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Archaeology

The Norse system of thralldom was not always complete chattel slavery, but most of the enslaved had little agency.

The Little-Known Role of Slavery in Viking Society

A new book looks at the legendary Scandinavians through their own eyes

Ten-year-old Fionntan Hughes found the sword on his first day using a new metal detector.

Cool Finds

Using a Metal Detector, 10-Year-Old Boy Finds Centuries-Old Sword in Northern Ireland

Fionntan Hughes had just received the device for his birthday

Dead Horse Bay gets its unsavory-sounding name from the numerous horse-rendering plants that operated along its marshy shoreline from the 1850s until the 1930s.

New York’s ‘Glass Bottle Beach’ Closed After Survey Finds Radioactive Waste

The Dead Horse Bay shoreline was a magnet for beachcombers and sightseers who came to peruse the eroding contents of 1950s landfill

Archaeologists with the South Carolina Battlefield Preservation Trust found Tar Bluff battlefield with the help of a British officer's hand-drawn map.

Archaeologists Locate the South Carolina Battlefield Where Patriot John Laurens Died

The Revolutionary War officer was notoriously reckless and fought alongside George Washington and Marquis de Lafayette

A small stone tablet featuring geometric art made by the Magdalenians, an Ice Age people that once inhabited Europe.

Cool Finds

Engraved Stones Found to Be the Earliest Known Human Art in the British Isles

Ten flat tablets discovered on the island of Jersey contain markings from hunter-gatherers who lived up to 23,000 years ago

Excavations at this site in Israel's Negev Desert yielded evidence of olive oil soap manufacturing dating back roughly 1,200 years.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Find 1,200-Year-Old Soap Factory in Israel

To create the cleaning concoction, ancient workers mixed olive oil with ashes from saltwort plants

Archaeologists discovered these fossilized fragments of grass deep inside South Africa's Border Cave.

Cool Finds

200,000-Year-Old Bedding Found in South Africa May Be World’s Oldest

New study suggests ancient humans slept on layers of grass and ash, which was used to ward off insects

Meroe, 150 miles north of Khartoum, served as a necropolis for the kings and queens of Kush for close to 600 years.

Why Sudan’s Remarkable Ancient Civilization Has Been Overlooked by History

The African nation’s pyramids and other archaeological sites are only now emerging from the shadow of its more storied neighbor to the north

The newly discovered banana cultivation site

Cool Finds

Traces of 2,000-Year-Old Banana Farm Found in Australia

The discovery contradicts conceptions of early Indigenous peoples as exclusively hunter gatherers

Oxburgh Hall, a moated Tudor manor house in Norfolk, England, is currently undergoing a major renovation project to fix its roof.

Cool Finds

Thousands of Rare Artifacts Discovered Beneath Tudor Manor’s Attic Floorboards

Among the finds are manuscripts possibly used to perform illegal Catholic masses, silk fragments and handwritten music

The charred shoulder blade of a young adult who was cremated in northern Israel some 9,000 years ago. The bone contains the embedded point of a flint projectile.

Humans in the Near East Cremated Their Dead 9,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists found the charred bones of a young adult in the ancient Israeli village of Beisamoun

Potential human ancestor Homo heidelbergensis used this 480,000-year-old bone hammer to create flint tools.

Cool Finds

Europe’s Oldest Bone Tools Hint at Early Hominin Sophistication

480,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis used hammers to fashion flint tools in what is now southern England

Archaeologists have excavated about one-third of the 66-foot wide timber circle, shown on the right. The other portion of this composite image draws on an aerial photograph to give a sense of the structure's size.

Cool Finds

Stonehenge-Like ‘Timber Circles’ Found in Portugal

The 66-foot wide circle of wooden posts predates the British monument by several hundred years

Archaeologists discovered a Roman coin and remnants of an ancient pub while renovating this extension of the Virgin Mary Assumption Church, known as Old Town Hall, in the Slovakian town of Spišské Vlachy.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Unearth Remnants of 18th-Century Pub in Slovakia

The team found a rare Roman coin, wall graffiti and ceramic fragments underneath the tiny village’s town hall

The helmet has been on view at England's Preston Park Museum since 2012.

Cool Finds

Millennia-Old Headgear Is One of Just Two (Almost) Intact Viking Helmets

A new study dates a piece of armor found in Britain in the 1950s to the tenth century A.D.

Amateur treasure hunter Mariusz Stepien found the cache of Bronze Age artifacts (including these pieces of a horse harness) while searching a field with a metal detector.

Cool Finds

Rare Bronze Age Sword, Horse Harness Unearthed in Scotland

The “nationally significant” trove of 3,000-year-old artifacts also includes a pendant, rings and chariot wheel axle caps

A bottle of whiskey, a diving helmet and bricks recovered from the wreck of the SS Politician, which sank off the coast of Scotland in 1941.

Cool Finds

Whiskey Salvaged From 79-Year-Old Scottish Shipwreck Is Up for Sale

A commercial diver recovered the intact bottle of spirits—which is no longer safe for consumption—in 1987

A high-resolution survey scan of U-Boat U-47 shows a remarkably well-preserved wreck.

Wreck of U-Boat Sunk Off English Coast During WWI Explored for the First Time

Researchers used deep-sea scanning to learn more about the German submarine’s history

Various types of North and South American fluted points

Ancient Artisans in Arabia, the Americas Invented Same Technology Independently

New research suggests stone fluting served different purposes in the two regions

Today, the figurative field of battle has become a literal one: Israel's Sharon Plain.

Study Identifies Site Where Crusader King Richard the Lionheart Defeated Saladin

In September 1191, the English monarch’s forces secured victory over the sultan’s army at the Battle of Arsuf

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