With restrictions lifting around the UK and outdoor sites reopening, we hope it won’t be long until we can visit museums and indoor heritage sites again. For now, Amy Brunskill has put together another selection of ways to get involved in history, heritage, and archaeology at home, from virtual tours of sites around the world to podcasts and social media trends, craft activities, TV shows, and more.
The artefacts, dating from the 9th-17th century AD, all once belonged to wealthy members of Welsh society.
Evidence of Late Mesolithic and Bronze activity has been discovered on a Welsh island.
This revealed much about life in ‘Roman’ Wales, in both its modest urbanised centres and its wider hinterlands.
This is a Roman ‘horse and rider’ figurine, made of copper alloy and probably dating to between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It was found in 2015 near Penllyn, Wales. While the object is quite corroded, it is largely…
A new home in Cardiff Bay for the Museum of Military Medicine has been given the green light by the local council. Currently based in the village of Mytchett, Surrey, where it was long known as the Army Medical Services…
It used to be said that Christianity in Roman Britain was a short-lived phenomenon that sputtered out in the 5th century, needing the missionary efforts of St Columba, St Ninian, and St Augustine of Canterbury to revive it in the later 6th century. But there is now an increasing body of evidence that the religion continued to thrive as a force for learning, culture, and social organisation in the western parts of England and Wales, with links to Brittany and Ireland. Chris Catling goes in search of the latest thinking.
From prehistoric Anglesey to Snowdonia's slate industry: Joe Flatman explores half a century of reports from the past
Since 1980, the UK’s National Heritage Memorial Fund has been safeguarding significant heritage at risk of loss. New archaeological finds declared as Treasure, works of art being sold to overseas buyers, historic buildings, and even an island home for puffins all come under the NHMF’s remit, with the various items they support serving as a memorial to those who have died for the UK. As the government-funded NHMF celebrated its 40th anniversary, Lucia Marchini spoke to Vanessa Wells to learn more about its achievements over the decades.
The archaeological societies founded in the 19th century embraced all aspects of the discipline, and from about the beginning of the 20th century societies came to be formed. In recent years, they have been joined by more-specialist societies and journals.…
The remains of a Roman villa have been revealed near Rossett, Wrexham. It is the first site of its kind to be found in north-east Wales, adding to our knowledge of the region during this period. The first clues to…
Tomen y Mur was abandoned by AD 130, but had lasting political and cultural significance into the medieval period.
At the turn of the 20th century, the first ‘Golden Era’ of Welsh rugby ushered in the national team’s rise to dominance and infused ‘rugger’ into the country’s lifeblood. Lewis, for his part, embraced the game body and soul.
Today this wreck, along with several others in the Beacons, stands as a monument, a tangible example of the enormous sacrifices that were made every day during the Second World War.
Archaeologists excavating the Welsh hillfort Beacon Ring (Caer Digoll) made an unexpected discovery relating to the 19th-century Ordnance Survey this summer, which has cast new light on early map-making fieldwork. Beacon Ring is on the Long Mountain overlooking Welshpool. Since…
Christopher Catling examines new evidence of the ancient links between Celtic Britain and the eastern Mediterranean
Dr Nat Alcock is a pioneer of the study of medieval cruck-built structures. To honour his contribution and mark his 80th birthday in 2019, a new survey has just been published that charts our growing understanding of cruck construction. It also highlights the remaining areas of uncertainty and debate about the social status of these buildings, when and where crucks originated, and what their distribution means. Chris Catling reports.
The Llangorse Crannog is the only example yet identified in Wales of a type of artificial island settlement more commonly found in Scotland and Ireland. Scepticism about the likelihood of the site being a crannog led to its being largely ignored in archaeological literature until the early 1980s. Then Alan Lane, who had recently been appointed to teach Post-Roman Archaeology at Cardiff University, rowed out to look and found substantial oak planks protruding from the water. Chris Catling describes what happened next.
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.
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.
Well known on the Continent and scattered along the coasts of Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland, dolmens are an immediately recognisable form of chambered tomb. They represent remarkable achievements for their Neolithic builders, crowned with stones weighing as much as 160 tonnes. Vicki Cummings and Colin Richards investigate how these distinctive monuments were constructed – and what happened when a project did not go to plan.
What is archaeology alongside a film crew like? Matthew Symonds found out.