York Archaeological Trust, which also trades under the name York Archaeology, has launched a new community project at the former Willow House care home in the Walmgate area of York, specifically designed to improve participants’ health and wellbeing while teaching them new skills in archaeology.
Each of the bodies showed signs of serious injury and were buried with swords, maces, and arrows.
In September 1224, St Francis of Assisi had a vision in which an angel marked him with the wounds of Christ. As Norman Hammond explains, this was a popular scene on plates for pilgrims, but sometimes these plates could offer up a more unusual image.
The figure of Nathan possibly dates to AD 1130-1160, making it perhaps the earliest surviving stained glass in England, and among the oldest in Europe.
Have you ever wondered why there is often a big hole in the wall just inside a medieval church doorway? This book is primarily a study of the bar locks they were made to hold. Some were huge – like…
This volume largely stems from the 2018 European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) annual meeting in Barcelona. The editors have obviously taken great care in compiling a cohesive and comprehensive collection of papers that work towards providing a new academic narrative…
What is it about the members of the Mortimer family, powerful and ambitious lords of the March, that attracts people to the Mortimer History Society (MHS)?
• Dover Castle
• Britain’s first medieval chess workshop
• Reconstructing the Sutton Hoo ship
• Experiments in construction at Butser Ancient Farm
• Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit
‘The late medieval sheep of Britain have so engaged the attention of the agrarian historians that other aspects of stock husbandry appear to have been neglected. Our knowledge of the cattle of the period, and of how they were kept,…
‘Even during Plague outbreaks, individual people were being buried with considerable care and attention.'
Robert C L Holmes analyses a decisive collision between two very different ways of war in the early medieval period.
Repair work will be carried out on the largest surviving remains of the walls of the castle, which was built on the orders of William the Conqueror between 1067 and 1071.
The timber is in such an excellent state of preservation, due to its waterlogged burial environment, that the carpenter’s markings are still visible.
Isabella (c.1427-1494) was the second daughter of James I of Scotland, and was given the manuscript by her husband, Duke Francis I of Brittany, on their marriage.
Placename experts say that Saline (pronounced to rhyme with the Estonian capital Tallinn) means ‘little barn’ – probably a place of collection and storage for tribute due to the Scottish king.
One of the more impressive aspects of this book – the outcome of a British Academy Conference held in 2015 – is the range of evidence that is marshalled to trace migrants in the medieval past. As might be expected,…
Underneath the foundation level was an eclectic assemblage of artefacts, including a whetstone of fine-grained sandstone, a spindle whorl made of cannel coal, a possible gaming piece or counter crafted from a sherd of green glaze pottery, two 17th-century coins, and an iron dagger.
In the CA377 'News in brief' section, Kathryn Krakowka explores excavations in York, a survey of a warship wreck, and new inscriptions found in Anne Boleyn's prayer book.
This is a burnt silver seal matrix, dating to the 13th or 14th century, which was found last August by a metal-detectorist near King’s Lynn, Norfolk. Despite the damage, clearly seen in the centre of the matrix is a reused…
Excavation in Northampton town centre has revealed the remains of a 12th-century bone-working workshop that yielded not only antler offcuts and other echoes of industry, but a number of high-quality chess pieces that had been discarded at different stages of their manufacture. With a monograph describing the finds in more detail having just been published, Rob Atkins tells us more about this unprecedented discovery.
As part of the project ‘Secrets of the Ice’, the Innlandet County-based Glacier Archaeology Programme (GAP) have been conducting surveys at Lendbreen since 2011, when the ice began melting away and exposing remarkable finds dating from the Roman Iron Age to the late medieval period.
There are plans for the redecoration of Caerphilly’s Great Hall to restore its original medieval splendour, and for the installation of new interpretations offering enlivened insights into the history of the castle...
The most expensive secular building of its day, Dover Castle was described by the 13th-century chronicler Matthew Paris as 'the key of England'. But though its imposing fortifications tower over the shortest sea crossing between Britain and the European mainland, it wasn't built in response to any threat of imminent foreign invasion. Instead, its construction in the years after the murder of Thomas Beckett in 1170 owed more to the growing numbers of foreign dignitaries who began to make the pilgrimage across the Channel to Canterbury to pay their respects to the slain archbishop.
Dover’s massive castle, rising in tiers above the harbour to the crest of the hill above the town, looks like the very model of a medieval fortification – but, as a new book reveals, it has some very odd features indeed. Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports on the efforts of English Heritage and Historic England, as well as castle specialists and medieval historians, to explain this extraordinary monument.
Medieval castles are often described as being of 'motte and bailey’ construction. But what is a motte?
When Headland Archaeology excavated a site in Cheveley, Cambridgeshire, there was every expectation that the medieval village would yield archaeological remains. What was found far exceeded the team’s anticipation, though, as they unearthed the remains of a 12th-century smithy surrounded by both the objects and waste material that it had produced. It was the site’s date, and that of its abandonment, which proved the most compelling part of the story, however, suggesting a connection to a dark period in the history of the Fens. Julie Franklin reveals more.
The story of Thomas Becket’s murder in AD 1170 still resonates after 850 years, despite the attempts of Henry VIII to eradicate all memory of the man that Henry II reportedly called ‘this turbulent priest’. Henry VIII called for the destruction of his shrine and the defacing of prayer books referring to his martyrdom. Even so, the Becket cult refused to die, and the British Museum has brought together an array of pilgrim badges and reliquaries, medals, paintings, and stained glass to show us why so many people in medieval Europe flocked to his Canterbury shrine. Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports.
• Thomas Becket: Canterbury Tales
• The lost city of al-Qata’i‘
• Persian Splendours: 5,000 years of Iranian culture
• Brixia: The Roman city and its bronzes
• Rosetta Stone and Thomas Young’s attempts to decipher it
It is believed that women would wear these girdles wrapped around themselves during the later stages of pregnancy and perhaps even during childbirth, but before now there was never any direct evidence for this.
News round-up featuring updates from HS2 archaeologists' excavations in Stoke Mandeville, the scheduling of a submarine wreck off the coast of Dartmouth, and a medieval database launched by the University of St Andrews.
Previous archaeological work at the prison had already confirmed the location of the medieval keep and a few other buildings that would have formed part of the castle complex; the castle was an important English stronghold before the Second Barons’ War (1264-1267) and the subsequent invasion and conquest of Wales.
Through radiographs and computed tomography (CT) scanning of human skeletons, cancerous lesions can be accurately identified...
It was decided instead that nine new carvings commemorating trailblazing women throughout history would be installed.
In a way, I began to feel slightly more sympathetic to Henry VIII; the church was extremely powerful and if you are to oppose it, I suppose you must be ruthless.
Bringing together more than 100 objects from museums, churches, and private collections across Europe, 'Thomas Becket: Murder and the making of a saint' powerfully evokes the medieval era as it explores the life, death, and legacy of Henry II’s ‘turbulent priest’.
Previously unknown inscriptions have been uncovered in the prayerbook which, according to historic records, Anne carried to her execution.