Archaeology April 2013 Archive

Pipestone refers to one of a whole slew of stone raw material types that are soft, fine-grained, and easily carved into a wide variety of shapes. Hopewell catlinite pipe from ... Read More

During the first century BC, the Batavi, a branch of ethnic Chatti and auxiliary troops to the Roman legion, left their homes on the east bank of the Rhine River, ... Read More

Tree ring dating, often called dendrochronology, is a fascinating science that uses the growth rings of long-lived trees as a record of climatic change in a region. Tree ring analysis ... Read More

The largest pyramid in the American continents, and one of the largest in the world, is that at Cholula, in central Mexico. Model of the classic period (AD 750-950) ... Read More

The latest domestication history to the About.com collection is the azuki bean, the tasty red bean so popular in Japanese cuisine. Azuki Beans. Photo by Richard West Although azuki beans were ... Read More

I've long been interested in how and when humans domesticated plants and animals, but a side interest of mine that occasionally surfaces is the history of ancient prepared foods. Home-made ... Read More

The latest information about the invention of ceramic containers is that the technology was developed in East Asia, probably Japan or the Yangtze valley of China perhaps 20,000 years ago. ... Read More

Black drink is a tea, made from toasted leaves of the American holly (Ilex vomitoria), and, according to the latest archaeological research, it was used by Native American groups in ... Read More

The Antikythera Mechanism is a wildly improbable object, an astronomical computing tool (quite possibly) made by the engineer/mathematician Archimedes in the 3rd century BC, and found in a Roman shipwreck ... Read More

I must admit that this article comes out of my frustration about a piece of jargon that shows up in archaeological literature these days: the practice of referring to marine ... Read More