Current World Archaeology 136
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Discovering Denmark: From prehistoric burials to Viking Age power architecture and beyond
Denmark is home to many archaeological marvels, including both renowned sites and world-class museums. Olympia Bobou, Ilaria Bucci, and Rubina Raja are our guides to the wealth of heritage that the country has to offer.
Surveying Falerii Novi: Rethinking the development of a Roman town
Surveying an ancient town in Italy has presented fresh insights into a key moment for Roman urbanism. Matthew Symonds spoke to Martin Millett about what can be learnt from studying an entire townscape.
A History of World Egyptology
The Rosetta Stone that proved key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, discovered by a French military engineer in 1799 (now in the British Museum), and the gold mask of Tutankhamun, discovered
The Antikythera Mechanism: an ancient Greek machine rewriting the history of technology
A seemingly unassuming lump of corroded bronze has confounded investigators for more than a century, ever since it proved to contain precision gearwheels that simply should not have existed in the ancient Greek world. A new study, using cutting-edge techniques, has now revealed what this machine could do, and how it did it, as Tony Freeth explains.
Dating the Plain of Jars
It is evident that the sites were reused over time, well into the historic period, and had retained some kind of ritual significance when the later burials took place in the 9th-13th century AD.
La Glacerie: excavating a prisoner-of-war camp in Normandy
La Glacerie in Cherbourg, Normandy, is the first WWII prisoner-of-war camp for German soldiers in France to be excavated and studied. How does living memory measure up to archaeological research? Robert Early compares the hard evidence with the witness accounts.
Bringing back the Birdman: restoring colour to the sacred cult of Easter Island
Early visitors to Easter Island recorded strange designs of a mysterious being. Now, using the latest technology and ancient records, Paul Horley, Georgia Lee, and Paul Bahn have restored glorious colour to the sacred site of Orongo, home of the mystical birdman.
Baalbek Reborn: Temples
A new app offers an opportunity to experience an ancient site in its Roman heyday.
Jerash: revealing a ‘peripheral’ part of an ancient city in northern Jordan
In AD 749, the ancient city of Jerash was hit by a devastating earthquake. Excavating private houses that collapsed during the disaster has revealed a wealth of information about the Umayyad city. These, though, are just some of the finds encountered during recent archaeological work in the north-western part of the site, as Achim Lichtenberger, Eva Mortensen, and Rubina Raja reveal.
Current World Archaeology 107
Current World Archaeology Photo of the Year 2021: Results
Despite travel limitations over the last year, we’ve been transported to a wide variety of places…
Ceremonial chariot found in Pompeii
This is a unique find, representing the only vehicle of this type found in Italy to date.
Ten years on from disaster
Urajiri is in the town of Minami Soma, impacted both by the tsunami and the meltdown, evacuated as it was in the exclusion zone around the stricken power plant. Archaeology is providing a focus for rebuilding community identity.
Understanding Hawaiian temples: a new angle on the role of ritual sites
The temples of Hawaii are renowned for their varied forms and orientations, but could it be that this veneer of irregularity masks a pattern that sheds fresh light on these monuments? Patrick Kirch and Clive Ruggles told Current World Archaeology’s Matthew Symonds what systematic study of the temple sites reveals.
Emblems of power in Argaric society
The Antiquity paper presents a new theory about the significance of these diadems as emblems of power and suggests that they may reflect the central position of these women in the governance of Argaric society.
The city of Chersonesos
The photograph shows the 1935 Basilica, named after the year it was excavated and believed to date to the 6th century AD.
Archaeology: Western science or global practice?
Delving into ancient sites to illuminate the past is generally seen as a Western innovation. But just how novel is this approach? Excavating in Papua New Guinea has prompted Chris Urwin to make the case for many different archaeologies.
Australia’s ancient rock art
Researchers in Australia have used wasp nests on a cave wall to identify the earliest known example of in situ rock art in the country: a painting of a kangaroo created over 17,000 years ago.
Saint-Bélec Slab
What is it? This engraved stone dating to the early Bronze Age (c.1900-1650 BC) is known as the Saint-Bélec Slab. Made of grey-blue coloured schist, the slab is c.2.2m long, 1.53m wide,
Megaliths and Geology
One of the essentials of building a megalithic chambered burial monument is the choice of materials used to construct it. It is now considered that stone (boulders, stone erratics and fragments, and quarried
Discoveries in the Judean Desert
The newly discovered fragments consist of over 20 pieces of parchment belonging to the Minor Prophets Scroll, including sections of the books of Zechariah and Nahum.
Olga Tufnell’s ‘Perfect Journey’
When 22-year-old Olga Tufnell set off on her first ‘perfect journey’ in 1927 – to join Flinders Petrie’s expedition in Egypt – she had little training in archaeology beyond several years assisting