News by Subject Archaeology

A new study finds forensics researchers use terms related to ancestry and race in inconsistent ways, and calls for the discipline to adopt a new approach to better account for both the fluidity of populations and how historical events have shaped our skeletal characteristics.

Researchers from Pompeu Fabra University and the University of Leicester have discovered at the site of Çatalhöyük (Anatolia, Turkey) a wide variety of hitherto unknown wild resources. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, has used an innovative approach, based on the analysis of microscopic plant remains extracted from grinding implements from different domestic contexts.

Evidence from an ancient eggshell has revealed important new information about the extreme climate change faced by human early ancestors.

In 2016, researchers from the University of Liège (Belgium) proposed a new definition of the geological boundary between the Devonian and Carboniferous periods (359 million years). This new definition has been tested by hundreds of researchers around the world and the results are now compiled in a special issue of the journal Palaeodiversity & Palaeoenvironments.

Proteins from frozen canine faeces have been successfully extracted for the first time to reveal more about the diets of Arctic sled dogs.

A McGill-led study has shown that the size of the Maya population in the lowland city of Itzan (in present-day Guatemala) varied over time in response to climate change. The findings, published recently in Quaternary Science Reviews, show that both droughts and very wet periods led to important population declines.

A new study published in PLOS ONE reports genetic and oxygen and strontium isotopic data for individuals buried at Alalakh, finding little evidence for the foreigners mentioned in texts.

After centuries of human impact on the world's ecosystems, a new study from Flinders University details an example of how a common native bee species has flourished since the very first land clearances by humans on Fiji. In a new paper in Molecular Ecology, research led by Flinders University explores a link between the expansion of Homalictus fijiensis, a common bee, which has increased its spread on the main island Viti Levu alongside advancing land clearance and the introduction of new plants and weeds.