A new discovery unearthed at Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana is helping to reveal new secrets about this mysterious culture. The discovery is a pot which was found whole, a rare event in archaeology. From a newspaper article on the find: An archaeology dig normally results in little more than dirt, rocks and pottery chards. [...]
The Ohio Historical Society has a new online exhibit entitled Virtual First Ohioans which includes videos and photos of artifacts found at many of Ohio’s most important archaeological sites. The site covers every archaeological period in Ohio from the Archaic to the Woodland to the Mississippian. The exhibit includes extensive information on the most important [...]
A new book has collected photographs of every known Native American head pot in existence. Head pots are a very rare and unique form of pre-historic Native American pottery found almost exclusively in northeast Arkansas and the adjacent bootheel region of Missouri. They are distinguished from other native North American pottery in that the entire [...]
A 15-inch-long prehistoric bone fragment found near Vero Beach, Florida contains a crude engraving of a mammoth or mastodon on it. Tests so far have shown it to be genuine. If so, it appears to be “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” wrote Dr. Barbara Purdy, emeritus professor of anthropology at [...]
Bill Green has supervised exploration of more than 250 potentially historic sites around the Southeast. And he knew the group working atop a bluff along the lower Saluda River was onto something special. Over eight months, each shovelful of dirt revealed new finds — arrowheads, spear points, eating tools, pottery shards, dwelling posts, a hearth [...]
“We Walk in Two Worlds” at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas tells the story of Arkansas’s first people, the Caddo, Osage and Quapaw Indian tribes from early times to today. The exhibit is told through objects and research. Approximately 158 objects, such as pottery, clothing and weapons, will be on exhibit. The exhibit has [...]
Some 1,700 years ago, the people who live in what is known officially as archaeological site “13LA582” west of Oakville, Iowa, were hunter-gatherers who also grew native crops like sunflower seeds. They lived in a doughnut-shaped village around a communal area and occupied 20 to 25 tree branch and bark wigwams capable of housing up [...]
The recent excavation of a prehistoric American Indian burial site on Ossabaw Island revealed cremated remains, an unexpected find that offers a glimpse into ancient Indian culture along Georgia’s coast. State archaeologist David Crass of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said prehistoric cremations were rare, particularly during the early time in which preliminary evidence [...]
Academic dogma asserted that early eyewitness accounts of large numbers of towns and villages in the Amazon were simply flights of fancy of the overactive imaginations of the European explorers. They even went further and advanced theories for why such civilizations could never have existed due to the poor quality of the soil. As is [...]
“ A lot of people don’t realize these amazing sites are basically in their backyard. They think you have to go to Egypt or all these exotic places, but this is just as interesting here.”Bryan Haley, University of Mississippi Surrounded by soybean fields and modern farm machinery, the Carson Mounds in western Coahoma County may [...]
Turtle Mound in Florida which is a massive oyster-shell midden is being re-investigated. Archaeologists have found 1,200 year old pottery and other artifacts for radio-carbon analysis. Turtle Mound is the highest shell midden in the country being 35 feet tall at this point but may have been 54 feet tall before erosion. There are 35,000 cubic feet of oyster shells. [...]
Ray Reser, director of the Central Wisconsin Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, described the object as a copper “celt,” a type of ax blade with no perforations or grooves. He said the celt was probably a functioning tool. The piece probably dates from 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.
Ohio’s Adena culture represents a turning point in state history. Situated between the nomadic hunting and gathering cultures of the Archaic period and the more settled farming cultures of the later Woodland period, the Adena culture represented the dawn of a new way of life for Ohio’s ancient people. Archaeologists now are fleshing out the [...]
Ohio’s Adena culture represents a turning point in state history. Situated between the nomadic hunting and gathering cultures of the Archaic period and the more settled farming cultures of the later Woodland period, the Adena culture represented the dawn of a new way of life for Ohio’s ancient people. Archaeologists now are fleshing out the [...]
During a remote-sensing survey of the Fort Ancient Earthworks in 2005,
Jarrod Burks of Ohio Valley Archaeological Consultants discovered a
circular pattern in the soil that stretched nearly 200 feet in diameter.
Fort Ancient is a massive earthwork in Warren County that was built morethan 2,000 years ago by the Hopewell culture.
On one of many pinnacles along the bluffs lining the Missouri River
southwest of Columbia, atop the steep face of jagged rock plunging to
the landing, there is an inconspicuous 10-foot lump of earth. What
appears to be a natural point in the landscape ˜ insignificant in the
swath of hills and valleys ˜ is a burial mound, formed by human hands
thousands of years ago.
The Octagon Earthworks in Newark is one remnant of the Newark
Earthworks, recently listed by The Dispatch as one of the Seven Wonders
of Ohio. Earlham College professors Ray Hively and Robert Horn demonstrated in 1982 that the walls of this 2,000-yearold circle and octagon were aligned to the points on the horizon, marking the limits of the rising and setting of the moon during an 18.6-year cycle.
A discovery of ancient jade could shake up old notions of the New
World before Columbus. Scientists say they have traced 1,500-year-old
axe blades found in the eastern Caribbean to ancient jade mines in
Central America 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) away.
Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a
remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region’s
past.
The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates
European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated
knowledge of astronomy.
Its appearance is being compared to the English site of Stonehenge.
Polychrome pots found with two female sacrifice victims Apparently it wasn’t good to be part of the Mayan Royal Family. If you got conquered you ended up sacrificed. From the article: Dr. David Freidel of Southern Methodist University cast one appraising look on a pyramid at a site known as Waka and said he felt [...]
In Guatemala’s Laguna del Tigre National Park, the dense forest hides many treasures: endangered scarlet macaws flit among the treetops, while rare jaguars hunt on the forest floor. Only recently has the world learned about one of Laguna del Tigre’s greatest treasures, a 2,500-year-old city that once stood at the crossroads of the ancient Maya [...]
