Archaeology news from the ancient world, checked against the original sources, and the home of The Egypt Files, The Greek Files and The Roman Files.
Three campaigns in, the Normale's Agrigento dig yields first-century BC fresco fragments beside the ancient assembly hall — and a central question about the building's identity that the announcement leaves open.
7 Oct 2026Forty-six skulls from Petrie's excavations are now held in the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge. A bioarchaeologist re-examined them with modern forensic methods: 39% show perimortem trauma, injuries Petrie apparently took for postmortem damage.
7 Oct 2026A Roman ship sank with dozens of statues and a device called the world's oldest computer. More than 125 years after sponge divers found the wreck, more of the cargo is thought to lie on the seabed, and in 2017 the team said it believed at least seven life-size statues could be hidden nearby.
6 Oct 2026Rome's new metro stations opened with a 2nd-century barracks and 28 Republican-era wells in tow. The Colosseo museum is live. The Porta Metronia barracks museum was announced for spring 2026.
5 Oct 2026Greece's Culture Ministry has completed major projects at Nicopolis and is pursuing a UNESCO bid, while the Great Theatre's third phase is funded and under way. Here is what is done and what is funded.
4 Oct 2026A 1954 black-and-white photograph is all that survives of a seal impression that may name a woman in Egypt's highest royal symbol. New digital tools are reopening the case — and at least one outside scholar disputes the reading.
3 Oct 2026A previously unknown Roman city with a street grid and 8,000-seat amphitheatre has been identified near Stein, Austria, in a gap between Ptolemy's coordinates and the archaeological record.
28 Sep 2026A microgravity survey and reanalysed radar data point to a "hidden complex" of corridors and rooms behind KV62's north wall. The data has been sitting in a project paper since 17 September. Whether anyone actually drills is a bureaucratic decision, not a scientific one.
27 Sep 2026