Peer-Reviewed Publication The Dura-Europos site in modern-day Syria is famous for its exceptional state of preservation. Like Pompeii, this ancient city has yielded many great discoveries, and serves as a window into the world of the ancient Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman periods. Yet despite the prominence of Dura-Europos in Near Eastern scholarship, there is another city, only some miles down the Euphrates river, that presents a long-neglected opportunity for study. A new paper in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, entitled "The Ancient City of Giddan/Eddana (Anqa, Ira ..read more

Bones and artifacts indicate a timeline of herding and agriculture in northern Arabia Peer-Reviewed Publication PLOS   IMAGE:  RESEARCHERS EXPLORING THE UMM JIRSAN LAVA TUBE SYSTEM. view more  CREDIT: PALAEODESERTS PROJECT, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/) A large lava tube in Saudia Arabia provided valuable shelter for humans herding livestock over at least the past 7,000 years, according to a study published April 17, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mathew Stewart of Griffith University, Brisbane and colleagues. Research in ..read more

  IMAGE:  DURING THE BRONZE AGE, HAZOR WAS ONE OF THE LARGEST CITIES IN THE REGION. THE SETTLEMENT MOUND IS LOCATED IN THE NORTH OF ISRAEL. view more  CREDIT: MARYAM MATTA The early origins of the Israelites are at the centre of a new research project at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. A team of researchers led by Hebrew Bible scholar and archaeologist Prof. Dr Benedikt Hensel will explore over a three-year period how one of the largest “megacities” of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean was abandoned and then resettled over centuries – and how the narr ..read more

 Indigenous Australian message sticks, which feature markings to convey messages over long distances, analyzed for first time at scale through new database of 1,500 artifacts ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299712 ..read more

    IMAGE:  A VIEW OF THE URBAN AREA AT MU‘A.  view more  CREDIT: CREDIT: PHILLIP PARTON/ANU. New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).   The study used aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.   Lead author, PhD scholar Phillip Parton, said the new timeline also indicates that urbanisation in the Pacific was an indigenous innovation that developed ..read more

    IMAGE:  CLOVIS FLUTED POINTS HAFTED ONTO WOODEN HANDLES BY MICHAEL WILSON. (IMAGES CREDIT: METIN I. EREN) view more  CREDIT: METIN I. EREN Kent State University’s experimental archaeologists, along with those from several other universities, joined forces with the popular hunting, outdoors, and conservation media platform, MeatEater, Inc., for a unique animal processing experiment, shedding new light on ancient stone knives and showcasing the importance of testing and looking for equifinality.  ‘Equifinality’ is when two or more distinct processes can lead to ..read more

A re-evaluation of the ancient bronze lamp concludes that it is a cult object associated with the mystery cult of the god Dionysus Peer-Reviewed Publication DE GRUYTER   IMAGE:  THE ETRUSCAN LAMP OF CORTONA view more  CREDIT: MUSEO DELL'ACCADEMIA ETRUSCA E DELLA CITTÀ DI CORTONA A large, highly decorated bronze lamp found in a ditch near the town of Cortona, central Italy, is significantly older than previously estimated and shows the god Dionysus, a new study published in De Gruyter’s Etruscan and Italic Studies argues. The date of the lamp and the me ..read more

  IMAGE:  DENTAL PIECES OF SHEEP FOUND IN THE CUEVA DE EL TORO SAMPLED FOR THIS STUDY. (AUTHOR: ALEJANDRO SIERRA, UAB). view more  CREDIT: ALEJANDRO SIERRA, UAB The herding groups of the Southern Iberian Peninsula applied different management strategies for their livestock at the beginning of the Neolithic period, with different breeding, feeding and movement patterns, depending on their ecological and productive needs. This is indicated by a study led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) that has reconstructed the feeding practices of the first herding communit ..read more

During archaeological excavations in the Schöningen open-cast coal mine in 1994, the discovery of the oldest, remarkably well-preserved hunting weapons known to humanity caused an international sensation. Spears and a double-pointed throwing stick were found lying between animal bones about ten meters below the surface in deposits at a former lakeshore. In the years that followed, extensive excavations have gradually yielded numerous wooden objects from a layer dating from the end of a warm interglacial period 300,000 years ago. The findings suggested a hunting ground on the lakeshore. An inte ..read more

  IMAGE:  AN EGGSHELL FRAGMENT FROM THE SITE OF BASH TEPA, REPRESENTING ONE OF THE EARLIEST PIECES OF EVIDENCE FOR CHICKENS ON THE SILK ROAD view more  CREDIT: ROBERT SPENGLER Chickens are one of the most economically important animals in the world today. However, the story of their origins and dispersal across the ancient world is still poorly understood. In fact, new archaeological techniques have recently led to the recognition that many finds of bones previously thought to represent early chickens in fact belonged to wild birds. Now, in a new publication, an internati ..read more