Victims of Vesuvius Excavations at a large villa in Civita Guiliana, 700m north-west of Pompeii’s city walls, have uncovered two more victims of the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed many settlements in this region of Italy in AD 79. The two bodies were found entombed in a 2m-thick layer of…
Excavations begin along the A303 Preliminary investigatons by Wessex Archaeology in advance of the planned A303 tunnel scheme are in progress. So far they have undertaken more than 462ha of geophysical survey and 440 evaluation trenches, uncovering diverse finds in the Stonehenge landscape. These include the burial of a young…
A Roman ring revisited A Roman intaglio discovered in 1995 in Colchester, UK, pre-dates the Roman invasion of Britain, research for the new online database for Colchester + Ipswich Museums suggests. Engraved with the image of Mars, the Roman god of war, the carnelian gem was once mounted in an…
Viking ship burial in Norway A Viking ship burial was recently discovered at Gjellestad, Norway, during a ground-penetrating radar survey. It is now being excavated by the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. The ship is just one part of a massive burial complex at the site, which includes 15…
Surveying Dunfermline Abbey A recent project led by Dr Michael Penman from the University of Stirling in partnership with Historic Environment Scotland has conducted a series of ground-penetrating radar surveys of Dunfermline Abbey, revealing the possible layout of the original medieval choir, which was left in ruins after it was…
News about an 800 year old turkey-feather blanket found in Utah, the Nasca feline in Peru, and investigations into British pet cemeteries.…
10,000 year old footprints identified in New Mexico, Neolithic assemblage found in Norway, and AMS dating of Upper Palaeolithic cave art in Spain.…
Footprints in the desert The earliest-known human footprints from the Arabian Peninsula have been discovered in an ancient lake deposit in the south-west of the Nefud Desert. They were discovered as part of the Palaeodeserts Project, which is studying the effects of climate change and human evolution in the region,…
Funding for Strictly ballroom The Blackpool Tower Ballroom, home to Strictly Come Dancing’s annual ballroom special, has received £764,000 from the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund to help enable repairs to be made to the venue, including its historic plasterwork ceiling. The ballroom is part of the Grade I-listed Tower Building,…
Late Neanderthal tooth Investigation into a canine tooth found at Riparo Broion, a rock shelter in Vicenza, north-eastern Italy, has revealed that it may represent an important piece of direct evidence for late Neanderthal occupation in the area. The tooth was discovered in 2018 in a late Mousterian level, with…
Managing the Musée Champollion and The Pitt Rivers Museum.…
Iberian Iron Age massacre The Iron Age settlement of La Hoya in the Ebro River Valley in Spain was discovered in 1935 and excavated between 1973 and 1990. It was known then that a violent attack must have taken place, as the skeletons of both people and animals were found…
Medieval bridge discovered in Scotland Over the last two years, the Ancrum and District Heritage Society (ADHS) have, with the help of Historic Environment Scotland, Dendrochronicle, and Wessex Archaeology, surveyed and researched a medieval wooden bridge that was discovered underwater in the River Teviot in southern Scotland. Only the cutwater…
Ochre mining in Mexico Evidence for the mining of red ochre has been discovered in the now-submerged caves of Quintana Roo in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Dated to between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, this is the earliest-known exploitation of this mineral in the Americas. Over the course of several dives…
National Trust report on colonialism The National Trust has released their Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, including Links with Historic Slavery (read more in ‘Sherds’ on p.64). Commissioned in September of last year, it analyses the history of…
British Museum revamps Collection Online The British Museum has recently launched a new version of its Collection Online website, featuring over half its collections, making it one of the largest such databases of any global museum. The updated resource encompasses nearly 4.5 million objects and 1.9 million images, including 85,000…
On the Maya road The first LiDAR study of the longest road in the Maya area has shed new light on settlement in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The 100km- long Sacbe 1 was built in the 7th century AD and connected the city of Cobá, which controlled the eastern peninsula, and…
British Museum launches protective platform The British Museum has launched a global platform called ‘Circulating Artefacts’ (CircArt) to fight against the looting and trafficking of antiquities. This initiative combines a restricted object database with an online public service where users can notify specialists about artefacts that they feel require investigation.…