ByTom Metcalfe
Published December 6, 2023
• 9 min read
The past year was a good one for archaeology: We’ve witnessed how new techniques such as AI can lead to breakthroughs, and scientists have shed new light on artifacts unearthed in earlier times.
But it was also a year of new archaeological discoveries, including mummification workshops from Egypt that reveal some of the secrets of the ancient burial technique; a submerged temple in Italy built 2,000 years ago by traders from the Arabian deserts; and a vast Mayan city that had been lost to the jungle but was revealed with laser technology.
Here are seven of the most interesting new finds:
1. The Dead Sea swords
In June, archaeologists found four remarkably well-preserved swords that were left in a cave in the Judean Desert between the first and the third centuries A.D.—a time when the region was a refuge for Jewish rebels to Roman rule. Wood and leather usually quickly rot, but here they were safeguarded by the dry environment so that the swords are complete with their hilts and scabbards.
The swords were discovered after an iron point of a Roman javelin called a pilum and pieces of worked wood were first found in the cave southeast of Jerusalem and beside the Dead Sea; researchers then searched the cave with metal detectors, which revealed the four swords wedged behind stalactites. It’s thought the weapons were probably stashed there by Jewish rebels during the Bar Kokhba revolt, between A.D. 132 and 136 after they had collected them from a battlefield or stolen them from Roman units. Archaeologists are excited by the preservation of the wood and leather, which could help pinpoint where and when the swords were made.
2. A new giant stone head on Rapa Nui
In February, volunteers unearthed a newfound giant stone head called a moai on Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean more than 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile. The statue is small for a moai—a little over five feet tall, while others of the roughly 900 on the island are up 33 feet tall (one unfished moai would have been more than 70 feet tall when completed.) But it was discovered in a dried-up crater lake, and archaeologists think there may be more there to find.
Most of the moai were erected between 1250 and 1500, and local people regard the statues as the “living faces” of their deified ancestors. Nothing is known about this newest moai, including which ancestor it represents, but archaeologists will search for the tools used to shape it from soft volcanic rock. Wooden tablets bearing glyphs called rongorongo might explain more—if only they could be read.
3. A lost Mayan city discovered by lidar
The revolutionary power of lidar—Laser Detection and Ranging—was demonstrated in June with the discovery of a previously unknown Mayan city on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The technique uses airborne equipment to scan the landscape below with thousands of pulses of laser light every second, which can reveal otherwise hidden details beneath trees and other cover—the historic bends and channels of the Mississippi River, for example, and shelters built by soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge.
Archaeologists who visited the site on foot have called the lost city “Ocomtún,” from the Yucatec Maya word for its many stone columns. They think it was a major center from about A.D. 250 until it was abandoned when the Mayan civilization collapsed between 900 and 1000, possibly from drought and internal strife. Ocomtún covers more than 120 acres and features plazas, ball courts, elite homes, raised platforms, ritual alters, and pyramid temples; the remains of the largest pyramid are more than 80 feet high.
4. A submerged desert temple in Italy
Italian archaeologists announced in August their discovery near Naples of the underwater remains of a 2,000-year-old temple, which they think was built by ancient Nabateans. Hailing from modern-day Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the Nabateans, who also founded Petra, were desert merchants who supplied the Romans with the luxuries of the east. Much of their trade arrived at the port of Puteoli, now Pozzuoli, a few miles west of Naples; the temple on the port’s shoreline had been submerged during volcanic activity in the area, which is in sight of Mt. Vesuvius.
The underwater ruins include an alter to the Nabatean gods, and archaeologists suggest the temple served as a “billboard” for Nabatean culture, as well as a place of worship. A Latin inscription on a piece of marble recounts that “Zaidu and Abdelge offered two camels to [the god] Dushara”—a sacrifice that may have been to benefit trade negotiations, or a blessing for a risky sea journey.
5. Two mummy workshops from ancient Egypt
Egyptian archaeologists announced in May that they had discovered two more workshops for mummification at the Saqqara necropolis near the ruins of the ancient city of Memphis, a few miles south of Cairo. The workshops are from the 30th dynasty (380 to 345 B.C.) and the Ptolemaic period (305 to 30 B.C.), which is late for ancient Egypt; the Egyptian practice of mummification to preserve a dead body for its afterlife dates back thousands of years earlier to around 2600 B.C.
One of the newfound workshops at Saqqara features stone beds meant for the preparation of human bodies, while the other has smaller beds that archaeologists think were used to mummify animals. The researchers also found instruments for mummification, clay jars for entrails, and ritual vessels for embalmed organs, as well as supplies of natron—a type of soda ash, sourced from dry lake beds in the desert, that was a key ingredient in the embalming process.
6. Lost gemstones from a Roman bathhouse
Dozens of carved gemstones depicting Roman gods and animals were discovered at Carlisle in the north of England, amid the ruins of an ancient drainage system that carried water away from public baths in the third and fourth centuries. Archaeologists announced the finds in June; it’s thought the gemstones were worn in jewelry by wealthy bathers, but that they fell into the drains when their settings loosened from the humidity and heat of the baths.
These gems include semiprecious stones of agate, jasper, amethyst, and carnelian; some are carved with images of Roman gods, such as Apollo, Venus, and Mars, while others show animals, such as rabbits and birds. Carved gemstones like this, called intaglios, were used by the Romans as a type of signature, often pressing a ring into clay or wax to create a seal. The ancient drains were found beneath a pavilion belonging to the Carlisle Cricket Club; the city was a regional center in Roman Britain, when it was known as Luguvalium.
7. A fateful wartime shipwreck in the South China Sea
In April, Australian searchers announced they had found the wreck of the Montevideo Maru, a Japanese transport ship that sank in 1942 with more than a thousand Allied prisoners-of-war on board. The ship was carrying Australian troops captured during the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, as well as a contingent of Norwegian sailors and more than 200 captured civilians.
The ship was bound for the Chinese island of Hainan, which was then occupied by Japan, when it was spotted by the American submarine U.S.S. Sturgeon near the northern coast of the Philippines. Not knowing the Japanese ship was carrying Allied POWs, the Sturgeon tracked it for several hours before sinking it with torpedoes. None of the prisoners survived, and the sinking is the worst maritime disaster in Australia’s history. Some Japanese crewman survived, however, and reported that some of the prisoners who had made it onto makeshift rafts sang “Auld Lang Syne” to their dead comrades on the sunken ship.
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