. A team of scholars has now extracted DNA from skeletal remains in plaster casts of 14 individuals, revealing that many long-held assumptions about those who died may be incorrect. In 1974, four bodies were discovered very close to one another at the foot of a staircase in the House of the Golden Bracelet. (See “Family History,” January/February 2016.) Scholars assumed that this group consisted of members of a single family: two adults and two children.…

Scholars studying the Silk Road have traditionally seen mountain ranges as obstacles standing in the way of merchants who plied the trade routes that connected China and western Eurasia. Now, a team led by archaeologist Michael Frachetti of Washington University in St. Louis and Farhod Maksudov of Uzbekistan’s National Center of Archaeology have discovered two previously overlooked medieval cities that flourished in the mountainous terrain of eastern Uzbekistan and were once stops on that fabled trade route. The cities, which are now known as Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, perch more than 7,000 feet above sea level. They were occupied during the height of the Silk Road, from roughly the sixth to eleventh centuries a.d., and would have been ruled for some of their existence by the Qarakhanids. (See “Unearthing an Elusive…

SOME 100 major temples towered over the landscape of Roman Egypt, though today only six still stand. One of the best preserved sits in a residential neigh-borhood in the modern city of Esna on the west bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt. The temple was dedicated to the creator god Khnum, his family, and the goddess Neith. Now 30 feet below street level, the temple’s red sandstone pronaos, or entrance hall, is all that survives of what was once a larger complex. The other remnants of the temple, which stood behind the hall, are now buried beneath the city. In antiquity, the hall, which measures 120 feet long and 65 feet wide and stands 50 feet high, would have dwarfed the rest of the temple. Larger-than-life scenes carved on…

Sometimes all it takes is one small artifact to tell an entire story. In 2015, during a metal detector survey in the Big Bend region of western Texas, archaeologist David Keller found one such object under windblown sediments that had likely protected it in place for around 100 years. “It was a heavy moment,” Keller says of his initial examination of the object with a hand lens. He called over the rest of his team to have a look. It was a fragment of a .45-caliber bullet, which later analysis would show was fired from either a Colt M1873 single-action revolver or a Colt M1909 double-action revolver, that had been heavily deformed by impact. That impact had fused the lead projectile with human bone. There had never been any doubt…

EXCAVATE Interview with AIA Award Winner Andrea Berlin At its 126th Annual Meeting, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) was thrilled to present the 2025 Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement to Andrea Berlin, James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology at Boston University. We asked Andrea to share some insights, experiences, and her passion for archaeology. Tell us about your history with the AIA. I’ve been an AIA member since my college days, 50 years ago. I have also served as an AIA trustee and traveled the country as a national lecturer for some 20 years, and I was awarded the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. What drew you to archaeology? At 17 years old, I went on a dig at Tel Sheva in southern Israel, where I…