Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew, here to tell you about our four top news stories from this past week of Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

A DNA study of seven skeletons found at the Classic Maya site of Copan in Honduras reveals a persistent Maya genome, but also a royal family that came from far away .  A study of desert stone monuments in Oman picks up a contrast between monuments erected during an earlier humid period and the later arid period.  A famous cemetery in a British Iron Age hillfort turns out to hold pre-Roman casualties of inter-tribal strife rather than warriors killed by the Romans.  And a huge cemetery just relocated in Brazil may be the largest burial ground of slaves and other marginalized communities in Latin America.

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And now, here’s Laura Kennedy with the Audio News from Archaeologica!  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day!

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Kennedy, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of May 25th through the 31st, 2025.

Our first story this week takes us to western Honduras, where a new study of ancient DNA from seven skeletons buried near the ancient Maya city of Copán [ko-PAHN] has uncovered new clues about the collapse of the civilization.

As reported by Live Science, Copán was a major crossroads between Central and South America.  It was set at the extreme southwest end of the Classic Maya civilization, which lasted from AD 250 to 900.  In AD 426, the Copán Valley became home to a royal dynasty that ruled for four centuries.  A man described as an outsider by inscriptions in Copán established the dynasty. 

Led by Shigeki Nakagome [she-GEK-ee nock-uh-GO-mey], an assistant professor of genomic medicine at Trinity College Dublin, the study appeared in the journal Current Biology. 

The skeletons’ genomes showed that all seven came from different maternal lineages.  Two males who were buried together did share the same Y-chromosome lineage.  However, researchers found no other relationship between them.  One, whose burial was lavish, may have been a dynastic ruler.  The other might have been a sacrifice.  The lineage they shared is still common among Indigenous American populations today. 

The team compared the seven genomes to other sequenced genomes from across Siberia and the Americas.  The results indicated genetic continuity in the Maya region from the Late Archaic period, between about 3700 and 1000 BC, to now.  This shows how local ancestry has persisted in the area. 

Researchers also discovered the introduction of people during the Classic Maya period, with ancestry from the highlands of Mexico, likely from other Maya sites such as Chichén Itza [chee-CHEN eet-ZAH].  These outsiders may have belonged to the ruling dynasty.  They intermingled with the local population, developing a population with two main ancestries. 

This genomic study enabled researchers to estimate the size of the Maya population at specific dates.  The population peaked around AD 730 at 19,000 people, possibly aided by the introduction of maize agriculture.  It began to wane around AD 750 during the beginning of the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization. 

The population shrank, but did not disappear completely.  Notably, the reduced population was not replaced by another group.  The genomes of the ancient Maya are closely connected to the genomes of over seven million Maya today. 

Next we head to Oman, where a study across seven thousand years of history has shown how ancient desert pastoralists changed their monuments as the climate transitioned from humid to an arid desert.  This research shows the importance of monuments for maintaining connections in periods of change.

As reported by Phys dot Org, the international team studying the monuments was led by Joy McCorriston, Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State University.  The study appeared on May twenty-eighth in the journal PLOS One. 

Because archaeological monuments played a key role in social life, the ability to create and maintain them in the face of challenging conditions was critical.  The study of 371 monuments in the desert Dhofar region of Oman shows how structures changed alongside ways of life. 

People there erected the earliest monuments during the Holocene Humid Period, 7500 to 6200 years ago, when there was more rainfall than in modern times.  The most recent monuments appeared 1100 to 750 years ago during the Late Antiquity period.  As the increasingly drier climate caused the population to disperse, monuments that had once been built by large groups started being constructed by smaller ones, often over multiple visits. 

One of the key yardsticks in the study was the volume and size of stones.  Older Neolithic platforms designed for large gatherings required multiple people to lift large stones.  Smaller groups built newer monuments over time, using smaller stones. 

Instead of hosting large assemblies, these monuments became touchstones to maintain social ties and share key environmental information.  Pastoralists depended on these social networks to exchange livestock, spouses and rare materials like seashells, carnelian, agate, and metal. 

According to McCorriston, many of the sites had previously been studied in a way that was specific to a certain time and place.  The new study looks at how these monuments contribute to a larger story of change.  This allowed researchers to develop a holistic model that can be applied to other places around the world. 

Our third destination is Dorset in southwestern England, where a new analysis has questioned long-held beliefs about an internationally famous ancient war cemetery.  Maiden Castle Iron Age hillfort is one of the most impressive prehistoric monuments in Britain, previously regarded as evidence of Roman conquest. 

As reported by Cosmos Magazine, the east gate cemetery of Maiden Castle is considered its defining feature.  Dig director Sir Mortimer Wheeler discovered the burial site of more than 80 bodies in 1936.  Since many of the skeletons showed signs of violence, he posited that they were British victims of a battle between the local Durotriges [DOO-ro-TREE-geez] tribe and the invading Romans, who came to Britain in AD 43. 

The new analysis, published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, suggests instead that the deceased were killed during British infighting across generations rather than during a single epic Roman battle marking the end of the Iron Age. 

According to study author Miles Russell of Bournemouth University, UK, Maiden Castle has become a defining moment in British history, based on the Wheeler interpretation and told in countless articles, books and documentaries.  However, while the Roman army had violent conflicts, this was not one of them.  This was Britons killing each other and burying the dead in a long-abandoned fortification. 

Radiocarbon dating shows that the bodies were buried between the first century BC and the first century AD, which precedes the Roman invasion. 

Many other hillfort burial sites exist across Britain whose contents demonstrate the gruesome treatment and haphazard disposal of human remains that suggest intercommunity violence.  Maiden Castle is notable for its formal burials with grave goods. 

Maiden Castle shows how the Durotriges specifically selected the abandoned hillfort for burial.  Researchers argue that the new study demonstrates how Britons were not passive members of a simple society destined to be destroyed by a more sophisticated power.  Rather, they were a population that actively controlled their future amidst social stress in the decades before Roman conquest. 

We end this week in Salvador in the state of Bahia [bah-HEE-yah], Brazil, where archaeologists have uncovered what may be the largest slave cemetery in Latin America. 

As reported by The Jerusalem Post, researchers estimate that the site may contain over 100,000 bodies.  Archaeologists uncovered the remains, which include teeth and large bones, under the parking lot of a complex that includes a museum, a college and an event venue.  Once known as the Campo de Pólvora Cemetery, the site operated from the late 1600s until 1844, when it was shut down due to health concerns. 

Architect and urban planner Silvana Olivieri identified the cemetery location during her doctoral research at the Federal University of Bahia.  She used historical records, archaeological studies and maps and plans of eighteenth-century Salvador.  Excavation began on May fourteenth, and the team found the first bones on May nineteenth, located 2.7 meters below ground. 

In addition to enslaved people, researchers believe the site contains the remains of other marginalized groups.  These include Indigenous people known as the Roma, the poor, the unbaptized, the excommunicated, sex workers, political rebels, and those who died by suicide.  Olivieri suspects that the cemetery holds martyrs of the 1835 Malê [ma-LAY] Revolt, an uprising of 600 Africans, largely Muslim, fighting for their freedom. 

According to Olivieri, beyond the site’s great archaeological and historical importance, it is a sacred place for the Black population of Bahia, as well as other marginalized communities.  Because of this, researchers will not remove the remains or release images of them.

The Public Ministry of Bahia has requested that the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage officially recognize the site as an archaeological zone.  Researchers believe that the site should no longer be a place for parties, instead proposing that a memorial be built.  The discovery has also led to the formation of a national committee to safeguard cemeteries of enslaved people across Brazil.

That wraps up the news for this week!

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web at www.archaeologica.org where all the news is history!  

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I’m Laura Kennedy and I’ll see you next week!