Current Issue
Current Issue
As NAGPRA Turns Thirty | American Archaeology
Thirty years ago Congress passed landmark legislation designed to return the remains and funerary objects of countless Native Americans to the ground from which they were taken long ago.
By Mike Toner
This is an article...
Upholding The Law | American Archaeology
By David Malakoff
This is an article excerpt from the Fall 2020 edition of American Archaeology Magazine. Become a member of The Archaeological Conservancy for your complimentary subscription.
The first glimpse was unforgettable and “overwhelming,” recalled...
Ancient Writing | American Archaeology
Archaeologist Stephen D. Houston of Brown University published a paper in 2006 arguing that a Maya tablet found in Veracruz, Mexico is ”an unambiguous example of writing,” a conclusion that since has been generally...
Spells, Charms, Curses, and Concealments | American Archaeology
By Gayle Keck
This is an article excerpt from the Fall 2020 edition of American Archaeology Magazine. Become a member of The Archaeological Conservancy for your complimentary subscription.
Have you ever stooped to pick up a...
Investigating The Calusa | American Archaeology
By Tamara Jager Stewart
This is an article excerpt from the Fall 2020 edition of American Archaeology Magazine. Become a member of The Archaeological Conservancy for your complimentary subscription.
The Calusa king Caalus, perched high on...
Cultivation, Cooperation, and Conflict | American Archaeology
Researchers are studying the connections between early plant domestication and changing patterns of settlement and conflict during the Middle Holocene.
By Julian Smith
This is an article excerpt from the Summer 2020 edition of American Archaeology...
Summer Travel | American Archaeology
Editor’s note: This travel article was planned before the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. If you’re considering visiting any of the Conservancy’s preserves, please consult the regulations of the states the preserves...
The Truth in the Tree Rings | American Archaeology
The University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree Ring Research was founded in 1937 by astronomer A.E. Douglass and is the premiere laboratory devoted to dendrochronology in the U.S.
By Jasmine Demers
This is an article excerpt...
A Tough, Versatile People | American Archaeology
An unprecedented three-year project involving scientists from four nations, as well as new studies of ceremonial burial caves that held hundreds of mummified men, women and children, has provided fresh insights into Unangax̂ people...
Forty Years of Preservation, a feature from American Archaeology
Since its inception in 1980, The Archaeological Conservancy
has acquired more than 550 sites.
By Paula Neely
This is a full feature article from the Summer 2020 edition of American Archaeology Magazine to commemorate The Archaeological...
SPRING 2020 | A Zest For Maya Archaeology
The following is an article excerpt from the Spring 2020 Issue of American Archaeology Magazine. Become a member to subscribe and read the full story!
By Tamara Jager Stewart
With the passing of Michael Coe at...
SPRING 2020 | The Enduring Mystery Of Chichén Itzá
The following is an article excerpt from the Spring 2020 Issue of American Archaeology Magazine. Become a member to subscribe and read the full story!
By Michael Bawaya
Nelda Marengo Camacho lay on her stomach on...
Previous Issues
Sneak Peak: 15,000 Year-Old Pre-Clovis at Wakulla Springs
Fall 2018 Sneak Peek By Tamara Jager Stewart.
15,000 Year-Old Pre-Clovis Sites Cluster at Wakulla Springs, Florida Are These Evidence of Mastodon Kill Sites?
Great to see old friend and Paleo-Indian archaeologist Dr. Andy Hemmings as I...
American Archaeology Summer 2018 is Here!
The most recent issue of American Archaeology Magazine, SUMMER 2018, is now available!
COVER: Kin Kletso is one of Chaco Canyon’s great houses. Evidence indicates that gambling could have played an important role in...
When The Gambler Came To Chaco
Summer 2018: By Alexandra Witze.
Navajo oral histories tell of a Great Gambler who had a profound effect on Chaco Canyon, the Ancestral Puebloan capital located in what is now northwestern New Mexico. His name...
Rethinking Shell Middens
Summer 2018: By David Malakoff
In the fall of 2005, Hurricane Wilma, a powerful storm packing 120-mile-an-hour winds, smashed into the Ten Thousand Islands, a fifty-mile-long maze of mangrove-ringed islets on the Florida’s southwestern coast....
A Tour Of Western North Carolina’s Rich Archaeology & History
Summer 2018: By Andrea Cooper.
We rounded a corner in the Rankin Museum of American Heritage in Ellerbe, North Carolina (population 986), when my husband burst out laughing with delight. Behind glass cases is a...
Rich Man, Poor Man
Summer 2018: By Wayne Curtis.
In the first half of the first millennium A.D., Teotihuacan in central Mexico was the largest city in the western hemisphere. At its peak, it had about 125,000 residents and...
A Revolutionary Technology
Summer 2018: By Linda Vaccariello.
Arlen Chase’s recent field season at Caracol, the large Maya site in western Belize that he and his wife, archaeologist Diane Zaino Chase, have been investigating for more than thirty...
American Archaeology Magazine Spring 2018 is Here!
The most recent issue of American Archaeology Magazine, SPRING 2018, is now available!
COVER: Researchers carefully position a 3-D scanner on the fragile steps of Copán’s Hieroglyphic Stairway. The scans are used to reproduce...
Discovering The Archaeology Of Tattooing
Spring 2018: By Gayle Keck.
In old Western movies, Indians were invariably depicted galloping into the scene whooping and streaked with war paint. At least one aspect of that cliché is true. Native Americans did...
The 3D Past Reproduced
Spring 2018: By Elizabeth Lunday.
In 1885, when British scholar Alfred Percival Maudslay and his wife Anne Cary Morris Maudslay first explored the ruins of the Maya city Copán, Morris Maudslay described the unexcavated site...
The Mystery Of Hohokam Ballcourts
Spring 2018: By Alexandra Witze.
From the Olmec to the Maya to the Aztec, ballgames were one of the defining activities of Mesoamerican cultures. Beginning some time before 1200 B.C., competitors kicked and whacked rubber...
The Story Of Nunalleq
Spring 2018: By David Malakoff.
When Russian fur traders began exploring southwestern Alaska in the early 1800s, they met native Yup’ik people who told horrific tales of violence and revenge. In one common but unverified...
A Case For Collaboration
Spring 2018: By Julian Smith.
In 2016, Bonnie Clark of the University of Denver was running an archaeology field school at the Granada War Relocation Center, a Japanese American internment camp in southeast Colorado, when a...
American Archaeology’s Ten Most Interesting Articles Of 2017
As editor, I chose these amazing archaeology stories from the pages of American Archaeology magazine because each of them stood out for 2017 in some way—from the highly-disputed contention that humans occupied southern California...
American Archaeology Magazine Winter 2017 is Here!
The most recent issue of American Archaeology Magazine, WINTER 2017, is now available!
COVER: Shumla researchers Jerod Roberts (on ladder) and Karen Steelman use a portable x-ray fluorescence instrument to identify the elemental composition...