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...