Anthropology

Are human remains the archaeology of death or the archaeology of life? This strange paradox stated in Pearson (1999), addresses that the surviving bones, tissues and skin are more likely to reveal information about a person’s life, not a person’s death.

Hunter-gatherer ancestors, from around 300,000 years ago, facilitated a cultural revolution by developing ideas in small social networks, and regularly drawing on knowledge from neighbouring camps.

‘A Black Death mass grave at Thornton Abbey: the discovery and examination of a fourteenth-century rural catastrophe’ Hugh Willmott, Peter Townend, Diana Mahoney Swales, Hendrik Poinar, Katherine Eaton & Jennifer Klunk Archaeologists have found a mass grave at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire, England.

Symbolic behaviour - such as language, account keeping, music, art, and narrative - constitutes a milestone in human cognitive evolution.

A new skeleton discovered in the submerged caves at Tulum sheds new light on the earliest settlers of Mexico, according to a study by Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from Universität Heidelberg, Germany.

Ancient skulls from the cave systems at Tulum, Mexico suggest that the earliest populations of North America may have already had a high level of morphological diversity, according to a study published by Mark Hubbe from Ohio State University, USA, Alejandro Terrazas Mata from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, and colleagues.

Takabuti, the famous ancient Egyptian mummy on display at the Ulster Museum, suffered a violent death from a knife attack, a team of experts from National Museums NI, University of Manchester, Queen’s University Belfast and Kingsbridge Private Hospital have revealed.

‘A re-evaluation of manner of death at Roman Herculaneum following the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius’. Residents of Herculaneum fleeing the devastating eruption of Vesuvius...

Humans began transporting and growing banana in Vanuatu 3000 years ago, a University of Otago scientist has discovered.

Anthropologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have confirmed the existence more than 10,000 years ago of a hunting camp in what is now northeastern Lebanon - one that straddles the period marking the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural settlements at the onset of the last stone age.

Hard plant foods may have made up a larger part of early human ancestors' diet than currently presumed, according to a new experimental study of modern tooth enamel from Washington University in St. Louis.

Christopher Columbus' accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men - stories long dismissed as myths.