Ordinary people had a voice in some early Mesoamerican societies, though these democracies apparently lasted only 200 to 300 years. By Lizzie Wade.

ISIS destroyed an ancient shrine — and archeologists may have discovered a wonder of the ancient world underneath. By Noah Charney.

The true purpose of the world’s great prehistoric sites were to act as vast repositories for cultural knowledge, argues Australian oral history researcher Lynne Kelly. Jim Rountree reports.

How a toxic debate over the first Americans hobbled science for decades. By Heather Pringle.

A British Museum expert says the Leekfrith Iron Age Torcs are of international importance.

A new interpretation of why people buried their dead in food jars 5,500 years ago.

Close examination of an ancient toy chariot has revealed a clue to what helped lead ancient Roman charioteers to victory.

As the nation teetered on the brink of war in the 1930s, two Western-educated thinkers struck out for the hinterlands to save their country’s riches. By Tony Perrottet.

Undisturbed for centuries, the ruins of a city in a barely accessible region of Honduras suggest an ancient apocalypse. By Douglas Preston.

Converging genetic and archaeological evidence hints that early migrants clung to the frigid, oxygen-starved “roof of the world” through the worst the climate could throw at them. By Jane Qiu.

Turkey’s Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük may have been an orderly society built on tolerance and equality — until it fell apart. By Jennifer Hattam.

Archaeology’s editors reveal the year’s most compelling finds.

The discovery in a remote part of Indonesia has scholars rethinking the origins of art—and of humanity. By Jo Marchant; Photographs by Justin Mott. (Jan., 2016)

Inland Maya communities knew an awful lot about sharks without ever visiting the sea.

Peak beard is so 20th century. Peak moustaches, however, is Iron Age.

Egyptian archaeologists excavating the Mortuary Temple of King Amenhotep III in Luxor have unearthed a number of statues of the goddess Sekhmet.

In 1967, a team of archaeologists led by Michael Katzev dove to the bottom of the churning Aegean Sea. They were tipped off by a sponge diver who, about two years earlier, spotted something unusual a mile offshore of Kyrenia harbor… By Lorraine Boissoneault.

The White Shaman mural has been silent for millennia — but thanks to the work of archaeologist Carolyn Boyd, it can begin to speak again. By Brad Tyer.

The unnerving truth that our past might be shrouded in a mystery we might never solve... By Robert Giametta.

Mysterious drawings, thousands of years old, offer a glimpse of lost Native American cultures and traditions. By John Jeremiah Sullivan. (March, 2011)