Decorated snail shell in a cave in Iraq could be evidence of Paleolithic bling
The early human 'Cockney pearly kings and queens'.
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Articles on Archaeology
Displaying 1 - 20 of 131 articles
When – and why – did people first start using money?
Currency first hit the scene thousands of years ago. An anthropologist explains the early origins and uses of money – and how archaeological finds fill in our picture of the past.
Modern humans evolved 100,000 years earlier than we thought – and not just in east Africa
A researcher tells the story of how he and his team discovered the oldest Homo Sapiens fossil bones to date in Morocco.
When it comes to disappearing ocean history, HMAS Perth is the tip of the iceberg
Archaeologists this week found that more than half of of HMAS Perth, a WWII wreck in Indonesia, has disappeared. It's now a race to protect the millions of other wrecks and sunken cities lying under the oceans.
Erasing history: why Islamic State is blowing up ancient artefacts
Islamic State has destroyed globally-significant sites in Iraq and Syria, but not as wanton acts of destruction. Instead, they are calculated political and religious attacks.
The truth about the Amazons – the real Wonder Women
Since the epics of the Homeric poets, there have been tales of the mysterious, war-like Amazon women. The myth is likely based on the 'strong, free' women of the nomadic Scythian tribe.
Friday essay: desecration and romanticisation – the real curse of mummies
The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, is the latest manifestation of our centuries old fascination with Egypt. But beneath this obsession is a darker story of looting and destruction.
It’s time to celebrate Africa’s forgotten fossil hunters
Africa has one of the world's richest fossil records, and evidence suggests that amateurs collected really important fossils long before professionals arrived on the scene.
Brain-imaging modern people making Stone Age tools hints at evolution of human intelligence
We can't observe the brain activity of extinct human species. But we can observe modern brains doing the things that our distant ancestors did, looking for clues about how ancient brains worked.
Behind closed doors: What the Piltdown Man hoax from 1912 can teach science today
A century-old case of scientific fraud illustrates how hard it is to untangle the truth when access to new discoveries is limited.
Can we ever find Jesus’s DNA? I met the scientists who are trying to find out
Here's what DNA analysis of relics purported to be from Jesus or his family can actually tell us.
Archaeological finds prove that fear of the walking dead was very real to medieval minds
Whatever drove villagers to dig up the dead and mutilate their corpses may seem to strange to us, but it was evidently real for them.
We’re closer to learning when humans first daubed arrows with poison
The early use of poison is one more indicator of an advanced repertoire of behavioural and technological traits that have characterised our species from the earliest times.
Dark tourism, Aboriginal imprisonment and the ‘prison tree’ that wasn’t
There is no evidence to support the marketing of an ancient boab in Western Australia as a tree that once held Aboriginal prisoners. The story is a myth that elides the tree's deep significance to Indigenous people.
New research indicates that Alfred the Great probably wasn’t that great
New research suggests his military achievements might have been exaggerated.
The Amazon’s ancient human history is written in its trees
New research shows how ancient rainforest cultures have left their mark on today's plantlife.
Uncovered after 2,000 years: gold torcs fit for an Iron Age queen
Torcs found in the Staffordshire hills can reveal a lot about Iron Age society.
Seeking truth among ‘alternative facts’
How do we determine what is fact? An archaeologist explains how the answer has changed over time and why it matters so much now.
Does an anomaly in the Earth’s magnetic field portend a coming pole reversal?
Are we headed to a magnetic reversal and all the global disruption that would bring? Enter archaeomagnetism. A look at the archaeological record in southern Africa provides some clues.
Friday essay: trace fossils – the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium
History is writ large in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor: from the fossils of microscopic, cell-like creatures to ancient stone tools to the deitrus of rocket tests and the painful legacy of the Maralinga atomic blasts.
Top contributors
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Research associate, University of Oxford
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Associate Professor, University of New South Wales Sydney, and Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW
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Alice Gorman is a Friend of The Conversation.
Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies, Flinders University
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Tom Austen Brown Professor of Australian Archaeology, University of Sydney
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Education Manager, Sydney University Museums, University of Sydney
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Professor in Archaeology, University of Bristol
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Senior Lecturer in Archaeology & Heritage, Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University
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Wood Jones Professor of Anthropological and Comparative Anatomy, University of Adelaide
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PhD; Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Monash University
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Professor of Archaeology, Flinders University
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Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Bradford
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Anniversary Chair in Landscape Archaeology, University of Bradford
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Senior Lecturer in Biological and Forensic Anthropology, University of Central Lancashire
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Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Professor of Cultural Palaeoecology, Liverpool John Moores University
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