EurekAlert! News by Subject: Archaeology - News by Subject: Archaeology

Archaeology

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 23-Oct-2025 03:11 ET (23-Oct-2025 07:11 GMT/UTC)

13-Oct-2025

Satellite images reveal ancient hunting traps used by South American social groups

University of Exeter
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Satellite images have revealed the remains of an ancient system of elaborate, funnel-shaped mega traps that were likely built by hunters and pastoralists to catch prey in the high altitudes of northern Chile.

Journal: Antiquity

9-Oct-2025

Earliest Neolithic communities were inclusive and open to newcomers

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international study with the involvement of the UAB, published in Nature Scientific Reports, reveals new findings based on the teeth found at five archaeological sites in Syria. These findings give new insights into how the world’s first farming villagers formed communities, moved across the land, and responded to outsiders. The research reconstructs mobility patterns that had never been observed before.

Journal: Scientific Reports

8-Oct-2025

Early humans butchered elephants using small tools and made big tools from their bones

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

During warmer periods of the Middle Pleistocene, ancient humans in Italy were in the habit of butchering elephants for meat and raw materials, according to a study published October 8, 2025 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Beniamino Mecozzi of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and colleagues.

Journal: PLOS One

8-Oct-2025

1,000-year-old gut microbiome revealed for young man who lived in pre-Hispanic Mexico

PLOS
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Analysis of preserved feces and intestinal tissue has revealed specific types of bacteria that were present in the microbiome of a young adult man who lived in Mexico about 1,000 years ago, prior to Spanish colonization. Santiago Rosas-Plaza of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on October 8, 2025.

Journal: PLOS One

8-Oct-2025

New book reveals war drove the rise of complex societies

Complexity Science Hub
Book Announcement

Why do virtually all humans today live in large-scale societies organized as states? A new book by Peter Turchin, from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), offers an answer based on analysis of data from more than 800 societies: warfare drove humanity's transformation from small nomadic bands to the complex civilizations that dominate our world.

7-Oct-2025

Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

University of Florida
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The new analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World, and the animals were likely eaten during starvation times.

Journal: Science Advances

7-Oct-2025

Easter Island’s statues actually “walked” – and physics backs it up

Binghamton University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

For years, researchers have puzzled over how the ancient people of Rapa Nui did the seemingly impossible and moved their iconic moai statues. Using a combination of physics, 3D modeling and on-the-ground experiments, a team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has confirmed that the statues actually walked – with a little rope and remarkably few people.

Journal: Journal of Archaeological Science