From the old ‘Cowboys of Science’ adage to swashbuckling fictional characters like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, the perception that fieldwork, and archaeology generally, is a job for tough people pervades both the discipline and public perception.…
My name is Adrianna Wagner, and I am a third-year student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I study English literature with minors in marketing and anthropology.…
In 2025, we published an article in Antiquity, demonstrating through chemical and isotopic analyses that, c. 1300 BC, tin ingots made from tin ores in southwest Britain are found on shipwrecks off the coast of Israel, around 4000 km away.…
The first volume of the Annual of the British School at Athens was published in 1895, almost a decade after the foundation of the School in 1886.…
In our new, game-based dissemination experiment, you can enter a mysterious Stone Age world with megalithic graves where life and death are more fluent concepts than today.…
The Edom Lowland Regional Archaeology Project’s (ELRAP) new article, “As if the Pieces of the Past were in our Hands”: Non-Linear Digital Public Archaeology with 3D Models on Sketchfab, presents a bilingual, interactive collection of 3D models based on years of digital excavation data from the Faynan region of Southern Jordan.…
Enacted in 1990 and now in its fourth decade, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) remains one of the most important legislative acts shaping the discipline of archaeology.…
Our recent Antiquity Project Gallery article introduced Semiyarka as one of the most extensive and carefully planned Bronze Age settlements yet identified on the Kazakh steppe — a 140-hectare landscape including rectilinear compounds, a larger central structure, and unmistakable evidence of organised tin-bronze production.…
“You get in, you get out, and you get the job.” That line from a recent The CRM Archaeology Podcast (Ep 315) about academia’s responsibility to CRM and vice versa stuck with me.…
On 12 October, 2025, Typhoon Halong reached the shores of Southwestern Alaska, with devastating consequences for many of the Indigenous communities living here.…
Recent Coronado Expedition (1539-1542) research has produced abundant and rich evidence pointing to the surprising interpretation that the first European settlement in the American Southwest was established in southern Arizona in 1541.…
Cambridge is proud to publish Archaeology journals that span every region of the world and all periods of history
In an era of shrinking research budgets and political pressure to justify public investment, federally funded digital archives in archaeology are delivering measurable, lasting benefits to scholars, land managers, Indigenous communities, and the public.…
Research programs that are deeply engaged with, and responsive to, communities require significant investment to build and sustain. Why, then, should archaeologists — often constrained by time and resources–commit to community archaeology?…
Visitors to many of the archaeological sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras are often struck by the bright blue paint on architectural sculptures and frescoed murals at these sites.…
Is it possible to protect cultural heritage during a war? And if so, how can it be done meaningfully and effectively?…
With the world facing war, climate change, pandemics, and civil unrest, it’s natural to question the importance of preserving culture. Why should we care about archaeology, monuments, traditions, art, and architecture when survival itself is threatened?…
Advances in Archaeological Practice covers are most often experienced as a tiny thumbnail shot either on the Cambridge Core website, or perhaps on social media.…
We are very excited to have been chosen as the new editors for Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (PPS), the flagship journal of the Prehistoric Society.…
Chris Dore, our current Society for American Archaeology (SAA) president, was Advances in Archaeological Practice’s first editor, and in 2022, on the journal’s tenth anniversary he reflected on the journal’s origins.…
Many sites around the world have been harmed because they were targeted for profit rather than for research. When objects are valued mainly for their economic worth, we miss out on the reach and diverse stories they can tell.…
For more on this topic, read the full article, Relationship between trackmakers of the Laetoli footprints from gait synchronization, by Wataru Nakahashi.…
Plenty has been written about the dog. Slobbery, goofy, embarrassingly friendly, with… well, everyone. Dogs are prominently featured in historic accounts and paintings, loaded down with ingratiating platitudes like “man’s best friend”.…
I remember when Volume 1, Issue 1 of Advances in Archaeological Practice (AAP) was published in 2013. I was a graduate student at the time, undertaking dissertation research on the processes of inclusion and exclusion in the archaeological data collection process.…
Parthenon Ancient Greece Acropolis Athens Archaeology 3D CGI Reconstruction Athena Temple Greek
The Annual of the British School at Athens (ABSA) has long been a preferred repository of research on Sparta. This introduction provides a brief history of research in the region and an account of further developments in archaeological and historical research.…
Famed Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier once wrote “war was the hellish laboratoryin which aviation became adult and was shaped to flawless perfection.”…
When we think of the Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean, it’s easy to picture the flourishing societies of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.…
As the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) begins, I examined Southeastern-focused articles in Advances in Archaeological Practice to identify emerging trends. Southeastern methodology may best be known for the 1950s Ford-Spaulding debate; however, this review shows that Southeastern methodology is still breaking new ground in archaeology.…
Horses played an indispensable role in the world of the Iron Age steppe, influencing everyday life, warfare, and ceremonial practices. Comprising a flamboyant art style and a unique way of life including horseback archery, Scythian material culture has long intrigued archaeologists.…
After much work by the American Antiquity (AAQ) Editorial Advisory Board, a revised description and vision of American Antiquity has been drafted for the website home page.…
Following my participation in an extensive illustration project in 2001 of precontact decorated ceramics from the Hohokam site of Snaketown that were curated at the Arizona State Museum, I wrote an article published by AAP in 2014 called Representation and Structure Conflict in the Digital Age: Reassessing Archaeological Illustration and the Use of Cubist Techniques in Depicting Images of the Past. …
Have you taken a direct-to-consumer ancestry test and had an unexpected or shocking result? Perhaps your ancestors were from a different part of the globe than you expected, or you found a long-lost relative.…
Antiquity author and Diving and Maritime Archaeology Officer at Bournemouth University Tom Cousins explores the exciting discovery of a rare example of a medieval shipwreck in English waters.…
DNA increasingly shows up in our public and private lives. Researchers use DNA to advance medical treatments. Ancient DNA (aDNA) studies trace human migrations and interactions in the distant past.…
In the 2021 Netflix film The Dig, Peggy Piggott was portrayed as a young woman of moderate skill, very much stumbling into archaeology.…
In June this year, CALDERA, the new Nordic-Japan research programme on “Catastrophe Archaeology” was awarded Antiquity’s Ben Cullen Prize 2024 for its opening pilot-study of human responses to the Holocene’s largest ever volcanic eruption.…
Dogs were one of the many animal companions that accompanied English settlers to Jamestown, Colony, Virginia, in the year 1607. In fact, one of the first recorded deaths at Jamestown was not a person but a dog, falling victim to a confrontation between the English and Virginia Indians days after the colony’s establishment.…
If you were living in north-west Europe in the late 7th century, you would have experienced something that your parents, grandparents, and more distant ancestors had not: coinage.…
How unequal were ancient Maya societies and what lessons can we learn from them about our own unequal world? Modern inequality metrics often focus on monetary wealth and financial statements, but other methods exist and inequality can manifest itself in multiple forms.…
As holders and curators of artifacts and their associated documentation and data, archaeological repositories are a place to learn about past and current excavation strategies, and an excellent training ground for future archaeologists.…
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States was high, as working-class laborers in the country viewed Chinese workers as a threat.…
If you’ve gotten on a horse in the 21st (or even 20th) century, your experience probably went something like this: you placed one foot in a stirrup, heaving yourself into a large, rigid saddle that helped secure your seat.…
Advances has been one of my favorite journals since the first issue appeared in my email inbox a little over 10 years ago.…
In Late Iron Age Scandinavia, roughly 500-1100 CE, increasing numbers of people started going to the grave with animal companions. As a general rule, the higher a person’s station in society, the more animals they were likely to take with them, and in a higher diversity of species.…
“Archaeogaming” occupies the intersection between archaeology and video games and treats these examples of contemporary material culture as artifacts, sites, and landscapes (Reinhard 2018).…
Between 2012 and 2014, I held a two-year Wellcome Trust Research Leave Award (WT096499AIA) for a project on women surgeons in Britain, 1860-1918.…
Archaeological literature offers many answers that vary in their accuracy and utility. Alice Beck Kehoe writes, “How do you become an archaeologist?…
The joy was infectious. “Happy Juneteenth” we shouted to the trucks and people parading by Fred Moore Park in Denton Texas.…
In January 2023, I was honored and humbled to be appointed Editor-in-Chief of Ancient Mesoamerica (ATM), together with a new Editorial team including leading scholars Christina Halperin and Sarah (Stacy) Barber.
Post Excerpt Archaeological data that are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (i.e. FAIR) enable all sorts of things that we can’t do with “hidden” or “siloed” data. As such, FAIR practices have clear impacts on archaeological data use and reuse.
With 2023 on the horizon, and the landscape of academic publishing in flux, Cambridge University Press spoke to the Editors of the SAA’s journals to find out what topics and questions are currently front of mind – for archaeologists, researchers and publishers alike.…
Part of a series of blog posts celebrating the 10th anniversary of the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice. It may come as somewhat of a surprise that the Digital Reviews Editor for Advances in Archaeological Practice is calling for an end to the concept of ‘Digital Archaeology’.…
It is safe to say that archaeology generally isn’t the most well funded discipline. Many of you reading this probably know this all too well.…
The acknowledgments section of the Monico Bayesian paper expresses gratitude to “Deb Nichols, John Watanabe, Sophie Nichols-Watanabe, Robert (Bob) L. Kelly, and the Dartmouth Coach for inspiring and facilitating the development of some concepts in this paper.”
In the spring semester of 2020, I developed and taught a class on archaeological data reuse and digital literacy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.…
As we are both children of the 70s and 80s, the things that we were taught about the history of democracy in public school somehow does not track with what we understand about the topic today.…
For many decades, archaeologists have used the analysis of materials such as ceramics to establish, through typologies and varieties, their own qualitative characteristics, such as shapes, decorations, or surface finishes.…
In “Getting Your Feet Wet,” (out now open access in Advances in Archaeological Practice) the authors outline barriers to inclusivity writ large in underwater archaeology and provide solutions for increasing diversity in the field.…
One of the most exciting developments in archaeology over the past few years has been the rapid growth in population-scale studies using ancient DNA.…
Portable braziers, frequently made of clay utensils and appearing in different shapes (Fig. 1:a), are associated with the process of cooking. They were popular across the Mediterranean from the Early Hellenistic to the Early Roman periods.
“I found my identity because of pottery,” says Amalia, who runs an Indigenous pottery workshop in General Paz, a city in Buenos Aires province, Argentina. Amalia and her family found archaeological pottery fragments by chance. These findings encouraged them to experiment and learn based on their observations of the techniques and designs of the ancient pottery.
Archaeology in K-12 and undergraduate classrooms can be used to promote cultural awareness and sensitivity, provide a means of critical thinking, promote cultural awareness and sensitivity, create an awareness of archaeological research, as well as promoting the stewardship of the past.…
A new analysis of ancient faeces found at the site of a prehistoric village near Stonehenge has uncovered evidence of the eggs of parasitic worms, suggesting the inhabitants feasted on the internal organs of cattle and fed leftovers to their dogs.…
From 1906 through 1910, archaeologists from the British School at Athens (BSA) conducted excavations at the well-known sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta (see Dawkins 1929).…
In 2016, we were privileged to edit a special section in Advances in Archaeological Practices on lidar in Mesoamerica and are delighted that the editors of AAP have invited us to provide an update to that special section in this blog. At that time, lidar acquisition was still uncommon, with only a handful of projects being fortunate enough to acquire the data that was revolutionizing settlement studies in tropical areas like Mesoamerica.
We take an archaeothanatological approach to the study of burial disturbances in northeastern and central-eastern Brazil from 12,000 years BP to 200 years BP.…
Research at Spirit Eye Cave did not take the course I envisioned. In the 1950s and 1960s, this cave, located on a private ranch in West Texas, was a pay-to-dig site. It was extensively dug, all too common with the vast tracts of private land that typify Texas. Initially, the goal of my research was to salvage any information about when the cave was occupied, and to examine the perishable collections.
Happy birthday! Advances in Archaeological Practice: A Journal of the Society for American Archaeology turns ten this year. You might not think that the birth of a journal is that big of a deal and certainly doesn’t warrant recognition a decade later.…
Until 5 years ago, if asked my profession, I’d have said I’m a scientist engaged in basic biomedical research to combat viral diseases.…
Authors Benjamin Carter, Jeff Blackadar and Weston Conner joined each other in conversation for this new blog post for Advances in Archaeological Practice.…
Archaeology has long contributed new perspectives to past events, transcending written records through the interpretation of material culture. Applied to the present, archaeology has the potential to disrupt and nuance the memorialization of contemporary occurrences as they are inscribed.…
The basic process of winemaking has involved three steps: harvesting grapes; pressing the grapes in order to release their juice; fermenting that juice into wine.…
Janvier, Alberta | 2019 It was a cold October morning in northeastern Alberta. I had been invited by the Chipewyan Prairie First Nation (CPFN) to conduct a small ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of a historic burial ground on one of their reserves.…
Not far from the Tower of London, to the east of the Tower Hill, stands one of the best surviving sections of London’s city walls, still preserved up to a height of about 10 metres. The lowest courses of this part of the wall, up to about 4 m, is the original Roman Landward Wall with later medieval additions above.
In mid-March 2020, I stood in my lab and slowly scanned the shelves. The tables were covered in ongoing projects. We had just been told that the University of Florida campus was closing to non-essential personnel and to plan on working from home for at least two weeks (which turned into months).…
The North Eurasian inland heaths are open landscapes, dominated by evergreen sclerophyllus plants, most typically Calluna vulgaris L. (Hull). These thrive in the Atlantic humid climate on sandy acidic soils.…
Teotihuacan is well known within Latin American archaeology and is critical to our understanding of the Classic period in Mesoamerica, when it was the largest city in the Americas and most influential polity within the culture area (ca.…
Sometimes archaeologists are forced to study what they can identify, even when they recognize that it is not representative. One instance of this concerns burials of people who died of plague during the Black Death in the mid-14th century and later outbreaks.
In a recent article I published with Antiquity, I argued that ancient Greek architects built accessibility into religious healing sanctuaries, such as the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus.…
It may seem obvious to state that slavery existed within the Roman Empire. Afterall, there is a large corpus of epigraphic and literary evidence outlining the role of enslaved people during this period.…
For decades, the dominant paradigm has been that the first Americans were descendants of populations that migrated from northeast Asia to North America by crossing the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge around 13,000 years ago.…
War always has a high price, paid by people and their land. The land has no value without its secure human being.…
In popular imagination, the Roman Empire was an agent of law and peace in the ancient world. However, Rome had a brutal side, with the death penalty used for a wide range of crimes.
It was an amazing moment in 1990 in the course of the Historic England (HE) excavations at Stanwick Roman villa, when David Neal uncovered the first piece of sculpted stone, reused as a quoin in the north-eastern corner of the fourth-century villa building.…
The opportunity to showcase some of the exciting archaeological research currently underway on medieval Ethiopia in a journal as widely read as Antiquity is important.
Questions on the extent of multiculturalism in Britain’s (Roman) past have never been more relevant. Thanks to the evidence of inscriptions and the recent scientific analysis of human skeletal remains we know that Romano-British cities were home to significant minorities of people with foreign origins from across the Roman empire and beyond, but what can the more everyday evidence of pottery tell us?…
Those of you who were born in the late 80s/early 90s may remember the movie “The Princess Diaries.” Remember the scene where Mia has a rough day, wants to cry, gets in her Mustang, the top won’t go up, and then it starts pouring while she sits drenched and dejected in her open convertible? Let me tell you the archaeology version.
Spring is underway in the United Kingdom, with daffodils blooming outside in gardens and verges, and chocolate eggs multiplying inside our supermarkets.…
Several times each year, I learn of another case. Sometimes, I see a post on social media. More often, it is through a private email or a phone request for an in-person meeting. The details differ, but the substance is the same: another early-career archaeologist has been harassed or assaulted in the course of their education and research.
One of the many things I love about the field of archaeology is how collaborations come together. A few years ago, a listserv delivered a survey to my inbox on the theme of field crew safety.…
A new blog from Professor Lin Foxhall looking at domestic interactions in the ancient world.
Lin Foxhall chats to Cambridge about her new editorship and hopes for the Journal's future.
This is a transcribed conversation between two of the four authors of a new article in Advances in Archaeological Practice on why and how to revise introductory archaeology courses to better shape the discipline.…
New digital technologies have been a boon to archaeological field recording as attested by the growing literature on the use of mobile devices, GIS, satellite imagery, and other digital tools.…
As each generation of researchers deconstruct and unpack their own preconceptions of the world around them, it reveals new shortcomings in our understanding of the past.…
It’s hard to find a positive contribution from Covid-19, isn’t it? I’ll suggest one. It has re-situated our appreciation for the importance of disease in past populations.…
As 2020—finally—comes to a close, the new year stretches out in front of us, full of possibilities. The long tradition of New Year’s resolutions offers each of us an opportunity to commit ourselves to learning more about curation, collections management, and the lifecycle of the collections we create through our work.…
Sarah Herr, Co-editor of Cambridge journal Advances in Archaeological Practice, reflects on how being in her role has helped her to form a remarkable connection to the people who are part of her publishing world.…
Articles in Ancient Mesoamerica offer insights about the Mexican highlands before, during, and after the Mexica took control of it. In only a couple hundred years, they created an empire that stretched from coast to coast in ancient Mesoamerica.…
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