Tag Archaeology

UW repository stores anthropological artifacts from around the world

October 8, 2013

Like Hercules assigned to clean the Augean stables, curator Danielle Benden was hired by the University of Wisconsin–Madison anthropology department in 2007 to sort and systematize the final resting place for the department's collection of pots, bones, baskets, spear points, clothing, musical instruments, kayaks and effigies.

Archeologists return to mysterious Aztalan site in Jefferson County

July 1, 2013

Research groups from three Midwestern universities are digging yet again at Aztalan, a state park near Lake Mills, Wis., hoping to unravel the history of a walled outpost that was once thought to be related to the Aztec culture in Mexico.

Archaeologists on front lines of protecting ancient culture in turbulent regions

April 11, 2013

J. Mark Kenoyer stands on a windswept peak in Logar Province in eastern Afghanistan, his head wrapped in a traditional scarf against the harsh sun. As he chats in a mixture of Urdu and Pashto with an Afghan archaeologist, it’s easy to see why documentarian Brent Huffman wanted the University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of anthropology to appear in his upcoming film about Mes Aynak, a 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery.

Isotopic Data Show Farming Arrived in Europe with Migrants

February 11, 2013

For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization. Now, new data gleaned from the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped shows that agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them.

UW-Madison archaeologists to mount new expedition to Troy

October 15, 2012

Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15).

Ancient Mesoamerican sculpture uncovered in southern Mexico

February 14, 2011

With one arm raised and a determined scowl, the figure looks ready to march right off his carved tablet and into the history books. If only we knew who he was - corn god? Tribal chief? Sacred priest?

To future archaeologists, old technology is beautiful technology

August 2, 2010

A couple of dozen students sit on plastic tarps under the trees at the edge of the Eagle Heights Community Gardens, at the west end of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. Their professor - a noted archaeologist - faces them, sitting on his own tarp, much as he would while supervising a dig in his specialty area, South Asia. Within arm's reach, UW–Madison archaeology professor Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has some raw materials of ancient technology: boxes of arrows, stone tools, horns, hunks of obsidian and flint, cords, a chalkboard and a box of Band-Aids.

Ancient kiln technology yields modern art

May 16, 2000

The proof is in the pottery. Proof, that is, of why a wood-fired kiln is worth all the smoke and ashes and interminable stoking. Student and faculty artists anxiously awaited that verdict last week as they unloaded their work from a new Japanese-style kiln constructed on Picnic Point.