Feature

Right This fragment of Samian ware, found in Cirencester, comes from a pottery vessel that was decorated with vivid scenes of gladiators fighting wild animals.

Echoes from the arena: exploring evidence for gladiators in York and Cirencester

Last month’s CA reviewed an exhibition in Cirencester that features six ‘gladiator’ skeletons excavated in York. Struck by the fact that Cirencester has an impressive amphitheatre, but no direct evidence for the individuals who may have fought there, while York has potential gladiators but as-yet no trace of any amphitheatre, Carly Hilts presents a tale of two settlements, exploring life and death in the ancient arena.

Left Room N6 in Phase 3 (AD 200 250) was given a floor made of red ceramic tesserae cut from roof and box flue tiles. The room was heated by a fireplace built into the eastern wall, visible at the top of the photograph. below left Room N7 in Phase 3 (AD 200 250), with the surviving third of a chequerboard mosaic floor bordered by a meander pattern. Fragments of wall plaster showed that the room had cream coloured walls with a pink stripe.

Druce Farm Roman villa: celebrating a community dig in the heart of Dorset

Roman villas are rarely excavated these days, because we already ‘know about them’. Yet when a villa is excavated – in part or as a whole – what we find defies what we think we know. The report on Druce Farm Roman villa, excavated between 2012 and 2018 by volunteer members of the East Dorset Antiquarian Society, has been published in quick time and in exemplary form. As Chris Catling discovers, it makes us think again about what defines a villa.

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Island lives: art and identity in the Mediterranean

Water may separate the Mediterranean islands from the mainland, but the sea also offers a vital link. Anastasia Christophilopoulou considers how objects from Crete, Cyprus, and Sardinia reveal aspects of shifting island identities over time, and stories of their connections.

Signature style: the artists behind Maya masterpieces

Recent breakthroughs in the study of Maya hieroglyphs have revealed artist signatures on artefacts long considered to be the work of anonymous artisans. Joanne Pillsbury and Laura Filloy Nadal introduce us to the newly identified sculptors and painters who worked in the Maya royal courts.

Left The main courtyard of the renovated Farnese home in Parma, the Palazzo della Pilotta, with contemporary artist Maurizio Nannucci’s neon installation Time Past, Present, and Future.

Palatial pleasures in Parma

The former palace of the Farnese family in Parma contains no fewer than five cultural institutions. Dalu Jones is our guide to the recently renovated Pilotta complex, where the dukes of Parma put art, archaeology, and theatre to use.

St Bartholomew the Great: tracing the history of London’s oldest surviving parish church

Making people laugh in the 12th century proved to be lucrative work for Rahere (d. 1143), who is variously described as a jester, minstrel, and courtier to Henry I (c.1068-1135; r. 1100-1135). But that was in his early life: Rahere later became a devout cleric who, falling ill on a pilgrimage to Rome, vowed to establish a hospital in London if he survived. The result was St Bartholomew, founded in 1123 as a joint foundation of hospital and priory. A commemorative volume has just been published to mark the 900th anniversary of the church, as Chris Catling reports.

Below Henry Every, privateer turned pirate, who captured the richest prize of all: a treasure ship belonging to the Great Mughal of Delhi.

Fighting the pirates: the dark side of privateering

Pirates or privateers? The buccaneers who haunted the high seas in the 17th and 18th centuries sailed a fine line between fighting Britain’s enemies and profiting themselves. Tim Newark looks at the careers of two notorious figures, and reveals the criminal complexity behind their actions.

Opposite The Penywyrlod long cairn photographed from the air during excavation in 2016, with Mynydd Troed on the horizon. top Penywyrlod: an aerial view from the north east in 2003, showing the impact of quarrying in the 1970s, when stone was removed to create a platform for a nearby farm building, before the archaeological significance of the cairn was realised. Cadw has since protected the mound using geotextile sacks filled with earth and sand, seeded with wildflowers, reconstructing the shape of the mound. above Penywyrlod and Mynydd Troed at ground level.

Pondering Penywyrlod: in search of the early origins of the Cotswold-Severn long cairn and barrow group

The title of The First Stones, a newly published book edited by William Britnell and Alasdair Whittle, proclaims a bold new thesis: that the Neolithic long cairn at Penywyrlod, in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales, is one of the earliest of its kind. With the benefit of 50 new radiocarbon dates, and new ways of modelling those dates using Bayesian analysis, its authors revisit excavations that first took place in the 1970s – and argue that this distinctive monument represents the birth of a new tomb-building tradition, as Chris Catling discovers.

Opposite Some of the components of the 7th century Harpole Treasure, the richest necklace of its kind ever found.

Harpole’s hidden gem: excavating early medieval Britain’s most significant female burial

Archaeological work just outside Northampton has uncovered an internationally significant burial, furnished with a remarkable 7th-century necklace, as well as a number of other high-status grave goods. With conservation and analysis of the finds under way, Carly Hilts spoke to Paul Thompson and Lyn Blackmore about what these artefacts can tell us about the woman they were buried with, and what they could add to our understanding of early medieval England as research progresses.

Below Overlooking excavations at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney. This site is home to dozens of large Neolithic buildings, the first of which was discovered 20 years ago. The Stenness Stones and the remains of Barnhouse’s late Neolithic settlement lie just across the bridge.

The Ness of Brodgar: marking 20 years of Neolithic discoveries

Since the first hints of Neolithic masonry emerged at the Ness of Brodgar in 2003, two decades of excavations have uncovered an extraordinary complex of monumental stone buildings dating back 5,000 years. The site continues to revolutionise our understanding of this period of prehistory both in Orkney and further afield, and last summer Carly Hilts visited the site and spoke to Nick Card to find out the latest news from the Ness.

Above Overlooking the remains of Weeley Barracks. Here the northern part of the camp, looking east, is shown; the site’s main road, with buildings on either side, can be seen.

Excavating Weeley Barracks: echoes of the Napoleonic Wars in Essex

In the early years of the 19th century, military camps sprang up along the south coast of England to guard against French invasion. Once the Napoleonic Wars ended, most were dismantled, leaving little trace of this turbulent period – but now archaeological work at Weeley, a small village 11 miles from Colchester, has uncovered the remains of one such site, as Nick Cox reports.