Archaeology News

2,400-Year-Old Iron-Smelting Workshop Unearthed in Senegal

A pile of tuyères at the site of Didé West 1 in Senegal. Image credit: Anne Mayor.
Mar 31, 2026 by News Staff

Excavations at the archaeological site of Didé West 1 in eastern Senegal have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved iron-smelting workshop dated between the 4th century BCE and the 4th century CE, representing nearly eight centuries of activity. A pile of tuyères at the site of Didé West 1 in Senegal. Image credit: Anne Mayor. In Europe, the Iron Age is generally dated from around 800 BCE to the end of the first century CE. However, these chronological...

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Large naturalistic style thylacine with sharp teeth from Injalak Hill, Northern Territory, Australia. Image credit: Craig Banggar.

Researchers Discover Tasmanian Tiger and Tasmanian Devil Paintings in Northern Australia

Mar 30, 2026 by News Staff

Both the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) are believed to have become extinct on the Australian...

Canadian Eskimo dogs. Illustration by John James Audubon and John Bachman (1845-1848).

Ancient DNA Study Rewrites Origins of Europe’s First Dogs

Mar 26, 2026 by News Staff

Scientists have extracted and analyzed DNA from 216 canid remains, including 181 from Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe. The oldest data that they recovered...

The Acropolis at Athens by Leo von Klenze.

Democracy’s Roots Run Far Deeper than Ancient Greece, New Study Says

Mar 19, 2026 by News Staff

Examining 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, researchers found that democratic systems were more widespread than once believed...

A butterfly clay bead from the Final Natufian period in Eynan-Mallaha, the Upper Jordan Valley, colored red with ochre and marked with the fingerprints of the child (around 10 years old) who modeled it 12,000 years ago. Image credit: Laurent Davin.

Long Before Pottery, Children Shaped Clay to Tell Stories

Mar 19, 2026 by News Staff

A cache of 142 beads and pendants from five Natufian (15,000 to 11,650 years before the present) sites in Israel reveals that clay was first used not for...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neanderthals May Have Used Birch Tar as Natural Antibiotic

Mar 18, 2026 by News Staff

New experiments show that tar made from birch bark — long known as a tool adhesive — can inhibit harmful bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus,...

Straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) were the largest land mammals of the European Pleistocene. Image credit: Hodari Nundu, CC-BY-4.0.

Neanderthals May Have Hunted Giant Elephants that Roamed across Prehistoric Europe

Mar 16, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Chemical clues preserved in the teeth of straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) from the 125,000-year-old site of Neumark-Nord in Germany suggest...

A pair of scarlet macaws (Ara macao) in Costa Rica. Image credit: Julio-César Chávez / CC BY 4.0.

Ancient Parrot DNA Points to Pre-Inca Animal Trade

Mar 10, 2026 by News Staff

Ancient DNA from brightly colored feathers found in Peru shows that at least four distinct species of Amazonian parrots — the scarlet macaw (Ara...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neolithic Europeans Had Surprisingly Complex Cuisine, Archaeologists Say

Mar 5, 2026 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists has examined a total of 85 pottery sherds with substantial amounts of foodcrusts from 13 archaeological sites across...

Plaquette with hybrid creature (so-called ‘Adorant’), ivory, from the Swabian Aurignacian. Image credit: Christian Bentz & Ewa Dutkiewicz, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2520385123.

Early Humans May Have Invented System of Symbols Long Before Writing

Feb 25, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

Early humans living in Europe some 40,000 years ago developed a conventional system of geometric signs — deliberate, repeatable markings that went...

Original photograph of the Badari drill published in 1927 by Guy Brunton (left) and the actual artifact. Image credit: Martin Odler & Jiří Kmošek, doi: 10.1553/AEundL35s289.

5,300-Year-Old Drilling Tool Found in Egypt

Feb 11, 2026 by News Staff

A tiny copper-alloy object long dismissed as a simple awl has been reclassified as the earliest known rotary metal drill from ancient Egypt. Original photograph...

Artist’s reconstruction of Xigou tool-hafting. Image credit: Hulk Yuan, IVPP.

China’s Xigou Site Yields Evidence of Advanced Stone Tool Technology

Jan 27, 2026 by News Staff

Technological innovations in Africa and Western Europe in the later part of the Middle Pleistocene signal the behavioral complexity of hominin populations....

An artist’s impression of a Marathousa 1 woman producing a digging stick from a small alder tree trunk with a small stone tool. Image credit: G. Prieto / K. Harvati.

430,000-Year-Old Wooden Handheld Tools are Earliest Ever Found

Jan 27, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists say they have discovered the ‘earliest known handheld wooden tools’ at the Middle Pleistocene site of Marathousa 1 in Greece. An artist’s...

Leang Bulu Bettue in the Maros-Pangkep karst area of South Sulawesi. Image credit: Burhan et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337993.

Enigmatic Hominins May Have Overlapped with Homo sapiens on Sulawesi

Jan 13, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

At Leang Bulu Bettue, a rock-shelter in the Maros-Pangkep karst region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, paleoanthropologists have uncovered one of...

The 60,000-year-old backed microlith from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: (A) buphanidrine and (B) epibuphanisine detected in a sample from the microlith; (C) the microlith showing the reddish poisonous adhesive residue still adhering to the dorsal backed portion of the tool. Image credit: Isaksson et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281.

60,000-Year-Old Poisoned Arrowheads Found in South Africa

Jan 8, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have identified traces of two toxic plant alkaloids — buphandrine and epibuphanisine — on artifacts from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter...

Reconstruction of Homo erectus.

773,000-Year-Old Hominin Fossils from Morocco Offer New Clues to Roots of Homo sapiens

Jan 7, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

The hominin fossils discovered in the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca, Morocco, are providing new evidence about the deep origins...

An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun.

Researchers Sequence Genome of 200,000-Year-Old Denisovan

Jan 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team led by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology scientists has generated the high-quality genome assembly of a Denisovan using...

Ancient humans. Image credit: sjs.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.

European Homo sapiens May Have Been Hunting with Bow and Arrow Earlier than Previously Believed

Dec 30, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

In a new paper published this month in the journal iScience, researchers from the University of Tübingen and elsewhere present a multidisciplinary analysis...

The 3,000-year-old pottery workshop of Gird-i Bazar at the Dinka Settlement Complex in Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. From this perspective, the walls of the buildings are clearly visible, along with the kilns. Image credit: Andrea Squitieri.

3,000-Year-Old Pottery Workshop Unearthed in Iraqi Kurdistan

Dec 29, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen and the LMU Munich have unearthed the ruins of an ancient pottery workshop at the early Iron Age Dinka...

Reconstruction of Mezhirich’s mammoth bone structure in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan. Image credit: Momotarou2012.

18,000-Year-Old Circular Dwellings Made of Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Ukraine

Dec 25, 2025 by Sergio Prostak

The Upper Paleolithic site of Mezhyrich, located in Cherkasy oblast, central Ukraine, is home to four remarkable mammoth bone structures. Ranging from...

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