Archaeology News

Archaeologists Find Traces of Indigo Dye on 34,000-Year-Old Grinding Tools from Georgia

Five pebbles from Dzudzuana Cave, Georgia. Image credit: Longo et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0321262.
Sep 2, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and elsewhere have found traces of indigotin — a blue secondary compound, also known as indigo — on unknapped ground stone tools recovered from Dzudzuana Cave, located in the foothills of the Caucasus in Georgia. Indigotin forms through a reaction between atmospheric oxygen and the natural glycoside precursors in the leaves of Isatis tinctoria. This proves that the plant, despite...

read more...
The impression of a cylinder seal from the Uruk period, around 3100 BCE. Image credit: Louvre Museum.

Ancient Sumer’s Rise Was Driven by Interplay of Rivers and Tides, Archaeologists Say

Sep 2, 2025 by News Staff

New research introduces a paleoenvironmental model in which tidal dynamics influenced the earliest development of agriculture and sociopolitical complexity...

A selection of ‘Phoenician oil bottles’ (c. 750/740-550/530 BCE) from Motya, Italy. Image credit: A. Orsingher.

Archaeologists Find Residues of Aromatic Oils in Phoenicians Bottles

Aug 27, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have performed the first systematic, interdisciplinary analysis of the composition, technology, and contents of 51 ‘Phoenician oil bottles’...

Stonehenge. Image credit: Regina Wolfs.

Neolithic Cow Tooth Supports Welsh Origin of Stonehenge Stones

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists from University College London and elsewhere have examined a molar tooth of a female Bos taurus (cow) discovered at Stonehenge. Stonehenge....

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Paleoanthropologists Discover Earliest Evidence of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists from Tel Aviv University, the Université de Liège and France’s Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle say they have found a combination...

Forensic facial reconstruction of another Australopithecus species - A. afarensis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Early Homo and Australopithecus Co-Existed in Ethiopia before 2.5 Million Years Ago

Aug 13, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

New hominin fossils recovered from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area in the Afar region of Ethiopia suggest the presence of early Homo at 2.78 and...

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

Mystery Archaic Hominins Lived in Sulawesi 1.04 Million Years Ago

Aug 7, 2025 by News Staff

The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated...

Paestum honey: (A) underground shrine in Paestum, Italy; (B) one of the hydrias on display alongside a Perspex box containing the residue at the Ashmolean Museum in 2019; (C) graphic representation of the arrangement of the bronze jars inside the shrine; (D) sample from the core of the residue. Image credit: da Costa Carvalho et al., doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c04888.

Bronze Jars Found in Italy Contain 2,500-Year-Old Honey, Archaeologists Find

Jul 30, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have re-examined a 2500-year-old residue found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum, Italy, previously identified as a wax/fat/resin...

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

Neanderthals Had Local Food Traditions, New Research Suggests

Jul 17, 2025 by News Staff

Amud and Kebara caves in northern Israel are two broadly contemporaneous Middle Paleolithic sites dated to 70,000-50,000 years ago, both located in the...

The wooden tools found at the site of Gantangqing in China. Image credit: Liu et al., doi: 10.1126/science.adr8540.

300,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Discovered in China

Jul 3, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have unearthed an assemblage of 35 wooden tools — digging sticks and small, complete, hand-held pointed tools — at the Early...

Nebamun hunting in the marshes with his wife and daughter, part of a wall painting from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, Thebes, New Kingdom, 1350 BC. Image credit: Werner Forman Archive / Bridgeman Images.

Researchers Sequence Whole Genome of Ancient Egyptian

Jul 2, 2025 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has sequenced the whole genome from an adult male Egyptian who lived between over 4,500 years ago — a few centuries...

Rice phytoliths from excavations at Ritidian Beach Cave, Guam. Scale bars - 10 μm. Image credit: Carson et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adw3591.

Archaeologists Find 3,500-Year-Old Traces of Rice in Guam

Jun 25, 2025 by News Staff

Rice was a staple crop in the ancestral Austronesian regions of Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia, but it was unknown in any of the Pacific Islands at the...

Isometric reconstruction of the Palaspata temple rendered with 3-m-tall walls. Image credit: Capriles et al., doi: 10.15184/aqy.2025.59.

Tiwanaku Civilization’s Temple Discovered in Bolivia

Jun 24, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists in Bolivia have discovered an ancient complex roughly 215 km (130 miles) south-east of Tiwanaku’s historical site, where a large, modular...

The ancient human footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, the United States. Image credit: Bennett et al., doi: 10.1126/science.abg7586.

Human Footprints at White Sands Are Up To 22,400 Years Old: Study

Jun 23, 2025 by News Staff

Discovery of human footprints at White Sands, New Mexico, dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, was a notable step in understanding the initial...

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

Ancient DNA Study Traces Incredible Journey of Dogs across Americas

Jun 18, 2025 by News Staff

Pre-contact Central and South American dogs (Canis familiaris) — all dogs preceding contact with European settlers — descended from a single...

The wild boar (Sus scrofa). Image credit: Elşad İbrahimov / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Pigs Were Domesticated from Wild Boars in South China over 8,000 Years Ago, Study Suggests

Jun 10, 2025 by News Staff

China has long been considered one of the locations for original domestication of wild boars (Sus scrofa) but tracking the initial process has always been...

Dead Sea Scroll 4Q7, a fragment of the Book of Genesis found in Wadi Qumran Cave 4. Image credit: KetefHinnomFan.

Some Dead Sea Scrolls Older than Previously Thought, AI Analysis Suggests

Jun 4, 2025 by News Staff

Determining by means of paleography the chronology of ancient handwritten manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls is essential for reconstructing the...

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

Study: Meat Preservation and Predator Protection, Rather than Cooking, Were Drivers of Early Fire Use

Jun 4, 2025 by News Staff

The use of fire marks a critical milestone in human evolution, with its initial purposes debated among scholars. While cooking is often cited as the primary...

Taxonomic identification of the 173 worked (a) and unworked (b) bone objects: (1) blank, Tito Bustillo, sperm whale; (2) projectile point with massive base, Isturitz, blue whale; (3) projectile point, Brassempouy, fin whale; (4) possible foreshaft, Las Caldas, sperm whale; (5) projectile point with massive base, Ermittia, gray whale; (6) unidentified object, Saint-Michel, sperm whale; (7-10) unworked fragments of fin whale bone, Santa Catalina. Image credit: McGrath et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-59486-8.

20,000-Year-Old Whale Bone Tools Found in Spain

May 27, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have examined a large sample of worked bone objects from 26 Paleolithic cave and rockshelter sites in the Cantabrian region of Spain and...

Aerial drone photograph showing the preserved stone section of the Gobi Wall traversing the hillside. Image credit: Golan et al., doi: 10.3390/land14051087.

Archaeologists Uncover New Evidence about Construction and Purpose of Gobi Wall

May 27, 2025 by News Staff

The Gobi Wall is a 321-km-long structure made of earth, stone, and wood, located in the Gobi highland desert of Mongolia. It is the least understood section...

© 2011-2026. Sci.News. All Rights Reserved. | Back to top