Sherds CA 406

Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.…

Revisiting research and challenging conclusions

We all enjoy stories about new discoveries, and it is these that tend to grab the news headlines, but there is another kind of story that gets far less coverage: those that contradict an earlier claim. In that category is the finding that our species – Homo sapiens – may…

Sherds CA 405

Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.…

Sherds CA 404

Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.…

Analysing ancestry and ancient agriculture

It is less than a decade since scientists developed swift and efficient methods of extracting and analysing ancient DNA from human remains (for which Svante Pääbo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2022) and yet scarcely a day goes by without some new breakthrough in our…

Celebrated crafts and cross-cultural connections

Buried in lead The excellent Museum of Antiquities in Rouen, Normandy, has mounted a special exhibition called Le Plomb et l’homme (Lead and Man; open until 5 March 2024) devoted to the large number of Gallo-Roman lead coffins and funerary urns in its collection, many of them discovered in the…

Language, a heritage asset

Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for Current Archaeology, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world. This is his latest 'Sherds' column.…

The secrets of church walls

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…

Wren 300

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…

Beyond the sea

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.…

Life and death

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…

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The Corbett Society

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…

Saving landmarks and ancient traditions

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.…

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