Welcome to our show, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew. 

Our stories from this past week of Archaeologica are about a seismic study of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, a remarkably large megastructure found in a small Neolithic site in Romania, the practice of ritual transformation in ancient and modern Mesoamerica, and a medical kit found with what was probably a doctor who died in Pompeii.  We’ll get to those in a few seconds.

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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 17th through the 23rd, 2026.

We begin this week with a visit to the only standing member of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World: the Great Pyramid of Giza.  Geophysicist Mohammed El Gabry led a team of researchers in a survey that examined the pyramid’s structural longevity and earthquake resilience.

As reported by ScienceNews, ancient builders constructed the Great Pyramid around 2600 B.C.  as a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu.  The monumental structure contains approximately 2.3 million stone blocks and required more than two decades to build.  While Egypt generally experiences low seismic activity, powerful tremors occasionally strike the region.  These include a magnitude 6.8 quake in 1847 and a magnitude 5.8 event in 1992.  Despite these intense shocks, the Great Pyramid has suffered only minimal damage over the past five millennia.

El Gabry and his colleagues outlined their recent investigation in the journal Nature.  To protect the fragile ancient monument, the research team opted to measure the impact of vibrations from everyday human activities rather than using invasive testing methods.  They monitored 37 distinct points within and around the pyramid as the structure vibrated from local human movement, traffic, and distant ocean waves.

At about three-quarters of the internal measurement sites, the structure naturally vibrated at frequencies between 2 and 2.6 times per second.  The surrounding soil, however, vibrated much more slowly, at just over once every two seconds.  Because the natural frequencies of the building materials and the soil do not match, the pyramid avoids resonance.  Resonance occurs when a building absorbs energy from the vibrating ground, which drastically intensifies shaking and structural damage.

The internal design of the monument also strengthens its resilience.  The ancient Egyptian architects built pressure-relieving chambers above the king's burial chamber to distribute the massive weight of the stone blocks.  These chambers also decreased the strength of vibrations nearer to the top of the structure.

According to El Gabry, a professor at Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, we cannot prove that the builders specifically anticipated earthquakes.  Nevertheless, modern structural engineers can learn a great deal from these ancient techniques to design safer, longer-lasting buildings today.

Next, we travel to northeastern Romania, where a massive prehistoric building offers new clues about how Europe’s earliest complex societies organized their communities.

As reported by Phys.org, researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg unearthed a 350-square-meter structure near the town of Stăuceni (stuh-CHEN-ee).  Members of the Cucuteni-Trypillia (koo-koo-TEN-ee try-PEEL-yah) culture constructed this massive building roughly 6,000 years ago.  Intriguingly, this massive building sat within a relatively small community of just 45 homes.

The team used magnetometers to record geomagnetic measurements, allowing them to precisely target their excavations.  This work revealed that the prehistoric builders constructed the megastructure—which is more than three times larger than any surrounding house—well after the rest of the settlement already stood.

Researchers have previously located similar megastructures within contemporary settlements in Ukraine.  However, those Ukrainian sites represent massive regional centers, where populations of 15,000 to 30,000 inhabitants lived in upwards of 3,000 houses.

According to Doris Mischka, a professor at Friedrich-Alexander University, the exact function of these prehistoric buildings remains a mystery.  Notably, excavation teams have found no other centers of power, palaces, or communal storage facilities at the large Ukrainian sites.  This absence suggests that the megastructures served as the primary organizational hubs for those societies.

Because the Stăuceni site is so much smaller than the Ukrainian mega-sites, the purpose of this particular building is even more puzzling.  A excavation of a small section of the building yielded only a few artifacts, including pottery shards, stone tools, and plant remains.  These items match the everyday objects found in the ordinary neighboring dwellings.  This similarity makes it difficult to determine whether the community used the space for political meetings, religious rituals, or both.

The research team will now focus on excavating the remainder of the Stăuceni structure.  They plan to pair their new discoveries with comparative data to better understand these enigmatic prehistoric spaces.

We now visit southern Mexico, where a new study shared in the journal Latin American Antiquity is recasting the meaning of ancient Oaxacan (wah-HAH-kan) ritual transformation.

As detailed by the news source Greek Reporter, archaeologist Jeffrey S.  Brzezinski of the University of Colorado, Boulder, led this deep dive into the archaeological, historical, and ethnographic record of the Formative period in Oaxaca.  Working alongside Guy Hepp, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, Brzezinski examined artifacts from multiple regional sites dating between 2000 B.C. and A.D. 250.

According to Brzezinski, modern scholarship has long approached these ancient practices from a flawed perspective that separates humans and nature into distinct categories.  The ancient Oaxacan people did not view the cosmos this way.  Instead, they believed in deep, fluid connections linking humans, animals, deities, and ancestors.

Because of this worldview, the common perspective that these transformation practices were simply performances or theatrical impersonations is incorrect.  For the ancient participants, putting on a physical costume or playing a ritual instrument marked a genuine shift in their fundamental identity, allowing them to merge fully with another being.

This unique ability to shape-shift across cosmic planes and connect to the "tonal"—the spiritual life force that linked each person to a non-human counterpart—distinguished rulers and ritual specialists from everyday citizens.

A number of archaeological artifacts support this new interpretation.  At the site of La Consentida, a set of early figurines and ceramic masks indicates that ritual specialists actively employed music, masking, and performance to transform into various animals.

Similarly, at the Chatino site of Cerro de la Virgen, archaeologists found a carefully bundled offering buried underneath a temple.  This cache contained a rain mask, an ancestor figurine, pottery, and miniature thrones.  Community leaders used these sacred objects to petition the gods for agricultural fertility.

Over time, the artistic styles of these ritual figurines shifted.  While artists initially depicted human forms, they later began to represent animals, hybrid beings, and figures caught mid-transformation.  Other Mesoamerican cultures, including the Olmec and the Maya, similarly created monuments that merged humans and the divine.  Although Spanish colonizers later labeled these belief systems as devil worship to stamp them out, these rich masking traditions survive in Oaxaca today.

Our final story brings us to Italy, where archaeologists have utilized a number of advanced modern techniques to piece together the profession of one of Pompeii’s tragic victims.

As described by the news source Greek Reporter, Italian archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri originally led excavations at Pompeii’s Garden of the Fugitives in 1961.  This site, which a vineyard covered at the time, became the final resting place for 14 individuals who died when a deadly pyroclastic flow overtook them as they fled through the Porta Nocera during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The artifacts from Maiuri’s excavations now rest in the archives of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.  Among these items is a small case containing personal and medical belongings that one specific victim carried as he tried to escape the volcanic catastrophe.

To study these delicate remains without causing damage, a diverse research team comprising archaeologists, restorers, radiologists, anthropologists, and digital modeling specialists performed X-rays and advanced CT scans at the Casa di Cura Maria Rosaria clinic.  These scans allowed the team to build highly detailed 3D reconstructions of the hidden case and its contents.

The researchers identified a small box constructed with organic material and metal parts, alongside a fabric pouch holding silver and bronze coins.  Crucially, the scans revealed a collection of metal surgical tools and a small slate tablet used for preparing medical or cosmetic substances.  The AI-assisted scans even uncovered a sophisticated internal locking mechanism fitted with a miniature toothed wheel, highlighting the advanced craftsmanship of the Roman era.

According to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, this specialized kit strongly indicates that the victim worked as a medicus, or Roman physician.  Zuchtriegel noted that this dedicated doctor chose to carry his vital professional tools during the panic so that he could rebuild his life elsewhere, and perhaps continue helping others along the way.

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! Also, be sure to check out our growing subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

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