An exhibition at the Musée Saint-Raymond explores the Roman cult of Mithras. Gillis Kersting visited to find out more about this enigmatic religion.…
Apart from his red hair, beard, giant girth and his equally gargantuan appetite for wives, the one thing we all associate with Henry VIII is the event that the authors of 1066 and All That called, with an eye for a memorable spelling mistake, ‘the Disillusion of the Monasteries’.…
In the early 18th century, Palladian style ruled England as the most fashionable for a British country house or public building. The man responsible, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), designed the building that started this architectural revolution. English Heritage archaeologists have recently had a rare chance to investigate…
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…
Stonehenge is merely one part of a much wider sacred landscape represented today by the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The evidence is mounting that Stonehenge itself represented a domain of the ancestors, and, as such, a place in which the final rites were performed in elaborate ceremonies marking the passage…
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, a well-preserved archaeological sequence, and a team of internationally recognised specialists, Butrint is becoming a benchmark for Roman…
Eberhard Sauer reports on the incredible discovery of a tombstone in Alchester, Oxfordshire; and not just any tombstone, but one which could rewrite the history of the Roman invasion and conquest of Britain.…
CWA takes a picturesque look at Japan's prehistoric Jomon Culture, encompassing their exquisite pottery, Neolithic/Mesolithic economy and ritual beliefs.…
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…
Around 8000 years ago a huge underwater landslide off Norway triggered a tsunami (‘tidal wave’) that wreaked destruction along the coasts of Norway, Iceland and eastern Scotland. An archaeologist considers the contemporary (Mesolithic) Scottish scene in the next article. Here geographer David E Smith describes what Quaternary scientists know…