The development and construction of watercraft
Gordon Longworth traces the evolution of ancient Egyptian watercraft over the millennia and uses his skills as a model-maker to illustrate how they were built.
boatbuilding
Building a Bronze Age boat
A reproduction of a type of Bronze Age vessel known as a ‘Magan Boat’ has just completed its maiden voyage off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The ‘Magan Boat’ is named after an ancient region in present-day Oman and the…
This week: experimental archaeology
The word 'experimental' can be confusing, or even alarming. It suggests an area of activity in which people are pushing at boundaries, or acting somehow without official approval. Attached to the word 'archaeology', however, it simply denotes a field of academic study that uses controlled experiments to provide a better understanding of the past.
Letters: April/May 2021
Herefordshire is a cornucopia of remarkable church architecture, not only of the 14th century but also of the 12th, and the county rewards explorers with its riches.
Ship 17: a wreck in the Nile
The emporium of Thonis-Heracleion lay at the westernmost entrance to the Nile. When this city sank into the Mediterranean, it created an extraordinary underwater repository of ancient activity, complete with ports and canals crammed with traces of ancient craft. Alexander Belov told Matthew Symonds what the first ship from the city to be excavated reveals about rivercraft that once caught Herodotus’ eye.