When we think about Roman society, the image that usually comes to mind is that of a world dominated by men: senators, magistrates, generals, and emperors. According to the traditional narrative, women occupied a secondary place, confined to the domestic sphere and excluded from public life. However, a recent study based on the analysis of [β¦]
A small object made of dark stone, carved with astonishing precision almost 3,500 years ago, has provided researchers with one of the clearest windows yet into the religion of ancient Crete. It is the inscription known as IO Za 2, engraved on a tiny libation table made of dark green serpentinite, measuring just 4.3 centimeters [β¦]
Atop an ancient grain storage building, in a settlement of the local Yampara elite, archaeologists Sonia Alconini and Walter SΓ‘nchez-Canedo have uncovered an exceptional find: a set of six copper bells folded into a pyramidal shape, deposited as a ritual offering more than five centuries ago, during the expansion of the Inca Empire through the [β¦]
More than two thousand years ago, in the middle of the Iron Age, the Celts built a large fortified settlement on two peninsulas that extended into the Rhine River, near what is now the Swiss city of Schaffhausen. This place, known as the oppidum of Altenburg-Rheinau, is considered by archaeologists to be a true commercial [β¦]
The waters surrounding Elba Island have once again yielded evidence of its millennia-old past. A dolium from the Roman era and a presumed shipwreck, still under study, have been located on the seabed of the Tuscan Archipelago during the underwater heritage monitoring operations that the ABAP Soprintendenza for the provinces of Pisa and Livorno has [β¦]
Excavations carried out during the past month of July in the monumental complex of Guadalupe (Extremadura, Spain) have brought to light the foundation remains of the former HospederΓa of the Catholic Monarchs (Guesthouse of the Catholic Monarchs), a lost historic building that has nothing to do with the current HospederΓa del Real Monasterio that operates [β¦]
A team of archaeologists has discovered in northern Turkey a settlement of hunter-gatherers who lived in the KoskarlΔ± cave approximately 14,000 years ago. The remains found during the first excavation campaign, conducted in 2024, confirm that the site was inhabited by human groups during the Epipaleolithic period, a transitional stage between the Upper Paleolithic and [β¦]
The 2016 discovery of a large mass grave in the ancient cemetery of Phaleron, on the coast of Athens, shocked the archaeological community and the general public. There lay the remains of 79 adult men, many still with metal shackles, arranged in three parallel rows. Since then, researchers have debated who these individuals were: pirates, [β¦]
The Egyptian archaeological mission under the authority of the Supreme Council of Antiquities has brought to light, during excavation work carried out in the archaeological area of Kom el-Khilgan, in the Dakahlia Governorate, a necropolis whose origins date back to the Predynastic Period and whose use continued through the Greek and Roman eras, together with [β¦]
Researchers from the University of Catania, in collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Catania and the Valley of the Aci, have located beneath the stage of the Teatro Antico a network of underground channels that in Roman times was used to intercept and evacuate groundwater toward the sea. The discovery, the result of a geoarchaeological [β¦]
The research, published in the journal Science, was led by Richard F. Kay, emeritus professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. The work, which used a unique collection of skulls mostly from the Natural History Museum of the Duke [β¦]
The history of the Roman Empire is often told through the exploits of emperors and generals, but the mechanisms of daily administration and, especially, the relationships between central power and the provinces, constitute an equally revealing field of study to understand the dynamics of that civilization. In this context, the discovery and subsequent analysis of [β¦]
What lies beneath one of the most important fortified settlements of Hellenistic Calabria? A study combining archaeology and geophysics has begun to answer this question. Thanks to the application of sophisticated subsurface exploration techniques, an interdisciplinary team from the University of Catania has succeeded in identifying anomalies compatible with buried structures at the Castiglione di [β¦]
The death, which radiocarbon dating places between 3932 and 3653 B.C., surprised an individual at approximately forty weeks of gestation in the rock shelter of Ripari AltΓ, at 1,100 meters above sea level, within the current Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park. The archaeological context points to the final phases of the Neolithic, a period in which [β¦]
Excavations carried out as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) have brought to light an architectural complex of incalculable value in the heart of Villa Celimontana. Under the supervision of the Special Superintendency of Rome of the Ministry of Culture, the work has uncovered eight rooms belonging to an Imperial-era building whose [β¦]
More than 500 meters beneath the Earthβs surface, a dark and ancient world teems with fungal life on a scale scientists had never imagined. A research team led by the University of Michigan has, for the first time, quantified the abundance of fungi in a deep subsurface site, reaching depths of up to 500 meters, [β¦]
The Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, has announced the completion of the excavation and restoration works of an ancient pool located in the frigidarium of the monumental complex known as the Hamam Gymnasium, within the ancient city of Tralleis, in the province of AydΔ±n. The newly restored structure has remarkable dimensions: [β¦]
The archaeological excavations currently being carried out at Kapellenberg, near Hofheim am Taunus in Germany, have provided new evidence during this summer campaign regarding the possible location of the central tomb of a large burial mound dating back approximately 6,000 years, as confirmed by the leaders of the research project directed by Professor Detlef Gronenborn [β¦]
In the summer of 15 BC, Emperor Augustusβ two stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus, brought the Central Alps and the Swiss Plateau under Roman control. That campaign concluded decades of efforts to link the Gallic provinces with Illyricum and secure the routes between northern Italy and the Danube. However, while the western and eastern routes of [β¦]