News

Congratulations to the winners of this year’s Antiquity Prize, whose research uncovered the earliest and largest agricultural complex yet found in Africa beyond the Nile, indicating North Africa played a key role in Mediterranean prehistory.

Come along to the 10th World Archaeological Congress to to chat with our editor Prof. Robin Skeates and get your hands on some Antiquity swag!

Examination of coins from an eighteenth-century AD shipwreck in the Colombian Caribbean contributes to the growing body of evidence identifying the site as the San José Galleon, a Hispanic flagship sunk in Ad 1708 while transporting valuable cargo from South America to Spain.

Archaeologists excavate at the ‘Medieval Wall System’, built across what are now Mongolia, Russia and China from the 10^th to 12^th centuries AD, suggesting the wall was not primarily military, instead being built to display power in the frontier areas and control movement of civilians, animals and goods.

Analysis of tin artefacts from three c. 1300BC shipwrecks off the coast of Israel finds the tin originated from south-west Britain, indicating British tin was traded to the major Bronze Age civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean, 4000km away. Tin mined by Britain’s small farming communities across Cornwall and Devon likely played an important role in the wider Bronze Age world.

Brown University reports on an Antiquity article on a newly discovered altar, buried near the centre of the ancient Maya city of Tikal, that is shedding new light on the 1,600-year-old tensions between Tikal and the central Mexican capital of Teotihuacan.

PhD candidate Mirjam von Bechtolsheim writes about her experience on placement with our editorial team, exploring the behind-the-scenes of academic publishing

New radiocarbon dates from the Neolithic enclosure of Flagstones, Dorset, finds it dates to ~3200BC, 200 years earlier than expected. This suggests it is the earliest large circular enclosure in Britain, contemporary to Newgrange in Ireland. Did the tradition of large circular enclosures originate in Ireland and spread to Britain via long-distance maritime connections?

Five expressive ceramic figurines with movable heads have discovered atop a large pyramidal structure at Preclassic San Isidro, El Salvador, may have been a kind of puppet used in ritual 'tableaus'. Similarities with examples from other Central American countries imply interaction and shared ritual traditions across this vast region, contradicting the commonly-held belief that El Salvador was culturally isolated from the rest of Central America.

Check out the latest Antiquity blog, in which Antiquity author Hamza Benattia from the University of Barcelona explores the long-neglected importance of the Maghreb in the Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean, telling a story of local innovation, adaptation and integration within the broader Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.

Fitting together ancient rune-stone fragments from burials at Svingerud, Norway, like a jigsaw puzzle reveals they make up a single stone, engraved with multiple intriguing runic inscriptions. Radiocarbon dating finds the fragments likely date between 50 BC-AD 275, the earliest known dates for rune-stones, suggesting the stone was intentionally fragmented and placed in later burials, providing insight into how rune-stones’ uses changed over time.

Analysis of Syrian amber in a museum collection finds it was sourced from the Baltic coast, 3000km away, shedding light on continent-spanning Iron Age trade and indicating a desire for ‘exotic’ goods in Mesopotamia.

Examination of plant remains from a 19^th century Australian women’s immigration depot and asylum indicates the inhabitants had diverse diets, including native and introduced fruits, veg and nuts. This contradicts colonial British records, which detail the inmates’ regimented, often bland meals, indicating women were unofficially obtaining and eating other foods, possibly as a form of resistance.

In Neolithic Denmark, hundreds of stones engraved with sun and field motifs were ritually deposited in ditches, likely to ensure a good harvest. New research finds their deposition coincided with a volcanic eruption that blocked out the sun, contributing to our understanding of how climatic events caused cultural changes during prehistory.

After seven years, Dr Robert Witcher is stepping down as Editor of Antiquity. Previous Deputy Editor, Professor Robin Skeates, is taking over and has big plans for the journal going forward!

Analysis and CT scanning of Roman mail armour from a civilian settlement on the Empire’s northern frontier provides the first solid evidence of armour repair outside of a Roman military installation. This repair would have been carried out by local craftspeople, shedding light on the Roman army’s reliance on civilian services.

Excavations at the Late Chalcolithic settlement of Shakhi Kora, Iraq, uncover new evidence for the earliest state institutions, suggesting a deliberate rejection of centralised forms of government, reaffirming that urbanism and the state are not inevitable outcomes. 

The engraving of trees with X-marks and geometric patterns played an important role in the cultural traditions of the Indigenous Sámi of northern Fennoscandia and north-west Russia, which were systematically repressed by the Scandinavian Church. In the modern day, the rare remaining trees are threatened by industrial logging, making their preservation vital to conserving Sámi belief systems.

Proto-cuneiform is a sign-based script, first attested in the c. 3350-3000 BC city of Uruk in southern Iraq, which developed into cuneiform: the world’s first writing system. New research suggests its origins lie partly in cylinder seals: engraved stone cylinders that were rolled across clay to imprint a design, rewriting our knowledge of how writing was invented.

Analysis of lidar data in Campeche, Mexico, reveals thousands of undiscovered Maya structures, including an entire city, proving that there is still much more of the Maya world to be discovered.