Archaeology

  1. Humans

    Reviving the taste of an Iron Age beer

    Malted barley from a 2,550-year-old Celtic settlement offers savory insights into ancient malt beverage.

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  2. Humans

    Ancient farmers swiftly spread westward

    A sudden influx of Neolithic farmers in southern Europe led to agricultural practices still in play today.

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  3. Humans

    Ancient hominid butchers get trampled

    Bone marks advanced as evidence of stone-tool use to butcher animals 3.4 million years ago may actually have resulted from animal trampling, scientists say.

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  4. Humans

    Deep African roots for toolmaking method

    A method for trimming stone-tool edges appeared 75,000 years ago in southern Africa, archaeologists contend, long before previous evidence of the practice.

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  5. Humans

    Neandertals blasted out of existence, archaeologists propose

    An eruption may have wiped out Neandertals in Europe and western Asia, clearing the region for Stone Age Homo sapiens.

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  6. Humans

    Clues to child sacrifices found in Inca building

    Children killed in elaborate rituals were drawn from all over the South American empire, new research suggests.

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  7. Archaeology

    Big eats from a 12,000-year-old burial

    Middle Eastern villagers may have feasted around a shaman’s grave 12,000 years ago, before the dawn of agriculture.

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  8. Anthropology

    Prehistoric ‘Iceman’ gets ceremonial twist

    Rather than dying alone high in the Alps, Ötzi may have been ritually buried there, a new study suggests.

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  9. Archaeology

    Lucy’s kind used stone tools to butcher animals

    Animal bones found in East Africa show the oldest signs of stone-tool use and meat eating by hominids.

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  10. Archaeology

    Serbian site may have hosted first copper makers

    Newly identified remnants of copper smelting at a 7,000-year-old Serbian site fuel debate over where and when this practice began.

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  11. Archaeology

    Jamestown settlers’ trash confirms hard times

    Analyses of discarded oyster shells confirm a deep drought during the Virginia colony’s earliest years.

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  12. Anthropology

    Hobbit debate goes out on some limbs

    A new analysis of fossil hobbits’ limb bones links them to much earlier hominids, and immediately attracts criticism.

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