Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2026 från ARCHAEOLOGY

Undeciphered. Unexplored. Unknown. While considering the list of extraordinary finds we chose as our Top 10 Discoveries of the year, not to mention all the exciting stories we shared with you over the course of 2025, what continued to amaze us is how many times we used these words. Unlike some other fields of scientific inquiry, archaeology is not a new discipline. In fact, it has been practiced in some fashion—although often less rigorously than today—since antiquity. And yet so much remains to be uncovered. In this year’s roundup of the Top 10 Discoveries alone, you will read about a previously unknown Babylonian hymn and a newly discovered link between two cultures who spoke forms of a prehistoric language that has since evolved into modern languages spoken by half the…

Images of lions abound in Venice. The city’s iconic symbol can be seen emblazoned on brightly colored flags, decorating the Doge’s Palace, and even adorning water taxi stops. The most prominent example, though, is the huge bronze winged lion perched high atop a column in St. Mark’s Square. This legendary artwork, sometimes referred to as the Lion of Venice, or simply the Lion, has presided over the city’s bustling main piazza for at least seven centuries. It not only represents power and strength, but is also deeply associated with Mark the Evangelist, Venice’s patron saint. Until recently, though, very little has been known about who made the sculpture and where it came from. “It’s really amazing that there aren’t any written documents about its origin,” says archaeologist Massimo Vidale of…

Bearded vultures are the avian world’s great accumulators, a species never burdened by the question “Does it spark joy?” They reuse their nests for hundreds of years, building up and repairing their aeries with bric-a-brac scavenged from the ground. Still, researchers investigating 12 nests in rock shelters in southern Spain were surprised at how much stuff the birds had tucked away—including items nearly 700 years old. “When artifacts of human origin began to appear in our visits to old nests, we decided to collaborate with archaeologists,” says ecologist Antoni Margalida of Spain’s Institute for Game and Wildlife Research. Bearded vultures are among Europe’s most endangered birds and went extinct in southern Spain between 70 and 130 years ago, but their nests have survived in high-altitude cave environments. In the 12…

The Lydian Empire controlled western Anatolia from the Aegean Sea to modern Turkey’s region of Cappadocia in the seventh and first half of the sixth centuries b.c. During this period, the Lydians minted the world’s first coins, including some that date to the rule of their famously wealthy king Croesus (reigned 585–547 b.c.). The Lydian palace was built on an artificial terrace in the capital city of Sardis. Researchers previously unearthed what they believed were the palace’s oldest walls, which they dated to Croesus’ reign. A team led by archaeologist Nicholas Cahill of the University of Wisconsin–Madison has now found earlier palace walls at Sardis, some of which date to the eighth, and perhaps even ninth, century b.c. “Since we have so few written sources from the Lydians themselves, we…

FRANCE: Both pierced and unpierced shells as well as red and yellow pigments from the site of La Roche-à-Pierrot are evidence of the oldest-known jewelry workshop in western Europe. These artifacts date to the Châtelperronian period, between 55,000 and 42,000 years ago, when Neanderthals in Spain and France were slowly being replaced by Homo sapiens. Scholars are unsure exactly which of these species made the objects, but argue that they demonstrate that the people of the Châtelperronian period were either influenced by or belonged to a wave of modern human newcomers in the region. VIRGINIA: When English colonists founded Jamestown in 1607, they brought much-needed horses with them. According to recent examination of equid bones, they also brought donkeys, which are not mentioned in historical records. Isotope analysis indicates these…

The Chavín religion was widespread in the Andes during the frst millennium b.c., but it wasn’t universal. The landscape was probably dotted with villages, towns, and even temples that had nothing to do with Chavín at all, either because some groups didn’t want to join in, or because they hadn’t been invited to participate. Since such people didn’t leave behind Chavín-style art, many of their settlements have likely been overlooked or dated to the wrong time period. Researchers have been able to identify a few communities that overtly rejected the Chavín religion. In the Nepeña Valley, archaeologist David Chicoine of Louisiana State University has excavated the sites of Huambacho and Caylán, which were founded around 600 b.c., during Chavín de Huántar’s heyday. “They really steer clear of all the Chavín…

When scholars study the great copper-producing powers of the Mediterranean Bronze Age, they often focus on Cyprus and the Levant. (See “In the Time of the Copper Kings,” January/February 2024.) But the source of the copper used in small bronze figurines called bronzetti found across Sardinia has perplexed researchers. Bronzetti were made by members of the Nuragic culture and depict everyday items and animals, as well as people engaged in daily activities and high-status members of society such as warriors. Now, by combining conventional techniques with a rarely used method to identify the origin of the copper used to make the bronzetti, scientists are finally putting Sardinia firmly on the copper map. “The standard approach to narrowing down the origin of copper in archaeological artifacts is a combination of elemental…

Over the past 30 years, excavations at the site of the seventeenth-century Colony of Avalon in the Newfoundland town of Ferryland have uncovered tens of thousands of artifacts. These objects have provided valuable information about life in one of the most remote English colonies in North America. Recent investigations unearthed a set of curious objects demonstrating that Avalon’s inhabitants had better connections with the greater colonial world than previously thought. While working in a storage room associated with the settlement’s main building, known as the Mansion House, archaeologists found seven tubular wampum beads. Wampum was typically carved from white and purple whelk or quahog shells and was used by Native American communities for a range of purposes, most commonly as currency. While wampum beads have been found at both European…

Twenty years ago, archaeologist Davide Tanasi of the University of South Florida concluded his excavations at an Early Bronze Age (ca. 2200–1950 b.c. in this region) stone enclosure on central Sicily’s Polizzello Mountain. In what he believed to be a sanctuary, Tanasi and his team had discovered numerous potsherds as well as cow, pig, sheep, and goat bones, presumably the remnants of mountaintop sacrifices. Trusting that future technologies would be able to tell more about how Early Bronze Age people in Sicily used the pottery, Tanasi left the sherds unwashed and in storage. Recently, the team tested more than 50 of these potsherds for residues of animal proteins. To Tanasi’s great surprise, the testing revealed proteins from horse meat on the ceramics, but none from the animals whose bones the…

Built in the thirteenth century a.d., the city of Paquimé in the Mexican state of Chihuahua was the largest precolonial settlement in the deserts of the American Southwest and northwest Mexico. Paquimé was the main center of the Casas Grandes culture and featured monumental architecture including multistory apartment complexes similar to those built by Pueblo people to the north and ball courts resembling those in Mesoamerica. Scholars have suggested that migrants, perhaps traders from Mesoamerica or high-status people from large northern pueblos, were primarily responsible for Paquimé’s remarkable efforescence. A team led by bioarchaeologist Meradeth Snow of the University of Montana and archaeologist Michael Searcy of Brigham Young University analyzed DNA from remains of people who lived in the region surrounding Paquimé both before and during its rise. Their data…

TALES FROM THE NEOLITHIC Karahantepe, Turkey Since the first stone structures were unearthed at Karahantepe just six years ago, the site has continued to change the story of the people who lived in southeastern Anatolia in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 12,000 to 10,200 years ago). This year was no exception, thanks to a pair of unique discoveries. The first is a stone monument known as a T-pillar that includes a carved human face. The second is a collection of artifacts that archaeologist Necmi Karul of Istanbul University believes represents the world’s oldest three-dimensional narrative. Both finds provide entirely new insights into how the region’s Neolithic people envisioned themselves, as well as rich evidence of symbolic thought, which is scant in the archaeological record of this period. T-pillars have been…

On the summit of Papoura Mountain in central Crete, archaeologists are investigating a highly unusual circular structure. It was built by members of the Bronze Age Minoan culture (ca. 3000–1100 b.c.) and is thought to be the earliest monumental complex discovered on the island. Measuring more than 160 feet across, the complex was constructed atop sloping ground and consists of eight concentric stone walls, some preserved to a height of more than six feet. The outer rings form rooms of roughly equal size connected by small doorways. At the center of the structure, a team led by excavation director Danae Kontopodi and Vassiliki Sythiakaki, director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Heraklion, has unearthed a vaulted building divided into four sections whose plaster walls preserve traces of paint. The archaeologists…

FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS early in the first millennium a.d., Teotihuacan controlled the most powerful empire in central Mexico. At its height, the city covered some eight square miles and was home to upwards of 150,000 people. Teotihuacan’s craftspeople were renowned for churning out tools, figurines, and other objects made from the glossy volcanic stone obsidian, which were exported as far off as the Maya cities of Tikal in Guatemala and Copán in Honduras. When Teotihuacan began to collapse, around a.d. 550, a number of central Mexican city-states arose in its wake and attempted to take control of its lucrative trade routes. Among the most prominent of these Epiclassic period (ca. a.d. 600–1000) powers was Xochicalco, which was located 70 miles south of Teotihuacan and controlled much of the western…

Pilgrims to Chavín de Huántar may have been greeted by one of the site’s most iconic monuments, known as the Tello Obelisk after the early twentieth-century Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello, who excavated it. Archaeologist Matthew Sayre of High Point University and art historian Patricia Lagarde of Tulane University propose that the Tello Obelisk was a kind of map of the Chavín religion’s geographically and cosmologically interconnected world. Starting at the base of the obelisk, a viewer can find lowland plants such as peanuts, which grow underground, and chili peppers. A strombus shell trumpet from the Ecuadorian coast sits halfway up, firmly in the human realm. A caiman, associated with the Amazonian jungle at the foot of the eastern slopes of the Andes, runs up the middle of the obelisk. Highland…

A FINAL RECKONING The article “Acts of Faith” (November/December 2025) by Daniel Weiss is as upsetting as it is well written. While the horror and abuse of the Spanish colonial experience and its forced conversions of the Maya is well known, in light of the fact that there is now evidence of the destruction wrought by Diego de Landa and his auto-da-fé, one would hope that there has been or will be a true apology by the Spanish to the Maya who continue to survive in spite of them. The infamous Spanish cleric gives a hint of his responsibility, but there is no real sense of the destruction and vulgar abuse of the Maya that Landa perpetrated nor the loss of the information and material culture it represents to our…

Recent excavations in the cities of Sogdiana, which encompassed parts of modern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from the fifth through the eighth century a.d., have illuminated the sophisticated artistic and religious traditions of the territory’s people. (See “A Silk Road Renaissance,” July/August 2020.) Archaeologists have now discovered fantastical figurative wall paintings and ornate wood carvings in a palace at the site of Sanjar-Shah in Tajikistan that was built in the a.d. 740s. Some mural subjects are typical for Sogdian art, such as a hunting scene and a battle against demons. Michael Shenkar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently finished reconstructing a rather more confounding composition from dozens of fragments unearthed in 2022 and 2023. “It’s a scene of fire worship and is unique,” he says. The fire ceremony was a…

In 1807, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh put forth his vision for Native American unity and resistance. “These lands are ours, and no one has the right to remove us,” he declared in a speech to his fellow Shawnee chiefs. “The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us to light our fires.” The following year, Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, a spiritual leader, headed a group that founded a settlement—called Prophetstown by local English speakers—in a valley near the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash Rivers in the Indiana Territory. The settlement was intended to be a refuge for all Native Americans and a headquarters for the brothers’ pan–Native American movement. Located in an area probably called Tippicannuck by the Shawnee, Prophetstown was quickly settled by a diverse range…

After more than four decades of excavation at the Maya site of Caracol, a team led by University of Houston archaeologists Arlen and Diane Chase made a first-of-its-kind discovery when they uncovered the tomb of Te’ Kab Chaak, founder of the kingdom’s ruling dynasty. It is exceedingly rare in Maya archaeology to be able to associate human remains with a historic figure known from hieroglyphic inscriptions. This is also the only tomb of a ruler to have been found in Caracol.Te’ Kab Chaak ascended to the throne in A.d. 331 and presided over Caracol in its early stages, before it grew into one of the most powerful Maya cities in the southern Yucatán Peninsula. The ruler’s burial was unearthed in an area of the site that the Chases first investigated…

UPHEAVAL AND UNCERTAINTY swirled around the splendid cities of the Roman Empire at the end of the third century a.d. When a new emperor, Diocletian, took the throne in a.d. 284, he set about righting a system in shambles. By a.d. 301, Diocletian had redrawn the map of the empire’s provinces and refashioned the emperorship as a four-person job, a tetrarchy. From Britannia to Armenia, the tetrarchs’ forces had beaten back usurpers to the throne, bellicose border tribes, and rival empires alike, but legions couldn’t fix the weak economy. The Roman government had debased its coinage for decades, sparking rampant inflation. Diocletian decided to unveil an unprecedented series of laws intended not only to curb inflation but to overhaul the marketplace economy in every town under the empire’s authority. All…

ON A MORNING SOME 2,700 years ago, a pilgrim set out on a grueling journey to the Center Place. She and her retinue came from the coast of Peru, less than 100 miles away, but it took weeks to reach the sanctuary. They walked up and over towering mountains, leaving behind the sparse coastal desert for verdant forests that thinned to grassland toward the high peaks. Along the way, they met people whose customs were strange to them. But some of these strangers had been to the Center Place themselves, and that made the pilgrim feel more comfortable accepting the shelter they offered. Finally, the pilgrim was in sight of the complex of stone temples and sunken plazas, which was tucked into a crook where two rivers met. Mountains loomed…

The broad river valleys of northern France are renowned for having some of the most fertile soil in Europe. Farmers in this region, known as the Paris Basin, produce most of the country’s winter wheat, and the area is often called France’s breadbasket, or even Europe’s granary. This farming tradition stretches back to some 7,000 years ago, when farmers began planting and harvesting wheat in the Paris Basin at a scale their ancestors had likely never imagined possible. These farmers, who lived during the region’s Middle Neolithic period (ca. 4700–4300 b.c.), belonged to what archaeologists have named the Cerny culture. They are thought to have refined techniques for planting fields of wheat using plows pulled by cattle. Their villages likely had larger populations than those of the farmers who preceded…

EDUCATE Thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s International Archaeology Day online contests. From creative builders to imaginative doodlers, your enthusiasm helped make archaeology fun, educational, and accessible to all. Our Build Your Own Monument contest inspired participants to re-create famous archaeological sites and monuments using bricks and other materials. We were thrilled to see so many inventive submissions and spirited voters supporting their favorites. We also received 54 entries for our Archaeo Doodles contest. The best submissions will soon be used to illustrate the AIA glossary of archaeological terms—one of the most frequently visited educational resources on the AIA website. Go to archaeological.org/glossary to check it out. ADVOCATE Museum visitors across the United States over the past two years may have noticed empty display cases accompanied by…