Historian Janina Ramirez tells Diana Bentley about her latest work delving into stories of celebrated archaeological discoveries and the people behind them, and of the medieval women all-too-often overlooked by history.…
Influential figures in the heritage world are concerned about the scale and height of new buildings proposed for the centre of Canterbury, where the primacy of the cathedral as a focal point of views and the intimacy of historic streets are under threat. Chris Catling reports on a manifesto for…
Seventy years after John Pull’s excavations at Cissbury Ring transformed our understanding of Neolithic flint-mining, an innovative new interpretive trail has been launched at the West Sussex landmark. Carly Hilts visited the site with James Brown and James Sainsbury to find out more.…
As the Society of Antiquaries of London launches a new affiliate membership, increasing access to its library and museum collections for the general public, Carly Hilts visited Burlington House to learn more about three centuries of antiquarian activity, and its very eclectic holdings.…
An investigation stretching from Durham to the southern Scottish Highlands is illuminating the lives of communities who lived under Roman occupation, and on the fringes of imperial influence. The first phase of this work has already identified more than 130 previously unknown settlements, as Carly Hilts reports.…
In its heyday, HMS Invincible was considered one of the finest ships in the Royal Navy – and although it sank off Portsmouth in 1758, its remains represent the best-preserved 18th-century warship known in UK waters. Carly Hilts spoke to Daniel Pascoe, who headed recent excavations of the wreck, and…
An exhibition on Feminine Power currently at the British Museum journeys through the beautiful, but dangerous, realm ruled over by great goddesses. There, Lindsay Fulcher discovers, men are often afraid to tread.…
The new galleries at the MFA, Boston, cover more than 2,000 years of art. We take a look at a some of the highlights from the ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine worlds.…
How did the elements of what we now call Gothic come together in medieval Europe? Emma J Wells takes us back to this great age of cathedral-building, when masons set out to replicate heaven here on earth.…
The layers of tunnels under Naples preserve traces of Greek life and death in ancient Italy. Dalu Jones heads beneath the surface to visit ongoing restoration work that is making an ancient tomb and its rare surviving Greek paintings accessible to the public.…
Some of the most significant texts from around the world have been given very special treatment, with words of holiness and of diplomatic value written both in and on gold. Annabel Teh Gallop, Eleanor Jackson, and Kathleen Doyle investigate the indelible importance of the precious metal in luxury manuscripts.…
Last month we explored the evolution of Roman and medieval Leicester. Now Mathew Morris explains how recent University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) excavations in the city have revealed links between its Roman predecessor and North Africa.…
Recent excavations at Black Cat Quarry in Bedfordshire have revealed a story of farming communities spanning the Neolithic to the early medieval period, as well as the possible remains of an important Viking encampment described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Ben Dyson, who supervised the majority of excavations and undertook the…
When Henrietta Howard (née Hobart) built her Thames-side country house in Twickenham in the 1720s, it represented so much more than a fashionable escape from the bustle of court life: it was a refuge from her abusive marriage, and a sign of hard-won independence. With the house and its grounds…
Not so long ago, the word ‘hillfort’ was habitually preceded by the words ‘Iron Age’, but now we know plenty of older examples. Not all of them are built on hills, and as for the word ‘fort’ there is little evidence for a defensive or offensive function. So what on…
This year marks the 1,900th anniversary of the visit of the emperor Hadrian to Britain where, according to his biographer writing more than 200 years after the event, ‘he put many things to right and was the first to build a wall 80 miles long to separate the Romans and…
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…
In the conclusion to this two-part article, Richard Hodges examines the circumstances surrounding the attack on the Benedictine monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno in AD 881.…
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…
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…
How a research expedition in Antarctica located the lost wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance.…