Coffin of asylum surgeon excavated at Leicester Cathedral
‘Over his lifetime, he made significant contributions to the development of modern medicine in Leicester, leaving a lasting impact on the city and beyond.’
burial rites
This week: Mummies
The ancient Egyptian process of mummification holds a unique place in the popular imagination – inspiring exhibitions, movies, books, and countless school trips. As we learn this week on The Past, however, Western responses to this extraordinary and costly practice…
Mummies Quiz
In 1922, a team led by which British Egyptologist excavated Tutankhamun's tomb?
Going for gold: reconsidering mummies from the Graeco-Roman period
The exhibition Golden Mummies of Egypt opens in February at Manchester Museum for its only European showing after an international tour that has included venues in the USA and China. Curator Campbell Price discusses the artefacts on display and their significance to the Greek and Roman Egyptians and to modern visitors.
Golden jewellery found in burial in Amarna
The Egyptian-British archaeological mission working in the Northern Cemetery (Tombs of the Nobles) at Amarna has uncovered a burial containing fine pieces of gold jewellery. The grave contained the remains of a young woman wrapped in textiles, who was buried…
Mummies with golden tongues discovered in Quesna
The thin gold tongue-plates were placed in the mouth to help the deceased transform into a divine being in the afterlife.
Burials and bathhouses: a round-up of some of the latest Ancient Egyptian discoveries
A Spanish team has announced the discovery of the remains of 60 mummies, buried in two tombs close to the tomb of the New Kingdom vizier Amenhotep-Huy in el-Assasif (West Bank of Luxor).
Royal tomb discovered near Valley of the Kings
The tomb is thought to date to the Eighteenth Dynasty
New tombs and golden amulets found in New Damietta
The burials contained bodies that were covered with thin gold foils in the shapes of Isis, Bastet, and other deities.
Bog bodies part of burial tradition spanning millennia, study finds
Several bog bodies are famous for being extremely well-preserved, such as Lindow Man from the United Kingdom, and Tollund Man from Denmark.
This week: Pacopampa
Understanding burial practices and funerary customs is a vital part of any attempt to understand an ancient culture – for while the need to separate the living from the dead is common to all human societies, the way in which…
The Priest of Pututus: unearthing a unique Andean tomb
What can a freshly discovered tomb reveal about the emergence of Andean civilisations? The early date of this rich burial is raising new questions about how and when social elites appeared, as Yuji Seki reveals.
Remarkable early medieval burial found in Northamptonshire
The collection of grave goods – dubbed the ‘Harpole Treasure’ after the name of the local parish – has been dated to AD 630-670.
The man in the parcel: explaining a puzzling burial rite
The discovery of a burial in pride of place in Gårdby Church, Sweden, marked the beginning of an archaeological detective story. What could explain the unusual treatment of the man’s body? Caroline Arcini investigates.
Funerary finds in Fayum
Inside the funerary structure, archaeologists found a number of rock-cut and stone-lined burial chambers containing a variety of burials, ranging from simple interments to examples of high-quality embalming.
Funerary and Related Cups of the British Bronze Age
Review by Edward Caswell This book provides a new and welcome synthesis of a particularly enigmatic group of Bronze Age ceramics, which have been variously named, but which the authors choose to classify, justifiably, as cups. Drawing on a large…
Anglo-Saxon assemblage acquired by KAS
The artefacts were found during the 1977-1981 excavations of nearly 200 graves at Ozengell, near Ramsgate in Kent.
Feathers and fur in Stone Age Finland
Analysis of animal hairs and plant fibres from a Late Mesolithic grave have shed new light on prehistoric clothing and burial practices in Finland.
Elite early medieval burial uncovered in Northamptonshire
The 7th-century grave of an elite woman who had been laid to rest with stunning grave goods – among them a necklace made of gold, garnets, and Roman coins – has been unearthed in Harpole, Northamptonshire.
New dietary evidence for The Cairns ‘Elder’
New isotope analysis of a jawbone found buried against the outside wall of an Iron Age broch at The Cairns on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, has shown that seafood was probably a major part of this person’s diet throughout their lifetime.
A Late Period cartonnage from Lahun
In each issue of Ancient Egypt magazine, Dr Campbell Price describes a key artefact from Egyptology collections around the world. His choice for AE 134 is from the internationally important collection at the Manchester Museum.
Everyday Life in the Ice Age
Archaeologists tend to reserve the term ‘civilisation’ for the settled villages and towns of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Many of the innovations that we think are characteristic of human civilisation were, however, the inventions of Ice Age hunter-gatherers. Just…
African Queen: an intact royal burial from Egypt reveals new insights into cultural connections
The identity of the ancient Egyptian ‘Qurna Queen’ remains a mystery over 100 years after the excavation of her intact burial. However, new research on her burial assemblage is revealing historic biases in interpretation and shedding light on Egypt’s place within African culture, as Margaret Maitland explains.
DNA, diets, and dealing with the weather
Svante Pääbo is the second member of his family to be elected a Nobel laureate: his father, Sune Bergström (1916-2004) shared the same Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1982. Is there a gene, one wonders, for Nobel-Prize-winning science?
New discoveries in Nîmes
The excavations revealed at least 50 burials dating to the Roman period, including inhumation graves, cremation urns, and signs of funerary pyres.
Study presents first evidence of use of human bone for making pendants in northeast Europe
The study aims to improve our understanding of the social identities of people living in this region between c.9,000 and 7,500 years ago by exploring what their burials can tell us about their relationships with the animals in the world around them.
Ancient DNA reveals family relationships in Late Roman grave
Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that two of the individuals, though not genetically related, could have shared a kinship through marriage.
Exploring Etruscan endurance
Recent investigations in southern Tuscany have found a Late Etruscan and Roman Republican village, manufacturing district, sanctuary, and a necropolis.
Set in stone: Jomon Japan
As a new exhibition opens at the Stonehenge visitor centre, curator and archaeologist Susan Greaney explores the incredible artistry and ingenuity of people living during Japan’s Jomon period and the parallels to their contemporaries in Britain and Ireland.
Setting the scene: early medieval migration into the east of England
Newly published research centred on ancient DNA, which is revolutionising our understanding of early medieval mobility and the genetic changes it brought in its wake, forms the focus of this special issue of Current Archaeology. Duncan Sayer discusses some of the key themes that we will cover this month, and how the project came together.
Individual encounters: capturing personal stories with ancient DNA
The study of ancient DNA is a potent recent addition to the archaeological arsenal, with the power to illuminate (and eliminate) family relationships between excavated individuals. Duncan Sayer, Dominic Powlesland, and Allison Stewart explore some of the most-intriguing recent revelations from the early medieval period.
New study identifies world’s earliest evidence of opium use
The study sheds light on how the hallucinogenic drug was used in Late Bronze Age burial customs.
Hunters or gatherers? Women’s everyday lives in the Ice Age
Recent debate about women’s roles in the Ice Age raises questions about how much can be said about everyday lives in this era. Elle Clifford and Paul Bahn examine the evidence for who did what in the Palaeolithic.
Rock crystal commemorations in the Neolithic
The quartz was brought to Dorstone Hill as whole crystals, which were then worked into smaller flakes, blades, and cores.
Iron Age remains and animal sacrifices found in Dorset
The newly uncovered banjo enclosure, which contains at least three roundhouses and 65 deep, cylindrical storage pits dating from c.300-100 BC, was discovered during a geophysical survey.
Research sheds light on the multi-ethnicity of an early colonial city in Mexico
Ancient DNA analysis has identified individuals of Indigenous Maya, European, and West African origin in the city's cemetery.