In CA 349, we reported on the discovery of a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Scremby, Lincolnshire. Since the dig finished in 2019, study of the 49 graves and their contents has continued back in the laboratory, giving fascinating insights into the lives of those buried in the Lincolnshire chalk…
Community excavations in Winchester are helping to piece together the layout of a long-demolished Benedictine monastery. Carly Hilts visited this summer’s investigations to find out more.…
The remains of a rare Neolithic cairn have recently been excavated at Holm in East Mainland, Orkney, showing that, despite 19th-century plundering, many of its main features survived, including a number of burials. In Orkney, most chambered tombs survive as upstanding monuments, but the tomb at Holm had become buried…
An ongoing project at Navan Fort, led by Dr Patrick Gleeson and Dr James O’Driscoll, is providing new evidence on the long-term evolution of the site and how it fits into the wider archaeological landscape. Navan Fort is a hilltop enclosure with prehistoric origins, but is famous in literature as…
Ancient Alaskan house uncovered Excavations on the shore of Karluk Lake on Kodiak Island in Alaska have revealed a 3,000-year-old ancestral Alutiiq house, so well preserved that woven grass mats were still present on the floor. The house was found to be oval in plan and made of sod with…
The first major archaeological investigations of the moated house of St John’s Jerusalem in Sutton-at Hone, Kent – once home to a Knights Hospitaller Commandery – have revealed some of the site’s medieval origins, as well as its evolution during the Tudor period. Founded in the 13th century after the…
A recent project has set out to rediscover the archaeology and history of the textile mill complex in Bannockburn, Stirling. In its heyday during the late 18th and 19th centuries, it was one of the largest producers of tartan, furnishing many of the Highland Regiments with their uniforms. The initiative,…
The remains of a late Iron Age and Roman farmstead have been revealed during works by Archaeological Research Services Ltd which, since late February, have been investigating archaeological remains identified during topsoil stripping for Leicestershire County Council’s new road scheme at Melton Mowbray. Agricultural boundaries and enclosures dating back to…
It has long been assumed that the advent of agricultural and pastoral practices during the Neolithic saw a major shift in human eating patterns, focusing more on a terrestrial diet than a marine-based one. Numerous isotopic analyses from across Europe have seemed to support this view, showing that, on the…
A recent excavation at Glendaruel’s Stronafian Community Forest on the Cowal Peninsula in Argyll has uncovered evidence of prehistoric occupation of the site. It had long been thought that a pattern of unusual cell- like features found at a site known as Creag Liath (or Grey Stones), near Glendaruel, could…
Archaeological investigations at a site in the Norwegian countryside have uncovered evidence of a rich history stretching back thousands of years. Amy Brunskill spoke to Jes Martens and Christian Løchsen Rødsrud, who led the research, to find out more.…
Analysis of paper money produced by Benjamin Franklin is shedding new light on the monetary history of Colonial-era America.…
Recent research at two mustatils (prehistoric rectangular open-air structures found across northern Arabia) is uncovering new information about the ritual practices that may have been taking place in the region in the late 6th millennium BC. First identified in the 1970s, mustatils have been the subject of detailed investigations in…
Excavations at a site in Alaska have uncovered an ancestral Alutiiq house frozen in time by a fire 3,000 years ago, complete with rarely preserved woven grass mats on the floor. The Nunallerpiaq site sits on the shore of Karluk Lake, on Kodiak Island in Alaska. It was discovered –…
A team of researchers have confirmed that a Bronze Age arrowhead found 150 years ago in Switzerland was made of iron from a meteorite – but not the meteorite they expected. The discovery was made during a recent study of archaeological artefacts from the area near Lake Biel, with the…
Archaeologists have uncovered a rare example of a religious tattoo in a burial near the medieval monastic site of Ghazali, in northern Sudan. The tattooed individual, whose skin was unusually well preserved, was discovered in 2016 during excavations of the monastery and four nearby cemeteries, carried out by a team…
Efforts to decipher the Herculaneum scrolls have reached an important turning point. The collection of over one thousand papyrus scrolls, carbonised during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, was discovered in 1752 in what is now known as the Villa dei Papiri in Roman Herculaneum. Attempts to open…
New research has been charting the wrecks of ships lost during Operation Dynamo, the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk in the summer of 1940. Historic England and its French counterpart, Drassm, carried out a survey of 30 wrecks in the waters around the French port in September and October this year.…
A new exhibition is set to explore what ordinary life was like for soldiers in the Roman army. Legion, opening in February at the British Museum, will boast more than 200 objects on display, including the world’s only intact legionary shield and recently unearthed body armour. According to the museum,…
It was one of the most significant conflicts in the country’s history. Now, a new database has been set up to record the monuments and memorials to the British Civil Wars. The wars were fought throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland between the Parliamentarians (also known as the Roundheads) and the…
Haunting new images have been revealed of shipwrecks caused by one of the most significant naval battles of the Second World War. The Battle of Midway, fought on 4 June 1942, saw the United States Navy inflict a crippling blow on the Japanese Imperial Navy in the North Pacific Ocean,…