The stern of Endurance.

Compiling a list of the top archaeological finds in a given year is not easy. I have to revisit past lives through art, wrecks, and bones. Some items were lost for a century, while others were lost for thousands of years. They are all stuck in a world that is well and truly gone except for these clues.

These are the archaeological discoveries that were the most interesting.

Stephen Alvarez, a study co-author, in the glyph chamber.

The mud glyph was found on the roof of a limestone cave. Evidence in the chamber shows that the glyph may have been made in the 7th and 10th centuries.

Another anthropomorphic glyph.
The 2,700-year-old toilet seat.

What a treat for the archaeologists working on an old home outside Jerusalem. In January, a research team announced that they found the eggs of worms in a large stone with a hole in its center. Archaeologists may be able to reconstruct your guts by what you left behind, so keep a good diet.

The stern of Endurance.

The ship that disappeared in 1915 was festooned with deep sea creatures. Amazingly, the crew survived after the vessel got stuck in ice and sank. Despite sinking to a depth of over 10,000 feet over a century ago, the ship looks mostly intact.

A boab tree with a snake carving in Australia’s Tanami Desert.

Archaeologists have found carvings on trees dating back hundreds of years. The exact age of the carvings is not known, but the team believes they are connected to Indigenous oral traditions.

A lead sarcophagus discovered underneath the floor of Notre Dame de Paris.

The Notre Dame cathedral was damaged in a fire in April of 2019. A church leader and a horse-riding nobleman are thought to be the owners of the 700-year-old coffins.

Top two: the two sides of Tutankhamun’s dagger. Bottom: the dagger as it was photographed in 1925.

The iron weapon in Tutankhamun's tomb was made from meteorites. References to a dagger gifted to King Tut's grandfather by a foreign ruler were found in ancient Egyptian literature.

Canaanite lettering on an ancient ivory comb found in Israel.

According to the translation of the sentence, it was found on a fine-toothed comb and was intended to remove lice. The ivory comb had a simple sentence written on it.

Ancient human spines threaded on sticks.

There were 192 posts threaded by human bones. The archaeological team believes the posts may have been a response to the loot of graves during the colonial era.

Rock formations near where Kibish Omo I was found.

The fossil is now 233,000 years old, thanks to new analysis of it. The bones were found in the volcanic ash layers in the 1960's.

The Old City of Jerusalem.

The jokes were written by Monty Python. Some ceramics found in Jerusalem in the 1960s were re-analyzed and found to hold explosives. They might have found the remains of Crusades-era grenades.

The recently discovered pile of mammoth bones in New Mexico.

The bones of a 37,000-year-old mammoth were found in New Mexico. The bones show that people were in southwestern North America earlier than previously thought.

Boulders transported by glaciers.

The Americas may have been reached first by humans traveling along the Pacific coast, according to archaeologists.

A preserved plate in the House of the Lararium.

The gift of Pompeii's Regio V continues to give. A Roman bodega was found last year in the ancient Roman city. In August, archaeologists at Pompeii announced the discovery of several furnished rooms in a house in the same area, containing plates, planks, and other items of middle class life in the city that vanished under volcanic ash in79.

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