My recent ‘Odd Socs’ column on the Ancient Tree Forum (CA 436) proved to be unexpectedly topical when, on 18 June, it was announced that Sherwood Forest’s 1,200-year-old Major Oak had died. The expressions of sadness that followed showed that many people loved this tree and considered it an important part of our national heritage.Â
A study of human remains from two cemeteries in Bulgaria, all buried with distinctively ‘Gothic’ jewellery, brooches, and belt buckles, suggests that the ancient Goths were ethnically diverse and not a single homogeneous community.
Does ‘balti’, the Birmingham-created curry named after the steel bowl in which the dish is cooked and served, count as part of the UK’s intangible heritage?
The story was seen as a further blow to the argument that the Marbles must stay in London – replicas ‘accurate to a millimetre’ could be displayed at the British Museum and few visitors would know the difference.
Inventive Vents has a clever way of engaging younger people with scatological anecdotes, in the style of Horrible Histories. Thus we are told that the innocuously named Carting Lane was known colloquially as ‘Farting Lane’ because of the smell of sewer gas.
People investing in DNA ancestry kits should be aware that they might not get the answers they were expecting: people who want to know if they have Viking DNA or are related to Richard III might instead discover an awkward family secret.
The ‘hippy generation’ prefers to tell archaeological narratives that paint our ancestors as egalitarian, caring for weaker members of society and welcoming migrants for the new skills and ideas.
Active travel, as it is known, is set to become even more popular as people rediscover the riches of the UK’s natural and cultural heritage.
This well-produced collaborative volume (with 12 subsidiary authors and two illustrators) presents – very timeously – the results of the 2018 excavation of c.4.5ha of development land on the outskirts of Ely.
There is a growing realisation that the solution to the climate emergency is to retrofit existing buildings, with all their embodied carbon and energy, rather than to build new ‘environmentally sustainable’ structures in place of old.
The statues of five elephants surrounding this part of the cemetery have led to the belief that these and other circus animals are buried here along with the human victims of the Hammond circus train disaster of 22 June 1918.
In 1473, Robert Wodelarke marked the feast of St Catharine by founding a college of priests in Cambridge, commanding them to pray for their founder daily while completing their theological studies
Quarreling was commonplace, especially over who was entitled to sit in ‘the best’ pews. Clergy complained about being assaulted: one Kentish aristocrat took his hawk to church in 1514 and punched the vicar in the face when chastised for doing so.
activists in Mexico City are claiming that the arrival of Columbus in America opened the door to European oppression and colonialism. Mexico City’s governor has confirmed that the place of Columbus will be taken by a replica of a pre-Columbian statue
Churches are significant repositories of community history; they contain rare and precious objects; they are, in a very real sense, museums at the heart of every community. They are also places of reflection and spiritual sustenance…
The Friends organise a rota of more than 100 volunteer ‘watchers’ to keep the churches open. They put on lectures, tours, and special events, while encouraging others to make use of the buildings.
When exactly did we begin to lose touch with the natural cycle of the sun, the stars, and the seasons? Was it at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when people moved from land-based activities to working in factories?
The idea that there was no pre-existing Roman settlement on the site of medieval Venice is hard to credit when you realise that the Italian peninsula was heavily populated under the Roman Empire
The heritage sector is central to the UK’s appeal as a tourist destination, which will be crucial in reopening our borders and rebuilding the economy as the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control.
Furnished graves smacked of paganism, along with the idea that worldly goods should be laid in the grave for the use of the deceased in the afterlife.
In a warning of what might occur again in the future, a paper in the journal Nature blames climate change for interpersonal violence among Nile Valley dwellers in the Late Pleistocene.
the organisation has halted the Westminster Parliament’s expensive and environmentally damaging plan to demolish Richmond House, listed at Grade II* as a rare example of a fine building from the 1980s…
Museums and sculptors should work more closely with archaeologists and palaeontologists to recreate the appearance of our extinct ancestors.