Americas

Above The new Gods and Goddesses gallery, overlooked by a colossal, 4m tall 1st century BC marble statue of a goddess. She is known as Juno, but is most likely a Muse.

Athens of America: an interview with curators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At the end of last year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – the city known as ‘the Athens of America’ – opened a renovated suite of five galleries devoted to the art of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium. Lucia Marchini speaks to curators Christine Kondoleon, Laure Marest, and Phoebe Segal to find out about how they are using technology and even modern art to help visitors see ancient artefacts in a new light.

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Minerva Magazine 195

• Spiro: a climate crisis in the Mississippian world
• Hisham’s Palace: mosaics in the desert
• Olympia: monuments to victory (available 27 April on The Past)
• The Museo Barracco in Rome
• Sir John Soane’s architectural drawings
• Exploring ‘trench art’

The Vase in the Flooded Cave

Cave diving at the cenotes in Mexico is a magical experience, a never-ending labyrinth of tunnels filled with crystal-clear water where the only limit is how much gas you can carry. With no natural light, and the crazy speleothems (mineral…

Right Effigy pipe of seated male figure, known as Resting Warrior or Big Boy, and identified as Morning Star or the hero Red Horn, from the Spirit Lodge, Spiro. Bauxite (flint clay), AD 1100 1200. Size: c.25 x 15 x 15cm

Spiro: renewing the world

Vast quantities of artefacts were found in a mound in Oklahoma in the 1930s. Together they tell an intriguing story of ritual and cosmic renewal. As an exhibition reuniting some of these objects travels to Texas, Lucia Marchini speaks to Michelle Rich and Eric Singleton to find out more.

Spiro

This week: Spiro Mounds

It was considered one of the finds of the century, when – at the height of the Great Depression of the 1930s – a group of American prospectors calling themselves the Pocola Mining Company uncovered a burial chamber in eastern Oklahoma that had remained undisturbed for more than 500 years.

Below A new study has revealed that the eggs of head lice found in historical hair specimens can offer a valuable source of ancient human DNA.

DNA denouements and coining a phrase

People investing in DNA ancestry kits should be aware that they might not get the answers they were expecting: people who want to know if they have Viking DNA or are related to Richard III might instead discover an awkward family secret.

The Bell Airacuda

Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Britain all produced their versions of the type, such as the Bf 110, Potez 630, Fokker G.I, and the Beaufighter.

RIGHT A contemporary artist’s reconstruction of the bombardment of Fort Sumter by Union ironclads on 7 April 1863. Image: WikiCommons

The charge of the Iron Fleet

Charleston, 7 April 1863. It was the place where the American Civil War had started. Two years on, with a revolution in naval warfare far advanced, a fleet of Union ironclads attacked Confederate defences at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Michael Laramie describes the action.

A Maya Universe in Stone

In 1951, Quest for the Lost City was published in the United States. Reviewed in The New York Times as ‘a sort of overland Kon-Tiki’ – in reference to Thor Heyerdahl’s recent Pacific Ocean adventure – the book was an…

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A Maya Universe in Stone

A Maya Universe in Stone delves deeply into the imagery, inscriptions, and political and social contexts of several ancient Maya carved limestone lintels made in the late 8th century AD, likely in Guatemala’s Department of Peten. Eminent epigrapher and archaeologist…

The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War

In his introduction to this exceptionally worthwhile volume, Stephen Robinson describes how, during the Gulf War, General Tommy Franks, a true believer in what had become the US Army’s dominant doctrine of ‘manoeuvre warfare’, formulated what historian Thomas Ricks referred to as ‘perhaps the worst war plan in American history’.