New biomolecular archaeological evidence backed up by increasingly sophisticated scientific testing techniques are uncovering medicinal remedies discovered, tested, and sometimes lost, throughout millennia of human history—herbs, tree resins, and other organic materials dispensed by ancient fermented beverages like wine and beer. Did those ancient "remedies" work-and if so, is there something we can learn—or re-learn—from our ancestors to help sick people today? Read More...

With graceful eyelashes, long flaxen hair and serene expression, the "Beauty of Xiaohe" seems to have just softly fallen to sleep-yet she last closed her eyes nearly 4,000 years ago. She was found, and excavated, in 2003, one of hundreds of spectacularly preserved mummies buried in the harsh desert sands of the vast Tarim Basin, in the Far Western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. This "Beauty of Xiaohe" and more than 150 objects, 700 to 3,800 years old, also excavated in recent years from the same desert and mountain region-travel for the first time ever to the East Coast, where Secrets of the Silk Road opens at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia from February 5 through June 5, 2011, before returning to China. Read More...

Siberia's Lake Baikal region is an archaeologically unique and emerging area of hunter-gatherer research, offering insights into the complexity, variability, and dynamics of long-term culture change. The exceptional quality of archaeological materials recovered there facilitates interdisciplinary studies whose relevance extends far beyond the region. The Baikal Archaeology Project—one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted in the history of subarctic archaeology—is conducted by an international multidisciplinary team studying Middle Holocene (about 9,000 to 3,000 years B.P.) hunter-gatherers of the region. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the project includes scholars in archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnography, molecular biology, geophysics, geochemistry, and paleoenvironmental studies. More...