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

Our stories from this past week of Archaeologica report that more Herculaneum scrolls can now be read, Bronze Age rock art carvings of boats in Spain and Portugal point to connections with Scandinavia, a huge Bronze Age site complex in Northern Ireland may be one of Europe’s oldest towns, and animal remains suggest that early Americans were specialists in hunting megafauna. 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 June 28 through July 4, 2026.

Our first story this week reports on a breakthrough that has allowed researchers to read ancient scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.

As reported by Live Science, researchers have recovered large sections of text from two carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum [her-kyuh-LAY-nee-um].  This Roman town met its destruction alongside nearby Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.  The intense heat scorched the papyrus scrolls, while volcanic ash preserved them.  However, the eruption also left them so fragile that scholars could not safely unroll them.

The work is part of the Vesuvius Challenge, an international research project.  Researchers used powerful X-ray scans and artificial intelligence to detect traces of ink hidden inside the burned papyrus.  Dr. Brent Seales, a professor of computer science, and Dr. Stephen Parsons, a postdoctoral researcher, both of the University of Kentucky, led the imaging work.  Dr. Federica Nicolardi, an assistant professor of papyrology, and her colleagues at the University of Naples Frederick the Second then studied and interpreted the newly revealed Greek text.

According to Dr. Seales, the project has finally made it possible to read texts that remained hidden for almost 2,000 years.  The research team recovered about five feet of continuous Greek writing from one Herculaneum scroll.  They also recovered more than 70 columns of text from a second scroll.

Dr. Nicolardi explained that scholars opened part of one scroll during the 1980s, but the tightly packed layers kept much of the writing hidden.  The new digital method finally made the text readable.

The handwriting and text suggest that the scroll dates to the second or third century BC.  This makes it one of the oldest in the Herculaneum collection.  The team thinks it may preserve a Stoic work about ethics and human behavior.  The text mentions Aristocreon [ah-RIS-toh-KREE-on], the nephew and student of the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus [cry-SIP-us].  Because little of the writing of Chrysippus survives today, the scroll may reveal new information about early Stoic philosophy.

Researchers also identified the title of another work by the ancient Greek philosopher Philodemus [fil-oh-DEE-mus], a member of the Epicurean [ep-ih-KYOO-ree-un] school of philosophy.  The discovery suggests that his work, “On Gods,” included at least eight books. 

More than 600 unopened Herculaneum scrolls remain.  This gives researchers hope that they can now read many more lost works of ancient literature without opening the fragile scrolls.

Our second story this week focuses on Bronze Age boat carvings.  These glyphs suggest that people along the Atlantic coast of Europe traded, traveled, and shared ideas across much greater distances than archaeologists once believed.

As reported by the Greek Reporter, researchers reexamined ancient boat carvings in northwest Iberia, a region that forms part of modern Spain and Portugal.  They compared the carvings with similar boat carvings from Scandinavia, the region that includes modern Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.  The similarities provide evidence that people along Atlantic Europe maintained long-distance contacts during the Late Bronze Age, between about 1300 and 800 BC.

Dr. Marta Díaz-Guardamino, a professor of archaeology at Durham University, led the study alongside researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Lancaster University, and the University of Minho.  The team used digital imaging techniques and computer mapping to study the carvings in greater detail than ever before.  The researchers identified details that earlier studies had missed, including masts, rigging, steering oars, crews, and raised ends on several boats.

The researchers gave special attention to one carving at Santo Adrião [ah-dree-OW] in northern Portugal.  According to Dr. Díaz-Guardamino and her colleagues, the boat shares several features with Bronze Age carvings from southern Scandinavia.  The researchers caution that this interpretation remains uncertain.  If they are correct, the carving could offer some of the clearest evidence yet for contact between communities living far apart across Atlantic Europe.

The team also identified similar features at other sites in Portugal and Spain.  Some carvings show boats side by side, a design commonly seen in Scandinavian rock art.  Others appear to show elements including crews, steering oars, and sails.  The researchers also used computer mapping to identify carving sites overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, river estuaries, and other waterways.  Those locations placed the carvings near important travel routes.

The researchers do not argue that Scandinavian sailors carved every image.  Instead, they suggest that local communities exchanged goods, technology, and ideas with people from other parts of Atlantic Europe.  During the Bronze Age, Iberia was an important source of copper and tin, two metals that fueled long-distance trade.  The carvings may indicate that maritime connections across Atlantic Europe were more extensive than archaeologists once believed.  

The study appeared in the journal PLOS One.

Our third story this week takes us to Northern Ireland.  Archaeologists there have uncovered evidence of a large Bronze Age settlement.  This location may have been one of Europe’s earliest town-like communities.

As reported by Phys.org, archaeologists reexamined Haughey’s [HAW-heez]Fort near the city of Armagh [aar-MAA] in Northern Ireland.  Haughey’s Fort forms part of the Navan [NAV-in] complex.  This group of prehistoric monuments later became an important ceremonial and political center in Ireland during the Iron Age, from about 800 BC to AD 400.  The new research shows that the area functioned as an important center much earlier, during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1200 to 800 BC.

Dr. James O’Driscoll, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, and Dr. Patrick Gleeson, a senior lecturer in archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast, led the study.  The team combined aerial surveys, geophysical surveys, excavations, and earlier archaeological records to build a clearer picture of the site.  They identified more than 200 possible wooden buildings inside Haughey’s Fort.  They also identified several much larger circular buildings.  Some of those structures measured nearly 30 meters across.  The researchers believe that these buildings served as gathering places for ceremonies and other community activities.

The team also uncovered evidence that people worked with bronze and gold, held large communal feasts, and traded with communities across Bronze Age Europe.  They recovered imported objects from as far away as Central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula.  Those discoveries suggest that Haughey’s Fort played an important role in long-distance trade.

Haughey’s Fort also formed part of a much larger ceremonial landscape.  A broad timber avenue connected the settlement to the King’s Stables.  At this artificial pool, people placed weapon molds, animal remains, and fragments of human bone as ritual offerings.  The researchers also reinterpreted the nearby Creeveroe Earthworks, a large prehistoric enclosure, as a site covering about 109 hectares.  The enclosure ranks among the largest prehistoric monuments in Ireland and Britain.

According to Dr. O’Driscoll and Dr. Gleeson, Haughey’s Fort was much more than an isolated hillfort.  Instead, it served as a regional center where people lived, manufactured metal objects, traded, gathered for ceremonies, and practiced rituals.  The researchers believe the site may rank among the earliest town-like communities in Western Europe.  

The study appeared in the journal Antiquity.

Our final story this week looks at new research that focuses on the diet of some of the first people in the Americas. According to this research, these early populations relied mainly on hunting giant animals rather than eating a wide variety of foods.

As reported by Phys.org, archaeologists analyzed data from 50 archaeological sites across the Americas, from Alaska to South America.  The sites represent some of the earliest widespread cultures in the Americas.  These groups include Eastern Beringian [buh-RIN-jee-un] people in Alaska and the Yukon, Clovis people in North America, and Fishtail Point people in South America.  These populations lived more than 11,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age.

Dr. Ben Potter, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Dr. James Chatters, an applied archaeologist and research associate at McMaster University, led the study alongside researchers from the United States, Canada, and Argentina.  The team examined animal bones from campsites to identify what people hunted and ate.  They also compared those remains with the animals living in each region at the time.

The researchers found that giant plant-eating mammals made up between 83 and 88 percent of the diet of these people.  Their prey included woolly mammoths in Alaska, Columbian mammoths in North America, and giant ground sloths and gomphotheres [GOM-foh-theerz], extinct relatives of elephants, in South America.  Rabbits and rodents were much more common on the landscape, but they appeared only rarely at archaeological sites.

According to Dr. Potter, these findings support the idea that early Americans specialized in hunting large animals instead of taking whatever food they could find.  The researchers also found that these early groups used similar hunting tools across the Americas.  They believe that people moved quickly into new regions because they already knew how to hunt the same kinds of large animals, even when they entered unfamiliar landscapes.

The study also compared the timing of human expansion with the disappearance of many giant mammals.  The researchers found that the extinctions generally followed human arrival from north to south across the Americas.  They conclude that human hunting likely contributed to those extinctions, together with climate change, which reduced animal habitat and made many species more vulnerable.  

The study appeared in the journal Science Advances.

That wraps up the news for this week!