The final days at one of Arizona’s most famous ancient landmarks were fraught with violence and death, new research shows.
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Severed Heads, Skull Bowls Found in California Graves Were Tributes, Not War Trophies, Study Finds
A 3,000 year-old village discovered in central California has been found to contain an unusual set of burials — with more than a half dozen individuals buried without their heads,…
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Mass Grave Found in California Reveals Prehistoric Violence Against ‘Outsiders’
An ancient mass grave, uncovered during the construction of a shopping mall outside San Francisco, contains the bodies of seven men who appear to have been victims of “mass homicide”…
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Victims of Human Sacrifice at Cahokia Were Locals, Not ‘Foreign’ Captives, Study Finds
The practice of human sacrifice in America’s largest prehistoric city was more subtle and complex than experts once thought, new research suggests. Recent studies into the remains of sacrificial victims…
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Site of Deadliest Native American Massacre Identified in Idaho
A peaceful patch of farmland in southeastern Idaho likely holds a grisly, bitter history — but the full story remains hidden, at least for now. Archaeologists surveying acreage along the Bear…
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Violence in the Ancient Southwest Offers Insights Into Peace, Study Says
Despite some recent sensational claims that the prehistoric Southwest was the site of the worst violence in American history, the archaeologist often cited for that assertion says that, in fact,…
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Evidence of Hobbling, Torture Discovered at Ancient Massacre Site in Colorado
The site of a gruesome massacre some 1,200 years ago in southwestern Colorado is yielding new evidence of the severity, and the grisly intensity, of the violence that took place there….
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From Stone Darts to Dismembered Bodies, New Study Reveals 5,000 Years of Violence in Central California
From shooting their enemies with darts and arrows to crushing their skulls and even harvesting body parts as trophies, the ancient foragers of central California engaged in sporadic, and sometimes…
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Sacrificial and Common Graves Alike Reveal Diversity in Ancient City of Cahokia
Whether they died from natural causes or as sacrificial offerings, the residents of America’s largest prehistoric city were surprisingly diverse, with at least a third of the population having come…
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Southwestern-Style Spear Throwers Identified in the Ozarks
New analysis of two spear-throwers excavated nearly a century ago in the Ozark Mountains reveals what one archaeologist calls an “uncanny” similarity to those used in the ancient Southwest and…
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Plains Indian Fortress With Moat, ‘Underground Apartments’ Unearthed in Oklahoma
A tumultuous time on the southern Plains is slowly returning to the surface in Oklahoma, where archaeologists have excavated a 250-year-old fortress built by a people known as the Taovaya,…
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Mass Grave of ‘Prodigal Sons’ in California Poses Prehistoric Mystery
New research has turned up some perplexing clues in a prehistoric mystery: the fate of three men found in a mass grave in California, their bodies riddled with arrow points…
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Grisly Mass Grave in Utah Cave Is Evidence of ‘Prehistoric Warfare,’ Study Says
Nearly a hundred skeletons buried in a cave in southeast Utah offer grisly evidence that ancient Americans waged war on each other as much as 2,000 years ago, according to…
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