Archaeology

  1. Anthropology

    Skulls from ancient London suggest ritual decapitations

    The city’s Roman rulers had special watery places to keep the heads of military enemies or vanquished gladiators.

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  2. Archaeology

    Animal mummies were a message direct to the gods

    A new theory about the purpose of animals mummified by ancient Egyptians proposes that the cats, ibises and other dead critters were more than just simple sacrifices.

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  3. Anthropology

    Year in Review: Slain king’s bones dug up

    The king’s skeleton reveals fatal wounds.

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  4. Humans

    Year in Review: New discoveries reshape debate over human ancestry

    Human evolution appears poised for a scientific makeover as the relationships among early hominids are disputed.

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  5. Animals

    China trumps Near East for signs of most ancient farm cats

    Earliest evidence found for grain as a force in feline domestication.

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  6. Archaeology

    Easter Island’s farmers cultivated social resilience, not collapse

    A Polynesian society often presumed to have self-destructed shows signs of having carried on instead.

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  7. Humans

    Fossils reveal a strong-armed, dead-end hominid

    Olduvai Gorge finds suggest extinct hominid both walked and hung out in trees.

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  8. Archaeology

    Early shrine unearthed at Nepal Buddhist site

    Ritual structure could help pin down when the sage known as the Buddha lived in South Asia.

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  9. Genetics

    Ancient Siberian bones clarify Native American origins

    Some New World ancestors came from western Eurasia, not East Asia.

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  10. Anthropology

    Human ancestors threw stone-tipped spears at prey

    African discoveries show that hunting weapons thrown from a distance appeared by 279,000 years ago.

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  11. Anthropology

    Ancient farming populations went boom, then bust

    Agriculture’s introduction led to big falls as well as rises in numbers of Europeans.

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  12. Astronomy

    ‘Space beads’ push back origins of iron working

    Ancient Egyptians used advanced techniques to make beads out of 'metal from the sky.'

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