The Archaeology Channel Tours
The Archaeology Channel Tours is a program set apart from others by our commitment to storytelling and expert guidance. We believe that a tour should be far more than a photo-op or checking off a bucket list. For us, a tour is an opportunity to perform our mission to tell the human story, in this case by bringing people to the real sites where history took place. We like to embed the background in the tour process, so each destination represents an episode in the historic timeline and has a comfortable place in the temporal, cultural and environmental context. We also like to design unique tours not offered by others.
Just below, you can see our upcoming tour schedule.
Angkor and the Rise of Southeast Asian Civilization
Civilization in Cambodia had its origin in the kingdom of Funan, beginning in the first century AD, when trade connections between India and the lower Mekong River delta brought about the adoption of many cultural elements from the subcontinent, including Vedic and Hindu religion, political thought, literature, mythology, and art motifs. As with later kingdoms in Cambodia, rice cultivation, fishing, irrigation, and maritime trade played big roles in the development and growth of the society. The successor state, Chenla, replaced Funan in the sixth century and was itself replaced three centuries later by the much better known Khmer Empire, which spread throughout Southeast Asia and retained many of the cultural and hydrological elements developed earlier by Funan and Chenla. The Khmer Empire golden age (roughly AD 800-1400) produced most of the impressive ancient monuments widely known today, including Angkor and many others, which are the focus of our tour. We will spend three days in the vicinity of Angkor Wat, the largest religious edifice in the world.
Dates: February 2-11, 2026
Click here to view the itinerary and register for your spot!
Registration Deadline: November 2, 2025. Spots are limited, so register today!
Going with the Flow of the Ancient Rivers: Upper Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent
The latest research suggests that the roots of civilization are to be found in southeastern Anatolia and adjacent part of the Fertile Crescent. Archaeologists have discovered to their amazement that settled communities with ritual features, possibly temples, containing sculpted monoliths existed here nearly 12,000 years ago, possibly even before the advent of agriculture. The best-known of these sites is Göbekli Tepe, but more research is revealing a complex of similar sites not far away. Much remains to be learned, but now it seems that these late-Pleistocene, pre-pottery sites launched the development of plant cultivation and animal domestication. They apparently mark the beginning of Neolithic culture, which spread widely in all directions over the following millennia, reaching the Atlantic Ocean about 6000 years ago and setting the stage for civilization. Subsequent cultural and historical developments in this part of upper Mesopotamia involve a sequence of cultures and civilizations that are central to human history in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. Among these cultures are the Hittites, Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, and Crusaders. Perhaps nowhere else in the world could we have designed a tour offering an opportunity to experience such a diverse cross-section of human civilization.
Dates: October 6-16, 2026
Click here to view the itinerary and register for your spot!
Registration Deadline: July 6, 2026. Spots are limited, so register today!