22+ hour, 23+ min ago   (504+ words) A 70,000–100,000-year-old site in China’s Lower Yangtze region yielded 3,596 stone artifacts. Their size and manufacture point to a change in toolmaking, but not to a known species or a settled explanation. Stone tools in China’s Lower Yangtze region point to…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago   (421+ words) Electrical surveys at a Neolithic cemetery in Brittany have found strong signs of buried stone clusters inside two huge barrows. Only excavation can show whether the mounds conceal rare human-shaped monuments. TRED30 and TRED31 are elongated earthen barrows between 50 and 80 metres long....

2+ day, 2+ hour ago   (569+ words) What does spolia mean? At Sardis, archaeologists found a late Roman wall built with pieces of an older temple, alongside other evidence of stones reused in streets and monuments. The post What Is Spolia? How Roman Sardis Reused Its Ancient…...

3+ day, 22+ hour ago   (821+ words) A terrace project in Rebild uncovered about 18.5 kilograms of Viking-Age silver. The objects show how wealth moved, was measured and was hidden in tenth-century Denmark. A new terrace was supposed to change a garden. Instead, a few minutes of digging…...

3+ day, 23+ hour ago   (1007+ words) What if a city that appears in the records of ancient Egypt has been sitting in plain sight, hidden beneath later roads, barracks and stonework? The find does not provide a complete map of a lost city. It does something…...

4+ day, 2+ hour ago   (418+ words) Imagine finding a Roman coin hundreds of miles from the place where it was made. Who carried it there? A soldier, a merchant, or someone whose journey has left no other trace? One coin leaves those questions open. Put thousands…...

4+ day, 23+ hour ago   (555+ words) A stone can be millions of years older than the monument built from it. Measuring when its minerals formed therefore cannot, on its own, reveal when people dragged it into place. To date a stone circle, archaeologists usually reconstruct the…...

1+ week, 19+ hour ago   (667+ words) An ancient iron object can look simple: a blade, nail, tool or fragment of a chain. Making it required a long chain of decisions, from finding ore and fuel to building a furnace and working the metal after it cooled....

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (673+ words) An ancient building does not come with a label on the door. When archaeologists uncover walls, they have to work out what people did inside them from the traces left behind. A hearth may suggest cooking, but it can also…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (764+ words) What is a megalith? The word comes from Greek roots meaning “large stone,” and archaeologists use it for monuments built with large stones or substantial stone settings. That definition is broad on purpose. A standing stone, a chambered tomb, a…...