Current World Archaeology 137
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Ramses the Great: How a pharaoh built his legacy
Why is Ramses II considered to be ‘the Great’? An exhibition focusing on his life and times sheds light on how Ramses earned this accolade. Matthew Symonds shares what he learnt.
Beyond the luxurious: Tracing the Late Antique ivory tradeÂ
Study of ivory use in the early medieval world is revealing fresh insights into how this material was viewed. The results have important implications for our understanding of the scale of the trade, and its impact on the elephants it exploited, as Rowan S English and Julia Steding explain.
Captain Spratt’s Crete: the island that tipped
Crete lies in an earthquake zone. This has affected the island over the centuries, but how? Although never fully recognised, in the 1850s Captain Spratt, of the Royal Navy, worked it out. Dudley Moore explains.
Roman frontiers: on the edges of empire
The former frontiers of the Roman Empire are set to become the world’s biggest single archaeological site. UNESCO World Heritage Site status is now in prospect for the frontiers as a whole. Historic Scotland’s David Breeze is a leading advocate of the move. Neil Faulkner asked him to explain why the Roman imperial frontiers deserve such special treatment.
Olympic link on Antikythera Mechanism
In CWA 30 we reported on recent research to understand the 2,000 year old scientific instrument salvaged from a Roman ship that sank off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera
Lost languages: how to decipher undeciphered scripts
How were Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs or Minoan Linear B deciphered? Drawing on his latest masterful book, Lost Languages, author Andrew Robinson hands us the keys to decoding the past.
Georgia’s treasures: from the Land of the Golden Fleece
The latest exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, features a wealth of archaeology from Vani in Georgia. Nicola Upson reports.
Ancient Greek calculator reconstructed
The mechanism was used to predict the positions of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon and possibly planetary motions.
Taboo!
The Gods of the Pacific are powerful gods. Some have called them idols – more have called them art. And the Gods of the Pacific have had an enormous influence on European art throughout the 20th century. The Gods were powerful, and their power could be dangerous as well as life-enhancing. And this power had to be contained: the Polynesians had a word for the means by which this power could be contained and controlled: Tapu. Tapu means ‘marked’ or ‘set apart’: anything that was Tapu had to be wrapped and kept separate. And the word Tapu has also migrated to Europe and has become our word Taboo.
Butrint from the air: an aerial perspective of a Classical and late antique Mediterranean city
Joint excavations between the British Butrint Foundation and the Albanian Institute of Archaeology are revealing the complex history of the ancient Adriatic port of Butrint. With funding from the Packard Humanities Institute,
Japanese Jomon
CWA takes a picturesque look at Japan’s prehistoric Jomon Culture, encompassing their exquisite pottery, Neolithic/Mesolithic economy and ritual beliefs.
The Brochtorff Stone circle, at Xaghra, Malta
The great Neolithic temples on Malta are among the oldest temples in the world, most of them erected before even the pyramids were built. Yet what were they and how did they work? The most important and illuminating excavations of this period were those that took place at the Brochtorff’s stone circle, at Xaghra, from 1987-1994.Â