Features From the Issue
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(Seiji Shimzu/Corbis) -
(Vincent Scarano on behalf of Connecticut College) -
Features
Eternal Banquets of the Early Celts
An extraordinary 2,500-year-old tomb offers vital evidence of trade, ritual, and power in fifth-century B.C. France
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Features
Where the Wells Never Go Dry
In a remote corner of Saudi Arabia, a team has been excavating the remains of the ancient oasis of Tayma
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Features
North of Paris
Remains of a medieval castle and manor house help tell the story of a powerful French family
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Features
The Power of Images
A view of ancient Mesoamerican life through artists' eyes
Letter From Wales
Letter From Wales
Hillforts of the Iron Age
Searching for evidence of cultural changes that swept the prehistoric British Isles
Artifact
Artifacts
Viking Sword
Digs & Discoveries
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Digs & Discoveries
The Second Americans?
(ShutterStock) -
Digs & Discoveries
How Much Water Reached Rome?
(Courtesy Duncan Keenan-Jones, University of Glasgow) -
Digs & Discoveries
Paleo-Dentistry
(Courtesy Stefano Benazzi) -
Digs & Discoveries
Friars' Leather Shop
(Courtesy Oxford Archaeology) -
Digs & Discoveries
The Gates of Gath
(Courtesy Griffin Aerial Imagery) -
Digs & Discoveries
Slinky Nordic Treasures
(Courtesy Danish National Museum) -
Digs & Discoveries
Lake George's Unfinished Fort
(Courtesy David Starbuck) -
Digs & Discoveries
Last Flight of a Tuskegee Airman
(Courtesy Wayne R. Lusardi, State of Michigan Maritime Archaeologist) -
Digs & Discoveries
Mysterious Golden Sacrifice
(Courtesy National Museum of Korea) -
Digs & Discoveries
Aftermath of War
(Courtesy Edgar Ring) -
Digs & Discoveries
Game of Diplomacy
(Courtesy John Ives, Gabriel Yanicki) -
Digs & Discoveries
The Magnetism of the Iron Age
(Gary A. Glatzmaier, Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy) -
Digs & Discoveries
Rituals of Maya Kingship
(Courtesy Marcello Canuto, Tulane University) -
Digs & Discoveries
Premature Aging
(Wikimedia Commons, Photo: Michael P. Kube-McDowell) -
Digs & Discoveries
Switzerland Everlasting
(Courtesy Stefan Hochuli, Zug Office of Monuments and Archaeology)
Off the Grid
Off the Grid November/December 2015
Fan Bay Deep Shelter, Dover, England
Around the World
Explore
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NEW ZEALAND
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CHINA
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KAZAKHSTAN
NEW ZEALAND
NEW ZEALAND: On private Great Mercury Island off the northeast coast, archaeologists are excavating an early Maori site—dating to the second half of the 14th century, perhaps just decades after Polynesian seafarers first arrived. It appears to be a small fishing settlement, marked by thousands of stone artifacts, as well as fishhooks made from sea mammal teeth and the bones of moa, the large native birds that were hunted to extinction 100 years after human arrival. A number of oceanside sites such as this one are at risk from coastal erosion. —SAMIR S. PATEL
CHINA
CHINA: For 500 years, residents near the Quinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province went to Dayu Cave to collect water and—when times were tough—pray for rain. They also left inscriptions about those times that, combined with the isotopic and elemental content of the cave’s rock formations, provide a unique historic and geological record of climate and rainfall. Seven separate drought events are recorded in both the inscriptions and deposits, some associated with major social instability. A scientific model suggests that the region is due for severe drought again soon. —SAMIR S. PATEL
KAZAKHSTAN
KAZAKHSTAN: Following tips from local officials, archaeologists working at the Koitas cemetery recently excavated a kurgan, or burial mound, which had clearly been looted in antiquity. They found scattered bones from an elite Scythian burial, including a vertebra with an entire 2.2-inch-long bronze arrowhead embedded in it. Bone growth suggests that—defying the odds for a spinal injury victim in the Iron Age, or any age, for that matter—the Scythian survived for some time after the blow. —SAMIR S. PATEL