Jenny Davenport marvels at all the astoundingly intricate works of medieval English embroidery in Opus Anglicanum, a major exhibition currently on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
Dominic Green gives us a preview of an exhibition about to open at the Getty Center in Los Angeles that shows us how the ancient world was viewed through medieval eyes
The remarkable preservation at Must Farm promised insights into day-to-day life that would revolutionise our knowledge of the late Bronze Age. As excavations at the site reach completion, it is already clear that we will never see that era in the same way again. Mark Knight, Susanna Harris, and Grahame Appleby told Matthew Symonds about life in a Bronze Age settlement.
The MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) Spitalfields Market excavations in 1991-2007 were one of Britain’s largest ever digs. Four major publications are being produced to cover the results. The latest volume concerns the post-medieval era (1539-1880), which was a period that saw vast social transformations, as Chiz Harward and Nigel Jeffries explain.
The Norman Conquest in 1066 is often described as the most famous date in English history, but 50 years earlier – almost to the day – the country had been captured by another foreign power: the Danish army of Cnut the Great. As we mark the 1,000th anniversary of these momentous events, what trace of the Viking conquest can be seen in the archaeological record? Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts reports.
Do the spectacular burials at a huge ceremonial complex in the northern highlands of Peru signal the emergence of a ruling elite? Yuji Seki introduces the high priests and priestesses of Andean society.
The results of CT imaging on Hatshepsut, Ramesses III, Tutankhamen, and a host of other New Kingdom mummies are revealed in a gripping new book by Zahi Hawass and Sahar Saleem, as Kimberley Watt illuminates.
Why was a sinister malediction cut into a beam at a 19th-century farmstead near Llandudno? Catherine Rees and Richard Suggett explore this surprising discovery.
Found over a number of weeks in 1942 and1943, the treasure that was dredged from Llyn Cerrig Bach, a small peat-filled lake on the Isle of Anglesey, is still revealing new information 70 years after it was found, as Chris Catling reports.
Dominic Green leads a tour travelling in the footsteps of the accomplished writer, scholar and soldier Patrick Leigh Fermor around Southern Greece
When earthquakes strike, the consequences can be catastrophic. Yet what do we really know about their impact on past cultures? All is revealed in Andrew Robinson’s latest unputdownable book Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization.
The extraction of slate from the hills of Snowdonia is not just an industry – it is a way of life bound up with chapel, politics, and the preservation of the Welsh language. Chris Catling explains why the Welsh Royal Commission is supporting efforts to have this industrial landscape designated a World Heritage Site.
Dominic Green reports on what the discovery of fragments of Aegean-style frescoes and an extensive wine cellar can tell us about life in the Bronze Age palace being excavated at the Tel Kabri site in the Galilee region of Israel
The stupendous temple of Angkor Wat and its forested environs are currently the focus of a major project involving LiDAR aerial laser-scanning and more. The archaeology is radically changing our understanding of this staggering site, but how? Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani get the inside story from project co-director Roland Fletcher.
Paul Cartledge, who has written the biography of the revolutionary idea of democracy, explains how it was practised in ancient Athens where it originated.
One of the ways that the Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating its 200th anniversary is by the staging of a splendid exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the end of July – a very fitting tribute to its founder, reports Theresa Thompson
Until recently, Leicester’s Roman cemeteries had seen little major excavation, and their burial practices were poorly understood. Now an investigation in the city’s West End has given a wealth of new insights into the Roman town’s diverse population, as Mathew Morris reveals.
For decades, the accepted view of the Orcadian Neolithic was one of two cultural packages with a sharp break in the middle. New research has revealed a much more complex and nuanced picture, however. Carly Hilts spoke to Colin Richards to find out more.
Alan Outram and Adrien Hannus uncover one of the earliest communities to take up farming on the Northern Plains of South Dakota.
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls a classic charge of British cavalry on a late 19th-century battlefield.
![Native American leaders: Sitting Bull (1831 1890) [centre right], and Gall (c.1840 1894) [right].](https://i0.wp.com/the-past.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/post-1_image9-9.jpg?fit=717%2C1116&ssl=1)
25 June 1876. Fred Chiaventone reassesses that most-famous collision between US and Native American forces.
At its peak, New Bailey was the largest jail in England, but its imposing Georgian buildings were designed on the basis of radical progressive ideals. Modern development has wiped away all traces of the pioneering prison above ground, but archaeologists are now bringing its methods to light once more, as Rachael Reader and Michael Nevell explain.
Just how quickly did Bronze Age people bury their dead? New work by Lauren Bailey, Martin Green, and Martin J Smith at Canada Farm suggests that they went to some lengths to display the deceased prior to their finally entering the earth.
How did copper production begin in China? Li Haichao discovers a site that overturns traditional models of the emerging copper industry.
Blood-sacrifice and ritual extravaganzas could not save the Moche civilisation, but that did not stop them trying. Jorge Meneses tells CWA about the latest discoveries in the heart of the Moche capital, evidence of the grim public displays so intrinsic to this mighty empire.
Excavations in Colchester have revealed where a couple stashed their valuables before Boudicca sacked the city. These artefacts, and the charred debris found strewn above them, provide a poignant insight into those on the receiving end of the Iceni’s wrath. First, Philip Crummy and Adam Wightman shed light on a dark day in Colchester’s past, and then Nina Crummy guides us through the treasure itself.
Telltale signs of a hidden doorway hint at more rooms beyond the boy king's burial chamber. If so, what lies within? Could it be the tomb of his stepmother Queen Nefertiti that has for so long eluded discovery?
A new horizon has opened up at Butser Ancient Farm, the famed experimental archaeology site. A Neolithic enclosure now joins the farm’s recreated Iron Age and Roman dwellings. Tiffany Francis brings us up to date.
Atrocities were mercifully few in America’s most bloody war. But the exceptions were grim. Frederick Chiaventone recalls the Lawrence Massacre.
What was it like to be a child growing up within the turbulence and destruction of Reformation England? Drawing on his research of over 4,500 skeletons, Bennjamin Penny-Mason reveals an untold story.
Historian of military medicine Mick Crumplin takes us into the grisly world of Napoleonic-era casualty treatment.
Naval historian and museum curator Nick Hewitt explores a little-known British disaster of the Second World War.
Stonehenge has to be the most intensively studied prehistoric monument in the world, which begs the question: ‘is there anything left to say?’ A new English Heritage study of the wider Stonehenge World Heritage Site landscape has come up with a few surprising facts which, if not all new, are perhaps not widely known, as Chris Catling now reports.
What actually happened on a Wars of the Roses battlefield? What was it like to fight in the 15th century? MHM analyses one of the most decisive battles of the war, blow by blow.
In this first part of a special feature on the dynastic struggle between the rival houses of Lancaster and York, Neil Faulkner presents a study of the strategy and tactics of the time.
Our special feature in this issue explores the art of war in late 15th-century England with an article on strategy and tactics, a blow-by-blow analysis of the Battle of Barnet (1471), and a short essay that sets the record straight on the much-maligned Richard III.