Archaeologists excavating a Roman-era fort in northern England have unearthed several enormous ancient leather soles that measure more than 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) long.

The finds add to the archaeologists' growing collection of supersized ancient footwear found at the ancient fort, known as Magna. The researchers now have eight of these extra-extra-large shoes — a quarter of the total found at the site.

The shoes were discovered at Magna — also known as Carvoran — a fort along Hadrian's Wall, which was built around A.D. 122 to demarcate the northern extent of the Roman Empire. Magna is situated about 7 miles (11 kilometers) west of Vindolanda, the large Roman auxiliary fort that's well known for the remarkable preservation of writing tablets, military medals and leather shoes.

An international research team has published a new study on one of the oldest known sites for the processing of animal meat by humans in the southern Balkans. At Marathousa 1, an archaeological site in the Greek Megalopolis Basin, researchers not only found numerous stone tools that provide clues to human behavior but also remains of the extinct straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One and led by the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, shows that various tool-making techniques were already being used about 430,000 years ago—depending on the material and purpose. The Marathousa 1 hominins produced the sharp-edged flakes required for cutting meat both by freehand striking and by using "bipolar striking techniques."

The Necropolis of San Giuliano (named for the medieval church of San Giuliano) is one of the most significant Etruscan cemeteries in central Italy. Among its tombs, the “Queen’s Tomb” stands out as the largest, dating back to the 5th century BC.

Upon removing the sealing slab of the tomb, a pristine burial chamber was unearthed containing ornately painted ceramic vessels in the Etruscan-Geometric style. The tomb also contains a burial bed, a basin, and several funerary bronze artefacts.

According to the archaeologists, the tomb dates from the late 7th century BC and is providing new insights into the Etruscan funerary customs and social structure.

Ancient DNA from Stone Age burials in Turkey has finally put to rest a decades-long debate about whether the 9,000-year-old proto-city of Çatalhöyük was a matriarchal society. The research finally confirms what experts have long suspected: Women and girls were key figures in this agricultural society.

"With Çatalhöyük, we now have the oldest genetically-inferred social organisation pattern in food-producing societies," study co-author Mehmet Somel, an evolutionary geneticist at Middle East Technical University in Turkey, told Live Science in an email. "Which turns out to be female-centered."

The new research was published Thursday (June 26) in the journal Science.

Located in south-central Turkey, Çatalhöyük was built around 7100 B.C. and was occupied for nearly 1,000 years. The vast settlement — spread over 32.5 acres (13.2 hectares) — is known for its houses that were entered from the roofs, burials beneath the house floors, and elaborate symbolism that included vivid murals and a diverse array of female figurines.

Seven giant funeral urns dating to pre-Columbian times have been found deep in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. A fisher who works in this little-known waterlogged area of the middle Solimões region, along the upper course of the Amazon River, made the discovery after a 50-foot-tall (15 meters) Paricarana tree fell over, revealing the urns buried beneath it.

The age of the urns is currently unknown; being Pre-Columbian, they're either centuries or millennia old. But their burial place — a human-made island — is extraordinary, although it's unknown if the culture that created the islands also crafted the urns, according to archaeologists at the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development (IDSM) in Brazil.

Two of the larger ceramic urns — which measure up to 35 inches (89 centimeters) in diameter — contained human bones, while the others held a mixture of seeds and the remains of fish, frogs and turtles, said Geórgea Layla Holanda, an archaeologist at the IDSM who co-led the excavation. These seed and animal remains were likely part of the funeral ritual.