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LEFT This Iron Age man’s spine showed signs of advanced tuberculosis.

Migration and disease in the Iron Age

Scientific analysis of a human skeleton discovered at Tarrant Hinton in Dorset has shed new light on life – and the transmission of infectious disease – in Iron Age Britain. The remains were originally found during excavations at a small…

Wood samples were taken from this 2nd century BC Gallo Roman ship discovered in Lyon, France, near the River Saône.

A new approach to wood preservation

Wood can be a difficult, and costly, archaeological material to preserve. This is nowhere better highlighted than by the enormous efforts put into place to help conserve the Mary Rose. When the remains of Henry VIII’s warship were lifted out…

World News

Iberian Iron Age massacre The Iron Age settlement of La Hoya in the Ebro River Valley in Spain was discovered in 1935 and excavated between 1973 and 1990. It was known then that a violent attack must have taken place,…

Below The face of long covered parts of Hadrian’s Wall was revealed during excavation by the WallCAP project.

Hadrian’s Wall revealed at Walltown Crags

Many miles of Hadrian’s Wall survive beneath turf and rubble, unexplored and often under threat from erosion, people, and animals. A recent excavation at Walltown Crags in Northumberland, undertaken in advance of fixing some of this damage, revealed sections of…

Below One of the stones from St Mary’s church, Stoke Mandeville, which is marked with a central hole with lines radiating from it.

Witch marks discovered in Stoke Mandeville?

Unusual graffiti have been discovered among the ruins of the medieval church of St Mary’s in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire. Archaeologists from Fusion JV have been carefully excavating and deconstructing the church ahead of HS2-related construction. The building was supposedly demolished…

PHOTO: Lewis Hulbert, Creative Commons

News in brief

Medieval bridge discovered in Scotland Over the last two years, the Ancrum and District Heritage Society (ADHS) have, with the help of Historic Environment Scotland, Dendrochronicle, and Wessex Archaeology, surveyed and researched a medieval wooden bridge that was discovered underwater…

Inside the Loughborough Bellfoundry museum (FAR LEFT) and manufactory (LEFT), where the ‘Great Paul’ bell, the heaviest rotatable bell in the world, was cast in 1881 for St Paul’s Cathedral. The last time that bells were silenced in British history was during the Second World War, when it was agreed to use them only to signal an invasion. The Trust has recently received £246,500 from the Cultural Recovery Fund to enable it to continue opening to the public with social distancing measures and one way routes in place.

Loughborough Bellfoundry Trust

In October 2020, a public inquiry was under way to consider whether planning consent should be given for the conversion of London’s Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a ‘boutique’ hotel. An alternative proposal has been developed by those who wish to…

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Decorated in glory: exploring later-medieval churches in Herefordshire

Churches are what archaeologists call ‘persistent sites’, places used for the same purpose for centuries, even millennia. But that does not mean the churches themselves are static: they represent the accretion of various building interventions of many different kinds and dates. None are richer in art and architecture, though, than those from the period we call ‘Decorated’, as Nigel Saul’s new survey of 14th-century Herefordshire church buildings demonstrates. Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports.

Above Rock art pecked into outcrops near Doddington, Northumberland.

Archaeology on Furlough: how volunteers explored the past during lockdown

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.