Read Highlights from the Winter 2022 edition of American Archaeology Magazine

Cover Photo from the article "The Oldest Human-Made Structures In The Americas?" - Syracuse University student wearing mosquito netting to ward off gnats takes notes. | Credit: Joshua Ives. The latest edition of American Archaeology...

Fringe Theories Presented as Fact Perpetuate Harmful Myths

By Julian Smith The eight-part series Ancient Apocalypse premiered on Netflix in November 2022. Hosted by the British journalist Graham Hancock, the show took viewers to archaeological sites from Mexico to Indonesia using drone footage,...

Podcasting is a Digital Outreach, Educational Tool for Archaeologists

By Gayle Keck For millennia, tales have been told around the fire – a tradition archaeologists likely reflect on as they sift through ancient fire pits. But these days, the new campfires are our smartphones,...

U.S. Archaeology Confronts Labor Crunch With Infrastructure Spending

By David Malakoff Late last year, the residents of Winlock, a small town in eastern Washington, got some good news: thanks to a $23 million government grant, contractors would soon begin installing 250 miles of...

Discovering Coronado: New sites found in Arizona, including the first townsite

By Tamara Jager Stewart It took no more than five minutes of scrambling through angry, needle-sharp undergrowth of dense cat’s claw and trying to dodge an equally angry overstory of mesquite, for me to relate...
Image of Mesa Verde cliff dwelling.

Summer Travel: Tour the Ancestral Pueblo Heartland of Southwest Colorado

By Tamara Jager Stewart From ancestral Native American cliff dwellings, Pueblo settlements, petroglyphs, and agricultural sites to historic structures and architecture related to early 20th century transportation, southwest Colorado boasts a vast array of archaeological...

Archaeology as Anthropology: Stuart Struever’s Visionary Ideas Contributed to the Movement of ‘New Archaeology’...

By Tracy Loe As a 9-year-old boy in 1940 Illinois, Struever Struever found a projectile point on a neighbor’s farm. He then found artifacts on his own family’s land. These new discoveries in hand, he...
Photo showing peole participating in an archaeological excavation.

The Archaeology of Place-Making: The Kawartha Lakes Project Explores How Burial Sites Helped Native...

By Wayne Curtis In September 2009, contractors were digging a foundation for a new building at a nonprofit summer camp on a 104-acre island in Pigeon Lake in south-central Ontario. Human remains were uncovered and,...
Photo of archaeological excavation in the middle of urban Miami, Florida.

Tequesta’s Miami: Discovery of Ancient Occupation Prompts Activists, Preservationists to Push City to Do...

By David Malakoff On a warm evening earlier this year, Miami’s trendy Brickell neighborhood was humming. Couples young and old strolled down streets lined with chic cafés and glittering condo towers. Sleek motor yachts cruised...

Beneath the Jungle: Large LiDAR Survey in Maya Lowlands Unveils a Sophisticated Kingdom

By Michael Bawaya In 2009, archaeologists Arlen and Diane Chase led a LiDAR study of Caracol, a large, 2,600-year-old Maya city in Belize. LiDAR (an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote-sensing technology...