Archaeology

A monumental prehistoric henge has been unearthed in eastern England during excavations originally focused on finding traces of an Anglo-Saxon hermit, a recent study shows.The site, known as Anchor Church Field and situated near Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire, is thought to have hosted ceremonial and sacred activities on and off from the time the henge…

In the early 1930s, a 13-year-old girl, Helen Carlton-Smith, helped excavate a former Roman settlement. She joined several female archaeologists in finding gold coins and pottery and uncovering mosaics. Until recently, few people knew of her participation.Located near what's now Hertfordshire, England, Verulamium was one of Britain's largest Roman cities. Archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, then director…

Enlarge / A selection of the Fitzwilliam Museum coins that were studied, including coins of Charlemagne and Offa.The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge Sometime around 660 CE, silver coinage replaced gold as the dominant form of currency in northwest Europe. But what was the source of all that silver? According to a recent paper published…

The murder of sacrificial victims by "incaprettamento" — tying their neck to their legs bent behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves — seems to have been a tradition across much of Neolithic Europe, with a new study identifying more than a dozen such murders over more than 2,000 years.The study comes after…

The elongated, cone-shaped skulls of Viking Age women buried on the Baltic island of Gotland may be evidence of trading contacts with the Black Sea region, a new study finds.The women's skulls were most likely modified deliberately from birth by wrapping their heads with bandages. This practice is attributed to the nomadic Huns, who invaded…

Hunter-gatherers in what is now Patagonia, Argentina, kept foxes as pets before the arrival of European dogs about 500 years ago, a new study suggests. In some cases, the ancient people were so closely bonded with their pet foxes that they were even buried with them.And while it's previously been proposed that modern dogs in…

Military personnel recently unearthed the remains of a prehistoric campsite on an air base in New Mexico, which early Americans may have occupied 8,200 years ago.Members of the 49th Civil Engineer Squadron (CES) made the discovery together with a team of geologists near a road cut on Holloman Air Force Base, 160 miles (260 kilometers)…

The discovery of a lynx buried with four dogs at an early-medieval settlement in Hungary is confounding archaeologists, as these wild cats are rarely found in archaeological digs.The fifth-to-sixth-century pit, which was about 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) deep, contained a complete lynx skeleton at the bottom and the skeletons of four dogs — likely pointers…

Low tides on Ireland's western coast have revealed the remains of defensive walls that are likely Bronze Age ramparts.Archaeologist Michael Gibbons discovered the ramparts, which are made of large limestone blocks, on a partially submerged isthmus, a narrow strip of land between two parts of the sea. But he's only recently obtained photographs of the…

We live in a light-polluted world, where streetlamps, electronic ads and even backyard lighting block out all but the brightest celestial objects in the night sky. But travel to an officially protected "Dark Sky" area, gaze skyward and be amazed.This is the view of the heavens people had for millennia. Pre-modern societies watched the sky…