had King Charles been in need of distraction or amusement during his Coronation in May 2023, he could have done worse than study all the graffiti carved into the woodwork of the Coronation Chair…
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for Current Archaeology, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world. This is his latest 'Sherds' column.…
In CA 373, we lamented the lack of a society ready to take on the task of managing the tercentenary of the death of Sir Christopher Wren. Fortunately, the Georgian Group has put on the mantle of chief co-ordinator of this year’s events. While Wren’s greatest works were designed in…
Humans in the late Palaeolithic lived mainly on the coastline at a time when sea levels were up to 100m lower than they are today, meaning much of the archaeology of this period now lies below the waves.…
Most of us would guess that this was a word of recent coinage, but it first occurred in the lyrics of a 1938 song by the blues singer Lead Belly…
The British Museum said that it would continue to use the word ‘mummy’, but would use the name of the mummified person wherever this was known…
the programme dramatised one of the essential differences between detectorists and archaeologists: the first are interested in objects (preferably ones that are worth a bob or two), the latter in knowledge.…
The treatment of Tennyson and Chaucer stands as a warning to us all not to adopt similarly reductive techniques in our interpretations of history, heritage, and archaeology.…
Harold James Dyos, late Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester, wrote that London underwent three distinct periods of growth: an increasingly dense build-up of the population in the centre, its spill-over into the outer districts of London, and the development of the outer suburbs of Greater London…
Why not mark the start of the other calendric festivals and their associated deities with holidays?... Time to bring back bonfires, dancing at dawn, May Day frolics, and the dressing of rivers, springs, and wells.…
Beneath the foundations of the staircase, the workmen found a wooden chest containing human bones and pieces of velvet. Charles II arranged for the remains to be reinterred in Westminster Abbey, but the bones were re-examined in 1933.…
Svante Pääbo is the second member of his family to be elected a Nobel laureate: his father, Sune Bergström (1916-2004) shared the same Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1982. Is there a gene, one wonders, for Nobel-Prize-winning science?…
I have a personal dislike of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the people and culture of southern and eastern Britain from the 4th to the 8th centuries because it is anachronistic – it implies homogeneity where I see much more interesting diversity…
I was reminded of his contempt for journalism during the summer, when the BBC and scores of newspapers that consider themselves serious reported that the drought was so severe that the source of the River Thames had dried up.…
What is it about Ministry of Works signage that motivates so many people to share images via social media? Partly it is just the fact of their survival, as reminders of a simpler age of heritage tourism before the era of virtual reality and QR codes. Many of the signs…
One common motif is that of a knight in armour engaging in combat with a snail. Another is that of the killer rabbit, shown wielding sword, axe, or bow and arrow as it fights against those hunting it.…
I was conscious of being several decades older than most of the other graduates, but as Rosemary Cramp said when I told her about my plans, ‘Nobody under 50 should study for a PhD because they don’t have enough experience to make an original contribution.’…
If you want to encounter a Dalek now, you can visit the scenic Northumberland village of Allendale, where one of these terrifying cyborgs stands harmless outside the Georgian home of Neil Cole, whose Museum of Classic Sci-Fi occupies his cellar.…
The Offa’s Dyke Association (ODA) – one of the many heritage bodies that have recently celebrated their half century – was founded in 1969 by Frank Noble, a school teacher and archaeologist based in Knighton, Powys, at the midpoint along the Dyke. Noble gathered a group of like-minded enthusiasts to…
Raiding parties often consisted of genetically similar people, suggesting that they probably came from a single community or were members of the same family, such as the four brothers in one boat burial in Estonia who died on the same day.…