In the previous few columns I have explored some of the great towns of Roman Britain – so, as a change of pace, here I will begin a new mini-series on the country’s great prehistoric sites. I will commence this month with a series of locations in Norfolk and Suffolk.
Analysis of flint tools found within Britain’s earliest-known post-built structures has revealed intriguing evidence of the tasks that they were used for, and how activities were undertaken in specific areas. Carly Hilts spoke to Jessica Bates to find out more.
Joe Flatman explores over half a century of reports from the past.
This unusual stone tool was recently discovered in a back garden in Hastings, East Sussex. It is a Neolithic polished flint chisel, or possibly axehead, that appears to have been reworked into a cutting or scraping tool. The flint is…
Excavations on a farm in Talsarn, Ceredigion, have found evidence for late Mesolithic and late Neolithic activity, helping illuminate a period that has been little explored in this region of Wales. The project at Talsarn began in 2019, when a…
A round-up of the latest archaeological news from around the UK.
The bluestone circles at Stonehenge represent one of the best-known examples of Neolithic skill in the extraction and long-distance transport of stone, but archaeologists have recorded thousands of equally awe-inspiring feats of lithic working from this period and earlier in Britain and Europe. Chris Catling reports on the Prehistoric Society’s newly published research paper Neolithic Stone Extraction, in which Peter Topping turns to ethnographic evidence to argue that stone objects did not only acquire symbolic status once they had been extracted and worked, but that quarry sites and the extraction practices themselves had important symbolic dimensions.
Gillis Kersting explores the lost worlds of Doggerland and prehistoric Malta through two new exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.
A vast number of flint artefacts – including scrapers, arrowheads, and axe fragments – were recovered from all five settlements.
Researchers propose that knowledge of fire was transmitted across vast regions within a short period of time due to cultural diffusion.
The Neolithic period was the final part of the Stone Age. Which years did it span in Britain?
The settlement is centuries older than the Stone Age site of Skara Brae.
Community excavations on the Beaulieu Estate in the New Forest have uncovered an enigmatic Bronze Age monument, as well as evidence for Mesolithic activity, greatly adding to our knowledge of how this area of Hampshire was used during prehistory. Aerial…
Neanderthals have long been stereotyped as our less-capable cousins, but advances in archaeological research have given fascinating new insights into the lives of our closest hominin relatives and the world they inhabited, as Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains.
The archaeological riches of God's Own Country: Joe Flatman explores half a century of reports from the past
A specialist grant that helps volunteer and community groups date their finds has opened applications for its 2019 funding cycle. Luke Parker shares some highlights from 2018’s supported projects – and details of how to apply this year.