Antiquities: (plural noun) an object, building, or work of art from the past.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antiquity

“In Obama’s last few months of presidency he used the antiquities act to protect as much land as possible.”

I encountered this word while reading one of my colleagues post; ” Obama’s Recklessness and De Blasio’s attempt at a clean up.” At first I broke the word down into two, “antique” and “ities”. I knew based of my core knowledge that an antique is an object from the past that can be worth a lot of money. Antiquities is just the plural version of antiquity. There is  another definition for the word antiquity which  is,  the ancient past, especially the time before the middle ages. In this context the correct definition would be the plural version. I know now the difference  between antiquity and antiquities, both are similar but have different meanings.