Tom Higham— Monday 22 June 2015 at 9:10 am. One of the great moments of my life. I was in one of the laboratories at the Research Lab for Archaeology at Oxford University, where I have worked for the last twenty years. With one of my students, Samantha Brown, I
Brent Nongbri— Late in 1907, it was publicly revealed that the American businessman Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) had acquired a group of four early Christian books from an antiquities dealer in Egypt. Freer, who made a fortune from the production of railcars in Detroit during the 1890s, had established himself
Brian Fagan— The bombshell exploded a few months after John Evans and Joseph Prestwich returned from their visit to the Somme gravel pits with axes and elephant bones. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species placed archaeology at the centre of the debates on human origins. The archaeologists and geologists had proved
Brian Fagan— There really is something to Indiana Jones, except that it’s all wrong. It’s rumored that Jones was an amalgam of several early twentieth century archaeologists, but Lucas Films is firmly mum on the subject. The history of archaeology over the past century-and-a-half is indeed replete with bold exploits
Are Indiana Jones and Lara Croft real archaeologists? Brian Fagan takes us through the history of archaeology from the early treasure hunting days to the rigorously scientific present. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Soundcloud
Thomas S. Kidd— When did the first people come to live in North America? Or, humanly speaking, when did American history begin? These questions deal with really old history, but the answers are changing all the time. Just last month, archaeologists working at the Aucilla River in Florida announced the discovery
The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History turns 150 this year, and to celebrate, we spoke with Richard Conniff, author of House of Lost Worlds, about some of the fascinating stories from the museum’s long history. Yale University Press: Why should we care about natural history museums? Richard Conniff: The business
Today, we are very proud to publish an important new book – Tamara Sears’s Worldly Gurus and Spiritual Kings: Architecture and Asceticism in Medieval India, the first full-length study of the matha, or Hindu monastery, which developed in India at the turn of the first millennium. In the course of
The Hunsrück Slate (in German: Hunsrück-Schiefer) is one of the most valuable fossil records for paleontologists to examine. The slate was first excavated by paleontologists in 1997, and the investigation has not been completed yet. More than just visual echoes of a distant era, the fossils serve as valuable research material
There was a time when historians would have to accept some details of the past as great unknowns. Without the ability to go back in time, recording and relating history will always pose difficulties. But each year, more and more of these oppositions are being removed. Today, modern archaeological research
