When it was completed in 1209, medieval London Bridge was the only fixed crossing of the Thames downstream of Kingston-upon-Thames (until Fulham Bridge was built in 1729). Remarkably, it was also home to some 500 people – equivalent to the population of a small medieval town. In London Bridge and…
How do you deal with a witch? In 17th century England, the answer was obvious: you prepare a ‘witch bottle’, with contents equally as bizarre as those in the cauldron of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Witch bottles were white magic devices, that is they were used not by witches, but against witches:…
Geography made a unitary empire embracing the Mediterranean and temperate Europe inherently unstable; but the wreckage of the Roman Empire contained the building blocks of modern Europe. In the third and final part of our series based on Cunliffe’s new book, Europe between the Oceans, we chart the changes from…
In CA 224 we reported a splendid new discovery from Vindolanda. The excavators – and just about everyone else – thought it was part of a calendar. Not so, says leading ancient technology specialist Michael Lewis. It is something much more spectacular. The 8cm-long bronze fragment turns out to be…
The Bamburgh Research Project is picking up the pieces of the archaeological work started by legendary eccentric Dr Brian Hope-Taylor, who had left virtually no record of his excavations – or so it was believed. The story of Bamburgh is two-fold: before properly investigating the site, the team must first…
In the second part of our mini-series based on Barry Cunliffe’s new book Europe between the Oceans, our focus is the period c.2800-140 BC. We see the rise and fall of great civilisations, and a looming clash between a Mediterranean-based superpower and the Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe. Once…
Barry Cunliffe’s latest book represents the synthesis of half a century studying the archaeology of Europe, an achievement comparable with that of Gordon Childe in the 1930s. In this article, and in two more to follow in succeeding issues, Current Archaeology summarises his conclusions.…
Britain has literally thousands of voluntary heritage societies dedicated to diverse causes. In this series we profile some of the least known and most dedicated. This month, we take a look at……
The 1st and 2nd century structures were found in the basement of Cirencester Corn Hall…
Apart from his red hair, beard, giant girth and his equally gargantuan appetite for wives, the one thing we all associate with Henry VIII is the event that the authors of 1066 and All That called, with an eye for a memorable spelling mistake, ‘the Disillusion of the Monasteries’.…
In the early 18th century, Palladian style ruled England as the most fashionable for a British country house or public building. The man responsible, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), designed the building that started this architectural revolution. English Heritage archaeologists have recently had a rare chance to investigate…
Stonehenge is merely one part of a much wider sacred landscape represented today by the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The evidence is mounting that Stonehenge itself represented a domain of the ancestors, and, as such, a place in which the final rites were performed in elaborate ceremonies marking the passage…
Eberhard Sauer reports on the incredible discovery of a tombstone in Alchester, Oxfordshire; and not just any tombstone, but one which could rewrite the history of the Roman invasion and conquest of Britain.…
Lee Prosser, curator at Historic Royal Palaces, tells us about the archaeology of a Georgian royal palace.…
There really have been so few instances when Time Team sites have yielded any evidence pertaining to children - despite having dug more than 150 sites over the 13 years the series has been running.…
Around 8000 years ago a huge underwater landslide off Norway triggered a tsunami (‘tidal wave’) that wreaked destruction along the coasts of Norway, Iceland and eastern Scotland. An archaeologist considers the contemporary (Mesolithic) Scottish scene in the next article. Here geographer David E Smith describes what Quaternary scientists know…