Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, famously sank in the Solent almost 500 years ago. Her partial remains were recovered by archaeologists in 1982 – what has been learned since then? Peter Marsden explores some of the latest thinking on the Tudor vessel’s appearance and her crew.
Sutton Hoo is best known as the location of an astonishing ‘princely’ Anglo-Saxon ship burial – but the site has compelling stories to tell about women too. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts explores the lives of five fascinating females linked with the 7th-century site.
The team behind the ‘Exeter: A Place in Time’ project tell us about the sites that were excavated in the last 50 years.
Scientific analysis of some enigmatic burnt features found in several Anglo-Saxon settlements across the east of England has provided new insight into early medieval cooking practices.
Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.
Post-excavation analysis of the many finds discovered on Highways England’s A14 Cambridge-to-Huntingdon improvement scheme (see CA 339) has revealed a rare Roman millstone carved with a prominent phallus.
The recent conservation of a small figurine thought to represent the Celtic god Cernunnos has revealed new details that call the identification into question.
A massive incised rock has recently been discovered at the northern end of the Bay of Skaill in Orkney.
A 13th century Bishop's palace unearthed in Somerset, an aerial tribute to NHS, and a box of mementos donated to English Heritage.
A newly published report from GUARD Archaeology has revealed evidence for the Iron Age inhabitation of St Kilda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and isolated archipelago located 64km west of the Outer Hebrides.
Why should we study airfields – and do these sites even count as archaeology? Bob Clarke makes a case for investigating and preserving such sites as important drivers of social change, as well as relics of military history.
The largest and most-complete late Bronze Age spearhead to be found in the Channel Islands has been discovered in Jersey, sparking questions about the ritual practices of the prehistoric islanders.
A collection of letters, tweets, and anecdotes from our readers! Featuring, mosaics, Chactonbury Ring, and auto-generated subtitles
With the arrival of spring and the promise of lockdown restrictions lifting over the next few months, we are looking forward to visits to museums and heritage sites in the not-too-distant future. For now, though, there are still plenty of things to keep you busy at home, whether you are looking for online exhibitions, craft ideas, or even some of the talks from Current Archaeology’s annual conference! Amy Brunskill has put together another selection of the latest options.
Economics cannot be used to measure the emotional, educational, psychological, spiritual, health, and social benefits of heritage – all the things that make life worth living.
Historic England’s latest book is an architectural history of England’s Co-operative Movement.
Famously (or infamously), the Roman Ninth Legion is believed to have disappeared around the end of the 1st century AD, a view made popular by Rosemary Sutcliff in her fictionalised account of the story in The Eagle of the Ninth.…
The Neolithic is that pivotal point in prehistory where community changes, from dependence on hunting, fishing, gathering strategies based on seasonal availability to seasonal harvesting, animal husbandry, food procurement, and storage. Until recently, archaeologists took a broad-brush approach, sometimes ignoring…
Caves can be portals to otherworlds, and Covesea Cave on Scotland’s Moray Firth is no exception. Armit and Büster’s handsomely produced volume transports us back in time to both the late Bronze Age and Roman Iron Age, revealing exciting new…
A few days ago I saw a notice that said ‘BeGambleAware’. It warned of the dangers of addiction, but it could have referred to the author of this book. Readers of Current Archaeology will already be aware that Clive Gamble,…
It has been more than two decades since Sam Lucy’s seminal book The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death, and in the intervening years new cemeteries, methodologies, and mortuary archaeology theory have advanced to the point that we are due a sequel.…
The film The Dig has shown that public interest can be engaged by a vintage excavation, and this book likewise recounts the results and evokes the mood of three seasons of digging, in this case in the 1960s. We cannot…
Discovered during excavations at Dewlish in 1974, the leopard mosaic is considered one of the most realistic depictions of an animal by a Romano-British artist to survive in any artistic medium.
This revealed much about life in ‘Roman’ Wales, in both its modest urbanised centres and its wider hinterlands.
This is a Roman ‘horse and rider’ figurine, made of copper alloy and probably dating to between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It was found in 2015 near Penllyn, Wales. While the object is quite corroded, it is largely…
The team from the ORAU and a group of researchers from across Europe have applied a compound-dating technique to Neanderthals, this time from Belgium, and once again the results have caused a re-evaluation of the timeline of Neanderthals in Eurasia.
The Irish archaeologist Barry Raftery (1944-2010) wrote: ‘Death represents the ultimate confrontation between the human and the supernatural worlds. The surviving burial remains and the associated funerary monuments thus provide us with the clearest and most tangible surviving evidence of religious beliefs and practices’. With this as her theme, Elizabeth O’Brien has studied every excavated Irish burial dating from the period c.200 BC to c.AD 800. She found great diversity and one common strand – burial in close proximity to ancestors or to people regarded as saints, as Chris Catling reports.