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…
It was probably around 3,600 years ago that the earliest known depiction of the cosmos was buried in eastern Germany. By then, the Nebra Sky Disc had already served several roles. Repeatedly refashioning the artefact allowed it to keep pace with changing desires to express knowledge, belief, and power, as…
Review by Barbara E Borg ‘The real essence of an age is better revealed among trivial and commonplace things than among prominent monuments and great leaders.’ The opening sentence of this book captures succinctly its underlying principles. Following two chapters outlining the approach and the wider social and topographical context…
• Digging Caesar’s Forum: daily life in Rome
• Nebra Sky Disc: decoding a prehistoric vision of the cosmos (out 25 May on The Past)
• The dead of Amato: conflict on the Peruvian south coast
• Tsunami: a Bronze Age tragedy in Turkey
• Finding Shackleton’s ship
• The monastery of San Vincenzo al…
Across 7 Phoenician city state destroyed by Rome in 146 BC (8) 9 Light cavalryman originating in Hungary in the 15th century (6) 10 Sailing vessel developed in Macau in the 16th century (6) 11 Germanic people who invaded Italy in the 6th century (8) 12 Palaeolithic communities of south-central…
Your observations, your objections, and your opinions: send them to cwaletters@world-archaeology.com…
Numerous altars, stelae, votive offerings, and other finds associated with a religious complex were discovered.…
Among the discoveries were a large number of fragments of Notre-Dame de Paris’ lost medieval rood screen.…
A new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, tells the story of 350 years of interaction between the British and Japanese royal and imperial families. Amy Brunskill visited to find out more.…
We have had a wonderful selection of entries for this year’s photo competition, with archaeological images that have taken us all around the world. Travelling from famous heritage sites to lesser-known local monuments, and from mountains and deserts to under the sea, the photos submitted for the 2022 competition have…
Access to the sea can be a double-edged sword. Recent archaeological work at Çeşme in Turkey has revealed that its Bronze Age inhabitants learnt this lesson the hard way. Vasıf Şahoğlu and Beverly Goodman-Tchernov told Matthew Symonds how a natural disaster ushered in dramatic change, both at Çeşme and further…
Review by M Elizabeth Grávalos What makes a home? All humans have ideals of home, but no two people conceptualise home and their household in the same manner. Yet despite this diverse human experience, many archaeologists rely on rigid household models to interpret domestic life in the past. Ancient Households…
The Inca may have called the city Picchu, or more likely Huayna Picchu.…
Fresh traces of urban life spanning almost three millennia are coming to light in central Rome. New Danish-Italian excavations have uncovered far more than Caesar’s monumental forum project. Delving through archaeological layers, while travelling back in time from Mussolini’s 1930s constructions, Jan Kindberg Jacobsen, Eva Mortensen, Claudio Parisi Presicce, and…
Cave diving at the cenotes in Mexico is a magical experience, a never-ending labyrinth of tunnels filled with crystal-clear water where the only limit is how much gas you can carry. With no natural light, and the crazy speleothems (mineral deposits) and colours inside, it makes you feel like you…
Review by Luuk de Ligt The two volumes that make up this publication present the results of the ambitious Roman Peasant Project co-directed by Kim Bowes and Cam Grey. Geographically, the focus of the book is on the region of Cinigiano, Grosseto province, in southern Tuscany. Chapters 4 to 11…
New research into the Venus of Willendorf has shed more light on the fascinating prehistoric figurine’s construction and its possible origins. The c.30,000-year-old statue is exactly 11cm tall and depicts a stylised, faceless adult female, with exaggerated sexual features and an elaborate headdress or hairstyle. A number of other Palaeolithic…
Neil went on to propose using what R G Collingwood called ‘the historical imagination’ by blending data and interpretation to ‘tell the story’. He was convinced that this ‘must be done if archaeology is to be interesting and worthwhile’.…
How a research expedition in Antarctica located the lost wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance.…
'Spot' is equipped to carry out routine inspections and monitor the safety of the site.…
Many of the jar sites in Assam contain engraved stone slabs decorated with human figures and other motifs.…
