July/August 2019

ARCHAEOLOGY

ARCHAEOLOGY magazine brings the ancient world to life.

ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
The Role Of Ritual
Everyone has rituals, some of them mundane and personal, such as brushing your teeth or getting on the same bus at the same time every day to go home from work. Some center on family, like using the pumpkin pie recipe each Thanksgiving that was hande
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
The Maltese Way Of Life
Water not only sustains us, it also brings us together—travel by boat has always been easier and less costly than overland transit. I was reminded of the importance of maritime journeys during a recent visit to Malta. These small rocky islands to the
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
From Our Readers
What species of native bees were kept by the Maya (“Maya Beekeepers,” May/June 2019)? Linda ValderTucson, AZ Eric A. Powell replies:The Maya kept stingless honey-producing bees of the species Melipona beecheii and Melipona yucatanica. Both are native
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
From The Trenches
Try saying “f” and “v” and pay close attention to your lower lip and upper teeth. Would it surprise you to learn that these sounds are relatively recent additions to human languages? Languages, of course, develop over time as usage, meaning, and pron
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Off The Grid
Over many centuries, a settlement on an oasis along the Silk Road grew into one of the world’s great metropolises. Ancient Merv was a nexus of commercial goods, languages, ideas, and religious beliefs connecting Europe, Africa, and the Far East. The
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Snake Snack
Some 1,500 years ago, a hunter-gatherer in the canyon lands of the Lower Pecos region of southwest Texas made the unfathomable decision to gulp down a whole snake, fangs and all. Texas A&M University archaeologist Elanor Sonderman discovered evidence
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
History In The DNA
An early nineteenth-century clay pipestem, one of many unearthed in the slave quarters at the former Belvoir tobacco plantation on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, has allowed archaeologists to rescue a lost history. DNA yielded by the seemingly unremarkab
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
A Big Production
When contractor Pedro Archila drove his excavator into a large earthen mound outside the central Guatemalan city of Coban in May 2018, he inadvertently exposed the remains of the largest figurine workshop ever discovered in the Maya world. A team led
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Cotton Mill, Prison, Main Street
Remnants of the foundation of a former cotton mill that later served as the main barracks for a Confederate prison in Salisbury, North Carolina, were unearthed during a recent excavation. The prison, which opened in late 1861, was known as a relative
ARCHAEOLOGY3 min read
World Roundup
CONNECTICUT: Coins, wampum beads, and other colonial-era objects found near the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield may be associated with the earliest settlers of Connecticut’s oldest English town. Archaeologists hope that these objects, along
ARCHAEOLOGY8 min read
The Prayerstone Hypothesis
IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE 45 million annual visitors to Las Vegas, you might happen to glance west at some point during your stay and notice that the horizon in that direction is dominated by the Spring Mountains. For most visitors, these craggy limeston
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Magnetic Mesoamericans
THE CENTRAL PLAZA OF the town of La Democracia in southern Guatemala is graced by a collection of 11 rotund stone sculptures. Archaeologists recovered the works from the nearby ancient city of Monte Alto, whose early residents were likely Maya. The s
ARCHAEOLOGY1 min read
Spring Boards
A modern shipping accident off the coast of the Netherlands led to the discovery of a sixteenth-century shipwreck that may provide insight into a transitional period in the history of global exploration and commerce. Salvagers attempting to retrieve
ARCHAEOLOGY12 min read
Place Of The Loyal Samurai
ON THE MORNING OF September 15, 1944, some 18,000 U.S. marines from the First Division invaded the tiny Western Pacific island of Peleliu, at the south end of the Palau archipelago. Nearly three years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Am
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Peleliu’s Battle
In the years since the Battle of Peleliu, Palauans have largely avoided the ridges and caves where the worst fighting took place, wary of chancing upon the ubiquitous unexploded ordnance and disturbing the human remains that were left at the end of t
ARCHAEOLOGY12 min read
Digging Deeper Into Pompeii’s Past
THE EMPEROR NERO is thought to have visited the southern Italian city of Pompeii in A.D. 64, perhaps spending a few nights in the enormous villa his wife, Poppaea, owned in the nearby town of Oplontis. Nero would have seen a city struggling to recove
ARCHAEOLOGY5 min read
Sacred Rites Of An Early Andean Empire
ON A CRISP WINTER DAY some 1,100 years ago, several boats circled the Island of the Sun in the middle of Lake Titicaca, in what is now Bolivia. Fragrant smoke curled up from incense burners sculpted in the shape of pumas, and llamas wearing gold leaf
ARCHAEOLOGY10 min read
Building A Road Through History
Outside the village of Brampton, Cambridgeshire, a handful of archaeologists huddle with a small group of local volunteers. Some of these professionals have been working here for two years and are all that remain of one of the largest archaeological
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min read
Photo Credits
COVER—Pasquale Sorrentino; 1—NARA; RG 127; 3—(clockwise from top left) Otto Botticher, Union Prisoners at Salisbury, N, C., 1863. Courtesy of Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Courtesy Brent Woodfill, © De
ARCHAEOLOGY4 min read
Dispatches From The Aia
This year’s International Archaeology Day (IAD) will take place on October 19, 2019. IAD is a global celebration of archaeology and the thrill of discovery, held annually on the third Saturday of October. This will be the ninth Archaeology Day since
ARCHAEOLOGY2 min readDesign
Artifact
Bronze Age Spain was a dicey place to buy jewelry. At this time, trade networks that spanned all of Europe carried valuable raw materials across the continent. One of these materials was amber, or fossilized tree resin, which had long been prized for

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