The early Christian kingdom of Aksum was at the heart of a great maritime trading network. Hundreds of ancient obelisks and stelas are strewn across fields on the outskirts of Aksum, a city in the highlands of northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The largest of these monuments, which lies toppled and broken into sections, was carved...

Landscape History of Hadramawt: The Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) Project 1998-2008, published in 2020 by the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, has been awarded the 2022 Anna Marguerite McCann Award for Fieldwork Reports presented by the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). The book was edited by Joy McCorriston, Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State...

Aksum was one of Africa’s most powerful and influential ancient civilizations, but many details of its history remain scantly understood. How did Aksumite civilization originate? Why, after nearly one thousand years, did it eventually collapse? Drawing on his collaborative research with Ethiopian scholars, including NASA-funded exploration, and the discovery of Beta Samati, Harrower discusses some...

How does one find an ancient town? What do archaeologists look for? How do they know where to dig? How do they interpret what they find?  In a YouTube presentation for the University of Chicago – Oriental Institute, Michael Harrower describes the discovery and excavation of the Aksumite town of Beta Samati. The Aksumite Empire...

The JHU Spatial Observation Lab for Archaeological Research (SOLAR) is pleased to announce the first publication on our discovery of the ancient town of Beta Samati. News coverage is available here… Archeologists unearth lost town from little-known ancient East African empire – CNN Ancient buried town in Ethiopia uncovered – BBC Radio Lost Ethiopian town...

Space@Hopkins, the umbrella organization for civilian space research at Johns Hopkins University, has awarded seed grants to four projects that focus on improving space travel and expanding the understanding of the history of Earth and other planets.

It was the summer of 1990 and broiling hot in southwest Oman. The small group spread out their sleeping bags on a desert mesa, under the setting Sun. They had not planned on stopping here for the night, so they had no radio, nor any mode of communication. Their transport, a Vietnam War-era Huey helicopter,...

Watch a short, three-minute report on ArWHO Project research at the site of Aqir Al-Shamoos.

Panel discussion at the Water and Power in Past Societies Conference at the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology (IEMA) at the University of Buffalo.