Features

Discovering Catalhoyuk
While searching for the origins of the mysterious Sea Peoples, the flamboyant British archaeologist James Mellaart found the world’s largest Stone Age city. By Michael Balter

Late in the afternoon of November 10, 1958, a green Land Rover lurched down a narrow dirt road in south-central Turkey, about 30 miles southeast of the city of Konya. Three British archaeologists were packed inside. A frigid wind gusted from the south, blowing swirls of cold dust over the surrounding wheat fields. […]

Excavating Catalhoyuk
In 1993, after a 30-year hiatus, the Turkish government granted British archaeologist Ian Hodder a concession to excavate at Catalhoyuk—a project to which James Mellaart, the original excavator of the site, gave his blessings. By Shahina Farid

From Mellaart’s excavations, we know that the people who lived at Catalhoyuk harvested crops and domesticated animals. They lived in densely packed mudbrick houses, which were occupied for hundreds of years. They expressed themselves vividly in paintings and relief sculptures. But who were they, why did they settle here, and how did they […]

Emulating Augustus
The Fascist-Era Excavation of the Emperor’s Peace Altar in Rome By Linda Ann Nolan

The exquisite Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) stands on a busy Roman thoroughfare near the Tiber River. Carved on the walls enclosing the altar is an elegant relief showing, among other things, a procession led by the emperor Augustus (63 B.C.-14 A.D.). Who would have guessed that this unassuming monument would […]

Departments

Editors’ Page: Who Owns Archaeology?
Certainly not the “Professional Elite” By Jack Meinhardt
Origins: Quod Erat Demonstrandum
Aristotle was the first thinker to know how he was thinking logically.
Horizons: Armies of the Night: Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum
An 8,000-man terracotta army, arrayed for battle in three huge underground pits, fights for a death-obsessed emperor in the afterlife.
Ancient Life: Pharaonic Fanfare
Trumpets from the New Kingdom
Briefly Noted
Ptolemaic Tomes