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Top 10 Discoveries of 2025 January/February 2026

Courtesy New Kingdom Research Foundation
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Enjoy these additional images from ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine's Top 10 Discoveries of 2025. Image 1 is from "Tales From the Neolithic." Image 2 is from "Return of the King." Image 3 is from "Crete's Inner Circles." Image 4 is from "Dining With Dionysus." Images 5 and 6 are from "The Case of the Missing Pharaoh." Image 7 is from "The Winds of Change."

Inside a decorated bottomless stone bowl, archaeologists at the site of Karahantepe in eastern Turkey found a smaller decorated stone bowl filled with stone batons and tiny stone figurines depicting a boar, a fox, and a vulture whose necks were encircled with stone rings.
A large void at the site of Caracol in Belize turned out to be the tomb of Te’ Kab Chaak, the founder of Caracol’s first dynasty, who ruled the kingdom beginning in a.d. 331. This is a highly unusual example of a Maya tomb that has been associated with a known person.
This aerial view of the summit of Papoura Mountain in central Crete shows a newly excavated large circular structure that was built by members of the Minoan culture as early as 3000 b.c. The complex likely served as gathering place for the region’s inhabitants.
A first-century b.c. fresco depicting a follower of Dionysus was uncovered in a house in Pompeii that has come to be known as the House of the Thiasus after the term for a Dionysian procession.
A section of the Amduat, a text that guided deceased Egyptian pharaohs on their journey to reunite with the sun, was found painted on the wall of the tomb of the pharaoh Thutmose II (reigned ca. 1492–1479 B.C.) at the site of Thebes in Egypt. Using this text was the king’s sole prerogative.
Painted fragments depicting stars against a blue sky were once part of the decorated ceiling of Thutmose II’s tomb. Like the use of the Amduat, starred ceilings were reserved for kings.
Three views of a wooden atlatl, or spear thrower, inlaid with mother of pearl and featuring a carved whale bone handle representing an anthropomorphic being that was discovered as part of a luxurious burial at the site of Pampa la Cruz in Peru

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