Archaeology December 2010 Archive

Last week the journal Nature reported additional data supporting the astonishing idea that a previously unidentified hominid lived among us up until at least 30,000 years ago. The data were ... Read More

Always on top of things, Archaeology magazine has selected an eclectic group of stories reported this year as their list of top ten discoveries. From Paleolithic Tools on Crete, to ... Read More

This week's Fieldwork in Focus comes from Christopher Fennell at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is leading excavations at the Edgefield district in South Carolina.

A long-standing debate in anthropological circles has become a recent and white-hot discussion on many science blogs--so hot both the New York Times and Gawker have covered it. Basically, the ... Read More

Great Zimbabwe is the best known archaeological site dated to the Zimbabwe culture of the late African Iron Age.

The Mesoamerican ball game is oldest known sport played in the Americas: the earliest example we have is at Paso de la Amada, dated to at least 1400 BC.

Archaeological and genetic evidence together indicate that all potatoes originated from South America--including sweet potatoes, Idaho potatoes and even these lovely purple Vitelottes.

The New Philadelphia Archaeological Project (NSF-REU) is a fieldschool in archaeology, geosciences, and laboratory techniques, held at the town site of New Philadelphia, a 19th century multi-racial farming community in ... Read More

You won't hear this very often about an archaeological site, but Yaxchilán, located on the banks of the Usumacinta river on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, is one of ... Read More

The avocado or alligator pear is among the most important and traded tropical fruit in the world. Hints about the history of the avocado are found in its original name ... Read More

Hunting and gathering is an old lifestyle that hardly anyone practices any more. Basically, a hunter-gatherer family lived off the land, migrating as the birds and mammals moved around the ... Read More