Features
Features September/October 2025
How to Build a Medieval Castle
Why are archaeologists constructing a thirteenth-century fortress in the forests of France?
RECENT Features
Features September/October 2025
Spirit Cave Connection
The world’s oldest mummified person is the ancestor of Nevada’s Northern Paiute people
Features September/October 2025
Here Comes the Sun
On a small Danish island 5,000 years ago, farmers crafted tokens to bring the sun out of the shadows
Features September/October 2025
Myth of the Golden Dragon
Eclectic artifacts from tombs in northeastern China tell the story of a little-known dynasty
Features September/October 2025
Remote Sanctuary at the Crossroads of Empire
Ancient Bactrians invented distinct ways to worship their gods 2,300 years ago in Tajikistan
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Features July/August 2020
From Head to Toe in the Ancient Maya World
Clothing, jewelry, and body modification spoke volumes about people’s social status and the varied roles they played
(Photograph © 2020 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Cylinder vase. Maya, Late Classic Period, A.D. 600–800. Object Place: El Petén, Guatemala. Earthenware: orange, red, dark pink, brown, gray (originally green), and black on cream slip paint; traces of Maya Blue pigment. 17.2 x 11.8 cm (6 3/4 x 4 5/8 in.). MS1119; Kerr 764. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Landon T. Clay. 1988.1176.) -
Features July/August 2020
A Silk Road Renaissance
Excavations in Tajikistan have unveiled a city of merchant princes that flourished from the fifth to the eighth century a.d.
(Prisma Archivo/Alamy Stock Photo) -
Features July/August 2020
Idol of the Painted Temple
On Peru’s central coast, an ornately carved totem was venerated across centuries of upheaval and conquest
(© Peter Eeckhout) -
Features May/June 2020
Weapons of the Ancient World
How people of the past developed arms to master the challenges of their time
(Leemage/ Contributor/GettyImages) -
Features May/June 2020
A Path to Freedom
At a Union Army camp in Kentucky, enslaved men, women, and children struggled for their lives and fought to be free
(National Archives Records Administration, Washington, DC) -
Features May/June 2020
Villages in the Sky
High in the Rockies, archaeologists have discovered evidence of mountain life 4,000 years ago
(Matt Stirn)