How did Egypt build the pyramids? It is a question that has excited the imagination of scholars and visitors for millennia. Now papyri documenting work on the Great Pyramid are revealing fresh insights into construction work. Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner told Matthew Symonds how combining text and archaeology can expose the secrets of an extraordinary building project.
In 1958, an archaeological team set out to undertake a trailblazing survey of the submerged ruins of Apollonia. Nic Flemming looks at what was accomplished, and what changed in the decades that followed.
Crossword from Current World Archaeology issue of March 2022.
Your observations, your objections, and your opinions.
Among the new statues is least one figure who appears to be a general, and another who is a middle-ranking army officer.
A new exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark explores the often-overlooked story of the Rus Vikings. We spoke to curator Pauline Asingh about the adventures of these influential voyagers, whose travels took them from Scandinavia to Constantinople, the Caliphate, and beyond.
New studies are revealing the impact environmental changes have had on ancient societies around the world.
The Kaiseraugst amphitheatre was discovered in the Rheinfelden district at a site known to have been the location of a Roman quarry
January 2022 saw the launch of a new phase in the first ever archaeological study of a human habitat in space. The project, which began in 2015, is led by Dr Alice Gorman at Flinders University and Dr Justin Walsh…
Review by Salima Ikram. This book, based on a PhD thesis, focuses on Egyptian ‘animal worship’ from the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BC. In the introduction, the author states that the work aims to use multiple theoretical perspectives and…
The plate was found in 2021 at the Devitsa V cemetery in the Ostrogozhsky District of the Voronezh region, Russia.
People investing in DNA ancestry kits should be aware that they might not get the answers they were expecting: people who want to know if they have Viking DNA or are related to Richard III might instead discover an awkward family secret.
These beads are some of the world’s oldest fully manufactured ornaments
The vertebrae-on-posts, which have been found at indigenous burial sites around the Chincha Valley, are believed to be connected to ideas about bodily integrity after death
The civil war had been very disruptive. There had been looting, pillage, and social upheaval. There are records of a most heinous crime, rooting up the boundary markers of land ownership, for which those guilty were impaled.
The Caucasus were home to some of the world’s earliest and most proficient goldsmiths. Despite an association between this metal and the mountains that became so strong it was woven into mythology, gold artefacts more or less disappear from a large part of the region for a period of some seven centuries. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo investigates why.
A team of scientists have used CT (computed tomography) scans to ‘unwrap’ Amenhotep I digitally and learn more about the mummy and its contents.
A remarkable group of luxurious wall paintings has been discovered at a rich Roman residence called the House of the Harpist in Arles, southern France. The house was discovered beneath an 18th-century glassworks factory in the Trinquetaille district, on the…
Review by George Nash Prehistoric rock art is very much a world phenomenon, with assemblages found in every corner of the globe. To the expert eye, each region has its own unique style, engraving or painting technique, and chronology. Since the…
It is one of the oldest cogs ever found in Europe.
Take Roman family portraits, for example. Either they were on public display to advertise the social standing of the family, or they were objects of veneration in the cult of ancestor-worship; or both.
Review by Paul Christesen Olympia is not an especially large archaeological site (the entire excavated area measures less than 1km on a side), but it is nonetheless a particularly complex one. Activity at the site began in the 4th millennium…
In the 1970s, prehistoric rock art was found in the Tagus River Basin, just as a dam project was set to raise water levels. In a race against time, archaeologists sought to find a way to record thousands of images before they were submerged. Now the results have been carefully studied using a variety of new technological approaches. Sara Garcês and George Nash tell the remarkable story of one of Europe’s principal rock-art areas.
Radiocarbon dating of a bone from the Burton Agnes burial suggests that all of these objects were created approximately 500 years earlier, c.3000 BC.
In the first of a two-part piece, Richard Hodges explores the story of San Vincenzo al Volturno.
The instrument from Dzhetyasar closely matches the 7th-century lyre discovered in the 1930s at Sutton Hoo.