Middle East Archaeology News

An international team of archaeologists has uncovered the earliest example of the use of a bridle bit with an equid (horse family) in the Near East. The discovery provides first evidence of the use of the bit (mouth piece) to control an animal long before the appearance of the horse in the Near East.

An international, interdisciplinary group of scholars working along the East African coast have discovered a major cave site which records substantial activities of hunter-gatherers and later, Iron Age communities.

The Arab Spring marked the beginning of a cultural crisis across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The looting and trafficking of cultural property became industrialized in countries like Libya, where antiquities were “gushing” out of the country at unparalleled rates.

Around 15,000 years ago, the Natufian culture appeared in what is today's Middle East. This culture, which straddled the border between nomadic and settled lifestyles, had diverse, complex origins - much more than researchers have assumed.

A unique collection of Iron Age metal artefacts which sheds new light on feasting rituals among prehistoric communities has been discovered by archaeologists from the University of Leicester during an excavation at Glenfield Park, Leicestershire.

First domesticated 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, wheat and barley took vastly different routes to China, with barley switching from a winter to both a winter and summer crop during a thousand-year detour along the southern Tibetan Plateau, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

When the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa, they passed through the Middle East and Turkey before heading deeper into Asia and Europe.

Evidence of communities on the Humber dating back 8,000 years resulting from a geophysical study and small scale excavation between Outstrays and Skeffling village last autumn.

DNA found at archaeological sites reveals that the origins of our domestic cat are in the Near East and ancient Egypt.

Since the 19th century, collectors have become increasingly interested in weapons from ancient Asia and the Middle East. In an attempt to fight forged copies, physicists are now adding their imaging power to better authenticate these weapons; the fakes can't resist the investigative power of X-rays combined with neutron imaging.

10 examples of castles in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, founded or occupied during the Crusades.

Archaeological digs in the Middle East have revealed the remains of ancient harvests that record how some of the world’s earliest cities grew and developed.

Middle Stone Age humans in the Porc-Epic cave likely used ochre over at least 4,500 years, according to a study published May 24, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Daniela Rosso from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and the University of Bordeaux, France, and colleagues.

A chance discovery in Mississippi provides the first evidence of an animal closely related to Triceratops in eastern North America. The fossil, a tooth from rocks between 68 and 66 million years old, shows that two halves of the continent previously thought to be separated by seaway were probably connected before the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

It is hoped that the database will drive awareness of the scale of the problem and help governments, NGOs, and other regional stakeholders preserve the heritage of the people of the Middle East and the wider world.