Conflict archaeology is disturbing – students need to be prepared.
ChameleonsEye/www.shutterstock.com
An archaeology lecturer was lambasted for allowing students to step out if they get upset. Why he was right to do so.
The ruins of the city Cyrene, an ancient Greek and Roman city near present-day Shahhat in Libya.
Mahir Alawami/Shutterstock
Hand over your travel photos and help build digital 3D recreations of threatened heritage sites.
Sian Tiley-Nel, chief curator, University of Pretoria Museums
Treasures from pre-colonial southern Africa were suppressed because they contradicted apartheid’s official history.
Ludovic Mann (right) and a colleague studying the site in 1930s.
Historic Environment Scotland
It’s arguably Europe’s premier Bronze Age art site -– but it has spent the last 50 years hidden underground.
The earliest hominin cancer.
Patrick Randolph-Quinney (University of Central Lancashire/University of the Witwatersrand)
Cancer is not the modern disease many believe it to be. New fossil evidence from two South African caves suggests that its origins lie deep in prehistory.
A prehistoric hand-held multipurpose stone tool the size of a person’s palm recovered by a farmer in Kenya. More tools were found during a search.
Stephen Thompson
Scientists are hoping that ancient stone tools found on a family farm in Kenya will add to a clearer picture of the first appearance, duration and variation of prehistoric technologies found so far.
Too good to be true? Time to hair the evidence!
Photo by Julie Russell/LLNL
Move over, DNA profilers. Scientists are developing a potentially more powerful technique to identify criminals from their hair.
Archaeologists on the front lines.
Jonathan Cohen/Binghamton University
Cultural resource management archaeologists don’t choose where they dig. Instead they identify, evaluate and preserve cultural heritage sites in locations slated for development.
The portrait painted by John Cooke in 1915. Back row: (left to right) F. O. Barlow, G. Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward.
John Cooke/wikimedia
Fossils claiming to be the missing link between ape and humans were manipulated in such a way that Charles Dawson, who discovered them, was most likely the forger.
Personal ‘hygiene sticks’ used in toilets on the Silk Road.
Hui-Yuan Yeh. Reproduced from the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
How a research team identified parasites in ‘hygiene sticks’ that travellers on the Silk Road effectively used as their toilet paper.
The fragmented remains of the Antikythera mechanism.
Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis
A bronze artefact rescued from a Greek shipwreck could hold the secrets of the universe.
A replica of the remains of “Lucy” at the National Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Reuters/Barry Malone
When it comes to valuable African fossils, much is at stake. They often unearth disputed ways of debating archaeology as a science of ‘discovery’.
Damian Evans/Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative
Space lasers developed in the 1970s are being put to a brand new use.
Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, built by Anasazi c. 1200. The Antiquities Act was passed to protect such sites from looters.
National Park Service
The 1906 Antiquities Act gives presidents unilateral power to protect land as national monuments. The law has saved important places, but has also fueled intense conflicts over land control.
Fallen star sword.
Daniella Comelli/University of Pisa
Research has confirmed a knife found in the ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb was made with metal from the heavens.
© The Rose Theatre Trust
In an attempt to speed up the planning process, the government has introduced a new law which could put Britain’s heritage at risk.
This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, carefully sculpted around the morphological features of his skull, suggests how he may have looked alive nearly 9,000 years ago.
Brittney Tatchell, Smithsonian Institution
A 9,000-year-old skeleton became a high-profile and highly contested case for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. How do we respectfully deal with ancient human remains?
The polished surface was a sure sign this was no natural fragment.
Australian Archaeology
Getting a scientific paper published about a significant finding - like the discovery of the world’s oldest axe - is challenge in itself.
Frank Augstein/AP
A model Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph, made in Italy from Egyptian marble, has been installed in London’s Trafalgar Square. Is this such a good thing?
There’s something in the water.
Shutterstock
The reach of the Vikings in England went further than we thought.