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…
In 2017, excavations revealed an unusual Bronze Age burial alongside other signs of ceremonial activity spanning thousands of years. With some of the grave goods now on display, CA returns to the story of the Lechlade ‘chieftain’.
Denmark is home to many archaeological marvels, including both renowned sites and world-class museums. Olympia Bobou, Ilaria Bucci, and Rubina Raja are our guides to the wealth of heritage that the country has to offer.
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The Altai region of western Mongolia has long been considered marginal in broader Eurasian archaeological narratives. In this book, William Fitzhugh and Richard Kortum build a compelling case for the region’s centrality in the evolution of…
REVIEW BY JOE FLATMAN The Stone Lands book launch was held on a sun-kissed midsummer’s evening on a farm near Avebury, followed by a guided walk led by the author to West Kennet long barrow. It was the perfect blend…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The Oman Peninsula and the surrounding Gulf States have been the focus of archaeological research for at least 120 years. Although the region’s archaeological record extends as far back as the Middle Palaeolithic – including evidence…
A large Viking Age burial ground has been discovered in Halland, western Sweden. Archaeologists Anders Kjellin and Petra Nordin tell us about their findings.
A collection of shallow pits carved into a rock ledge, believed to be mancala game boards, have been identified in central Kenya. Mancala is a group of two-player strategy games that involve moving tokens across rows of shallow holes in…
Japanese burial mounds can be stunning in scale, while the decorated tomb chambers and grave goods sometimes found within have the power to astonish. In the first of a two-part series examining these tombs, Simon Kaner introduces the archaeology of burials mounds from the 3rd-8th centuries AD.
An Early Bronze Age sanctuary that functioned as a solar calendar has been discovered in the Netherlands. Cristian van der Linde tells us more.
Who was the Ancient Egyptian god of the sun?
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological news from across the globe.
The title of The First Stones, a newly published book edited by William Britnell and Alasdair Whittle, proclaims a bold new thesis: that the Neolithic long cairn at Penywyrlod, in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales, is one of the earliest of its kind. With the benefit of 50 new radiocarbon dates, and new ways of modelling those dates using Bayesian analysis, its authors revisit excavations that first took place in the 1970s – and argue that this distinctive monument represents the birth of a new tomb-building tradition, as Chris Catling discovers.
The dates listed below may have changed since we went to print. Check the websites of the museums for the most up-to-date information and bookings.
Review by David Field. Rarely in recent times have extant barrows, let alone groups of them, been excavated, for in most cases developer-funded excavation has only encountered levelled examples and the ditch alone has been sampled. At Petersfield Heath, 14…
'No intact original human burials have been found but they are thought to be represented by the disarticulated skeletal remains.'
The plate was found in 2021 at the Devitsa V cemetery in the Ostrogozhsky District of the Voronezh region, Russia.
They will investigate the recent trend in constructing burial mounds as a columbarium – a place for housing the cremated remains of the deceased.
The sands of ancient Nubia, a region over-lapping southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are home to remains of cities, forts, and numerous pyramids. It was to these archaeologically rich sands that the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition headed…
Viking ship burial in Norway A Viking ship burial was recently discovered at Gjellestad, Norway, during a ground-penetrating radar survey. It is now being excavated by the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. The ship is just one part of…
The exhibition Iron Age – Europe without Borders is divided into cultural-historical, chronological, and geographical sections. In addition to relics of largely unknown cultures, the exhibition focuses on the legacies of peoples such as the Celts, Etruscans, Scythians, and Sarmatians.
When the UK locked down against COVID-19 last spring, many archaeologists were unable to work as normal – but Rob Wiseman found a silver lining. He brought together more than 100 furloughed archaeologists to create a volunteer task force that has shed light on sites all over the country, spanning prehistory to the present day. Here, he shares some of the project’s highlights.
Joe Flatman re-examines half a century of reports on one of the spiritual homes of British archaeology
Patrick Skinner sets out from the country's capital on a voyage of archaeological discovery.