Current Archaeology 439
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Current Archaeology’s September Listings: exhibitions, events, and heritage from home
There are lots of great ways to get involved with history and archaeology over the next few months, including exhibitions, lectures, and conferences exploring a wide range of subjects. If you would prefer to get your heritage fix from the comfort of your sofa, though, there is a variety of resources on offer online, too, from virtual site tours and digital offerings by museums to podcasts, TV shows, and more. Kathryn Krakowka has put together a selection of some of the options available.
Staffa’s past signatures: Uncovering the hidden human history of a celebrated Scottish island
A small team of archaeologists has been undertaking research into the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. Camping for a few days at a time over a number of years, they have carried out both survey and excavation work. Derek Alexander, Daniel Rhodes, Stuart Jeffrey, Tessa Poller, and Siân Jones describe the results of these efforts to date.
New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England
The Neolithic is that pivotal point in prehistory where community changes, from dependence on hunting, fishing, gathering strategies based on seasonal availability to seasonal harvesting, animal husbandry, food procurement, and storage. Until
Roman Britain’s Missing Legion: What Really Happened to IX Hispana?
Famously (or infamously), the Roman Ninth Legion is believed to have disappeared around the end of the 1st century AD, a view made popular by Rosemary Sutcliff in her fictionalised account of
Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries: kinship, community, and identity
It has been more than two decades since Sam Lucy’s seminal book The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death, and in the intervening years new cemeteries, methodologies, and mortuary archaeology theory have advanced to
Making Deep History: zeal, perseverance, and the time revolution of 1859
A few days ago I saw a notice that said ‘BeGambleAware’. It warned of the dangers of addiction, but it could have referred to the author of this book. Readers of Current
Darkness Visible: the Sculptor’s Cave, Covesea, from the Bronze Age to the Picts
Caves can be portals to otherworlds, and Covesea Cave on Scotland’s Moray Firth is no exception. Armit and Büster’s handsomely produced volume transports us back in time to both the late Bronze
Faxton: excavations in a deserted Northamptonshire village, 1966-1968
The film The Dig has shown that public interest can be engaged by a vintage excavation, and this book likewise recounts the results and evokes the mood of three seasons of digging,
Dewlish leopard
Discovered during excavations at Dewlish in 1974, the leopard mosaic is considered one of the most realistic depictions of an animal by a Romano-British artist to survive in any artistic medium.
Reassessing the timeline for Neanderthals in Europe
The team from the ORAU and a group of researchers from across Europe have applied a compound-dating technique to Neanderthals, this time from Belgium, and once again the results have caused a re-evaluation of the timeline of Neanderthals in Eurasia.
Finds tray – Roman ‘horse and rider’ figurine
This is a Roman ‘horse and rider’ figurine, made of copper alloy and probably dating to between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It was found in 2015 near Penllyn, Wales. While
Mounds and monasteries: burials in late Iron Age and early medieval Ireland
The Irish archaeologist Barry Raftery (1944-2010) wrote: ‘Death represents the ultimate confrontation between the human and the supernatural worlds. The surviving burial remains and the associated funerary monuments thus provide us with the clearest and most tangible surviving evidence of religious beliefs and practices’. With this as her theme, Elizabeth O’Brien has studied every excavated Irish burial dating from the period c.200 BC to c.AD 800. She found great diversity and one common strand – burial in close proximity to ancestors or to people regarded as saints, as Chris Catling reports.
Forgotten faith? Tracing early Christianity in western Britain and Ireland
It used to be said that Christianity in Roman Britain was a short-lived phenomenon that sputtered out in the 5th century, needing the missionary efforts of St Columba, St Ninian, and St Augustine of Canterbury to revive it in the later 6th century. But there is now an increasing body of evidence that the religion continued to thrive as a force for learning, culture, and social organisation in the western parts of England and Wales, with links to Brittany and Ireland. Chris Catling goes in search of the latest thinking.
The Lutyens Trust
If you aspire to owning a Lutyens house and have very deep pockets, the Trust’s property column will alert you to houses for sale.
The Social Context of Technology: non-ferrous metalworking in later prehistoric Britain and Ireland
Although a little heavy on detail, this is a thorough study of the subject which presents, in a chronological fashion, the archaeological evidence for (mostly copper and bronze) metalworking from sites across
Landscape and Settlement in the Vale of York: archaeological excavations at Heslington East, York, 2003-2013
York is well-known for the archaeology of its Roman, Anglian, Viking, and medieval periods of occupation, but the prehistoric and Roman archaeology of its rural hinterland is much less visible, despite an
The Tale of the Axe: how the Neolithic revolution transformed Britain
Around 12,000 years ago, the course of human history changed forever when hunter-gatherer communities in western Asia made a dramatic lifestyle change, switching from foraging to farming. It was the beginning of
Life, Death, and Rubbish Disposal in Roman Norton, North Yorkshire: excavations at Brooklyn House, 2015-2016
Detailing excavations at Brooklyn House in Norton-on-Derwent, carried out by JB Archaeological Services between 2015 and 2016, this comprehensive site report sheds new light on this area of Roman Britain. Lying north-west
Worcester Magistrates Court: excavation of Romano-British homes and industry at Castle Street
Worcester, like many historic cities, has had its share of undistinguished 20th-century development. As this has come up for redevelopment, it has afforded numerous opportunities for archaeological investigations, which have revealed the
The Horse Butchery Site: a high-resolution record of Lower Palaeolithic hominin behaviour at Boxgrove, UK
As a first-year undergraduate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology in London, I spent seven weeks during the summer of 1991 at Boxgrove, enjoying stints working at several sites there, including GTP17, Q2/D,
Digging into databases
Arguably, one of the biggest challenges that continually faces archaeology is accessibility. While that can be interpreted in several different ways, what I’m going to concentrate on in this month’s ‘Science Notes’
Finds Tray – Iron Age terminal mount
This is an Iron Age terminal mount in the shape of a bull’s head. It was found by a metal-detectorist near Scarning, Norfolk, back in 2015, but recent research has suggested it