This week: Marble Hill

The glorious, far-reaching south-western outlook from Richmond Hill has long been one of England's most famous views. For centuries, painters (including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Turner) have climbed to the top in search of inspiration from the landscape, and to marvel at the beauty of the Thames as it wends…

This week: Mapping the cosmos

These days, we take it for granted that we carry the world – and the cosmos – in our pockets. Powerful smart phones and ever-more-sophisticated technology mean that we can summon up highly detailed maps both of the earth and the heavens above with just a few taps of the…

This Week: natural disasters

It is a question that has been debated by archaeologists and historians for decades: to what extent can one of the worst disasters in human history, the catastrophic volcanic eruption in c.1600 BC that devastated the ancient Aegean island of Thera (now known as Santorini), be linked to the mysterious…

Volcanoes Quiz

In which year did the eruption of Mount Vesuvius bury Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and mud?…

This week: Crete 1941

The daring German capture of Crete in May-June 1941 is not often mentioned alongside more celebrated military upsets. But still, there were many levels on which Operation Merkur (Mercury) – as it was codenamed – was a victory against the odds.…

Against the Odds Quiz

At which narrow pass did a small Greek force including 300 Spartans fight a heroic rearguard action against a substantially larger Persian army in 279 BC?…

This week: Links of Noltland

The perfectly preserved Stone Age village of Skara Brae is perhaps Orkney's most celebrated ancient site, offering stunning proof that these northerly islands were once at the cutting edge of Neolithic civilisation. But Skara Brae was only inhabited from about 3200 to 2200 BC – after which date, according to…

This week: Olympia

As fans of the world's most celebrated sporting contest know, the modern Olympic Games are no stranger to accusations of cheating. Things were no better, however, at the Ancient Olympics, the four-yearly panhellenic Games, which were first recorded in 776 BC and held at Olympia in the northwestern Peloponnese.…

This week: Spiro Mounds

It was considered one of the finds of the century, when – at the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s – a group of American prospectors calling themselves the Pocola Mining Company uncovered a burial chamber in eastern Oklahoma that had remained undisturbed for more than 500 years.…

Roman Britain Quiz

Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 and 54 BC. But which emperor began the Roman conquest in earnest in AD 43?…

This week: Maryport

It was a ploughman's chance discovery that led to one the greatest Roman finds of the Victorian age – described by John Collingwood Bruce, the 19th-century historian of Hadrian's Wall, as a 'sudden acquisition of treasure' such as had never before been seen in the region.…

Time Team Quiz

Which Anglo-Saxon king's stronghold in Athelney, Somerset, was investigated in Time Team's first ever episode?…

This week: Time Team

Last year, we could barely contain our excitement at news that Time Team, the much-loved archaeology series that became a long-running Sunday-afternoon TV favourite, was planning to pick up its trowel again after a near-decade-long hiatus.…

This week: Submerged cities

According to Plato, it was a fabulously wealthy island – larger than Asia Minor and Ancient Libya combined, and situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Its powerful princes conquered much of the eastern Mediterranean, subjecting whole populations to slavery, until an alliance led by the Athenians staged a fightback,…

Lost Settlements Quiz

Once the capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles, which busy Suffolk port was carried away by coastal erosion?…

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