Recently showing at arts cinemas around the UK is a documentary called Wilding, which tells the story of how Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell decided in 2001 to let nature take its course on their 1,400ha estate at Knepp in West Sussex, abandoning the conventional farming practices of soaking the land in herbicides, insecticides, and fertiliser in order to grow loss-making crops
Our Neanderthal cousins may now be extinct, but they are rarely out of the news. Writing in The Conversation, archaeologist Steven Mithen tackles the perennial question of why Homo sapiens flourished while Neanderthals died out by examining the differences between the brain cavities of the two species
As part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, one of the last acts of the outgoing government was to authorise Historic England to extend the blue plaques scheme to the whole of England.
A new organisation has come into being in Wales, in a bold move designed to increase the capacity of the four Welsh Archaeological Trusts (WATs) to compete for major developer-funded contracts, while building on their reputation for specialist regional expertise and service delivery.
In the complex story of human migration out of Africa, Homo sapiens are believed to have travelled steadily eastwards to Asia – eventually reaching Australia by around 50,000 years ago – but seem not to have moved into Europe for a period of 20,000 years.
Historic England has recently listed three properties that have been claimed as the ‘first’ examples of their kind (not, it has to be said, by Historic England themselves – they know better than to invite a pantomimic chorus of ‘Oh no it’s not!’, but the media are not so subtle).
Secret tunnels are a trope of local folklore – many a town in the UK has its story about long-lost underground passages, doubtless providing the inhabitants of a monastery or castle an escape route from their confinement.
It might have been used as an antiseptic or… a hunger suppressant – or just because people liked the taste.
Much that is done in the name of access is admirable: lectures are now broadcast to the world; collections can be searched online; journals and academic papers can be read free of charge
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
Hiding in plain sight Look carefully at Renaissance paintings and you will see all sorts of fascinating cultural details, from the most obvious – the clothing that was fashionable at the time the painting was made, the jewellery, the hairstyles,…
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
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…
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
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…
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
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…