When two young men wading in the Columbia River on a lazy summer day stumbled on a skull and bones a decade ago, the remains looked so fresh that police taped off the area as a possible crime scene. The human skeleton—a scattering of 380 pieces sparked a highly publicized court case that made national headlines for years. A projectile…

Though clay pipes are routinely found during Atlantic seaboard excavations, llittle is known about their manufacture and use. Work at a 17th-century settlement in Maryland is revealing unique pipes, as well as evidence of how they were made.   Al Luckenbach is taking a break from the September heat at a dig in rural Maryland to ponder the mystery that…

An interpretation of new data suggests that ritual activity took place in southern Mexico more than 9,000 years ago. But the interpretation has sparked a debate among Mesoamerican scholars   On a balmy summer evening more than 9,000 years ago, a couple of dozen people gathered outside their oval huts on a small plaza demarcated by two rows of boulders.…