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.…
Why did collecting human heads as trophies become so widespread along the south coast of Peru, and who were they being taken from? Lidio M Valdez examines the extraordinary and chilling implications of the archaeology of the Acari valley.…
Ashley Cooper and Stephen Cooper question the hallowed notion of decisive battle.…
Neil Faulkner introduces an elite Nazi strike-force and sets the scene for the epic Battle of Crete in May 1941.…
Neil Faulkner analyses one of the Second World War’s most curiously asymmetrical battles.…
Edmund West reports on a medieval naval battle that is little known but was of decisive significance.…
Fred Chiaventone recalls the service of the US Army’s first black regiments.…
Inspired by the American and French revolutions, the Irish Rebellion of 1798 saw thousands take up arms against against British rule. But though it would inspire future generations of republicans, the rising was quickly crushed and many of the rebels were taken prisoner. Patrick Mercer looks at what happened next.…
Analysis of human remains from the Links of Noltland, Westray, has revealed the first concrete evidence of a major influx of non-local people into Orkney during the Bronze Age – and, uniquely for the period, it appears that this movement of migrants was dominated by women. Carly Hilts reports.…
The people of Chichester – or Noviomagus Reginorum, as the settlement was known in the 1st century AD – have much to celebrate when it comes to their Roman heritage. Claire Walton and James Kenny explore the city’s Roman archaeology, and explain how it has served as both a platform…
How can understanding the archaeology of peatlands help to ameliorate the current climate crisis? Rosie Everett and Gillian Taylor share the latest research.…
Nearly 50 years of excavations have explored much of Leicester’s north-eastern quarter – and now a newly published thematic volume, Life in Roman and medieval Leicester, draws together the results from these extensive investigations. Covering such a large area, and a time span that starts with the late Iron Age…
Come with me on a pub crawl — around Pompeii. There are some 163 pubs known so far in Pompeii, so it’s going to be quite an evening. But first, we’d better find out what a pub is in Latin, in case we lose our way. There is quite a…
Phil Harding and Emily Glass describe recent excavations by the charity Waterloo Uncovered, which has made exciting new discoveries on the eponymous Belgian battlefield.…
One of the most celebrated works of ancient Greek sculpture, Phidias’ statue of Zeus, was once housed in a temple at Olympia. Though this lost wonder was much admired by ancient visitors, it was not the only attraction at the site, for centuries the home of great panhellenic games. A…
Vast quantities of artefacts were found in a mound in Oklahoma in the 1930s. Together they tell an intriguing story of ritual and cosmic renewal. As an exhibition reuniting some of these objects travels to Texas, Lucia Marchini speaks to Michelle Rich and Eric Singleton to find out more.…
Last year, the restored mosaics of the lavish audience hall and bathhouse of Hisham’s Palace near Jericho were opened to the public. Marie-Louise Winbladh explores the early Islamic art that embellished this Umayyad winter resort, built not by Hisham, but by his nephew al-Walid.…
A small selection of the thousands of drawings compiled by Regency architect Sir John Soane have gone on display in London, among them exquisite works that bring us visions of ancient monuments abroad and of unrealised splendour in England. Lucia Marchini takes a look.…
Having brought together ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian artefacts to create a museum of comparative sculpture, Baron Giovanni Barracco gave his collection of antiquities to the city of Rome in 1902. Now housed in a 16th-century palace in the Italian capital, the little-known Museo Barracco showcases ancient artistry and…
From buttons to artillery shells, a range of items from battlefields have been transformed – often by soldiers – into powerful and personal pieces of ‘trench art’. Nicholas J Saunders explores some of the human stories of life and death sealed within these creations.…
The Roman fort at Maryport is best known for the collection of altars, dedicated to the god Jupiter, that were found buried in a series of large pits just outside its walls. Where was this religious stonework originally displayed – and what can we learn from the remains of two…