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Mysteries of Archeology and History, New York, NY (2026)

09/05/2026

Monumental Herakles Gate with 1,800-Year-Old Reliefs Unearthed at Ancient Side

Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Side in southern Türkiye have uncovered a monumental Late Antique gate built with nearly 1,800-year-old Roman reliefs depicting the Twelve Labors of Herakles and several Greco-Roman gods.

The discovery emerged during excavations along a 390-meter-long street that preserves evidence of how Side’s urban landscape was reshaped between the Roman period and Late Antiquity.

Known as Street B, the route runs between the northwestern corner of the gymnasium and Side’s East Gate. What archaeologists have exposed along it is not simply another Roman street. The buildings, blocked entrances and reused sculptures preserve successive attempts to reshape the same part of the city over several centuries.

The most striking feature is the Herakles Gate, where sculptural reliefs carved in the early 3rd century AD were incorporated into a later monumental entrance. Alongside episodes from the Twelve Labors of Herakles are coffered panels depicting Athena, Zeus, Artemis, Hygeia and Tyche. The sculptures were already centuries old when builders reused them during Late Antiquity.

09/04/2026

Rare Statues of Roman Emperor Hadrian and Empress Sabina Discovered at Ancient Kibyra

Archaeologists at the ancient city of Kibyra in southwestern Türkiye have uncovered the remains of monumental marble statues depicting Roman Emperor Hadrian and his wife, Empress Sabina, revealing what appears to have been an imposing display of the imperial household at one of the city’s main entrances.

Fragments recovered during excavations allowed the team to reconstruct Hadrian’s statue to a height of about 2.14 meters (7 feet). Substantial sections of Sabina’s statue have also come to light, alongside pieces belonging to other large marble figures that once stood above Kibyra’s Monumental City Entrance Gate.

The sculptures date to around AD 130, placing them within Hadrian’s reign from AD 117 to 138. Archaeologists believe the group may have been commissioned in connection with the emperor’s extensive travels through Anatolia, although no evidence has yet shown that Hadrian himself visited Kibyra.

The excavations are led by Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University as part of Türkiye’s Legacy to the Future Project.

09/04/2026

Submerged Etruscan Harbor off Rome May Be the Earliest Known Port Linked to a Temple

Archaeologists working in shallow waters north of Rome have documented the remains of an Etruscan harbor just 130 meters from the ancient sanctuary of Punta della Vipera, raising the possibility that the two formed parts of the same coastal complex.

The stone-built harbor lies off Santa Marinella, about 90 meters from the modern shoreline, while the sanctuary stood immediately inland overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Researchers argue that the proximity of the two sites was probably not accidental: the harbor may have provided direct access to a sacred place founded in the sixth century BCE and extensively rebuilt several generations later.

The interpretation appears in a new peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage. The research develops earlier work presented in a 2024 preprint, but adds a more cautious chronology for the submerged structure. Rather than dating the harbor to the foundation of the sanctuary itself, the new study places its construction most likely around the late fourth or early third century BCE — a period when the temple was also undergoing major changes. If confirmed, the researchers say it would be the earliest known harbor facility associated with an Etruscan temple.

The remains were identified during underwater surveys along the coast between Punta della Vipera and Capo Linaro, an area better known for its Roman maritime archaeology. The team was investigating the coastal landscape around Castrum Novum when a much earlier arrangement of large stone blocks emerged from the seabed about 800 meters north of the Roman settlement.

09/03/2026

Rare Viking Girl’s Grave in Denmark Preserves 1,300-Year-Old Clothing

A rare Viking Age burial in western Denmark is preserving something archaeologists almost never get to see: traces of the clothes worn by a young person some 1,300 years ago, still caught between the metal ornaments that once held them in place.

The grave was uncovered at Skonager (ARV 661), near Varde in West Jutland, where archaeologists discovered a Viking Age cemetery in 2024. Among the burials was a child laid to rest with two shell-shaped brooches. Wool and linen survived against the metal, while fragments of fabric remain on both the upper and lower surfaces of the brooches.

That unusual preservation means researchers may be able to do much more than identify a few ancient fibres. The position of the textiles could reveal how several layers of clothing were arranged on the body, from the garment worn closest to the skin to the clothing fastened above it.

Teeth have also survived, while one of the brooches shows evidence of an ancient repair. Radiocarbon dating, textile analysis and dye studies are now being brought together to answer questions that rarely survive with a Viking burial: what the girl wore, what colours surrounded her, and whether one of the ornaments she was buried with was already old when she received it.

09/03/2026

1,500-Year-Old Moche Child Burial Found with Whistles, a Rattle and Other Unusual Offerings

Archaeologists excavating the ancient urban center of Huacas de Moche in northern Peru have uncovered the burial of a child who died at around one to one and a half years of age. The roughly 1,500-year-old grave contained an unusually evocative group of offerings, including two whistles, a rattle, and a sculptural ceramic vessel.

The Moche child burial emerged from Architectural Complex 61, a residential sector within the urban core that once stretched between the monumental Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna near present-day Trujillo. Rather than coming from one of the site’s imposing ceremonial monuments, the discovery places funerary practices directly within a part of the settlement where archaeologists are investigating everyday Moche life.

Archaeologist Jermi Mejía López, who described the discovery during the presentation of the latest excavation results, said the child’s burial followed a characteristic Moche funerary pattern. Archaeologists found the body lying down with the head oriented toward the south and the legs toward the north.

Beside the young child were two whistles, a rattle, and a sculptural vessel. Although researchers have not yet established exactly what these objects meant in this particular burial, their deliberate placement makes them important evidence for understanding how the Moche treated their youngest members in death.

09/02/2026

4,300-Year-Old Tomb in Inner Mongolia Reveals Earliest Known Dragon-Phoenix Pairing in Northern China

Archaeologists excavating a Late Neolithic tomb in Inner Mongolia have uncovered two clay figures identified as a dragon and a phoenix, forming what researchers describe as the earliest clearly recognizable dragon-phoenix pairing yet found in northern China.

The figures came from a tomb at the Zhaizita Stone City site in Jungar Banner, Ordos City. Radiocarbon dating places the burial at around 2300 BC, roughly 4,300 years ago, during the middle-to-late Yongxingdian Culture and the broader Longshan-period cultural horizon.

What makes the discovery particularly striking is not simply the presence of the two figures, but their deliberate arrangement around the dead.

The tomb consists of a rectangular earthen pit containing a person buried face-up with the limbs extended and the head pointing northeast. Archaeologists found the dragon-shaped clay figure on the right side of the body, with its head oriented in the same direction as the deceased. On the left, the phoenix-shaped figure appears in a rising or soaring posture.

09/02/2026

A Unique 11,000-Year-Old Statue of a Human Sitting on a Leopard Unearthed at Karahantepe

Archaeologists excavating Karahantepe in southeastern Türkiye have uncovered an approximately 11,000-year-old composite statue depicting a human figure seated on the back of a leopard, adding an unexpected new variation to the site’s already remarkable repertoire of human-animal imagery.

The 70-centimeter-tall sculpture was discovered during the 2026 excavation season and announced on August 25 by Türkiye’s Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. According to the announcement, the statue was found where it had apparently been left in antiquity, resting on a bench running along the wall of a structure measuring about three meters in diameter. The building had a floor paved with flat stones.

Ersoy described the sculpture as displaying a style not previously encountered at Karahantepe. No detailed archaeological publication explaining the object’s chronology, manufacturing technique or precise interpretation has yet accompanied the announcement, leaving its meaning open for further study.

The leopard is not a new presence at Karahantepe. What makes the latest discovery particularly intriguing is the relationship between the animal and the human figure.

Earlier excavations produced several composite sculptures showing the opposite arrangement: a human carrying a leopard on their back. Karahantepe excavation director Prof. Dr. Necmi Karul has previously said that three such sculptures were discovered at the site. Importantly, the leopards were not represented as dead prey. They were carved as living animals, appearing alert and aggressive.

09/01/2026

Archaeologists Unearth a Medieval Village That Was Abandoned Without Fire or Destruction

Archaeologists excavating east of Halberstadt in central Germany have uncovered a remarkably well-preserved medieval settlement whose buildings are easier to trace than the people who once lived inside them.

Rows of sunken buildings, settlement pits, wells and boundary ditches remain clearly visible beneath the soil. Yet despite that level of preservation, archaeologists have recovered surprisingly few possessions. There is no destruction layer and no evidence that the settlement burned.

Instead, the inhabitants appear to have taken much of what they owned with them before leaving. Why they left is still unknown.

The site lies east of Halberstadt, near Gessnerstraße and the Frevelgraben, in Saxony-Anhalt. Excavations have been underway since March as part of archaeological work preceding the expansion of Halberstadt’s Industrial Park East.

The settlement itself was not entirely unexpected. Geophysical surveys carried out before construction had already revealed sections of a complex ditch enclosure and numerous archaeological features inside it. Archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt (LDA) are now exposing those traces directly.

The results show that this was not a small, short-lived cluster of buildings. Numerous pit houses were arranged in rows alongside settlement pits, while two wells have also been documented. Toward the Frevelgraben, archaeologists found no house sites, but pits and occupation layers indicate that the bank itself was intensively used.

One of the most valuable features is something less spectacular than an individual artifact: the division of the settlement into recognizable plots.

According to LDA archaeologist Susanne Friederich, the surviving layout offers an unusual opportunity to examine how the settlement was organized and how individual areas were used by its inhabitants. Overlapping structures show that the village passed through at least two phases. New buildings were constructed beside or across older ones, gradually shifting parts of the settlement, while its ditch systems were repeatedly altered and expanded.

09/01/2026

Object Mistaken for an Animal-Tooth Bead Turns Out to Be a 6,500-Year-Old Human Tooth Pendant

A small object from a Neolithic site in Serbia, long classified as an animal-tooth bead, has turned out to be something far more unusual: a carefully modified human canine that was likely worn as a pendant more than 6,500 years ago.

The tooth came from Jablanica, a Late Neolithic settlement south of Belgrade associated with the Vinča culture. Researchers Nemanja Marković of the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade and Ana Maričić of the Belgrade City Museum identified it as a human upper right canine after reexamining an object that had remained in the Museum of Mladenovac collection for nearly two decades.

Their study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, found clear evidence that the tooth had been deliberately shaped, drilled and suspended. More unusually, the researchers argue that it was probably obtained after its owner had died and the body had already become skeletonized.

The object was originally recovered during a surface survey at Jablanica rather than during a controlled excavation. Agricultural activity had damaged the tooth, splitting part of its crown, and it was subsequently catalogued as the remains of a bead thought to have been made from an animal tooth.

Macroscopic and radiographic analysis showed that the object was a human maxillary canine measuring about 23 millimeters long. Researchers also identified deliberate modifications that would be difficult to explain as accidental damage.

The apex of the root had been shaped, while a mesial-to-distal hole had been drilled through the root. Microscopic examination of the perforation revealed wear produced by repeated friction.

Those traces are particularly important because they indicate that something had repeatedly moved against the inside of the hole. The researchers interpret this as evidence that the tooth had been suspended on an organic fiber or cord and worn as a personal ornament.

In other words, the hole was not simply drilled into the tooth and abandoned. The pendant appears to have been used for an extended period.

The precision of the modification also suggests that its maker understood how to work a difficult material without breaking it. Marković described the microscopic traces as evidence of considerable skill rather than an improvised attempt to turn a tooth into jewelry.

08/31/2026

3,400-Year-Old Monumental Hittite Building at Šapinuwa Reveals Clues to Ancient Rituals

Archaeologists excavating the ancient Hittite city of Šapinuwa in central Türkiye have uncovered unusual animal remains inside a monumental building dating to around the 1380s BC, raising the possibility that ritual sacrifices accompanied changes or renovations to the structure.

The discoveries come from two symmetrical, L-shaped rooms within the building. In 2025, archaeologists found the skeleton of a headless young animal, probably a lamb or goat, resting on a stone-paved surface. During the 2026 excavation season, the team uncovered a cattle skull placed on another stone pavement in the corresponding room.

Neither deposit looks like ordinary food waste, according to excavation director Önder İpek of Hitit University. Instead, their deliberate placement and the building’s multiple construction phases may connect them with ritual practices already known from Hittite written sources.

Archaeologists have not yet determined whether the monumental structure functioned as a temple, administrative building or another form of public architecture.

The structure first appeared during geophysical surveys at Šapinuwa in 2024. Archaeologists initially opened a 5-by-5-meter trench and exposed roughly 20 percent of the building during the first season.

Excavations in 2025 and 2026 followed its exterior walls and revealed most of its overall plan. Researchers have now moved into the interior spaces, where artifacts and architectural details may finally establish what happened inside the building.

Archaeological observations and dating work place its construction in the 1380s BC, a period when Šapinuwa occupied an important position within the Hittite world.

İpek said the team has identified several phases of use or modification in the building. That detail may prove especially significant for understanding the animal deposits. Hittite texts describe sacrificial practices connected not only with temples and festivals but also with buildings undergoing construction, renewal or ritual purification.

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