The 6th Shanghai Archaeological Forum has just drawn to a close, and it is time to reflect on its many highlights. This year, the field trip was scheduled on the first day, and we were given the choice of visiting freshly uncovered shipwrecks and the new Shanghai Museum, or to take the bus south to visit two key sites: Jingtoushan and Hemudu.
At the time of writing, I am anticipating a memorable occasion in December: the 6th Shanghai Archaeology Forum. These meetings begin with the announcement of the winning nominees in two categories: field discovery and research achievement.
On 1 August 1960, I visited Mycenae for the first time. In my diary I described it as a terribly moving experience, seeing the shaft graves and the famed treasuries of Atreus and Clytemnestra. Looking back, what I recall most clearly was the romance of it all.
The Princess was not buried alone. Alongside her was a grave big enough for an adult, which contained the ochre covered skeleton of a little girl aged about 18 months, covered in about 15,000 shell beads and, lo and behold, a tiny clay anvil for shaping pots.
The civil war had been very disruptive. There had been looting, pillage, and social upheaval. There are records of a most heinous crime, rooting up the boundary markers of land ownership, for which those guilty were impaled.
We all gathered round on another day, when a whoop of excitement emerged from the next-door shop, where Professor Frend was working in a cellar. He had just found the lovely bronze statuette of Venus, now a proud exhibit in the Verulamium Museum
The contents of those two pits amaze. They include some of the most remarkable bronzes from the ancient world: human face-masks with protruding eyes, thought to depict Cancong, the mythical first king of Shu.
Originating in the remote past on the island of Taiwan, these Austronesian-speaking people were ultimately to settle from Malagasy to Rapa Nui, Easter Island. But did they go even further, and reach the Americas before Columbus?
For some unaccountable reason, perhaps a case of mistaken identity, Polly and I were ushered into a private room to sit down to afternoon tea with the junta.
One of the most breathtaking experiences in my archaeological life was to mount the steps and look out over the assembled ranks of the terracotta army.
My excavations, including Khok Phanom Di, have yielded well over 1,000 human graves, and often the dead were interred with multiple mortuary offerings from fine pottery vessels to thousands of ornaments in gold, silver, bronze, iron, carnelian, glass, shell, and agate.
There is no email I await with greater anticipation and, indeed, trepidation, than one captioned ‘Your radiocarbon results’.
Charles Higham looks at how a routine DNA analysis resulted in a stunning discovery about the prehistory of our human past