ARCHAEOLOGY

We know we aren’t supposed to pick favorites, whether among children, pets, or articles in the magazine, but we have to admit that it would be hard for a team of editors not to love “Formatting Bronze Age Tablets,” which appears in this issue’s Digs

Editor in Chief Jarrett A. Lobell Deputy Editor Eric A. Powell Executive Editor Daniel Weiss Senior Editor Benjamin Leonard Associate Editor Marley Brown Editorial Assistant Malin Grunberg Banyasz Creative Director Richard Bleiweiss Maps Ken Feisel C

A visual celebration of Egypt’s ancient past, featuring evocative sketches, paintings, and photographs from pioneering explorers’ and archaeologists’ journals. Reproduced in their original form, they capture the excitement of the golden age of Egypto

While restoring a viewing area overlooking the Nazca Lines in the desert of southern Peru, archaeologists noticed the previously undocumented traces of a cat geoglyph crouching on a steep hillside. The 121-footlong outline of a feline was badly erode

When hundreds of Phoenician ceramic figurines and vessels were first recovered from the seafloor off northern Israel almost 50 years ago, archaeologists interpreted the artifacts as cargo from a fifth-century b.c. shipwreck. Now, University of Haifa

Within three deep burial shafts in a section of the Saqqara necropolis known as the Area of Sacred Animals, archaeologists have unearthed nearly 60 vividly painted wooden coffins containing the mummified remains of individuals who traveled to the aft

Neanderthals—Homo sapiens’ closest cousins—went extinct around 30,000 years ago. Yet some people possess genetic markers inherited from these distant relatives. This was the conclusion of a groundbreaking 2010 study led by Svante Pääbo of the Max Pla

A decade ago, archaeologists were summoned to investigate a scattering of human and camelid bones outside the modern city of Trujillo. They would soon learn that the 500-year-old remains belonged to the victims of a mass ritual sacrifice, the largest

It was originally thought that the ancient stone walls visible on the edge of the Mu Us Desert in the northern province of Shaanxi had once been part of the Great Wall. But, when archaeologists examined them intensively, they realized something much

After Richard III—England’s most vilified monarch—was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he was hastily buried in Leicester’s Greyfriars church. When the church was demolished 50 years later by Henry VIII, the grave of the last Plantagenet kin

Captain John Franklin set sail from England in May 1845 with 133 men and two ships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—in search of the Northwest Passage. The crews of two whaling ships that sighted the expedition that August were the last Europeans to see Fra

When the strange skeletal remains of more than a dozen early hominins were uncovered in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system, they challenged the story of human origins. The fossils perplexed scholars, as their anatomical features combined modern h

The countryside surrounding the Khmer Empire’s capital of Angkor is blanketed with thick jungle, which has hindered archaeological investigation for more than a century. However, laser scanning technology was finally able to do what researchers could

One of the greatest archaeological discoveries in Greece over the past 50 years was made at Pylos by University of Cincinnati archaeologists Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker. The grave of the “Griffin Warrior” held the remains of a powerful man who died

Mummification is among the best-known religious practices of the ancient Egyptians, yet apart from a few textual descriptions and tomb paintings, very little is known about the facilities where this process took place. That changed when archaeologist

Although Pompeii has been almost constantly excavated since the mideighteenth century, around one-third of the city still remains buried beneath 20 feet of volcanic debris from the a.d. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Archaeologists do not often get a

Created in the eleventh century, the Bayeux Tapestry is one of the world’s most famous textiles, both an extraordinary piece of medieval art and an impressive historical document. The 230-foot-long linen cloth is embroidered with images of more than

COVER—Courtesy Egyptian Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities; 1—Johny Isla, Ministry of Culture; 3—(clockwise from top left) Zoonar GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo, Courtesy Michael Cordonsky/Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority, Jonathan J.

archaeological.org Since it was established in 1879, the AIA has championed archaeology and archaeologists and shared the wonder of discovery and of the past with people all over the world. In this, the year’s first “Dispatches from the AIA,” we woul