Each year, archeology teaches us much more about world and human history, uncovers new mysteries, reshapes our understanding of the past, and raises new mysteries for researchers to solve.

Monica L. Smith Professor, Department of Anthropology and Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian Studies, UCLA

What I would like to see discovered in 2025 is a bilingual inscription (on any medium – stone, ceramic, metal) of the Mesopotamian language and the Indus script.

The ancient Indus culture was in the area of ​​present-day Pakistan and western India, and the heart of the ancient Mesopotamian culture was in the present-day country of Iraq.

We know that there were trade relations between the two regions in the third millennium BC. AD, because especially in Mesopotamia, objects were found that could only come from the Indus region.

And in Mesopotamia there are several references to speakers of what they called the “Meluhhan” language, which they associated with the Indus. But…while we can read what the Mesopotamians wrote, the Indus script is still undeciphered.

It would be a real Rosetta Stone moment to meet a bilingual who could be something excavated at any of the Indus and Mesopotamian culture sites, or could be in a museum storehouse of long-excavated material that has yet to be found. fully cataloged.

Dr. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, Professor Principal de Arqueología, Departamento de Humanidades, PUCP

The most would be the discovery of the long-lost Late Moche king of northern Peru
interesting to see next year.

In the last 30 years, the archeology of the Moche, who lived on the northern coast of Peru, has produced some of the most amazing discoveries of royal tombs, such as those found at Sipan and Huaca Cao.

These discoveries revealed an incredibly complex civilization that predates the Incas by 800 years, yet was able to produce the most exquisite gold and silver jewelry.

But one piece of the puzzle is still missing, the last Moche king who ruled just before the collapse of that civilization, which is more interesting than the Mayan collapse.

Michael E. Smith, Professor of Archeology and Former Director, ASU Teotihuacan Research Laboratory, School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University

I would love to see such insights Riris et al. applied to the resilience of early cities.

Today, cities bear the brunt of the negative impacts of climate change, and there is a great effort to find out what cities can do to adapt to higher temperatures and environmental degradation.

Do early cities have lessons about why some cities have prospered over time while others have declined? Unfortunately, we currently lack methods and data to evaluate this concept.

So what I would like to see in 2025 are methods and data that would yield new insights into the resilience of early cities and the ways in which they adapted to a wide range of shocks. Then we’ll see if they have insight into today’s cities.

Elizabeth Graham, Emeritus Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology, UCL Institute of Archaeology

In 2025? The plan is to acquire lidar images of the Lamanai site in northern Belize, which dates back to about 1600 BC. AD to historical times.

Professor Joann Fletcher, Department of Archaeology, University of York

Certainly more ancient Egyptian finds from our part of the world here in Yorkshire, England, which is not only home to the northernmost temple ever created for the Egyptian gods almost 2,000 years ago, but where more and more evidence is being identified in the most unlikely of places and all part of of our ‘Ancient Egypt in Yorkshire’ project.