Letters From

Letter from Mongolia November/December 2025

Building the Black City

Why the nomads of the Uighur Empire constructed a medieval urban center like no other

View of Karabalgasun, Mongolia, landscape

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Letter from Greece September/October 2025

Searching for Washingtonia

How archaeologists located a forgotten nineteenth-century utopian community

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Albert Sarvis

Letter from Williamsburg July/August 2025

A New Look at an Old City

Archaeologists are reconstructing the complicated 400-year history of Virginia’s colonial capital

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Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith/The Library of Congress

Letter From Albania May/June 2025

The Many Fortresses of Ali Pasha

How a father and son are documenting the architectural legacy of a renegade nineteenth-century warlord

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Andronira Burda

Letter from the Levant March/April 2025

On the Origin of the Pork Taboo

Exploring ancient people’s shifting beliefs about rearing and eating pigs

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Courtesy Giorgio Buccellati

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  • Letter from Woodhenge January/February 2021

    Stonehenge's Continental Cousin

    A 4,000-year-old ringed sanctuary reveals a German village’s surprising connections with Britain

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    (Photo Matthias Zirn)
  • Letter from Israel November/December 2020

    The Price of Purple

    Archaeologists have found new evidence of a robust dye industry that endured on the Mediterranean coast for millennia

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Michael Eisenberg)
  • Letter from Alcatraz September/October 2020

    Inside the Rock's Surprising History

    Before it was an infamous prison, Fort Alcatraz played a key role defending the West Coast

    Read Article
    (Hans Blossey/Alamy Stock Photo)
  • Letter from Normandy July/August 2020

    The Legacy of the Longest Day

    More than 75 years after D-Day, the Allied invasion’s impact on the French landscape is still not fully understood

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    (National Archives)
  • Letter from Morocco May/June 2020

    Splendor at the Edge of the Sahara

    Excavations of a bustling medieval city tell the tale of a powerful Berber dynasty

    Read Article
    (Photo Courtesy Chloé Capel)
  • Letter from the Four Corners March/April 2020

    In Search of Prehistoric Potatoes

    Native peoples of the American Southwest dined on a little-known spud at least 10,000 years ago

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    (©2020/Jerry Redfern)
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