Iron Age people living on the Iberian Peninsula in the last millennium BCE had a striking funerary tradition: chopping off people’s heads and hanging them in prominent places—sometimes with a giant nail hammered through the skull. Archaeologists, however, aren’t sure who got beheaded: was it a ritual of veneration for important community members, or a […]
Archaeologist Who Uncovered Pharaoh’s Tomb May Have Just Made an Even Bigger Find
The stunning discovery of a pharaoh’s burial spot last week was a bombshell in the archaeology world. Not since Howard Carter located the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun in 1922 had such a site been found. There was only one problem: the pharaoh’s body wasn’t in the tomb. Now, the archaeologist who made the […]
The River Thames Has Been a Dumping Ground for Bodies for at Least 6,000 Years, Study Reveals
The average Londoner might be shocked to hear that, over the past two hundred years, hundreds of human bones have been discovered in the River Thames. As new research shows, a sizable portion of these remains date back to prehistoric times. Researchers in the U.K. have studied the remains of 61 individuals recovered from the […]
AI Unlocks 2,000-Year-Old Herculaneum Scroll Carbonized by Vesuvius
Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vesuvius Challenge have deciphered yet another scroll carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The scroll—designated PHerc. 172—is one of nearly 2,000 carbonized scrolls and charred papyrus fragments found in the lost Roman town of Herculaneum in 1750, and one of three […]