Meadowcroft Revisited
By Julian Smith
In June of this year, James Adovasio of the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, returned to a site he has been investigating since the end of the Vietnam War. The Meadowcroft...
A Pioneering Researcher
By Tamara Jager Stewart
The late Wendy Ashmore was one of the leading theoreticians in Maya archaeological research. She was born in Los Angles in 1948, and she earned her B.A. in anthropology in 1969...
Many Unhappy Returns
By Mike Toner
The admonition to “leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but pictures” is as familiar to national parks’ visitors as admission fees. So, it seems, is the urge to take more than pictures—a...
Understanding The Lead Rush
By Elizabeth Lunday
In 1830, a woman named Susan Gratiot received a letter from her father. Gratiot (pronounced GRASH-it) lived in a two-room log cabin with her husband and several young children in a mining...
Read Highlights from the Fall 2022 edition of American Archaeology Magazine
Cover Photo from the article "Understanding The Lead Rush" - Syracuse University student wearing mosquito netting to ward off gnats takes notes. | Credit: Joshua Ives.
The latest edition of American Archaeology Magazine will be...
The Oldest Human-Made Structures In The Americas?
By Elizabeth Lunday
On the edge of the Louisiana State University campus sits two eighteen-foot tall, conical earthen mounds constructed by ancient Native Americans. Known as the LSU Campus Mounds, they are a local landmark...
Ancient Adaptations
By Tamara Jager Stewart
Severe drought, mega fires, reservoirs evaporating, glaciers melting, sea levels rising, devastating hurricanes—these and other calamities are the consequences of climate change, which the British newspaper The Guardian proclaims is the...
Digging Detroit
By David Malakoff
The beer stein had seen better days. The hefty glass mug was missing its top half and part of its sturdy curved handle. Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine the stein brimming...
Exploring Belize’s Deep Past
By Michael Bawaya
Jaime Awe had an epiphany. He was scrutinizing a sweat bath he and his crew had uncovered at Xunantunich, a Maya ceremonial center in western Belize, when he realized there were two...
The Massacre At Mistick Fort
By Wayne Curtis
Shortly before dawn on the morning of May 26, 1637, a contingent of seventy-seven English soldiers accompanied by as many as 300 Native American allies quietly advanced upon a palisaded fort of...