Throughout Egyptian history, pastoralists have played a vital role in food production, and the importance of domesticated animals is reflected in their abundant depictions in texts, tomb reliefs, and 3D art. Richard Redding highlights how critical animal-rearing was to all…
The skeletal remains of a wildcat, found in the Burren, Co. Clare, have been radiocarbon dated to c.3600 BC, providing the first concrete evidence that this species, now-extinct in Ireland, was present during the Neolithic period. A total of 39…
New research – using the largest multi-isotope dataset of animal remains yet generated in archaeology – has shown that communities in southern Britain had diverse ways of organising feasts during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.…
If you want to know how liveable a city is, you can ask the rats. The cosmopolitan rodents will know exactly how resource-rich and wasteful in nutrients their human co-habitants are.
Hilary looks at the symbolism attached to one of the major food sources for ancient Egyptians.
Malta is one of the most remote archipelagos in the Mediterranean, located almost 100km from the nearest landmass, Sicily. For many years, it was thought that European hunter-gatherers were unable or unwilling to travel to such remote islands; on Malta,…
In the second part of an article on the symbolism attached by the ancient Egyptians to beasts with horns, Hilary looks at goats, sheep, and wild animals.
Recently published research focused on the bones of birds of prey spanning the early Bronze Age to the medieval period has revealed striking differences between their eating habits and those of modern raptors. Researchers at the University of Reading analysed…
In the first of a two-part article on the symbolism attached by the ancient Egyptians to beasts with horns, Hilary looks at cattle.
Research at a site in northern Morocco is uncovering evidence for the oldest and largest Neolithic society that has yet been found in Africa outside the Nile valley. Evidence of prehistoric activity at Oued Beht was first noted in the…
I would like to dedicate these pages to my PhD supervisor, Eric Higgs. After studying at the London School of Economics, he bought a hill farm in Shropshire at the outset of the Second World War, and spent the following decade rearing sheep and cattle, with the objective, he once told me, of breeding miniature versions of the former.
A mammoth discovery A remarkable collection of mammoth bones has been found in a wine cellar in Lower Austria. Excavations at the site in Gobelsburg, carried out by archaeologists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), have revealed a dense…
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Although cattle were introduced to Ireland during the Neolithic period (specifically, by at least 3800-3700 BC), archaeological and documentary evidence indicate that early medieval communities in Ireland put increased value on cattle husbandry, so much so that it became the…
An interdisciplinary project involving biologists, Egyptologists, and anthropologists has discovered evidence that may pinpoint the actual location of the trading region of Punt, based on the genetic analysis of an ancient mummified baboon discovered in the ‘Valley of the Monkeys’…
Two recent studies have assessed a large quantity of worked whale-bone recovered from Anglo-Saxon contexts in Southampton (Hamwic), Ipswich, and Flixborough, finding that each site may have employed different strategies for obtaining cetacean remains. Whether whales were actively hunted or…
REVIEW BY FRANCIS WENBAN-SMITH This volume presents an interim report on the current research into Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal occupation on Jersey and in its vicinity, centred on re-investigation of La Cotte de St Brelade rock-shelter and its distinctive mammoth bone…
Archaeologists found an alignment of large limestone rocks and sandstone cobbles that appears to have been arranged by the cave’s occupants.
The Konya Plain presents an extraordinary glimpse of what the shift from a mobile existence to Neolithic lifestyles could mean for individuals. Douglas Baird, Ian Hodder, and Michele Massa share some exciting results from the long-running investigations of a set of sites in central Anatolia.
A round-up of some of the latest discoveries from across the globe.
Review by Bryony Coles The blurb on the back of this book gives an uncommonly accurate description of its contents: ‘a popular science book that tells the story of one of the most important, but least known major archaeological sites…
An infant who died at birth during the fourth Bronze Age phase was interred with a hen’s egg over the left hand; perhaps the infant was holding it when placed in the grave. What better symbol can be found for the regeneration of life itself than an egg?
The tracks of 593 individual animals were identified, representing 401 large animals and 192 humans – making this one of the largest-known concentrations of predominately prehistoric faunal tracks in the world.
Thanks to the development of ZooMS, it is now possible to differentiate between different animal species using collagen peptide fingerprinting techniques.
Two stelae are examples of some of the oldest artistic expressions in the Middle East.
Excavations at Blick Mead, a significant Mesolithic occupation site close to Stonehenge, continued this autumn. Carly Hilts travelled to the site to learn more about prehistoric hunters and traces of a priory associated with a medieval queen.
‘Neolithic communities repeatedly returned to the Camel Site, meaning its symbolism and function was maintained over many generations’
A vast number of flint artefacts – including scrapers, arrowheads, and axe fragments – were recovered from all five settlements.
This book presents the results of excavations at the Dix Pit quarry near the village of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, which revealed one of the largest and most-remarkable Pleistocene assemblages yet to be found in Britain, with finds spanning over c.200,0000…
As a first-year undergraduate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology in London, I spent seven weeks during the summer of 1991 at Boxgrove, enjoying stints working at several sites there, including GTP17, Q2/D, and Q1/A (as well as a week as…
The footprints were discovered as part of the Palaeodeserts Project, which is examining climate change and human evolution in Saudi Arabia.