Top 10 Discoveries of 2015

ARCHAEOLOGY's editors reveal the year's most compelling finds

By THE EDITORS

January/February 2016

Top Ten Opener ImageThis year’s Top 10 Discoveries reach us from vastly different cultures and across eons. Some raise new questions about what it means to be human and what separates us from our species’ relatives. Others bring us face to face with individual people, their travels, their faith, their hold on power. Several, covering matters as diverse as slavery and the origins of art, come to us via newly applied scientific methods. Taken together, this year’s discoveries present an array of insights into endeavors, large and small, spanning millions of years.


Jamestown’s VIPs
Jamestown, Virginia
Mythological Mercury Pool
Teotihuacan, Mexico
Tracing Slave Origins
Philipsburg, St. Martin
World’s Oldest Pretzels
Regensburg, Germany
Baby Bobcat
Springfield, Illinois
Tomb of a Highborn Celt
Lavau, France
Bronze Age Bride
Copenhagen, Denmark
The First Artists
Sulawesi, Indonesia
Earliest Stone Tools
West Turkana, Kenya
A New Human Relative
Johannesburg, South Africa
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