Archaeology
Digging up what people left. Stratigraphy and the trench, Pompeii and Herculaneum, Çatalhöyük and Sutton Hoo, ground-penetrating radar and LiDAR, radiocarbon dating, and the finds that rewrote a chronology.
Part of Underground
67 moments in this segment.
- - Flint in the Form of a Bird. (5000–2950 BCE), Naqada II–III (3650–3000 BCE), dated 4000–3000 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Seal Amulet in the form of a Lion's Head. 3800–3500 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Kandila (Collared Jar with Conical Foot). ), Greece, Cycladic, dated 3000–2950 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Sickle Blade. (2040–1648 BCE), Dynasty 12, dated 1980–1801 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Sickle Blades. (2040–1648 BCE), Dynasty 12, dated 1980–1801 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Fragment of a Necklace. (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18, dated 1540–1296 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Amulet of Bastet. (1069–715 BCE), dated c. 1069–715 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Amulet of a Crouching Bear. (715–332 BCE), dated 664–332 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Black-Gloss Oil Lamp. 400s BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Lamp. 100–1 BCE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Oil Lamp. (c. 50 BCE, 50 CE), dated c. 50 BCE, 50 CE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Relief Portrait Head of the Emperor Balbinus. 238 CE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Axe. 250–900 CE. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Eccentric Flint. (250-900), dated 600–900. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Animal-Headed Figure Pendant. 1000-1550, dated c. 1000–1550. Museum photograph of an excavated object; the date given is the object's, not the photograph's.
- - Bethel excavations matpc.16401. Title: Bethel excavations Abstract/medium: G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection Physical description: 1 negative:. Period photograph.
- - ORL 33 tab 06 pic 02 Anlegestelle. Photograph showing orl 33 tab 06 pic 02 anlegestelle. Modern photograph of an ancient site.
- - Mary Beard: Pompeii - Life and Death in a Roman Town. Classicist Mary Beard's BBC documentary reconstructs everyday Roman life from the evidence buried by Vesuvius.
- - 24 July 1911: Machu Picchu 'rediscovered'. Hiram Bingham reaches the Inca site, built in the 15th century and abandoned by 1572.
- - New finds from the Antikythera wreck. Statues and a mysterious bronze disc recovered by divers returning to the wreck site.
- - Ask an archaeologist: ground-penetrating radar. UC Berkeley's Scott Byram explains how GPR maps buried structures before a spade goes in.
- - Technology in archaeology: ground-penetrating radar. An interview on how GPR is used in the field and what its returns can and cannot show.
- - A gold mask emerges at Sanxingdui. Excavation footage of the gold mask found at the Sichuan Bronze Age site first identified in 1929.
- - Castlerigg before a storm - Adam Morgan Ibbotson. Castlerigg Stone Circle with stormy skied approaching.
- - The Antikythera mechanism. BBC Reel on the corroded bronze device recovered from a Greek shipwreck and what its gearing computed.
- - Iron Age and Roman archaeology at HS2's Blackgrounds dig. A site tour of the Northamptonshire excavation and the geophysical survey that found it.
- - The largest bronze mask from Sanxingdui. Footage from ritual pit no. 3 as archaeologists lift the largest bronze mask yet found at the site.
- - Dholavira - Games Board from the Harappan civilization. The games board's appearance at Dholavira reflects people's leisure activities.
- - Lasers reveal an ancient Amazonian civilisation. Nature reports the LiDAR survey that exposed pyramids and canals beneath the Bolivian Amazon.
- - Bronze altar among new Sanxingdui finds. CGTN reports nearly 13,000 relics recovered from the newly opened pits.
- - The Rosetta Stone and what it actually says. Curator Ilona Regulski reads the decree on the stone found in 1799 and notes the 27 other copies since identified.
- - Fyndplats för mynthänge RAÄ-nr Väskinde 166 1. Fyndplats för guldmynt, omgjort till spänne, RAÄ-nr Väskinde 166:1. Myntet slaget i Spanien 1122-23 e.v.t. Påträffat 1971 vid potatisplockning. Nu hos Gotlands Museum (GFC 10771).
- - Why the British Museum has the Parthenon Marbles. How the sculptures came to London, and the contested legal and ethical history of that acquisition.
- - Woolley and site formation at Ur. Dr Brad Hafford revisits Woolley's field notes alongside new excavation, at a conference marking the centenary of his first season.
- - A complete bronze applique depicting a Lion dated to the 1st Century B.C, it was found in
- - Tony Freeth on the Antikythera mechanism. The researcher who led the X-ray tomography work explains what the surviving fragments encode.
- - Pompeii begins its biggest excavation in a generation. BBC News on the reopening of large-scale digging at Pompeii, with a bakery and skeletons already uncovered.
- - Gobekli Tepe: the place that rewrote history. An archaeology-trained explainer of the Turkish site, separating the evidence from the lost-civilisation claims made about it.
- - Return or retain? The Parthenon Marbles debate. A formal debate on the restitution of the sculptures Lord Elgin removed from Athens, and what museums owe.
- - Sanxingdui: discovery of a lost Bronze Age civilisation. A UCLA symposium on the Sanxingdui site and its place in Chinese archaeology.
- - Castlerigg Aerial - Adam Morgan Ibbotson. Castlerigg Stone Circle as seen from the sky to the north, looking towards the Thirlmere Valley.
- - Hidden Secrets of Pompeii. Archaeologists open new digs at Pompeii, examining a sacrificial skull and crawling through the site's underground tunnels.
- - Dead Sea Scroll Detectives. NOVA follows scientists using imaging and chemistry to test newly surfaced scroll fragments for forgery.
- - The Parthenon Marbles and cultural repatriation. A short briefing on ownership, appropriation and the repatriation argument facing Western museums.
- - Why was the Rosetta Stone so important?. How scholars used the stone's parallel Greek text to unlock Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- - Circular platform near Las Pilas. Circular threshing floor near the Las Pilas mountain on La Gomera. The platform is made of selected rocks cemented with mortar. It is a near-perfect circle. Nearby is a farm ruin. Few hundred meters S.
- - Pompeii: The New Dig - the pyroclastic flow. Volcanologist Chris Jackson reads the tell-tale signs of the pyroclastic surge that killed everything in its path at Pompeii.
- - 146375 israel lands management authority inscription on PikiWiki Israel. Name: Israel Lands Management Authority Inscription On Description: Israel Lands Management Authority Inscription On Ancient Tomb In Mamilla Cemetery.
- - A Maya city found by accident in the Mexican jungle. Pyramids, ball courts and causeways revealed under canopy by a laser survey a student found in an online dataset.
- - A once-in-a-century find at Pompeii. BBC News on the discovery of a large private bathhouse in the ongoing Regio IX excavation.
- - Sanxingdui: the discovery that rewrote Chinese history. An evidence-led account of the bronze masks, gold sceptres and jade from the Sichuan sacrificial pits.
- - Inside the new excavations at Pompeii. NBC reports from the once-in-a-generation dig underway in the buried Roman city.
- - The forest was full of cities we couldn't see. How airborne LiDAR changed archaeology, and where its results have been over-read.
- - The greatest historical discoveries of 2024-2025. An evidence-based round-up of the year's finds and the reanalyses that changed accepted chronology.
- - Secrets of Pompeii's Dead. National Geographic examines new excavation evidence from Pompeii and Herculaneum identifying victims of the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption.
- - Five discoveries from Pompeii's new excavations. A tour of finds from the ongoing Regio IX, Insula 10 excavation, filmed with access from the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
- - The oldest temple in the world. Palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi visits Gobekli Tepe for the BBC.
- - Excavating Gobekli Tepe: interview with Jens Notroff. Archaeologist Jens Notroff, who worked years at the site, on what the excavation actually found.
- - Guerrero Coyote de Tula en el MNA. Vista de la pieza del Guerrero Coyote de Tula del Museo Nacional de Antropología que algunos expertos relacionan con Ce Acatl Topiltzin, Quetzalcoatl.
- - The machine that changed our understanding of history. How a 1900 sponge-diving find off Antikythera produced a geared astronomical calculator two millennia old.
- - HS2's 450,000 finds in a secret warehouse. The BBC is shown the vast store of objects unearthed by the archaeologists working ahead of the HS2 line.
- - Stone Age Temple Mystery. NOVA on Gobekli Tepe, where hunter-gatherer monuments predate agriculture and overturn assumptions about how civilisation began.
- - AI used to reconstruct a Pompeii victim's face. Reuters on the first use of AI facial reconstruction on a victim of the AD 79 eruption.
- - Life in Pompeii. David Suzuki's documentary on the science being used to read the city's oldest and deepest layers.
- - Vindolanda 2026 excavation update. Dr Marta Alberti-Dunn reports new features and finds from the current season at the Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall.
- - Twenty great discoveries of 2025-2026. A myth-busting survey of the most significant archaeological finds announced across the past two years.
- - Top archaeological discoveries of 2026 so far. Lost cities, ancient pandemics and other finds announced in the first half of 2026.
