this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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Oldest Cremation Pyre Ever Found Reveals Sophisticated Rituals | Ancient Origins (www.ancient-origins.net)
submitted 1 week ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/archaeology@mander.xyz
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Archaeologists working at the foot of Mount Hora in northern Malawi have uncovered what appears to be the world's oldest known cremation pyre containing adult human remains. Dating back approximately 9,500 years, this extraordinary find is challenging long-held assumptions about the social complexity and ritual practices of ancient African hunter-gatherer societies. The discovery, published in the journal Science Advances, provides unprecedented insight into the elaborate mortuary customs practiced by these early communities thousands of years before the advent of agriculture.

Until this discovery, the earliest confirmed intentional cremations in Africa dated back only about 3,500 years and were associated with pastoral Neolithic food-producing societies. The oldest previously known funeral pyre in the world was discovered in Alaska and dates to approximately 11,500 years ago, but that cremation involved a young child rather than an adult. Some burned human remains from Egypt date to around 7,500 years ago, but these show only incomplete burning with no evidence of an intentionally constructed pyre.

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[–] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No wonder it was found where it was, I have to imagine this screams ‘point of interest’ if you’re in a hunter gatherer society living off the land (image credit Chelsea Smith):

a distant view of a single rocky mountain that juts out abruptly from a plain of grassland and spotted patches of trees. Other than a large nearby hill, most everything else is flat

These hunter-gatherers did not engage in megalithic or other architectural behavior, yet sites were positioned at notable landscape features and used repeatedly in diverse mortuary rituals that spanned multiple generations for at least ~16,000 years

Using unaltered features in the landscape wasn’t something I had ever considered as akin to megalithic monument use, but in that light it makes perfect sense.