The Ness of Brodgar in Orkney is home to an unprecedented complex of 5,000-year-old buildings. Ongoing analysis is illuminating their form and function, as Carly Hilts reports.
When we last reported from Arthur’s Stone in 2023 (CA 404), it was thought of as an isolated Neolithic monumental site overlooking the Golden Valley in Herefordshire. Now, the Universities of Manchester and Cardiff team that is leading the project…
Earliest evidence of Yersinia pestis? As DNA analysis of human remains continues to expand, evidence is mounting that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, has been ravaging human populations for millennia. Now a new study has identified the…
In mid-May, the day before CA 437’s print deadline, we joined a press conference to hear about an exciting discovery associated with Stonehenge. Keen to keep to our commitment to bringing you ‘current’ archaeology, we included a brief summary of the key findings in last month’s issue – here is a fuller account of the research that was described by Phil Harding, Matt Leivers, and Fabio Silva.
Another prehistoric circle was recently uncovered during a community archaeology project, this time near the Giant’s Ring, just outside Belfast. The investigation, led by archaeologists from Queen’s University Belfast, was sparked by a re-examination of aerial photographs taken in the…
A geophysical survey on Machrie Moor, on the western side of the Isle of Arran (a small island off the west coast of Scotland), has revealed the outline of what may be a previously unknown, near-circular prehistoric monument, adding to…
For the first time in human experience, a substance could be melted and converted into something new. If you set off by car from the Volga River to Hungary, you will have to drive for 32 hours and cover a…
Analysis of two votive offering vessels from Pompeii is enhancing our understanding of Roman domestic rituals.
Analysis of two votive offering vessels from Pompeii is enhancing our understanding of Roman domestic rituals.
A huge replica of a Neolithic hall, based on archaeological evidence excavated at Durrington Walls, has opened at Stonehenge. Carly Hilts reports.
There are lots of great ways to get involved with history and archaeology over the next few months, including exhibitions, lectures, and conferences exploring a wide range of subjects. If you would prefer to get your heritage fix from the comfort of your sofa, though, there is a variety of resources on offer online, too, from virtual site tours and digital offerings by museums to podcasts, TV shows, and more. Kathryn Krakowka has put together a selection of some of the options available.
Excavations at Bulford have revealed the remains of a 5,000-year-old structure suggesting that the solstice was celebrated on Salisbury Plain centuries earlier than thought. CA reports.
An international team carrying out satellite remote sensing in the Eastern Sudan deserts has discovered hundreds of huge ancient mass graves in the Atbai Desert, part of the Sahara Desert which stretches between the Nile in Nubia and the Red…
Since the early days of archaeology, people have been analysing the architecture of burial monuments, seeking connections between them to understand better how ancient populations were related. The advent of modern ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis added a new way of…
The Outer Hebrides are home to over 170 crannogs (small, human-made islands), some of which are proving to be much earlier in date than suspected. Recently published research centred on Loch Bhorgastail has shed detailed light on the make-up of one such site, and has also pioneered an innovative new approach to documenting its above- and underwater remains. CA reports.
When I began studying archaeology nearly 70 years ago, my professor illustrated his lectures with the aid of glass slides projected through an antediluvian machine known as an epidiascope
This year marks a century since the birth of the pioneering prehistorian Aubrey Burl, and the 50th anniversary of the publication of his landmark study The Stone Circles of the British Isles, which is often considered the foundational work on the subject. To reflect these milestones, Neil Mortimer offers an overview of how the book came into being – and the occasionally unconventional approach of its author.
With excavation at the Ness of Brodgar – one of the largest Neolithic sites known in north-west Europe – having finished in August 2024, after a remarkable 20 years of fieldwork, the long process of post-excavation analysis has now commenced.…
Excavations at Honeygar Farm, a nature reserve that forms part of the Somerset Wildlife Trust, have uncovered the remains of a 6,000-year-old wooden trackway that would have been used during the early Neolithic period to allow people to cross the…
A narrow wadi in Algeria contains a remarkable concentration of rock art. Christoph Baumer reveals how these images offer a glimpse of a changing world, as a land of lakes and grasslands transformed into the Sahara Desert.
An exhibition at the James Simon Gallery – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin explores the art and architecture of the first settled cultures in south-eastern Turkey.
The 6th Shanghai Archaeological Forum has just drawn to a close, and it is time to reflect on its many highlights. This year, the field trip was scheduled on the first day, and we were given the choice of visiting freshly uncovered shipwrecks and the new Shanghai Museum, or to take the bus south to visit two key sites: Jingtoushan and Hemudu.
Archaeological work at Eilsleben, in northern Germany, has uncovered unexpected evidence of connections between the early farmers living at this site and the pre-existing hunter-gatherer communities of the region. Eilsleben was discovered in the 1970s and has since undergone extensive…
The timber halls ex-cavated at Carnoustie between 2016 and 2017 are some of the most significant Neolithic discoveries in Scotland in recent decades, particularly considering that the bigger of the two halls is the largest of its period yet discovered…
This volume comprises 11 regional or national papers and a synthesis of lipid analysis results. Several contributors note that Impressed Wares have been a ‘Cinderella’ among Neolithic pottery traditions. They echo Isobel Smith’s 1974 characterisation of Peterborough Ware (the Impressed…
How did the builders of Stonehenge manage to work with sarsen – a notoriously hard material – to create the Neolithic monument’s towering trilithons? Carly Hilts spoke to Phil Harding of Wessex Archaeology about his recent research exploring whether flint-knapping techniques might hold the key.
Archaeologists from Swedish National Historical Museums have uncovered an unusual and remarkably well-preserved dog burial believed to date to c.5,000 years ago at a site in Logsjömossen, near Järna, south-west of Stockholm. Excavations revealed the remains of a large male…
REVIEW BY KK This book synthesises what is currently known about the Neolithic in Jersey, highlighting the fact that while our knowledge for some areas of the island and for some phases of the Neolithic is fairly extensive, for other…
Recent fieldwork at the Durrington Walls ‘superhenge’ has explored a series of large pits forming what appears to be a 2km-wide (1.2 mile) circular boundary around the monument, revealing new evidence to suggest they were deliberately dug and not natural…
The skeletal remains of a wildcat, found in the Burren, Co. Clare, have been radiocarbon dated to c.3600 BC, providing the first concrete evidence that this species, now-extinct in Ireland, was present during the Neolithic period. A total of 39…
Mass graves and migration in Neolithic France Recent isotopic analysis of human remains from Neolithic mass graves found at Bergheim and Achenheim in Alsace, France, have shed new light on the life histories of these individuals. Each pit was found…
REVIEW BY ROB IXER This is the second landscape book by Jackson to be published this year and is in many respects a prequel to his earlier Rocks on the Edge of Empire, which is itself a splendid, sometimes stunning,…
If you happen to be among the many people who are born and raised in the countryside, chances are that you have found yourself at some point in your life quarrelling about city people who seemed to imagine themselves to be naturally more innovative and progressive than the rest of humankind, your good self included.
Recent analysis has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding a pair of unusual Neolithic mass graves in north-east France. Around a decade ago, two late Middle Neolithic burial pits were discovered at the sites of Bergheim and Achenheim in…
A c.12,000-year-old stone pillar decorated with a human face has been found at the archaeological site of Karahan Tepe in Turkey. Karahan Tepe is a Pre-pottery Neolithic ritual complex that forms part of the Taş Tepeler group of prehistoric sites…
December 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the identification of a remarkable prehistoric timber monument just two miles from Stonehenge in Wiltshire. Amanda Chadburn is our guide around Woodhenge and its lasting legacy.