Archaeological News

A gold bar found in a Mexico City park in 1981 was part of the Aztec treasure looted by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, a new study says.

The 1.93-kilogram bar was found by a construction worker during excavations for a new building along the Alameda, a picturesque park in the heart of the Mexican capital.

For 39 years, its origins remained a mystery.

But thanks to specialized X-rays, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) says it has now confirmed where the bar came from: the Spaniards' hasty, though temporary, retreat during the so-called "Noche Triste," or "Sad Night." 

Archaeologists have discovered more than 100 ornaments for use in piercings in ~11,000-year-old adult burials in Türkiye, providing the earliest conclusive evidence for body perforation and suggesting that piercing may have been a coming-of-age ritual.

Earring-like objects have been found at Neolithic sites in South-west Asia before, but there was no clear evidence for their use in piercings.

Archaeologists in Panama have discovered a 1,200-year-old tomb belonging to pre-Hispanic royalty that also contains a sizable gold collection.

The tomb is located in El Caño, an archaeological park in the Coclé province of central Panama. It is the final resting place of an "important Coclé lord," according to a translated statement from Panama's Ministry of Culture.

The lord likely lived during the late 700s and would have been in his 30s when he died, according to an El Caño Foundation Facebook post.

The 3,500-year-old pockmarked skeleton of an ancient Nubian woman could be one of the earliest known cases of rheumatoid arthritis in the world, scientists say.

Archaeologists discovered the woman's skeletal remains in 2018 while conducting excavations at a cemetery located along the bank of the Nile near Aswan, in southern Egypt. Analyses revealed that she would have stood around 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, been around 25 to 30 years old when she died and lived sometime between 1750 and 1550 B.C. The researchers published their case study in the March issue of the International Journal of Paleopathology.

Neanderthals living in Central Europe around 35,000 years ago suffered from tuberculosis (TB), a new DNA analysis of their bones reveals. This is the first time this disease has been identified in Neanderthals, raising questions about whether tuberculosis contributed to their extinction.

In two research studies published in the journal Tuberculosis in December 2023, one international team of researchers reanalyzed the skeletal remains of two Neanderthals discovered in a cave in Hungary in 1932 and another tested them for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB.

A Roman-era silver "toilet spoon" discovered by a metal detectorist in the U.K. has been declared a "treasure" by experts.

Valentinas Avdejevas made the peculiar finding in 2020 while exploring Vale of Glamorgan, a county in Wales. He surrendered the metal artifact to the Portable Antiquities Scheme for Wales, a local authority that works directly with metal detectorists who have unearthed artifacts. The utensil is currently in the possession of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, according to a statement.

Modern humans crossed the Alps into chilly Northern Europe about 45,000 years ago, meaning they may have coexisted with Neanderthals in Europe for thousands of years longer than experts previously thought, according to new research.

The discovery — of 13 bone fragments belonging to Homo sapiens who occupied a cave in Germany between about 44,000 and 47,500 years ago — catalogs the oldest known H. sapiens remains from Central and Northwest Europe, the researchers said. The finding also surprised the team because, as they found, the climate in the region was frigid at that time.

Archaeologists have discovered a 1,700-year-old royal tomb in Guatemala that's overflowing with funeral offerings, including an intricately designed jade mask depicting a Maya deity.

The tomb, which is located at an archaeological site known as Chochkitam near the borders of what are now Mexico and Belize, was the burial site for a previously unknown Maya king, according to a statement from Tulane University.

Hundreds of Roman-era medical instruments now being examined by scientists may come from one of the earliest known examples of a group medical practice, or at least a place where health care workers congregated to treat people.

Two trails of ancient human footprints pressed into a beach in Morocco form one of the largest and best-preserved trackways in the world.

Researchers happened upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa in 2022 while studying boulders at a nearby pocket beach, according to a study published Jan. 23 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Archaeologists in Poland have discovered a collection of more than 550 pieces of Bronze Age jewelry that were once part of an ancient burial ritual.

Known as Papowo Biskupie, the dried-out lake bed site was occupied from roughly 1200 to 450 B.C. by the Chełmno group, a community from the larger Lusatian culture that lived in northern Europe during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, according to a study published Wednesday (Jan. 24) in the journal Antiquity.

The Lusatians are best known for their ritual depositions of metal hoards in bodies of water. However, the Chełmno group was not known for engaging in this practice.

Archaeologists in Greece have discovered a 1,600-year-old wine shop that was destroyed and abandoned after a "sudden event," possibly an earthquake or building collapse, left broken vessels and 60 coins scattered on the floor, according to new research.

A skeleton visible within a burial at the entrance of the palace of Hernán Cortés —the Spanish conquistador who caused the fall of the Aztec Empire — is not the remains of a Spanish monk as was long thought. Instead, a new analysis reveals that the bones belonged to a middle-aged Indigenous woman.

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered two mummies outfitted with golden tongues at the ancient town of Oxyrhynchus, bringing the total number of golden tongues found at the location to 16, archaeologists say.

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a series of tombs dating from about 1,800 to 4,800 years ago, some of which contain colorful mummy masks and even the childlike statue of the god of silence, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The colorful mummy masks, which would have been worn by the dead, date to the Ptolemaic period (304 to 30 B.C.) and Roman period (29 B.C. to A.D. 641), according to Nozomu Kawai, the director of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Civilizations and Cultural Resources at Kanazawa University in Japan, who led the excavations.

Just south of the Arctic Circle, within the vast forests of northern Finland, lies a sandy field dotted with dozens of "unusual" pits.

Workers stumbled upon the site, known as Tainiaro, six decades ago, and since then, its origins have remained elusive.

But now, upon conducting a comprehensive analysis of the site, researchers have determined it is likely a sprawling hunter-gatherer cemetery dating back some 6,500 years, according to a study published on Dec. 1 in the journal Antiquity.

A German-Austrian team led by archaeologist Christiana Köhler from the University of Vienna is investigating the tomb of Queen Meret-Neith in Abydos, Egypt. She was the most powerful woman in the period around 3,000 BC. Recent excavations prove her special historical significance: the researchers found 5,000-year-old wine and other grave goods. This fuels speculation that Meret-Neith was the first pharaoh of ancient Egypt and predecessor of the later Queen Hatshepsut.

The team recently began archaeological excavations in the tomb of Queen Meret-Neith of the 1st Dynasty (c. 3,000 BCE) in Abydos and discovered significant new information about this important historical woman.