All stories

In a room featuring silver plates, wooden furniture with ceramics on top, and a black pot hanging in a fireplace, a wax figure of a person wearing a beret and red and green kilt holds a book with one hand and touches an object on the mantle with the other.

In Defense of Museums

In response to news of ethical violations by museums, a curator reflects on the past and future missions of such institutions.
A large furry, horned animal stands on grassy terrain with a forest behind and airborne dust surrounding it.

Why Store 41,000 Bison Bones?

An archaeologist explains why a museum keeps so many bones from the Jones-Miller site, an ice age bison kill on the North American plains.
Under a blue sky, a row of several wooden beams protrudes out of a large wall of cobbled sandstones.

The Astounding Origins of Chaco Canyon Timber

In a nearly treeless desert, Ancestral Puebloans built Great Houses with more than 200,000 massive log beams. Where they got the wood has long puzzled archaeologists.
A close-up photograph features a sculpture depicting a person wearing a headwrap and dress leaning on a tombstone at a gravesite etched with the numbers “1941–1945.”

When Life Imitates Art in Ukraine

Photographs from Russia’s war on Ukraine dissolve an archaeologist’s fondness for a Soviet-era sculpture.
Una sección transversal de color marrón claro de un árbol muestra anillos arbóreos estrechos y anchos.

Los anillos de los árboles son la prueba de la megasequía —y de nuestro destino funesto—

Científicos utilizan la dendroclimatología para investigar las megasequías en el oeste de Estados Unidos, y los árboles están contando una historia inquietante.
A light-brown cross section of a tree shows narrow and wide tree rings.

Tree Rings Are Evidence of the Megadrought—and Our Doom

Scientists are using dendroclimatology to investigate megadroughts in the western U.S., and the trees are telling a disturbing tale.

Two Pioneering Female Archaeologists

Hannah Marie Wormington and Cynthia Irwin-Williams grew up in a time when women were banned from some anthropology classrooms, yet they forged successful careers and set examples as supportive and inspiring leaders.
A black-and-white photograph shows the profile of a Black person on a horse in an open space.

A Hidden Figure in North American Archaeology

A Black cowboy named George McJunkin, who died 100 years ago, found a site that would transform scientific views about the deep history of Native Americans in North America.

The Blockbuster Exhibit That Shouldn’t Have Been

Museum curators have occasionally embellished archaeological finds with compelling but questionable stories. Consider the Field Museum’s "Magdalenian Girl."
A collection of tall, thin wooden statues of different heights rests against a wall.

Do Stolen Sacred Objects Experience Culture Shock?

Ancestral memorials from Kenya called vigango have been stolen and sold as "art" around the world. An anthropologist working to return them wonders what the spirits experience when they are displaced.

How Museums Can Do More Than Just Repatriate Objects

It is beautiful when museums go beyond returning objects toward “propatriation”—collaborating to commission new objects for display.
Mesa Verde Ancestral Puebloan - Stone axes used by Ancestral Puebloans left distinctive jagged marks on wood, as seen on this beam end from a tree cut down around A.D. 625.

The Phantom Forests That Built Mesa Verde

For years, archaeologists working in Mesa Verde National Park have been looking for evidence of where Ancestral Puebloans harvested the thousands of trees they used to build their elaborate cliff dwellings.
do twins share soul - The author and his twin pose with ère ìbejì on display at a 1967 Field Museum exhibition.

Do Twins Share a Soul?

An anthropologist—and identical twin—grapples with different cultural understandings of twinship.
archaeology marijuana - Commercial marijuana products in the U.S. have proliferated since recreational use has been legalized in 11 states.

An Archaeology of Marijuana

How did cannabis—a plant humans have been using for more than 10,000 years—become so vilified in the U.S.?
wildfire archaeology - The first poster of Smokey Bear, the U.S. Forest Service’s now famous mascot for forest fire suppression, appeared in 1944.

Wildfire Archaeology and the Burning American West

Archaeologists in New Mexico are pioneering surprising research methods—involving tree rings, pottery, and blasts of light—to explain why wildfire suppression doesn’t work.
Total hip replacement surgeries, using titanium parts such as those shown, have become a routine medical procedure.

Two Surgeries, 800 Years Apart

An archaeologist’s hip surgery prompts him to reimagine the experience of a Puebloan woman who survived a terrible fall centuries ago.