The Nile Mosaic at Palestrina
Robert R Frost explores Graeco-Roman Egypt through the scenes in a stunning Nilotic mosaic.
Roman Empire
Gladiators: Heroes of the Colosseum and Gladiators of Britain
Exhibitions currently running at the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery focus on ancient Rome’s famous arena fighters, separating fact from fiction and exploring the latest archaeological research. Carly Hilts visited both to learn more.
Herculaneum Scrolls: title revealed
For the first time, non-invasive technology has been used to recover a title from the ancient papyri from Herculaneum carbonised in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Earlier this year, scans of the scroll in question, known as PHerc.172,…
Birthing Romans
REVIEW BY PAULINE RIPAT Roman legends stressed the importance of babies in the foundation of Rome and its destiny to dominate. The unlikely birth of the twins Romulus and Remus from a Vestal Virgin, and their even more improbable survival…
Current World Archaeology 130
• Spoils of war? Riches from Claudius’ invasion of Britain
• A key issue: accessing towers on Roman frontiers
• Forgotten voices of conflict: the fate of First World War graffiti
• Unusual Gallic burials: excavating bodies seated in pits
• Iranian swords: what can we learn from trafficked finds?
• Greece: Master of Actium
• China: Splendours of Sanxingdui
World News
Dionysian frieze discovered in Pompeii Ongoing excavations of a grand domus in Pompeii’s Insula 10, Regio IX, have revealed a series of spectacular finds, including a dining room decorated with scenes from the Trojan War (CA 412), a lararium or…
World News
Roman battlefield burial uncovered A mass grave was discovered in autumn last year during construction work being carried out in Simmering, a district of Vienna, Austria. The subsequent excavation of the site uncovered around 150 individuals buried within a 5m…
The Hoby cups: Tracing connections in Iron Age Denmark
What can a pair of silver cups deposited as grave goods in Denmark reveal about links with the Roman world? Olympia Bobou, Ilaria Bucci, and Rubina Raja share a story of shifting political and cultural forces.
Apsaros Roman fort: Guarding a distant shore
The Roman frontier in Georgia follows the edge of the Black Sea. Matthew Symonds visited the remains of Apsaros fort to find out more.
Roman miniature padlock
A unique find, this tiny object is very finely crafted. What is it? This Roman miniature padlock, comprising a gold exterior and an iron core, measures just 1.2cm by 1.1cm. It is similar in form, technical structure, and decorative style…
Ashby and Strong: A golden partnership and its end
Dedicated to the memory of Amanda Claridge In 1925, thanks to Winston Churchill, Britain returned to the gold standard; Italy slipped into a dictatorship under Benito Mussolini after a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January; the USA…
Rare Dionysian frieze in Pompeii
In recent months, excavations in Pompeii’s Insula 10, Regio IX, have uncovered several sections of a grand domus, including a black-walled dining room decorated with scenes from the Trojan War (CWA 125), a lararium or household shrine room (CWA 126),…
A battlefield burial
A mass grave recently unearthed in Austria is believed to be associated with a Roman battlefield. In autumn 2024, construction workers carrying out renovations of a playing field in Simmering, a district of Vienna, had unexpectedly come across a large…
Mass grave of Roman soldiers found in Vienna linked to ‘catastrophic event’
An ‘unprecedented’ mass grave of Roman soldiers has been uncovered in Vienna. The find was made last autumn by construction workers who were renovating a football pitch in the Simmering district of the city. In April, experts at the Vienna…
Egyptian ginger cats: Honorary Soldiers of Rome
W Benson Harer Jr says we should thank the Roman legionaries for our ginger feline friends.
The Rocks at the Edge of the Empire: 50 extraordinary rocky places that tell the story of the Romans and the landscape of their northern frontier
REVIEW BY ROB IXER Many recent popular archaeology books are text-heavy, with indifferently reproduced black-and-white illustrations printed on poor-quality paper, and with a few token colour plates. This wonderful paperback, a landscape book in both senses of the word, is…
Spoils of war? An extraordinary Roman hoard from Utrecht
A cache of Roman and British coins found in the Netherlands seems to be associated with the emperor Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD 43. Study of the hoard is shedding new light on the circumstances surrounding this major historical event. Matthew Symonds found out more from Jasper de Bruin.
Master of Actium
Richard Hodges introduces the Emperor Augustus’ city of victory at Actium and interviews its renowned excavator, Kostas Zachos.
Private baths at Pompeii
Ongoing excavations in Insula 10, Regio IX, at Pompeii have uncovered a luxurious private bathhouse, one of the biggest ever found in a domestic context in the ancient city. The thermal complex is the latest remarkable discovery inside the grand…
Reading a new Herculaneum scroll
Another advance has been made in the efforts to decipher a collection of ancient papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum that were burnt during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Remarkable progress has been made in recent years thanks to…
Digging Lincoln
REVIEW BY LISA BRUNDLE The archaeologist Michael J Jones, having worked for 40 years in Lincoln, provides a unique personal account of archaeological discoveries in the former colonia city of Lindum prior to commercial development. For those of us who…
Tantalising tesserae: North Leigh Roman Villa
These photographs show a colourful mosaic at North Leigh Roman Villa: the only example in Oxfordshire that remains in situ. The villa was excavated in 1813 by Henry Hakewill, and originally boasted at least 19 geometric mosaics. Today, only one…
Finds Tray – Nail cleaner
This object was found by a metal-detectorist in Roxby cum Risby, North Lincolnshire, and was subsequently identified by the local Finds Liaison Officer as a nail cleaner, or possibly a surgical instrument, dating to the late Roman period (c.AD 250-410).…
Reading the Herculaneum Scrolls: Secrets from the only surviving Classical library
Thanks to an ingenious digital technique, a particle accelerator, and an internet competition, we stand on the threshold of being able to enjoy what is potentially the greatest influx of ‘new’ Classical texts since the Renaissance. Brent Seales told Matthew Symonds why scrolls that were once widely believed impossible to read are now on the verge of becoming legible.
Petite but picture perfect
A small, ornately decorated house has been uncovered in Pompeii during ongoing excavations of the Insula of the Chaste Lovers, in the centre of the ancient city. Archaeological investigations of this newly discovered residence are still under way, but it…
Collapse and decline
Few experiences seem to bring us closer to people in the past than literally following in their footsteps on the streets of abandoned ancient cities, among the ruins of what they once called home. The effect can be dampened, though, when we reflect that these remains only exist because at some point the population left their houses, temples, palaces, and plazas for better or – more likely – worse.
CWA news in brief
A curious composition New analysis of an inhumation burial unearthed in the 1970s at a Gallo Roman cemetery in Pommerœul, Belgium, has revealed that this ‘individual’ in fact comprises bones from at least four different Late Neolithic people, as well…
Iceni updates: Expanding our understanding of Venta Icenorum
The Caistor Roman Project has returned for another summer excavation outside the walls of Venta Icenorum – once the most important town in Roman East Anglia. Carly Hilts visited the site and spoke to Will Bowden and the Caistor team to hear the latest thinking about the settlement and its inhabitants.
Current World Archaeology 128
• On the trail of the legions: a Roman battlegroup in Switzerland
• The lost city of Ocomtún: searching for Maya settlements
• Execution sites in Sweden: an archaeology of capital punishment
• Archive images: seeing the past in the past
• Italy: the ‘Monster Park’ at Bomarzo
• Norway: researching whalers’ burials
Digital data: Fishbourne Roman Palace
When it was excavated in the 1960s, Fishbourne Roman Palace generated an archive that, for the time, was incredibly structured and detailed. However, by today’s standards, little attention was given to distribution of artefacts across the site, or relative locations…
Museum news
The latest on acquisitions, exhibitions, and key decisions.
Forum: Comments and conundrums
Your observations, your objections, and your opinions: send them to cwaletters@world-archaeology.com
Rune-inscribed knife
What is it? This broken knife blade is almost 2,000 years old. Currently preserved at a length of c.8cm, its original length is unknown, but was probably just slightly longer than this. On one side, the iron blade is incised…
Dolia: The containers that made Rome an empire of wine
REVIEW BY EMLYN DODD The study of dolia, and indeed research more generally into ancient viti- and viniculture, has become increasingly popular in the past two decades. Cheung’s book fits neatly into this trajectory and complements other recent work on…
War of Words – ‘Cohort’
With Marc DeSantis
Antiquarian or archaeologist? Illustrating the influence of Edmund Tyrrell Artis
In the early part of the 19th century, there began a gradual move away from antiquarian ways of simply describing archaeological features and sites towards a more analytical approach of enquiry into the past. Stephen Upex takes up the story of Edmund Artis, one of the pioneers of this progress who, he argues, should be considered among the founding figures of modern British archaeology.