There are many great ways to get involved with archaeology and heritage this summer, including new exhibitions, events, activities, and more. Or, if you would prefer to get your history fix at home, there is a wide variety of resources available online, from new apps and digital exhibitions to virtual…
When the many islands that are scattered across the waters of Oceania were first settled, how, and by whom are questions that have generated much discussion over the centuries. It is such questions and responses to them that Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge,…
Last March, museums and heritage sites across the world closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, we created ‘Heritage from Home’ to share the many wonderful ways that you can get your fix of archaeology, history, and culture without leaving the house. Amy Brunskill has put together a roundup…
As we find ourselves back in lockdown, the vast quantity of resources available online seems more valuable than ever. Amy Brunskill has put together a selection of some of the many ways you can get involved in archaeology, history, and heritage from home, to help you explore the past until…
Classical Caledonia explores the antiquarian rediscovery of Scotland’s Roman remains, and how these have influenced and continue to influence Scottish identity, impacting on our interpretation of Roman Scotland today. Various populist and misleading tropes, such as Hadrian’s Wall forming the border between England and Scotland, or the belief that Scots…
More than a decade in the making, this book was well worth the wait. It is a thorough compendium of knowledge on not only the history and (bio)archaeology of leprosy, but also its epidemiology and evolution. At its heart, it puts the people who have been affected by this horrendous…
‘The past lies in fragments… one might just as well try to reconstruct the idea of a tree from its leaves, or an ocean wave from a dripping tap.’ So writes Max Adams, author of The First Kingdom, a wide-ranging new overview of the emergence of early medieval Britain from…
This book provides a brief history of how humans have dealt with their dead over the centuries – mainly focusing on the early medieval period through to the modern day. It is, at times, a dizzying whirlwind of a tour, taking readers from Britain to Bhutan and everywhere in between.…
This latest book in the ’50 Finds’ series from the Portable Antiquities Scheme is the first to focus on a specific artefact type rather than on a region or period. Roman coinage is a fitting choice for this new approach, as it represents by far the largest single category recorded…
Sheffield Castle is a rare archaeological treat put together by a university team working with local authorities and professional archaeologists. It is about a place that has topographical and historical meaning thanks to recent well-designed rescue excavations and sleuth-like digging into myriad archives. More than this, it is a book…
It is almost time for Current Archaeology Live! 2021, which will run from 26 to 28 February. While this year’s event will be entirely online, and things will look a bit different to what you are used to, we still have an excellent line-up of leading archaeological experts from across…
This intelligent, articulate, and visually imaginative three-part BBC documentary series about five millennia of writing – shortened into two parts for US transmission as A to Z in the PBS series NOVA – is particularly welcome, and will probably be watched for many years.…
It is the comprehensive yet unconventional way in which Gayford and Gormley shine new light on objects from prehistory to the early 21st century that make this volume so truly spectacular.…
There has been much debate about what to call the people of medieval Scandinavia now known widely as ‘Vikings’. The term stems from the Old Norse vikingr, used to describe someone who went on seafaring expeditions, but this was not tied to identifying any particular cultural group, nor did it…
Review of John Grehan's latest release 'Hitler’s V-Weapons: The Battle against the V-1 and V-2 Written at the Time – an official history'.…
City walls are the largest structures associated with cities in the Roman Empire, but they seem still to be far from understood – maybe simply because they are such large structures and dating is a topic open to discussion and reinterpretation. This volume is formed from a collection of papers…
How do archaeologists know where to dig? How do they find out how old things are? And who gets to keep the objects they find? It is questions like these, often asked by curious members of the public, that Eric H Cline sets out to answer in this new publication.…
Grave Disturbances focuses on a much-neglected area of funerary archaeology. Disturbed human remains are frequently encountered within burial contexts, but are often given scant attention in comparison to more complete remains in expected anatomical configuration. The case studies in the volume focus largely on continental Europe, although there are also…
Oliver Gilkes contemplates an ancient masterpiece plucked from the sea.…
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.…
The sheer scale of Khufu’s Great Pyramid is breathtaking, but there is more to this audacious monument than immediately meets the eye, as Matthew Symonds recalls.…