Rapid erosion has revealed spectacular Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology on the coast of Westray, Orkney. Contemporary with the Ness of Brodgar’s religious monuments but with a domestic focus, what can this settlement tell us about daily life in prehistoric Orkney? Hazel Moore and Graeme Wilson explain.
Is the Titanic archaeology? A century since her loss on 15 April 1912, we learn how recent survey has revolutionised knowledge of the wreck, transforming a lost liner into a monument to a great migration, as James Delgado told Matthew Symonds.
On the 11 October 1982 a pioneering campaign of underwater excavations culminated in the raising of Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose. That was only the beginning of a programme of research and conservation that continues to this day.
Colonel Ronnie McCrum takes a critical look at a battle that was lost before the war began.
February 7th marks the anniversary of novelist Charles Dickens’ birth. But how might archaeology offer a new chapter to his blockbusting London slum story, Oliver Twist? David Saxby, of Museum of London Archaeology, explains all.
Erosion poses a constant threat to Scotland’s rich coastal heritage. Tom Dawson and Joanna Hambly reveal how knowledge is being saved from the waves.
The deadly wave that engulfed the northeastern coastline of Japan devastated many archaeological sites and museums. Prehistoric settlers along the coast chose higher ground for their sites, perhaps passing on knowledge of the danger from earlier tsunamis from generation to generation. CWA looks at a handful of these ancient sites.
Following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in Spring this year, archaeologist Simon Kaner insists there is much to celebrate about the country’s heritage – and much to mend.
The Spartans are so famous that their name has become part of the language. But the name of the military genius who broke their power – and whose example inspired Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great – is hardly remembered at all. This is the story of Epaminondas and the Theban revolution in war.
A new generation of castleologists believe that castles were about much more than trebuchets, portcullises, galloping hooves, boiling oil, and the clash of swords on armour: instead, castles were centres of lordship, symbols of wealth, and expressions of status, alluding to the past and expressing poetic ideals. Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports.
As Prince William’s and Kate Middleton’s nuptials this month stir up feverish national excitement, what light can archaeology shed on the pomp and pageantry of the most magnificent of Royal occasions? Brendon Wilkins goes in search of the evidence.
‘I can’t understand it!’ That was British commander Lord Chelmsford’s response. Isandlwana was perhaps the greatest defeat inflicted on British redcoats by native warriors in imperial history. Zulu War expert Ian Knight, who has published a major new study, tackles the key question: what went wrong for the British at Isandlwana?
Time Team’s geophysics crew have covered a lot of ground, and their data represents an unparalleled archaeological archive of sites from rural retreats to Royal palaces. Lisa Westcott talks with John Gater about the science behind the scenes.
Everybody knows the story of how Time Team started: one ex-teacher turned TV producer, a couple of quirky archaeologists, and a fortuitous meeting in the Mediterranean with one of Britain’s best-loved actors combined to create the most successful archaeology programme ever on British television.
The discovery of two Viking hoards in 2011 yielded silver coins, ingots, and jewellery. Dot Boughton, Gareth Williams, and Barry Ager reveal how they also provide a window into a turbulent time.
Prehistoric forests, the skull of a child, the slipway of a Victorian engineering masterpiece and part of a Tudor palace jetty: all have emerged from the mud and gravel on the foreshore of the Thames, thanks to an exciting new project to record the archaeology of London’s great river. Nathalie Cohen tells CA about the Thames Discovery Programme.
Sensational discoveries of metal masks in a subterranean temple have led to calls for Javanese history to be rewritten. Fiorella Rispoli investigates.
Divers recently discovered a 3,000 year-old shipwreck near Salcombe, which carried a huge cargo of copper and tin: is this the first evidence for Late Bronze Age long-distance maritime trade in bulk goods? Chris Yates, of the South West Maritime Archaeological Group, explains.
In Brian Fagan’s latest instalment of all things archaeological that are both exotic and entertaining, he reads a Jamestown tablet, gets spiritual with the Hopewell, and finds gomphotheres with Clovis points.
Crete lies in an earthquake zone. This has affected the island over the centuries, but how? Although never fully recognised, in the 1850s Captain Spratt, of the Royal Navy, worked it out. Dudley Moore explains.
Today, only 20 people live on Foula, and the ferry takes just one car at a time. More than 3,000 years ago, Bronze Age people erected a monument of 290 standing stones on the tiny, rocky, storm-battered island of Foula. As John Oswin reports, members of the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society – working a long way from home – have been exploring.
How do you deal with a witch? In 17th century England, the answer was obvious: you prepare a ‘witch bottle’, with contents equally as bizarre as those in the cauldron of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Witch bottles were white magic devices, that…
In 1969, fire raged through this exceptional Elizabethan house. Paul Drury explains what archaeologists were able to rescue from the burnt-out husk.
Geography made a unitary empire embracing the Mediterranean and temperate Europe inherently unstable; but the wreckage of the Roman Empire contained the building blocks of modern Europe. In the third and final part of our series based on Cunliffe’s new book, Europe between the Oceans, we chart the changes from Caesar to Charlemagne.
In CA 224 we reported a splendid new discovery from Vindolanda. The excavators – and just about everyone else – thought it was part of a calendar. Not so, says leading ancient technology specialist Michael Lewis. It is something much more spectacular. The 8cm-long bronze fragment turns out to be part of one the most sophisticated technical devices known to antiquity: an anaphoric water-clock.
The former frontiers of the Roman Empire are set to become the world’s biggest single archaeological site. UNESCO World Heritage Site status is now in prospect for the frontiers as a whole. Historic Scotland’s David Breeze is a leading advocate of the move. Neil Faulkner asked him to explain why the Roman imperial frontiers deserve such special treatment.
The Bamburgh Research Project is picking up the pieces of the archaeological work started by legendary eccentric Dr Brian Hope-Taylor, who had left virtually no record of his excavations – or so it was believed. The story of Bamburgh is two-fold: before properly investigating the site, the team must first excavate the archaeologist who worked there 60 years ago.
In the second part of our mini-series based on Barry Cunliffe’s new book Europe between the Oceans, our focus is the period c.2800-140 BC. We see the rise and fall of great civilisations, and a looming clash between a Mediterranean-based superpower and the Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe. Once again, it is the movement of people, goods, and ideas that is central to Cunliffe’s vision of Europe’s distinctive history.
How were Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs or Minoan Linear B deciphered? Drawing on his latest masterful book, Lost Languages, author Andrew Robinson hands us the keys to decoding the past.
Barry Cunliffe’s latest book represents the synthesis of half a century studying the archaeology of Europe, an achievement comparable with that of Gordon Childe in the 1930s. In this article, and in two more to follow in succeeding issues, Current Archaeology summarises his conclusions.
Apart from his red hair, beard, giant girth and his equally gargantuan appetite for wives, the one thing we all associate with Henry VIII is the event that the authors of 1066 and All That called, with an eye for a memorable spelling mistake, ‘the Disillusion of the Monasteries’.
In the early 18th century, Palladian style ruled England as the most fashionable for a British country house or public building. The man responsible, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753), designed the building that started this architectural revolution. English Heritage archaeologists have recently had a rare chance to investigate Britain’s first ‘Palladian’ country house.
The Gods of the Pacific are powerful gods. Some have called them idols - more have called them art. And the Gods of the Pacific have had an enormous influence on European art throughout the 20th century. The Gods were powerful, and their power could be dangerous as well as life-enhancing. And this power had to be contained: the Polynesians had a word for the means by which this power could be contained and controlled: Tapu. Tapu means 'marked' or 'set apart': anything that was Tapu had to be wrapped and kept separate. And the word Tapu has also migrated to Europe and has become our word Taboo.
Stonehenge is merely one part of a much wider sacred landscape represented today by the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. The evidence is mounting that Stonehenge itself represented a domain of the ancestors, and, as such, a place in which the final rites were performed in elaborate ceremonies marking the passage of the recently deceased from life to death.
Joint excavations between the British Butrint Foundation and the Albanian Institute of Archaeology are revealing the complex history of the ancient Adriatic port of Butrint. With funding from the Packard Humanities Institute, a well-preserved archaeological sequence, and a team of…
Eberhard Sauer reports on the incredible discovery of a tombstone in Alchester, Oxfordshire; and not just any tombstone, but one which could rewrite the history of the Roman invasion and conquest of Britain.