Life In The Great Dismal Swamp
Spring 2017: By David Malakoff.
“I sometimes ask myself why I didn’t do one of those projects where the dig is right next to the parking lot.” Archaeologist Becca Peixotto wasn’t complaining, but she sounded...
Saving An Ancient Library
Winter 2017: By Richard A. Marini.
Having scrambled about the shallow, open-air rock shelter known as the Wiley site in southwest Texas, six archaeologists took inventory of the many iconographic figures painted on the shelter...
The Fates Of Very Ancient Remains
SUMMER 2017: By Mike Toner
To some Native Americans, the repatriation and reburial of very ancient human remains is simple justice. To many archaeologists and other scientists, it’s akin to reburying the Rosetta stone. “Every...
Book Review – The African Burial Ground in New York City
The African Burial Ground in New York City
By Andrea E. Frohne
(Syracuse University Press, 2015; 444 pgs., illus., $75 cloth, $50 paper; syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu)
In the late 1980s, the General Services Administration (GSA) made plans to build...
Summer 2014
The cover of past issue of American Archaeology Magazine, Summer 2014
Cover Photo: A Native American holds an elaborate pipe in this mid-19th century illustration by the noted artist Karl Bodmer.
Photo Credit: Rare Books Division, The New...
From Atlatls To Arrows
Spring 2015: From Atlatls To Arrows, By Mike Toner.
For thousands of years, North America’s ancient people relied on an ingenious spear-throwing device called the atlatl to hunt game and wage war. Then they discovered, and...
SPRING 2019 PREVIEW | Righting Wrongs At Effigy Mounds
The following is an excerpt from the Spring 2019 Issue of American Archaeology Magazine.
By Julian Smith
COVER IMAGE: Effigy Mounds’ officials bought so many new pieces of construction equipment that a shed was built to hold...
Putting The Petroglyphs In Context
Fall 2015: Putting The Petroglyphs In Context, By Tamara Stewart
Escaping from the blistering desert heat, we are drawn down the worn stone steps into Chevelon Canyon, toward the cool oasis of flowing water and...
Archaeology Under Attack
Spring 2017: By Tamara Jager Stewart.
In the late 1980s, while working in Wisconsin, Lynne Goldstein, now archaeology professor and director of the Campus Archaeology Program at Michigan State University, served on a panel working...
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...