With small tiles of marble and glass, Roman mosaicists created intricate mythological images, realistic scenes from nature, and other complex compositions to decorate the floors and walls of tombs, sanctuaries, and homes. Dalu Jones explores some mosaic masterpieces normally hidden in stores in Rome’s museums.…
• Prayer and poetry: Enheduanna and the women of Mesopotamia
• Circles of stone: Japan’s prehistoric monuments
• Vindelev hoard: power and gold before the Vikings
• Classical currents: ancient Greece and Rome in early US history
• Deciphering the Rosetta Stone…
More than 15,000 petroglyphs were documented in the rock shelter.…
Odin is a war god, fomenting conflict to see who is worthy of entering his hall, Valhalla, and ultimately fighting at Ragnarök (the events, including a battle, at the end of the world). But he is also a god of magic and wisdom, something he is always seeking…
A newly discovered hoard of gold was buried in Vindelev in the 6th century. Why? And what can its regal riches reveal about power and religion in Denmark before the Vikings? Mads Ravn shares what we know so far.…
Fragments of ceramic vessels, cooking utensils, and bones of pigs and oxen with cut marks have also been found, offering a glimpse of the feasting that went on.…
The dates listed below may have changed since we went to print. Check the websites of the museums for the most up-to-date information and bookings.…
As the British Museum marks the 200th anniversary of the decoding of the Rosetta Stone in a new exhibition, Lindsay Fulcher talks to its curator, Ilona Regulski, about the two men who worked to decipher its text, what it revealed, and the powerful role of the scribes who created these petrified…
It has been suggested that the ivories were made by Assyrian artists and possibly arrived in Jerusalem as a gift to the nobility.…
Review by Eugenia Ellanskaya Why do we spend what makes up almost 20 per cent of our life being children? What is the purpose of our incredibly drawn-out pregnancies and post-birth investment into our offspring? These are just some of the questions addressed by the biological anthropologist Brenna Hassett in…
Gilbert was one of the first Americans – of any ethnicity – to undertake archaeological work in Greece. There, he is likely to have met Heinrich Schliemann, rediscoverer of Troy, and certainly he did groundbreaking excavation work on the neighbourhoods of Athens…
The presence of ancient Greece and Rome can be felt in many places in the early history of the United States of America. Lucia Marchini speaks to Sean Burrus and Emilie Johnson to find out how Americans like Thomas Jefferson were putting antiquity to use as a new nation was…
What Carter and his Egyptian team found at the bottom of the stairs and along a short corridor stunned the world, of course – especially those countries barely beginning to recover from the dreadful losses of the First World War.…
Recent investigations in southern Tuscany have found a Late Etruscan and Roman Republican village, manufacturing district, sanctuary, and a necropolis.…
One archaeological milestone this year is the centenary of the founding of the Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan (DAFA) in 1922. Their century of research has included investigations at Aï Khanoum, a Hellenistic city on the banks of the Oxus River in northern Afghanistan. Its (later) name means ‘Lady Moon’,…
The latest on museum and gallery openings.…
Review by Sadie Watson Scholars of Roman London might wait years for a major synthesis such as Dominic Perring’s London in the Roman World to be published. This is hardly surprising when you consider the amount of research that has gone into its production. Perring alludes to this in his…
As a new exhibition opens at the Stonehenge visitor centre, curator and archaeologist Susan Greaney explores the incredible artistry and ingenuity of people living during Japan’s Jomon period and the parallels to their contemporaries in Britain and Ireland.…
Beneath a corridor in the mausoleum, they found a burial structure, a mortuary gallery dubbed the ‘Gallery of Elite Craftsmen’.…
Enheduanna, high priestess at the ancient city of Ur, is thought to be the world’s first named author. She was a poetic innovator, but she was not alone in Mesopotamian history as a prominent or a literate woman, as Lucia Marchini learns from Sidney Babcock.…
With workers living on site, and indoor salt kitchens, Ta’ab Nuk Na could produce salt year-round.…
