How did Egypt build the pyramids? It is a question that has excited the imagination of scholars and visitors for millennia. Now papyri documenting work on the Great Pyramid are revealing fresh insights into construction work. Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner told Matthew Symonds how combining text and archaeology can…
Across 6 Homo ___, early human species, the name meaning ‘handy man’ (7)8 Undeciphered script found on tablets in Crete (6,1)10 Earliest epoch of the Tertiary period (10)11 Recess in the wall of a Roman basilica (4)12 ___ Ware, 6th-century Spartan pottery (8)13 Paste used for decoration, produced from sulphides…
Newgrange and Michael O’Kelly Re: ‘Clare Tuffy and Newgrange’, CWA 117 I had the privilege of working with Professor O’Kelly at Newgrange in 1969. The restoration was just starting, and we were excavating around the exterior of the mound. O’Kelly was a tall, rangy man with what at first seemed…
• A forgotten civilisation: exploring the lost world of Sanxingdui
• Not just a stone age: extraordinary timber architecture at Kalambo Falls
• Young versus Champollion: deciphering the decipherers of Egyptian hieroglyphs
• Myanmar: cradle of empires
• Tating ware: on the trail of a pottery paradox
• Georgia: the Golden Age…
Sanxingdui has produced a wealth of startling Bronze Age artefacts. Many of these treasures were deliberately smashed or burnt before being buried, raising questions about what they were used for and how they met their end, as Tianlong Jiao and Shengyu Wang told Matthew Symonds.…
It is often thought that AD 900-1100 was a time when nothing much happened in the area that is today the Netherlands; many overviews of Dutch history have a tendency to skip straight from the Romans to the later Middle Ages. However, the RMO’s latest exhibition, the culmination of a…
The Caucasus is a region where nations have often found themselves sandwiched between competing great powers. Christoph Baumer examines the political intrigues and military struggles that led to the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Georgia, while taking in some of the key monuments from the era.…
In 2019, excavations at Kalambo Falls in Zambia produced a range of wooden objects. These included structural elements that have been dated using cutting-edge technology to an almost unbelievably ancient era. The results force us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the capabilities of early humans, as Larry…
The rivalry between Young and Champollion in the race to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs is legendary. But what motivated these two scholars, and what qualities did they bring to the endeavour? Andrew Robinson goes in search of the personalities behind an extraordinary intellectual achievement.…
Examining artefacts from Myanmar reveals how a tale of power, wealth, people, and the rise and fall of empires played out over centuries, as Alexandra Green told Matthew Symonds.…
Archaeological investigations at a site in the Norwegian countryside have uncovered evidence of a rich history stretching back thousands of years. Amy Brunskill spoke to Jes Martens and Christian Løchsen Rødsrud, who led the research, to find out more.…
Analysis of human and animal footprints carved into rock faces in Namibia has revealed that they contain a wealth of hidden details. Engravings of human and animal tracks are found in prehistoric rock art around the world, but these images are often overlooked, grouped together with other geometric motifs. However,…
Analysis of paper money produced by Benjamin Franklin is shedding new light on the monetary history of Colonial-era America.…
Iron Age child’s shoe Excavations in a prehistoric salt mine in Dürrnberg, Austria, have uncovered a well-preserved shoe – roughly a UK child’s size 12.5 – dated to the 2nd century BC. The discovery was made by the German Mining Museum Bochum, who have been carrying out research into the…
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on heterogeneity.…
A team of researchers have confirmed that a Bronze Age arrowhead found 150 years ago in Switzerland was made of iron from a meteorite – but not the meteorite they expected. The discovery was made during a recent study of archaeological artefacts from the area near Lake Biel, with the…
Excavations at a site in Alaska have uncovered an ancestral Alutiiq house frozen in time by a fire 3,000 years ago, complete with rarely preserved woven grass mats on the floor. The Nunallerpiaq site sits on the shore of Karluk Lake, on Kodiak Island in Alaska. It was discovered –…
Recent research at two mustatils (prehistoric rectangular open-air structures found across northern Arabia) is uncovering new information about the ritual practices that may have been taking place in the region in the late 6th millennium BC. First identified in the 1970s, mustatils have been the subject of detailed investigations in…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The burial monumentality associated with the Neolithic is very much a global phenomenon. This desire to bury the dead in an artificial cave covered with an earthen or cairn mound occurs over at least six millennia. Indeed, there are even places around the world where such…
What is it? This impressive necklace from a Neolithic child burial is composed of over 2,500 beads, made from three varieties of stones, four types of mollusc shells, and – in the case of two beads – a rare example of amber. The rows of beads would have been connected…
REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Let’s do some biblical archaeology. Nazareth is not well known. Bethlehem, where the Bible tells us that Jesus was born, has a magnificent basilica; Jerusalem has the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; but Nazareth, which was his hometown, where he was brought up, is less celebrated.…