Enclosure with T-shaped pillars at Karahan Tepe. Photo: tobeytravels / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

1 Dec 2022 · Sayburç, Şanlıurfa, Turkey (Türkiye)

Sayburç reliefs: narrative scene with humans and leopards

In a bench frieze, a man holding his phallus is flanked by two leopards, and another man faces a bull. It is the earliest known narrative relief scene, about 9000 BCE.

Why it matters: It extends the Taş Tepeler world beyond the big sites and offers rare “story” imagery from the era.

art & symbols excavation

Site guide: Göbekli Tepe & Karahan Tepe · Source: Özdol Kutlu 2023, Antiquity ↗

Bronze heads with gold-foil masks from the Sanxingdui sacrificial pits — Photo: momo · CC BY 2.0

26 Oct 2026 · Sanxingdui, Guanghan, Sichuan, China

Silk wrapped the sacred bronzes of Sanxingdui 3,000 years ago

Jianbo Guo, Ruochen Ge, Lu Yang and colleagues studied textile residues on objects from the Sanxingdui sacrificial pits K2–K8, the site of the famous bronze heads and gold masks of the ancient Shu culture. They found silk on 101 objects, 94 of them bronzes, dating to the Late Shang period (1300–1046 BCE). Microscopy and infrared tests identify mulberry silk, mostly plain weave, some coloured with hematite or an organic red dye, and some cloths as finely woven as Shang silks from the Central Plains.

excavation art & symbols ancient society

Source: Guo, Ge, Cai, Tian & Yang 2026, Antiquity ↗; Archaeology Magazine (news), 28 Oct 2026 ↗

16 Oct 2026 · Shég’ Xdaltth’í’, Tanana valley, Alaska, United States

13,800-year-old Alaskan camp links both sides of the Bering Land Bridge

Kelly Graf, Ted Goebel and colleagues report on Shég’ Xdaltth’í’ (formerly McDonald Creek), 55 km south-southeast of Fairbanks. It has three Late Pleistocene occupation layers dated to about 13,800, 13,000 and 12,700 years ago. The oldest layer holds more than 80,000 specimens, including a distinctive hafted biface, bone and antler tools, animal remains and well-preserved activity areas.

dating excavation hunter-gatherers

Graham Hancock · Source: Graf et al. 2026, Science Advances ↗