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November/December 2025 Issue

Beehive-shaped tombs at the site of Al-Ayn, Oman
Vadim Nefedov/Alamy

Features From the Issue

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  • Features

    Secrets of the Seven Wonders

    How archaeologists are rediscovering the ancient world's most marvelous monuments

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    © The Trustees of the British Museum

  • Features

    Acts of Faith

    Evidence emerges of the day in 1562 when an infamous Spanish cleric tried to destroy Maya religion

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    Adriana Rosas/Alamy

  • Features

    Temples to Tradition

    A looted cache of bronzes compels archaeologists to explore Celtic sanctuaries across Burgundy

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    The temple at the Gallo-Roman sanctuary in Couan in east-central France
    M. Thivet, MSHE

  • Features

    Oasis Makers of Arabia

    Researchers are just beginning to understand how people thrived in the desert of Oman some 5,000 years ago

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    Beehive-shaped tombs at the site of Al-Ayn, Oman
    Vadim Nefedov/Alamy

  • Features

    Searching for Venezuela’s Undiscovered Artists

    Inspired by their otherworldly landscape, ancient people created a new rock art tradition

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    José Miguel Pérez-Gómez

Letter from Mongolia

Letter from Mongolia

Building the Black City

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

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View of Karabalgasun, Mongolia, landscape
H. Rohland/DAI Bonn
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Artifact

Artifacts

Viking Chess Piece

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Roberto Fortuna/Courtesy the National Museum of Denmark
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Digs & Discoveries

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Off the Grid

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Off the Grid November/December 2025

Bighorn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming

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Lee Rentz/Alamy

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Slideshow: Keepers and Finders of Gallo-Roman Sanctuaries

The Celtic people inhabiting what is now east-central France began demarcating sacred areas in the fourth century b.c. These areas slowly grew into sanctuaries that included sacred enclosures, wooden temples, and gathering areas. At these sites, worshippers left offerings of glass beads, iron farming tools, miniature drinking cups, battle trumpets called carnyces, and much more. In the first century b.c., the Romans made their influence felt at sites such as the Celtic city of Bibracte and the rural sanctuary of Couan. After Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (roughly modern France) in the 50s b.c., a hybrid Gallo-Roman culture developed, blending Celtic and Roman gods, and Celtic craftsmanship with Roman styles. In the past two decades, French archaeologists have been excavating these sanctuaries, seeking the elusive Celtic temples whose remnants lie beneath Gallo-Roman ones. In the process, they have unearthed wondrous and mundane artifacts dating from the fifth century b.c. to the fourth century a.d. Archaeologists are also realizing how many precious offerings have been lost to modern greed and looting. To read our article on excavations of Gallo-Roman sanctuaries, click here.

Starting in the third century b.c., Celts in continental Europe began living in unfortified farming communities in the plains. Amid the turmoil of the late second century b.c., Celts were often caught between incursions of Germanic tribes to the north and counterattacks from the Romans. This series of clashes is known as the Cimbrian War (113–101 b.c.). Celts in today’s western and central Europe were compelled to move to compact fortified settlements called oppida, usually located on hilltops. Bibracte, the power center of the Aedui tribe of Celts in eastern Gaul, was one such oppidum. Atop Mont Beuvray, shown here, Bibracte’s population reached an estimated 10,000 in the first century b.c.
The Aedui who lived in Bibracte drank from distinctive oval-shaped handleless cups. Some were glazed black (right). Other cups (center) were adorned with geometric patterns. Even before the Roman conquest of Gaul, the Aedui imported Roman ceramics such as this jug (left). In the decades after the conquest, the Aedui stopped producing their old styles of tableware and began to use Roman designs entirely. As the Celts wrote no histories, it remains a matter of debate how much of Roman culture they willingly adopted.
Bibracte has been excavated for longer than it was inhabited. The settlement was established around the end of the second century b.c. and mostly abandoned by the end of the first century b.c. Excavated architecture and artifacts show that at the start of its lifespan, Bibracte was a Celtic town; by the end, however, it was a Gallo-Roman one. Right around the midpoint of Bibracte’s existence, two buildings competed for attention in its city center. Standing amid the center’s ruins, Andrea Fochesato, Bibracte’s head of archaeological programs, explains that one of these buildings was a stone basilica constructed with columns, antefixes, and other typically Roman architectural elements. The other building, he says, was a public complex, possibly a sanctuary, built and later rebuilt using timber in a conspicuously old-fashioned Celtic style.
The Morvan massif of east-central France is rich in iron ore, and the Celts were masters of all manner of metalwork. Archaeologists have unearthed many small metal workshops at settlements in eastern Gaul, where everyday accessories such as fibulas, or brooches, were mass produced. A first-century b.c. brooch mold (top right) found at Bibracte has been reconstructed to demonstrate the technique: Wax models of fibulas were arranged in rings, with a ceramic mold (top left) fashioned and fired around them. Once the wax was removed, the mold was used to cast fibulas in bronze and was then broken open. Individual bronze fibulas were detached from the ring (center left) and finished by hand (center right). At sanctuaries across eastern Gaul, worshippers deposited fibulas—both everyday bronze examples as well as gold ones—as votive offerings. Hundreds of these accessories have been unearthed, representing dozens of styles.
At the foot of Mont Beuvray, archaeologists located a large, unfortified satellite settlement or suburb of Bibracte 2.5 miles from the city. This settlement’s inhabitants gathered at sanctuaries, too, including a complex shown here called the Sources of the Yonne, which was excavated between 2016 and 2024. The sanctuary encompassed three wooden temples built on terraces. Like most sanctuary temples in eastern Gaul, they were square, with square inner chambers. Also as at most sanctuary temples in eastern Gaul, people offered all manner of votive offerings, including ceramics and coins, there. The settlement may have developed around the sacred spot, but despite the sanctuary’s location near springs that fed the Yonne River, archaeologists found no water pipes or other hydraulic installations at the site. Although some Celtic sanctuaries hosted ablution rituals, there is no evidence that such rituals took place here.
The carnyx, an upright battle trumpet, was a symbol of Celtic warfare dating to before most Celtic lands were conquered by Rome. This modern reconstruction borrows elements from two ancient artifacts. The raging boar’s head at the bell end is modeled after a copper-alloy carnyx excavated in fragments at a sanctuary in Mandeure, a town near the Swiss border. In the centuries before the Roman conquest, Celtic soldiers sacrificed swords, shield bosses, carnyces, military ensigns, spear tips, and other arms at sanctuaries. Romans generally tolerated, and even participated in, the traditional rituals of eastern Gaul, but they put a stop to the offering of weapons and war accessories.
Before the Roman conquest, the Aedui controlled most of the Morvan massif in central France. Thirty-six miles north of Bibracte, they built a sanctuary in the countryside. Centuries after its destruction, it was lost amid the wheat fields of a lightly wooded area called Couan. For three decades, the site was known only to a man named Georges-André Colas, who looted a magnificent cache of bronzes from the sanctuary in 1977. In 2008, Colas confessed to trafficking what has come to be known as the Cobannus hoard. Geophysical surveys confirmed the presence of a sanctuary in the field in 2016, and archaeologists began excavating at the site three years later. In 2025, a team of archaeologists and students dug trenches in the southeast corner of the site. One contained remnants of an ancient road next to the sanctuary (leftmost trench above). In the hilly area to the west (background), a Gallo-Roman rural settlement was located about a 15-minute trip from the sanctuary by foot.
After plundering the Couan site, Colas suffered multiple misfortunes and tragedies, and the current team of archaeologists has contended with flooding, pneumonia, car accidents, yet more treasure hunters, and a COVID outbreak that scotched the 2020 dig. In 2025, however, the “curse of Cobannus” abated. Archaeologist and site director Rebecca Perruche (right) examines a trench in a 2,200-square-foot roofed building outside the sacred enclosure, which was likely used for assembly. This year, Perruche’s team uncovered a burial dating to the fifth or sixth century a.d. in the floor of the building. This suggests that the pagan sanctuary continued to be seen as hallowed ground even after it was destroyed around a.d. 380.
Although Colas looted and sold dozens of precious artifacts from Couan, he missed one particularly intriguing specimen. In 2019, archaeologists located the torso of a statue dating to the fifth century b.c.—some 400 years before the sanctuary was established. Only three Celtic statues with similar features have been found in Europe. These other statues have oversized heads and wide hips. The Couan statue is shown wearing a crosshatched cuirass. Archaeologist Rebecca Perruche believes the statue most likely depicted a real man, perhaps a warrior or leader in an early Celtic community, and that it was imbued with spiritual meaning over the centuries, ultimately coming to represent an ancestor god. Around the first half of the first century a.d., the statue was deliberately broken and buried under the temple’s Roman-period altar, perhaps in a sacrificial ceremony. Perruche suggests that the Romans may have wanted to put a Celtic warrior god to rest.
When Colas looted the Couan site, he documented his finds unusually well. He made plaster casts of the 79 ancient artworks he dug up, including many bronze statues and figurines of deities, people, and animals. He also sketched the looter’s pit and the positions of items in the hoard as he found them, and made a map of the area. Despite the damage Colas wrought, he led archaeologists to the scene of the crime, allowing them to make additional discoveries.
Of the 79 artworks Colas looted, only eight are accounted for today. Colas took this photo of part of the original assemblage. The bronzes in the hoard included a three-horned bull (left), possibly a Celtic fertility deity; depictions of protector gods and the goddess Minerva (rear center); and animals such as lions and boars (front right and center). A few of the objects depicted here are in private collections, but the whereabouts of most are unknown.
Four of the bronzes looted from Couan were acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in the 1990s, when their provenance was still unknown. One is an arca, a 1.7-foot-tall hexagonal offering box topped with a curved, faux-tiled roof, on lion’s-foot pediments, which was cast in the second century a.d. The arca has a slot at the top for depositing coins and a door with a keyhole for emptying its contents. Art historians working with the Getty curatorial team have examined each of the bronze pieces to better understand ancient metalworking techniques and the production of bronze statuary. They have analyzed the composition of their alloys, identified techniques that artisans used when working with a wax model for casting, and observed refinements made to the finished bronze.

Slideshow: Exploring Venezuela’s Hidden Rock Art Wonders

In Venezuela’s vast Canaima National Park, a team from the Manoa Foundation led by archaeologist José Miguel Pérez-Gómez of Simón Bolívar University has discovered a number of previously unknown rock art sites. In the past decade and a half, the team has recorded dozens of rock panels covered with complex networks of abstract pictograms. These designs may have been inspired in part by the unique landscape of the Canaima region, the most notable feature of which are tabletop mountains called tepuis that are known for their dramatic waterfalls. Pérez-Gómez suspects these waterfalls, beloved by the people of Venezuela today, likely also inspired people who lived amid the tepuis some 9,000 years ago. To read our article on the rock art of the Canada region, click here.

The world’s tallest waterfall, Angel Falls in Canaima National Park, drops over the edge of Auyán Tepui.
Red ocher pictograms cover the face of a rock shelter in a boulder that lies at the base of Upuigma Tepui.
Faint red ocher pictograms are interspersed among more numerous yellow ocher designs in a section of the Upuigma Tepui rock shelter known as the Yellow Panel.
A version of the previous photograph of the Yellow Panel enhanced using an imaging program called DStretch renders the pictograms more visible.
An abstract motif found at the top of the Yellow Panel is surrounded by barely visible yellow ocher dots.
The yellow dots surrounding the motif at the top of the Yellow Panel are more conspicuous in a version of the photograph enhanced by DStretch.
An isolated starburst-like design on a boulder at the site of Cerro Kuyarimpa is visible in this photograph processed with DStretch.
Archaeologist José Miguel Pérez-Gómez inspects pictograms on an outcropping at the base of Kusari Tepui.

Slideshow: Vintage Threads

Recently, a team led by archaeologist Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute faithfully reconstructed 2,000-year-old silk and wool garments discovered at the site of Niya in what is now western China. They were placed in the grave of a young woman who scholars believe once wore the clothing. The garments’ elaborate construction suggests she was a person of some consequence in her community. Perhaps these specific outfits signaled her importance, or, perhaps, they were simply her favorite looks. To read our article on the garments discovered at Niya, click here.

Reconstruction of wool pants and shoes (left) unearthed at Niya compared with the original garments (right).
Two views of a reconstruction of the silk tunic found at Niya, which features a red wool collar.
The front (left) and back (right) of a reconstruction of the silk robe discovered at Niya, which follows Chinese fashion of the time.

Video: Searching for Heretics

On Sunday, July 12, 1562, Diego de Landa, the highest-ranking Catholic authority in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula presided over an auto-da-fé, meaning “act of faith,” in the town of Maní. On that day, more than 150 prominent Maya people were punished for acts of heresy including worshipping idols and possessing books called codices that recorded details of Maya ritual practice. As part of the auto-da-fé, many thousands of idols and other cultural artifacts were demolished, and 27 codices were burned. To see a reenactment of the auto-da-fé, click on the video below. To provide English translation, click on the box labeled CC. To read our article on the discovery of evidence of the 1562 auto-da-fé, click here.

The reenactment was produced by Antonio Rodríguez Alcalá of Anáhuac Mayab University, John Chuchiak of Missouri State University, Zoraida Raimúndez Ares of the Complutense University of Madrid, Maria Felicia Rega of the Institute of Heritage Science of the Italian National Research Council, Luis Díaz de León of the Autonomous University of Yucatán, and Hans B. Erickson of Missouri State University.