Strands of human hair from the Bronze Age burial and cult-cave of Es Cà rritx in Menorca have been analysed, providing the first direct evidence of ancient drug-use in Europe. Around 1450 BC, Menorca’s inhabitants started to use natural caves as funerary structures. Among them was Es Cà rritx, which had already…
A missing piece of wood, one of the three objects collected from the Great Pyramid of Giza by engineer Waynman Dixon in 1872, has been rediscovered in a cigar box in the University of Aberdeen’s museum collection. Two of the objects Dixon discovered in the Queen’s Chamber of the pyramid…
Recent excavations in the Regio V district of Pompeii have unearthed a well-preserved Roman thermopolium – a hot-food shop – in its entirety. The counter, with a painting of a Nereid (a sea nymph) riding on a seahorse was partially excavated in 2019 as part of the Great Pompeii Project.…
Buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, the Roman seaside resort of Stabiae and its opulent villas have long been overshadowed by nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum. As Dalu Jones reports, a new museum puts this ancient playground of the rich in the spotlight.…
Why are we drawn to bright things? When and where did our fascination with sparkle and shine begin? Were ancient ideas of beauty and value the same as ours – or rooted more deeply in the magical worlds of sorcery and spiritual belief?…
The sands of ancient Nubia, a region over-lapping southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are home to remains of cities, forts, and numerous pyramids. It was to these archaeologically rich sands that the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition headed in 1913. The team, led by George A Reisner, had…
Over the past few years, the Ethiopian Heritage Fund has been scaling cliffs and mountains to study and conserve the remarkable rock-hewn painted churches of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, currently in the grips of conflict. Blair Priday, Stephen Rickerby, and Lisa Shekede guide us through their work.…
Medical stories have dominated the news this past year. While the pandemic is closing museums, some are heading online. A new virtual exhibition by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World sheds light on the life and accomplishments of Galen, the Roman physician who worked during a deadly…
Since 1980, the UK’s National Heritage Memorial Fund has been safeguarding significant heritage at risk of loss. New archaeological finds declared as Treasure, works of art being sold to overseas buyers, historic buildings, and even an island home for puffins all come under the NHMF’s remit, with the various items…
Netflix has just released The Dig, a major film about the Sutton Hoo excavation. Lindsay Fulcher unearths the story of how Basil Brown uncovered the splendid Anglo-Saxon ship burial and illuminated the so-called ‘Dark Ages’.…
Details of the latest and most interesting exhibitions.…
The great epic by Roman poet Virgil (or Vergil; 70-19 BC) became an instant classic. His Aeneid was celebrated by other poets and the imperial family, and taught in schools in antiquity (indeed, it is still taught in some schools today). The 12-book Latin poem, written during the reign of…
Disease tearing through a community; mass fatalities; and no apparent end in sight: the pestilences plaguing Greeks at Troy at the start of Homer’s Iliad or Thebes in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King seem all too familiar in our COVID-haunted world. However, while we pin our hopes on scientists and vaccines,…
When the many islands that are scattered across the waters of Oceania were first settled, how, and by whom are questions that have generated much discussion over the centuries. It is such questions and responses to them that Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge,…
He was not, Jacques Francis insisted as prosecution witnesses tried repeatedly to have his testimony thrown out, a slave. They called him ‘blackamoor’ and ‘infidel-born’, but he called himself famulus rather than servus – a member of the household, a worker alongside free servants. At this historical distance, it seems…
One of the most lavish dwellings in Roman Herculaneum, the House of the Bicentenary reopened to the public in 2019 after decades of conservation efforts. Francesco Sirano, Director of the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano, and Leslie Rainer from the Getty Conservation Institute tell the story of this magnificent house,…
This major figure in Egyptian archaeology was also a novelist, journalist, artist, erstwhile musician, and dauntless travel writer.…
This intelligent, articulate, and visually imaginative three-part BBC documentary series about five millennia of writing – shortened into two parts for US transmission as A to Z in the PBS series NOVA – is particularly welcome, and will probably be watched for many years.…
It is the comprehensive yet unconventional way in which Gayford and Gormley shine new light on objects from prehistory to the early 21st century that make this volume so truly spectacular.…
There has been much debate about what to call the people of medieval Scandinavia now known widely as ‘Vikings’. The term stems from the Old Norse vikingr, used to describe someone who went on seafaring expeditions, but this was not tied to identifying any particular cultural group, nor did it…
The ancient Greeks thought much about the dead – how their remains should be disposed of, how their spirits might be summoned, how malignant they could be if unavenged. Classicist David Stuttard brings us face to face with the Greek dead.…