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.

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.

Photographs from Russia’s war on Ukraine dissolve an archaeologist’s fondness for a Soviet-era sculpture.

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

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 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.

Museum curators have occasionally embellished archaeological finds with compelling but questionable stories. Consider the Field Museum's "Magdalenian Girl."

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.

It is beautiful when museums go beyond returning objects toward “propatriation”—collaborating to commission new objects for display.

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.

An anthropologist—and identical twin—grapples with different cultural understandings of twinship.

How did cannabis—a plant humans have been using for more than 10,000 years—become so vilified in the U.S.?

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.

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

One museum’s saga of returning stolen vigango statues to Kenya reveals how repatriating sacred objects is both the right thing and a very hard thing to do.

A history of masks reveals how humans have used them to hide, disguise, transform, and protect themselves.

An archaeologist explains why figuring out an object's age is harder than you think.

With COVID-19 making its way around the United States, people are emptying stores of toilet paper. Archaeology throws a light on other bouts of odd consumer behavior.

After floating in a sensory deprivation tank and visiting Dave & Buster's, one anthropologist ponders our ancient ancestors' soundscapes.

New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon showcases magnificent structures that were built on ingenuity. By contrast, the state’s Rio Rancho Estates was built on fraud.

An archaeologist ponders memorials—from the Monti gate to the Taj Mahal—and finds clues about the reasons people want to be remembered.

Commonly held views of ancient history are often colored by what survives in the archaeological record—and by cultural biases.

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, an archaeologist and curator imagines the inventor and artist teleported to our time.

Westerners have long shunned obese people, and this attitude now pervades much of the globe. Was this always the case?

The long history of Native American tribes is nowhere to be found on modern maps. So the Zuni decided it was time to create their own kind of cartography.

Can natural history museums justify their collections of human remains?

For many years, scholars believed oral history was no more accurate than mythology. It turns out they were wrong.

An archaeologist explores how shoes have embodied our identities through the ages.

We can continue our obsessive, harried pursuit of new technology, or we can relax and enjoy life more—but we can’t do both.

An archaeologist explains what ancient Roman bathrooms were like. Hint: It involved a long stick and a bucket of vinegar.

Embalming is just one among the world’s wide variety of funeral practices, and in a sense it’s as ordinary as any other. Then again, it’s pretty strange.

People who were part of the Hopewell culture ventured far and wide to obtain large quantities of raw materials.

Tree-ring dating helps answer questions about pre-Columbian life in the Mesa Verde region.

Among gifts, the peace medal is one of the most coveted—and complex.

Without the material value of a literal coin, we are left to trust in the symbolic relationships that give meaning to money.

Scientific findings tend to be provisional. That’s a good thing.

Scientific discoveries usually involve many people working over long periods of time. But they are generally worth the wait.

The faces of Soviet-era prisoners in a famous sculpture speak volumes about the brutal circumstances that millions experienced under Joseph Stalin. But what of prisoners today in the U.S.?

Sometimes objects in museum collections lead to a lot of conflict. In the best cases, though, they give rise to mutual respect and gratitude.

Growth rings in wood can be used to date some surprising objects—even stringed instruments.

History has produced a lot of famous war machines, but only a few of them have become icons.

An astronaut brought an ancient Clovis point to the space station. What object would you choose to send into space?

Our often-ridiculed ancestors were capable of abstract thought. They deserve some respect. Exhibit A: Neanderthals' Levallois technique.

What do 53-foot shipping containers and Bactrian camels have in common? Not much at first glance, but dig a little deeper and you find some surprising similarities.

How we memorialize significant events says a lot about our cultural view of time. Consider the Chief White Horse Winter Count.

Donald Trump’s simple fashion statement speaks volumes.

What do a figurine from Greenland, a burning desire to win, and one man’s plot to overcome a goat's curse have to do with the World Series?

Whether across the expanse of thousands of years or alongside a river, the hand wave is a gesture that holds social meaning. But has it always been used as a positive greeting?

Velcro might appear to be victorious, but the zipper, a 100-year-old invention, arguably still reigns in both familiar and unexpected places.

Long before Siri, GPS, and well-worn road atlases, mariners relied on ancient, time-tested navigational tools such as stick charts.

GPS is everywhere these days, but if it suddenly disappeared all would not be lost: We’ve been making cognitive maps for eons.

Mother Nature doesn’t play fair when it comes to the preservation of archaeological remains. Should we study gender archaeology?

The development of tree-ring dating offers a great example of why good science often takes time.

Hundreds of memorial statues stolen from Kenya and Tanzania have ended up in U.S. museums. Should the principle of informed consent be applied to (apparently) inanimate objects?

An unusual container produced by the Moche civilization of Peru raises many questions about their society—and our own views of sex.

When it came to carving the likeness of the immortal Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the world's most valuable sapphire, there was no room for error.

The Acheulean hand ax is one of the most beautifully designed tools ever produced. And it's by far the most sustainable technology in human history.

Can an anthropologist who loves hockey embrace his team’s race-based mascot?