archaeology

A Stone Age individual’s left leg healed after being amputated just above the foot, allowing them to survive for six to nine years after the procedure was performed, researchers say.

Ancient stashes of animal bones, tools, and other artifacts are often dismissed as archaic garbage heaps, but the deposits provide glimpses of the cultural practices and environmental conditions of past Indigenous settlements.

The genome is from a male who was likely in his late thirties when the historic Mount Vesuvius eruption occurred. The analyses suggest he is related to the diverse Imperial Roman population of the time, and that he may have suffered from spinal tuberculosis.

Archaeologist and paleontologist Juan Carlos Cisneros tells The Scientist that researchers frequently fail to involve local groups—and sometimes violate laws—when studying Latin American fossils.

Scientists find human DNA preserved in lice cement from the heads of South American mummies.

Genomic analysis of ancient chum salmon bones and cultural knowledge from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation suggest that people in the Pacific Northwest managed fisheries for thousands of years by harvesting males and releasing females.

Researchers excavated human footprints out of a small bluff next to a dried-up playa lake and radiocarbon-dated embedded seeds to around 23,000 years ago. Their results suggest that people entered the Americas thousands of years earlier than the accepted estimate.

Analysis of DNA from remains found in an Indonesian cave provides new insight into human movements among the islands between East Asia and Australia.

An analysis concludes that pigments were transported into the cave, and the marks were made with intention, though their ultimate meaning remains unknown.

A massive, well-preserved skull discovered in China in the 1930s belongs to a new species called Homo longi, researchers report, but experts remain skeptical about the evidence.

A forensic investigation of Seqenenre Taa II’s traumatic injuries suggests he died with his hands tied behind his back, perhaps the end result of fighting to liberate his kingdom.

Listen to a musicologist blow through the oldest known shell horn.

Early investigations of the microbial communities in and around sunken boats reveal that there are patterns to where bacteria settle.

Sharp drops in global temperatures helped seal the fate of three extinct hominin species, including our close relatives, the Neanderthals, according to thousands of archaeological specimens and a model of past climate conditions.

A selective advantage may have led the modern human Y chromosome to sweep through the Neanderthal population after it was introduced via interbreeding more than 100,000 years ago.

Watch researchers travel to a cave deep in the Amazon to search for clues about the first humans to populate the Americas.

Africa’s sparse fossil record alone cannot reveal our species’ evolutionary history.

While questions still outnumber answers, new findings from archaeology, genetics, and other disciplines are revealing surprising insights into the early cultures of the most recently populated continent.

Modern human genomes and bones left behind from ancient hominins in Africa tell a complex story about the origins of our species.