On 3 June 1968, Italian archaeologists digging the ancient city of Paestum made an extraordinary discovery. They had unearthed a tomb fashioned from slabs of travertine, containing the bones of an individual who had been lain to rest c.480 BC,…
• Digging Apollonia Pontica: the rise and fall of an ancient Greek city
• A golden hoard in Denmark: runes, religion, and royal power at Vindelev
• The power of nature: seeking the origins of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain devotional art
• Polio in medieval Sweden: three burials and a dangerous disease
• A most unusual pot: cosmic psychopomps and apotropaic pentagrams
• Special report: studying ancient tattoos
REVIEW BY MARC DeSANTIS Alexander the Great of Macedonia is one of the best-known figures of ancient history. Comparatively large amounts of written material concerning his short but extraordinarily eventful life have survived from ancient times. This is a boon…
An elegantly designed new exhibition at the British Museum traces the artistic traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. Carly Hilts visited to learn more.
• In search of the Thracians: from ancient tales to archaeological riches
• Worlds beneath the waves: the submerged story of Liman Tepe
• The Herculaneum Scrolls: secrets from a Classical library
• Rock art of Wadi Rum: investigating the prehistoric and protohistoric past
• Sweden: beneath the surface of a Viking Age cemetery
• Albania: saving Saranda
The Thracians made a keen impression on both their neighbours and the archaeological record, but how much do we really know about them? Sara E Cole and Jens Daehner introduced Matthew Symonds to an enigmatic group of peoples.
Archaeologists, like most people, have an urge to grasp the world through something tangible or, even better, countable. There can be a great comfort in numbers, and numbers also convince; many have been the attempts to define cities by countable characteristics: an area of at least 10ha, 10,000 inhabitants, a certain number of public meeting places, a particular thickness of city walls in metres.
REVIEW BY GEORGIA FRANK This rich collection of essays explores the behaviour, experiences, and memories of travellers who visited shrines and sacred centres around the Mediterranean in antiquity. Looking beyond literate travellers’ descriptions of sacred places, these essays also attend…
Scythian leather made of human skin A recent study, published in PLOS ONE (), has analysed 47 samples of leather from burials at 14 Scythian sites in southern Ukraine, dating from the 4th-5th century BC. The researchers used palaeoproteomics (the…
Graham Goodlad recalls one of the great works of military history.
REVIEW BY GERALD LALONDE Activity of the Earth’s tectonic plates affects geography, and geography affects the activity of humans. Sliding of the Africa–Arabia plate under the Eurasia plate in the Miocene and Oligocene ages raised mountains from the Pyrenees in…
Fred Chiaventone recalls one of the great works of military history
When you envisage Greek statues and friezes, you probably picture pure white marble sculptures, pockmarked with age – that is, after all, how they appear today. But that was not how they appeared to the ancient Greeks who made them,…
Looking for somewhere off the beaten track to explore in Greece? Martin Davies is our guide to the rich prehistoric heritage of Volos.
Nick Spenceley recalls one of the great works of military history.
Carly Hilts reviews the latest outing of cinema’s most celebrated archaeologist.
The impressive ancient temples, villas, and theatres of Sicily understandably attract the attention of many visitors, but looking beyond the monuments to their spectacular natural surroundings and the stories they inspired also offers a way to understand the island’s ancient societies. David Stuttard guides us through Sicily’s mythological landscapes.
Review by Diana Bentley Nearly two and a half millennia after it was written, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War not only remains vibrantly alive and regularly referred to in discussions of modern conflict and politics, but is a rich…
Eleusis – modern Elefsina – is in the spotlight as European Capital of Culture. Dalu Jones visits its ancient remains to enter the realm of the Eleusinian Mysteries, secret rites honouring the renewal of life.
Review by Matthew Symonds When we think of Alexander the Great, it is his exploits as an adult that spring to mind. He is the audacious leader who landed an army in Asia at the age of 21 in a…
The archaeological gems on show in a neglected region of Greece help to shed light on the success of Alexander the Great, as Alex Rowson reveals.
In the first part of our special, Paul Rahe examines the background to the struggle between Athens and Sparta for control of the ancient Greek world.
In the second part of our special feature, Paul Rahe reveals how Sparta won the largest land battle fought within Greece during the Peloponnesian War.
The mountains and forests of Epirus offer a dramatic backdrop for a tour through the theatres of the Greek region’s ancient cities. Diana Bentley finds stories of a famed oracle and a celebrated victory along the way.
Review by David Stuttard On an Apulian funerary vase, a fair-haired young man sits clutching a spear in his left hand as he exclaims in terror, ‘I’m not coming!’ But it is no use. Grabbing his wrist in a vice-like…
The temple is believed to date to around the end of the 6th or beginning of the 5th century BC.
Haunted by Ostrogothic and Hunnic raids, Panticapaeum still survived as a Byzantine citadel. It lived through a succession of Khazar and Slavic lordships to become the modern city of Kerch, now once more trying to persist through a precarious situation in the current war in Ukraine.
Genomic analysis of skeletons excavated from the ancient Greek city of Himera, Sicily, has shed light on the diverse cultural backgrounds of those who had defended it against attacks from Carthage in the 5th century BC.
Gilbert was one of the first Americans – of any ethnicity – to undertake archaeological work in Greece. There, he is likely to have met Heinrich Schliemann, rediscoverer of Troy, and certainly he did groundbreaking excavation work on the neighbourhoods of Athens
At which battle in 490 BC did an Athenian army repulse the first Persian invasion of Greece?
The layers of tunnels under Naples preserve traces of Greek life and death in ancient Italy. Dalu Jones heads beneath the surface to visit ongoing restoration work that is making an ancient tomb and its rare surviving Greek paintings accessible to the public.
Why did collecting human heads as trophies become so widespread along the south coast of Peru, and who were they being taken from? Lidio M Valdez examines the extraordinary and chilling implications of the archaeology of the Acari valley.
The story was seen as a further blow to the argument that the Marbles must stay in London – replicas ‘accurate to a millimetre’ could be displayed at the British Museum and few visitors would know the difference.
As fans of the world's most celebrated sporting contest know, the modern Olympic Games are no stranger to accusations of cheating. Things were no better, however, at the Ancient Olympics, the four-yearly panhellenic Games, which were first recorded in 776 BC and held at Olympia in the northwestern Peloponnese.
One of the most celebrated works of ancient Greek sculpture, Phidias’ statue of Zeus, was once housed in a temple at Olympia. Though this lost wonder was much admired by ancient visitors, it was not the only attraction at the site, for centuries the home of great panhellenic games. A new book by Judith Barringer explores the many transformations Olympia experienced, even before the creation of Phidias’ masterpiece, as David Stuttard reports.
In honour of which god were the Ancient Olympics held?