Excavation reports often have a long gestation, and the publication of the City of Hereford Archaeology Unit’s 1993 excavations on the site of Hereford Cathedral’s new Mappa Mundi museum has been eagerly awaited. Yet any frustration at the delay quickly…
Aberdeenshire is known for its Pictish symbol stones, but until recently evidence for Pictish settlements in the region was sparse and our understanding of Pictish sites even more tenuous. This has now changed dramatically, in large part due to a…
First discovered nearly 30 years ago, the wreck of a ship that sank in Salcombe Bay, Devon, in 1633 has now been comprehensively re-examined in this new British Museum volume. On its discovery, the ship was found to be carrying…
The latest in the British Archaeological Association’s regional conference volumes covers Shropshire. The 16 contributions might seem at first sight to concentrate on the county’s best-known Roman and medieval sites – such as Wroxeter, Shrewsbury, Much Wenlock Priory, Buildwas Abbey,…
The Archaeology of Industrial Cheshire in 20 Digs is a well-illustrated introduction to Cheshire’s industrial past. Each concise chapter combines documentary evidence with excavation results to trace the development of the county’s key industries across two millennia. The book opens…
The idea of a guidebook is an ancient one – Pausanias’ Guide to Greece is perhaps the first – but these days the idea of wandering around sites clutching a book conveying detailed information might be thought to be superfluous…
Don Hollway’s account of the life of the Norse warlord Olaf Tryggvason (king of Norway in the years c.995-1000) covers a period of momentous social and religious change in the lands bordering the Baltic Sea. The author tracks his hero’s…
Hideki Tojo was Japan’s most important policymaker of WWII. As detailed in Gary Bass’s 2023 study Judgment at Tokyo, he was the highest official to face the death penalty at the ensuing war-crimes trials. Yet apart from Robert Butow’s Tojo…
War correspondent, film producer, and writer: many MHM readers will already know Damien Lewis’s work. In his latest book about British Special Forces, he presents five more hair-raising accounts of WWII escapes. ‘Escapes’, that is, in the broader sense, since…
On the face of it, Operation Barbarossa – Nazi Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union – is straightforward to understand. Germany was at first strikingly successful, then faltered, and ultimately failed to subdue the Soviets, leading to rout and…
Between 1639 and 1653, the whole of the British Isles was engulfed by civil war. Despite popular opinion, however, it was not pitched battles that dominated the fighting, but sieges. Not for nothing did one veteran of the conflict comment:…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history releases.
This book explores an important, new aspect of archaeological interpret-ation that deals with the description and transmission of mythical romanitas. One of the most prominent and novel features of Dr Turner’s study is his use of what he terms ‘heat…
Stephen Cosh, together with his colleague Dr David Neal, are the authors of a truly monumental and authoritative five-volume survey of all the Roman mosaics of Britain, the only province of the Empire which brought such a venture to completion:…
This new book from Pen & Sword is a most welcome one: many people are familiar with the Saxon Shore forts of east and south-east England, but there has not been a comprehensive guide to them published since Andrew Pearson’s…
Highdown Hill is an extraordinary place. It stands detached from the great chalk spine of the South Downs, dominating the coastal plain across to the English Channel. The Bronze Age saw the hill crowned with an enclosure, perhaps a redistributive…
The Roman auxillary fort of Vindolanda has produced by far the largest assemblage of Roman footwear to be recovered anywhere. The remains of 5,000 shoes have been found, many in a remarkably good state of preservation, allowing 1,000 to be…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH When we think about the history and archaeology of the north, we are immediately drawn to the Inuit or Sami peoples. We forget the vastness of the polar region, which covers at least 20% of the surface…
REVIEW BY SHANNON LEE DAWDY Dead Man’s Chest is a collection of essays and research reports by practising archaeologists and historians who have conducted work on shipwrecks, terrestrial sites, artefact collections, and archival sources. It is the third book in…
REVIEW BY MATTHEW POPE From the start, Slimak is clear that The Naked Neanderthal is a very personal book and offers his own individual views on the archaeology of Neanderthal people. And this is an important point to make. The…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles.