archaeology

The North Arabian Desert oases were inhabited by sedentary populations in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE. A fortification enclosing the Khaybar Oasis—one of the longest known going back to this period—has just been revealed by a team of scientists from the CNRS and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU)....

The spectacular explosion of the mine at Hawthorn Ridge—a fortified German front-line position in the First World War—marked the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, and remains one of the best-known pieces of film from the whole conflict....

Abstract...

The puzzling depiction of a vicious predator — either a dragon or a snake — devouring a frog on an early medieval belt buckle from the Czech Republic may be a symbol from an unknown pagan cult, archaeologists say....

Nicholas Copernicus was the astronomer who, five centuries ago, explained that Earth revolves around the Sun, rather than vice versa. A true Renaissance man, he also practised as a mathematician, engineer, author, economic theorist and medical doctor....

The abandoned fieldstone walls of New England are every bit as iconic to the region as lobster pots, town greens, sap buckets and fall foliage. They seem to be everywhere—a latticework of dry, lichen-crusted stone ridges separating a patchwork of otherwise moist soils....

Archaeologists in Kazakhstan have discovered two gold ornaments in a 1,500-year-old tomb that feature the earliest known depictions of the great khan, or “khagan,” of the Göktürks — a nomadic confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples who occupied the region for around three centuries, according to an archaeologist who...

Archaeologists in China have unearthed a mysterious set of rectangular wooden pieces linked to an ancient astronomical calendar. The artifacts were discovered inside an exceptionally well-preserved 2,000-year-old tomb in the southwest of the country....