NORWAY

Around the World May 1, 2011

In what seemed to be a routine dig of a burial mound, excavators were surprised to discover hidden Bronze Age petroglyphs, including outlines of feet with cross-hatching, beneath cremated human remains.
SHARE:

NORWAY: In what seemed to be a routine dig of a burial mound, excavators were surprised to discover hidden Bronze Age petroglyphs, including outlines of feet with cross-hatching, beneath cremated human remains. The mound above was probably deliberately built atop the rare rock drawings as part of a funeral ritual. Such carvings are often associated with fertility and growth—possibly making the mound a place where life and death come together.

  • Features January/February 2026

    The Cost of Doing Business

    Piecing together the Roman empire’s longest known inscription—a peculiarly precise inventory of prices

    Read Article
    A digital reconstruction shows how the Civil Basilica in the city of Aphrodisias in southwestern Anatolia would have appeared with the Edict of Maximum Prices inscribed on its facade.
    Ece Savaş and Philip Stinson
  • Features January/February 2026

    The Birds of Amarna

    An Egyptian princess seeks sanctuary in her private palace

    Read Article
    The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/ Rogers Fund, 1930
  • Features January/February 2026

    Taking the Measure of Mesoamerica

    Archaeologists decode the sacred mathematics embedded in an ancient city’s architecture

    Read Article
    Courtesy Claudia I. Alvarado-León
  • Features January/February 2026

    Stone Gods and Monsters

    3,000 years ago, an intoxicating new religion beckoned pilgrims to temples high in the Andes

    Read Article
    The ritual center of Chavín de Huántar flourished in northern Peru.
    Courtesy John Rick