In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a team of researchers led by Professor Jia Xin from the Institute of Environmental Archaeology at Nanjing Normal University reconstructed the environmental evolution and human settlement adaptation processes at the Xuecheng archaeological site in the Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River during the Mid to Late Holocene. By integrating multiple environmental proxies and high precision topographic data, the study revealed how hydrological and landscape changes shaped prehistoric settlement migration and spatial organization, providing new evidence for understanding human environment interactions during the formation of early Chinese civilization.

Pliny the Younger witnessed the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago and recorded the day’s events with enough detail that scientists are now able to benchmark the argon-argon dating method, one of the most versatile, spanning the present to the beginning of the solar system. After resolving ambiguities about the date — Aug. 24, 79 CE — UC Berkeley scientists significantly improved the method’s accuracy and precision. They also increased the precision of potassium-40’s half-life.

A severely deformed 1834 British silver sixpence preserves physical evidence most consistent with an unusual minting anomaly, according to an IA STUDIO study published in npj Heritage Science.

Archaeologist have long debated how pottery from Native Americans of the Mississippian culture in what is now the Southeast United States wound up far beyond the boundaries of that culture in Tampa Bay, Florida. Now archaeoloigsts say they have the answer: a secretive guild of migrant artisans made the pottery hundreds of years ago and may have used their specialized knowledge to secure a place for themselves in their new community. 

Sir John Gage, a key figure in Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, saved a dangerous Catholic book from likely destruction, a new study suggests. The identification of six lost pages of a medieval bestseller – illicitly prized by Catholics in the Reformation – as belonging to Gage, exposes the split loyalties of one of Tudor England’s great survivors.

Efforts to virtually unroll and read papyrus scrolls carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius show the value of X-ray scans and AI in deciphering texts. UC Berkeley and NIST scientists have now created, carbonized and scanned contemporary scrolls to see if lead in the ink would make deciphering easier. They found that even small amounts of lead make the letters readable in X-ray scans, arguing for a systematic lead analysis of the remaining papyri.

X-ray technology and artificial intelligence — along with the discovery of lead in the ink of fragments of a collection of ancient Roman scrolls — could soon help scientists read long-lost texts buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, according to a study published September 16, 2026, in the open access journal PLOS One by Douglas Seiler, an affiliate of the University of California Berkeley, USA, Jacob Michael LaManna from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA, David Kreimer from University of California Berkeley, USA, and colleagues.

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have gleaned new insights into ancient water management in the French region around Nîmes by analyzing carbonate deposits within the Roman aqueduct that features the famous Pont du Gard bridge. Among other findings, the aqueduct – built around 50 AD – was expanded to include an additional water source after eleven years of operation; this event coincided with a historically documented dry spell. A century after the aqueduct's construction, the water supply to the city was deliberately throttled; it is likely that some of the water was diverted to agricultural land in the surrounding area instead. Another 120 years later, the urban water supply ceased completely, coinciding with an empire-wide economic crisis and the Plague of Cyprian (250-270 AD). Nîmes was presumably depopulated by the plague, rendering the water supply to the city unnecessary.