Letters From
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
RECENT Letters From
Letter from Nigeria July/August 2024
A West African Kingdom's Roots
Excavations in Benin City reveal a renowned realm’s deep history
Letter from the Catskills May/June 2024
Ghost Towns of the Ashokan Reservoir
An archaeologist investigates how construction of New York City’s largest reservoir a century ago uprooted thousands of rural residents
Letter from Nicaragua March/April 2024
Who Were the People of Greater Nicoya?
Archaeologists are challenging long-held assumptions about Mesoamerica’s influence on Indigenous peoples to its south
Letter from Rome January/February 2024
Secrets of the Catacombs
A subterranean necropolis offers archaeologists a rare glimpse of the city’s early Jewish community
MORE Letters From
-
Letter From Singapore November/December 2017
The Lion City's Glorious Past
The founding mythology of this city-state was once thought to be pure fiction—archaeology says otherwise
(Courtesy John Miksic) -
Letter from California September/October 2017
The Ancient Ecology of Fire
Lessons emerge from the ways in which North American hunter-gatherers managed the landscape around them
(Justin Sullivan / Gettyimages) -
Letter From Peru July/August 2017
Connecting Two Realms
Archaeologists rethink the early civilizations of the Amazon
(Courtesy Quirino Olivera Nuñez) -
Letter from Greenland May/June 2017
The Ghosts of Kangeq
The race to save Greenland’s Arctic coastal heritage from a shifting climate
(Photo: R. Fortuna, National Museum of Denmark 2016) -
Letter from Philadelphia March/April 2017
Empire of Glass
An unusual industrial history emerges from some of the city’s hippest neighborhoods
(Courtesy AECOM, Digging I-95) -
Letter from Laos January/February 2017
A Singular Landscape
New technology is enabling archaeologists to explore a vast but little-studied mortuary complex in war-damaged Laos
(Jerry Redfern)