At the foot of Mount Aragatsotn, in the Armenian highlands, sits the site of Aruch — a castle that was never just a castle. Between the 12th and 13th centuries, it housed a high-status residence, complete with stone-slab floors and cisterns. Over time, though, that elite space was carved up into smaller rooms, and holes […]

Chinese legal texts have described nasal amputation as a criminal punishment since the Bronze Age. Oracle bone inscriptions from the Shang dynasty even carved the concept into a single character: a knife next to a nose. For all that documentation, though, no archaeologist had ever found a skeleton that showed it happening — until now. […]

Danish archaeology is facing one of the most unique discoveries of the last decade in the field of ancient Nordic clothing. During the excavation at the site known as Skonager (ARV 661), carried out near Varde, in the heart of Western Jutland, a team of archaeologists has located a female tomb from the Viking Age […]