Last autumn’s excavations at Culloden Battlefield, near Inverness, had already rewritten our knowledge of how the engagement unfolded (see CA 430), but further insights continue to emerge, including the discovery of an unexploded mortar shell, which further highlights the conflict’s…
In the second part of our special, Stephen Roberts focuses on the little-known battle whose appalling casualty rate laid down a marker for the Somme.
In the first part of our special, Stephen Roberts marks the 110th anniversary of the offensive that saw the bloodiest day in Britain’s military history, before looking in more detail at the Battle of the Boar’s Head in the second part.
Infographics: Amy Brunskill / Images: public domain, National Army Museum, Canadian War Museum
As thousands died on WWI’s Western Front, a young officer by the name of T E Lawrence was among those fighting a very different war in the Middle East. Here, Nicholas Saunders reveals how a British-backed uprising proved a turning point in history.
One of the most talked-about battles in US history took place 150 years ago this summer. Here, Fred Chiaventone identifies some common misunderstandings about Custer’s Last Stand.
The narrative about the rise and fall of civilisations and their infrastructures is still omnipresent in scholarship about past cities. It is a story that sells well.
Since the late 1990s, the study of World War I has moved beyond the constraints of military history to embrace an increasingly multidisciplinary agenda. Not least in this has been the adoption and incorporation of anthropological and archaeological perspectives, focusing…
Archaeologists have discovered four military mass graves from the 18th and 19th centuries during rescue excavations in advance of the construction of the D11 highway between the towns of Jaroměř and Trutnov in the Czech Republic. The first mass grave…
During World War II, a number of German armament factories were relocated underground as a result of Allied air raids. In August 1944, a work detail of the Buchenwald concentration camp was established near the village of Walbeck, in the…
REVIEW BY NICHOLAS SAUNDERS The past 25 years have seen a revolution in our understanding of war (especially modern war), due partly to the shift from a solely military-history approach to an interdisciplinary one incorporating archaeology, anthropology, and scientific-technological advances.…
The decade between the first successful powered flight – made by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903 – and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 is known as the pioneer era for aviation, as research…
Smelly memories Please thank Chris Catling for his smelly article in CWA 129; smells and memories, it works both ways. I was reminded of a forgotten memory. Back in the late ’60s/ early ’70s, I visited Madame Tussauds (pictured): the…
August 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which precipitated the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of the Second World War. What has become known as VJ (Victory over…
A trove of helmets dating from the First and Second World Wars has been discovered by archaeologists in Poland. Road-construction workers found more than 50 helmets lying just beneath the surface on Koszarowa Street in the city of Wrocław. The…
REVIEW BY CALUM HENDERSON St Petersburg has an immensely dark history. Built largely by slave labour on the orders of Peter the Great in the early 1700s, it has endured more than its fair share of assassination, revolution, flooding, and…
Traces of the First World War are often seen in terms of trenches, battlefields, and cemeteries, but the soldiers caught up in this conflict left more subtle testimonies to their presence. Graffiti ranging from pencilled names to patriotic artistry provide powerful and personal glimpses of the combatants, as David Crossland reveals.
Why were the remains of dozens of men, women, and children thrown into a deep shaft in Bronze Age Somerset? They had suffered violent deaths, after which their bodies were butchered and probably partly consumed in an act unprecedented in British prehistory. Carly Hilts describes recently published research into possible motivations behind these events.
REVIEW BY DAMIAN SHIELS This book takes as its focus the archaeological excavation of a remote mountain cave used as an IRA hideout in 1922, a location described by the authors as a ‘Civil War time capsule’. The project was…
The discovery of a Roman fortification high in the Alps is the most recent development in a remarkable series of findings that allow us to trace the progress of a legionary battlegroup in the 1st century BC. As well as following part of their march, we can see how they sought to control this mountainous terrain, and where they clashed with local forces, as Hannes Flück told Matthew Symonds.
Analysis of arrowheads from Bronze Age Europe is uncovering new details about an ancient battle that took place in the Tollense Valley.
REVIEW BY JOHN REID The attraction of ancient Rome is as potent today as it has ever been – just turn on your TV or look at any popular history bookstand – and how can we resist such an alluring…
When the Salisbury Plain village of Imber was taken over by the War Department in 1943, its inhabitants all departed, never to return. What has recent archaeological work revealed about the life and death of a long-lived Wiltshire community? Richard Osgood reports.
REVIEW BY IAIN BANKS This is a landmark publication, summarising as it does the 12 years (and counting) that Operation Nightingale has been in existence. During this period, some excellent archaeology has been carried out and some excellent therapeutic work…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles.
This year is the 380th anniversary of the Siege of King’s Lynn, an important but often overlooked engagement during the Civil War. David Flintham presents the latest findings of a community archaeology project exploring the town’s fortifications.
It began as an anticolonial struggle against the French, and ended as the Cold War’s bloodiest battleground. By the time the last US troops were withdrawn on 29 March 1973 – fifty years ago this month – it had cost…
Archaeologists excavating the site at Coleshill Manor, east of Birmingham, found evidence that a newly discovered fortified gatehouse there had at one point come under intense fire.
On 4 May 1917, the entrance to the tunnel on the Chemin des Dames collapsed following French shelling.
The reliefs depict details including mountains, grapevines, pomegranates, figs, palm trees, and warriors firing arrows in battle
War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes by Elizabeth N Arkush provides a well-organised analysis of the external/environmental and internal/psychological factors that shaped pre-contact Andean warfare. More specifically, the key argument is that Andean conflict was entwined with the…
Fought at Sutton Bank in North Yorkshire, near Harrogate, on 14 October 1322, Byland saw Scottish forces led by King Robert the Bruce inflict on the English a defeat as serious as that of Bannockburn eight years previously.
Richard Hodges has been visiting Sexten, where the alpine scenery still bears the traces of fighting in the First World War.
A round-up of some of the latest news from the realm of archaeology in the UK.
Phil Harding and Emily Glass describe recent excavations by the charity Waterloo Uncovered, which has made exciting new discoveries on the eponymous Belgian battlefield.
From buttons to artillery shells, a range of items from battlefields have been transformed – often by soldiers – into powerful and personal pieces of ‘trench art’. Nicholas J Saunders explores some of the human stories of life and death sealed within these creations.