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Following the Eagle, After the Fire, and Treasure: Hidden, Lost, Found
CA recently visited exhibitions at three sites in the care of North East Museums, with displays exploring Roman military life and ideas of ‘treasure’.
Penn Museum: a museum for the coming decades
The symbol of the new Penn Museum is in the refurbished main entrance hall. On a prominent podium behind the ticket desks sits the Museum’s celebrated sphinx. Richard Hodges reports.
Europe without borders
The exhibition Iron Age – Europe without Borders is divided into cultural-historical, chronological, and geographical sections. In addition to relics of largely unknown cultures, the exhibition focuses on the legacies of peoples such as the Celts, Etruscans, Scythians, and Sarmatians.
Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy
On entering the gallery, visitors are reminded that, despite their prominence in the story of the early colonists, the passengers of the Mayflower were not the first Europeans to settle in the ‘New World’.
National Museum of Denmark
The National Museum of Denmark has one of the oldest established collections of prehistoric artefacts in the world. It dates back to King Frederik VI, who set up The Royal Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities in 1807. More than 200 years after the Commission’s founding, the ground floor of the Prince’s Palace (where the collection moved in 1855) beautifully presents artefacts from across Denmark, which offer a detailed look at the people who lived there, as well as further objects from the land that once connected Denmark to Britain.
Infinity of Nations
Around 700 objects from more than 200 Indigenous communities give a glimpse of the people who have interacted across these diverse environments over thousands of years.
Your Stonehenge
Visitors to Stonehenge have been taking photographs of the monument – and themselves – for almost 150 years. Lucia Marchini visited the site to explore a new exhibition showcasing some of these images, and the stories they tell.
Great North Museum: Hancock
From Roman temples dedicated to Mithras to Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, Newcastle’s Great North Museum: Hancock explores an array of beliefs and ways of life in the north of England, as Lucia Marchini found out.
Tantra: an archaeology of enlightenment
Tantra’s appeal has proven remarkably broad. What began on the margins of Indian society went on to command the patronage of royalty and transform Hinduism and Buddhism as it spread across Asia. Along the way, it created a rich archaeological legacy, capable of provoking radically different reactions from its audiences, as Imma Ramos told World Archaeology.
Last Supper in Pompeii
The extraordinary levels of preservation at the relatively ordinary Roman city of Pompeii and other sites in the Bay of Naples, where the eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastatingly interrupted the inhabitants as they went about their daily lives, provide remarkable insights into the production, distribution, and conspicuous consumption of food and wine.
The Charterhouse
A recently opened museum at London’s Charterhouse illuminates centuries of life at this former medieval monastery. Lucia Marchini explores some of the highlights.
Review: Royal Navy Submarine Museum
Reviewing the best military history exhibitions WITH MATTHEW ADAMS.
The Road to Palmyra
Halfway between the Mediterranean and the River Euphrates, the Efqu spring offered refreshing respite for ancient traders crossing the dusty Syrian desert. The city of Palmyra flourished at the oasis, its merchants
Writing early medieval England: tracing the first echoes of Anglo-Saxon voices
How did the kingdoms of early medieval England evolve into a single nation? A new exhibition at the British Library combines artefacts and manuscripts to tell the story of the Anglo-Saxons in their own words. Carly Hilts reports.
The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey
New displays in Westminster Abbey’s eastern triforium (the gallery above the nave) explore the long history of the church, its royal links, and its importance as a national monument. Lucia Marchini takes a look at the recently opened Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries.
Harry Potter: a history of magic
What link is there between archaeology and a best-selling series of children’s books? To find out, Lucia Marchini tours the British Library’s major new exhibition.
The Rothschild Pentateuch
The text contains features that indicate it may have been written in France for Jewish emigrés who had been expelled from England in 1290.
Modernising Maudslay’s Maya casts
These monumental carvings are just two of the many the adventurous Alfred Maudslay recorded on his travels around Mesoamerican sites in the 1880s and 1890s.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema: the archaeologist of artists
Dominic Green looked at the sensual paintings of the acclaimed Victorian artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema on show at Leighton House in London.
Picasso – half man, half bull
Picasso never visited Greece, let alone Crete. He didn’t need to do so. He re-created it on paper. The drawings and prints in our show reveal how Picasso evoked the ancient world and peopled it with gorgeous girls who resembled his mistresses.