Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i ARCHAEOLOGY

If you are a dedicated follower of fashion—or even if haute couture isn’t your particular obsession—we are certain you will find many stories in this issue enchanting. Just as ancient people’s artistic, domestic, and linguistic choices reveal much about their world views, the clothing that they wore or that was buried with them can tell archaeologists a great deal about what they valued in life. For example, two stories in our Digs & Discoveries section explore women’s burials containing clothing and accessories. Although separated by several millennia and thousands of miles—one set of burials dates to third-millennium B.C. central Europe and a single burial dates to second-century A.D. China—both offer vivid looks at the role of fashion in these women’s cultures. Three women found in what is now eastern Germany…

Eleven thousand years ago, early Neolithic people who gathered at the site of Asiab in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran brought their own boar meat to contribute to communal feasts. Archaeologists uncovered 19 wild boar skulls that displayed clear signs of butchery neatly packed in a pit at the site. A team of researchers conducted dental and geochemical analysis on some of the boars’ teeth to determine where the animals may have originated. Although Asiab’s environment provided a natural habitat for boars, the animals consumed there came from various distant locations, some as far as 40 miles away. Transporting a heavy boar carcass across the mountainous terrain would not have been an easy task, especially as the journey must have taken several days. Scholars believe it was important for…

CANADA: Excavations on a property that once belonged to legendary Black cowboy John Ware have revealed new details about his family’s domestic life. Ware was born into slavery in the United States but settled near the hamlet of Millarville, Alberta, in 1882, becoming one of the region’s first non-white ranchers. Archaeologists uncovered personal items attesting to a level of affluence not previously attributed to the Wares. These include decorative glassware, an English ink bottle, and a thimble engraved with the word “REMEMBER.” GUATEMALA: It’s well known that the Maya practiced dental modification, but scholars thought that such procedures were only performed on adults. A new study at the Popol Vuh Museum of 3 teeth inlaid with jade determined that the teeth belonged to 3 different Maya individuals between 8 and 10 years…

In his account of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, the first-century B.C. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus describes the Hanging Garden—not Gardens—as a lush landscape whose tree-filled terraces recalled the shape of a theater. He and other Greek and Roman authors based their descriptions of this easternmost of the wonders on earlier Greek accounts that no longer exist. Many of the writers of these reports had traveled throughout Mesopotamia as part of Alexander the Great’s retinue in the fourth century B.C. and, presumably, visited the sites they chronicled. Like Diodorus, several writers identify Babylon as the Hanging Garden’s location—but only the first-century A.D. Roman historian Josephus attributes its construction to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 604–562 B.C.). Nevertheless, the king’s name has persisted in the garden’s lore. Scholars have…

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the massive tomb built for Mausolus, governor of the southwestern Anatolian province of Caria from 377 to 353 B.C., lies in ruins at the center of the ancient city of Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum. Meager blocks from the monument are scattered where once stood a 14-story-tall structure clad in shining white marble and covered with decorative columns, immense sculptures, and expressive friezes designed by the most famous sculptors of the day. In their efforts to visualize this now-ruined monument, scholars have more to go on than for some of the other Seven Wonders. In addition to the surviving sculptures and reliefs, parts of a structure exist that may have served as a model for the mausoleum. This tomb in the ancient city of Milas, some 25 miles…

WHERE THE BORDERS of Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana meet, Mount Roraima rises some 9,200 feet above sea level. It is the highest of the tepuis, or tabletop mountains, that loom over the otherworldly landscape of Venezuela’s Canaima National Park. According to a foundational myth of the region’s Pemón people, Mount Roraima is the stump of the divine tree that once bore all the world’s fruits and vegetables. They believe the tree was cut down by the trickster hero Macunaíma, whose rash act triggered a flood that ushered in the age of humans. Each tepui, which in the Pemón language means “house of the gods,” has its own biosphere that is home to a unique array of flora and fauna. Among them is Auyán Tepui, from whose peak flows the world’s…

In North America and around the globe, archaeologists assess and sometimes excavate sites where new roads, subways, offce buildings, and arenas—just about any major construction project—are about to be built. Following local and national laws, this work balances development with the preservation of sites that have cultural or archaeological significance. Professional archaeologists working for city, state, and federal agencies, as well as cultural resource management (CRM) firms, undertake these projects, which are often called rescue excavations. Frequently, they make important discoveries in the course of their work. In my own field of maritime archaeology, some of these discoveries have been transformative. For example, Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport, begun in the late 1950s, was constructed partially over the enormous harbor built by the first-century A.D. emperor Claudius. At the time,…

Had the events of November 12, 1758, unfolded differently, they could have forever altered the course of American history. On that day, a 26-year-old George Washington nearly lost his life in a friendly-fire incident during the French and Indian War. (See “Exploring the Great Warpath,” September/October 2019.) Fighting for the British, Washington was leading a Virginia militia regiment against a French raiding party in western Pennsylvania when fog and miscommunication resulted in two Virginia battalions firing upon each other. Colonel Washington risked his life by riding out between the groups to shout for a ceasefire, knocking aside muskets with his sword. When the smoke cleared, 14 men had died, and dozens were wounded. The battlefield was lost to history until archaeologists located it near Fort Ligonier. There, the team uncovered…

One of the planet’s most successful arthropods, trilobites, abounded in the oceans from about 520 million to 250 million years ago. Trilobite exoskeletons are found on all seven continents and are a familiar sight in textbooks and museums the world over. Ancient Romans were also fascinated by these ubiquitous fossils. Classical authors, including the first-century A.D. Roman historian Pliny the Elder, mention trilobites, and archaeologists have found many examples of Roman glass and jet beads that take their characteristic shape. Yet no trilobite fossil had ever been found at a Roman site until a team led by University of Vigo archaeologist Adolfo Fernández-Fernández unearthed one measuring an inch long in a trash deposit in the Roman city of Armea in northern Spain. The team’s analysis indicates that the fossil has…

As early as 40,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers in southern Africa ventured long distances to procure special types of stone to make their tools. Although these groups primarily fashioned blades and scrapers from quartz, tools knapped from colorful green, red, and black varieties of chert have been excavated at sites in Eswatini. A team of researchers led by University of Tübingen archaeologist Gregor Bader surveyed the Mgwayiza Valley to locate the sources of stone used to make tools recovered at four of these sites. They identified natural outcrops of two types of chert—green chalcedony and red jasper—within 2.5 miles of each other. Using neutron activation analysis, the team confirmed that the geochemical fingerprints of the stone in the outcrops matched elements in the green and red chert tools. The precise…

People from throughout the ancient Greek world regularly flocked to the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia for festivals, including the eponymous Olympic Games held there every four years. The Temple of Zeus, which was built beginning around 472 B.C., was the largest sacred edifice in westernGreece. Around 430 B.C., the great Athenian sculptor Phidias was commissioned to craft a monumental wooden statue of Zeus covered in ivory and gold, the size of which would exceed that of the sculpture of Athena he had designed for the Parthenon in Athens. Placed on a gilded base at the back of the temple’s cella, or main chamber, the sculpture depicted the god sitting on a throne. In his left hand, Zeus held a scepter with an eagle resting atop it, and in his…

Approaching the port of Alexandria in antiquity could be perilous. The coastline faces the open Mediterranean Sea and is littered with reefs and shallows that could easily sink a ship. The port was also crowded with military and royal vessels. When Ptolemy I (reigned 304–284 B.C.) became king, he began to plan what is thought to be the world’s first monumental lighthouse at the eastern tip of the nearby island of Pharos to aid arriving vessels. Completed 15 years later under Ptolemy II (reigned 285–246 B.C.), the edifice stood nearly 350 feet high. It was surmounted by a flame illuminating the waters around the harbor, ensuring sailors’ safety and advertising the Ptolemaic Dynasty’s power and beneficence for miles. The lighthouse remained standing for some 1,500 years until a series of…

ELDERLY AND AILING, a potter named Georges-André Colas penned a six-page letter to the Regional Archaeological Service of Burgundy in October 2008. “Dear Sir or Madam, although I am aware of the tremendous scientific interest of the deposit of bronzes of Couan, I hesitated for a long time to make it known, because of the legal consequences of the circumstances of its discovery,” he began. “However, I wanted to do it while I was still alive.” Thirty-one years earlier, in 1977, wrote Colas, he had taken a metal detector to a field in the oak-forested Morvan massif of east-central France. He knew that fragments of ancient masonry had been found on the property in the 1950s, suggesting a possible archaeological site. Detecting a faint signal, he grabbed a shovel and…

The story of how cities come into being usually goes something like this: Mobile groups settle down and start to farm. Agricultural surpluses, in turn, make it possible for some people to spend their days engaging in activities other than farming, leading to, for example, castes of priests and armies of soldiers with their associated bureaucracies. Eventually, people completely abandon their nomadic past, and some settlements become cities. Some of these cities become capitals of states or even empires. It’s a story as old as the mudbrick urban centers of Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia. But on the Eurasian steppe over the last 1,500 years, this process has sometimes been turned on its head. There, nomadic tribes came together to form centrally ruled states—all while staying on the move. A…

A decorated bag used to carry something particular, or for a special occasion such as a night on the town, is often used to signal wealth and status. This seems to have been true as well for members of the Corded Ware culture, which spread throughout Europe in the third millennium B.C. During installation of a power line in the eastern German town of Krauschwitz, archaeologists discovered 15 Corded Ware burials of men and women interred with distinct sorts of artifacts. “People in this period differentiated men from women by including certain types of objects, such as axes for men and jewelry for women, in their graves,” says archaeologist Oliver Dietrich of the State Ofce for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. Three women were found alongside pierced dog teeth, some of…

New analysis of a uniquely Inca recordkeeping device, known as a khipu, has changed archaeologists’ conception of the individuals who created and maintained them. These objects consist of a series of intricately knotted cords typically made from animal hair. They were used to record numerical information such as dates, inventories of goods, and tax data. Khipus were instrumental in the administration of the Inca state and it has long been thought that khipukamayuqs––or khipu makers––were educated elites. However, this may not be the case, according to recent analysis of a 500-year-old khipu held by the University of St. Andrews. Researchers noticed that a large portion of the artifact was woven from human hair that was the product of eight years of growth. “The presence of the khipukamayuq’s hair suggests that…

Perched almost 9,700 feet above sea level on Medicine Mountain in Wyoming’s Bighorn Range, the Medicine Wheel is an 80-foot-diameter circular structure made from limestone boulders. Twentyeight spokes radiate from a central cairn, and six additional cairns are positioned around the wheel’s perimeter. While more than 100 similar circular stone monuments have been found throughout the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada, the Medicine Wheel is the best preserved and among the largest. Since the site was first described in 1902 by ethnologist S. C. Simms of the Field Museum, archaeologists have sought to discover when and why the wheel was built. “The Bighorn Mountains have been home to American Indian culture for over 12,000 years,” says retired U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Dave McKee. Despite this long history…

In 1863, as part of an all-out race by European museum directors to acquire the most spectacular remnants of the classical world, the British Museum began to sponsor excavations in Ephesus. The museum’s archaeologists had previously found pieces of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in 1856—another wonder would certainly be a very large feather in their cap. Several ancient sources mention the Temple of Artemis, including the first-century A.D. Roman historian Pliny the Elder, who names the edifice’s fourth-century B.C. architect and marvels at the engineering feats required to raise an all-marble building 450 feet long and nearly 225 feet wide. Pliny also remarks on the temple’s 60-foot-high columns, 36 of which had bases covered with carved reliefs. Just two centuries later, the building he describes was gone. In 1869, it…

The Greek city of Rhodes emerged victorious from a yearlong siege by the Macedonian noble Demetrius Poliorcetes in 304 B.C. To commemorate their city’s resilience, the Rhodians built a towering bronze statue of the sun god Helios, their patron deity, who also appeared on their coinage. It took the local sculptor Chares 12 years to construct the Colossus of Rhodes, the tallest sculpture in the ancient world at some 120 feet. Chares created the statue using a revolutionary process known as casting in courses, which no other ancient sculptor is known to have employed. In order to cast each course, or level, of the Colossus in place, a huge earthen mound was built, enabling artisans to reach ever higher. They used metal bars to affx the bronze cladding to a…

TODAY, WATER FLOWS THROUGH a canal shaded from the fierce Arabian sun by overhanging palm trees in the remote village of Maqabil in northern Oman. The settlement is at the edge of the Bat Oasis, a pinpoint of green in the otherwise rocky and barren landscape of Oman’s desert interior. While oases might seem as natural to this landscape as the dunes themselves, that’s just a mirage. Oases are often the careful creations of generations subtly manipulating the arid environment. On hills around Maqabil stand mute reminders that people have been altering their surroundings in this hard country for millennia. Those who lived in a settlement in the Bat Oasis more than 4,000 years ago buried their dead in conical tombs standing as tall as two stories that were constructed…

ADVOCATE Colombian authorities recently requested that the United States renew bilateral agreements protecting their cultural resources from illegal importation. These requests fall under the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), which advises the U.S. president on agreements designed to safeguard archaeological objects from looting and illicit export. The AIA strongly supported Colombia’s request and urged members to submit letters of support ahead of the CPAC’s September meeting. This ongoing collaboration builds on a decade of successful repatriations. In March 2022, the FBI Art Crime Team returned artifacts to Colombia from a 2014 seizure of nearly 7,000 objects taken from the vast collection of amateur archaeologist Donald Miller, which included items from North and South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Papua New Guinea. The Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History identified…