Pioneering research in the Francis Crick Institute’s Ancient Genomics Lab is boosting our understanding of past populations, people, and pathogens. Carly Hilts spoke to Tom Booth and Kat Nilsson and explored a new exhibition sharing some of these findings.
REVIEW BY EMMA LOUISE THOMPSON From Norwegian courts to Icelandic households and British burial grounds, the lives of Viking women were as intricate as the worlds they inhabited. The Hidden Lives of Viking Women offers a ‘kaleidoscopic review’ drawing on…
In the second of her articles describing the practice of tattooing in ancient Egypt and Nubia, Renée Friedman looks at the surviving evidence from the New Kingdom onwards.
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS Finally! An in-depth biography of not just one, but seven Ptolemaic queens named Cleopatra – and a few more besides. There is a plethora of books focusing on the most famous of these queens, Cleopatra VII,…
The recent re-analysis of an unusual Iron Age burial from the Isles of Scilly – which contained grave goods typical of both men and women from this period – has shown that its occupant was biologically female. Discovered on the…
REVIEW BY HILARY WILSON This collection of papers from a 2019 Cairo conference represents current research into the life of women in ancient Egypt. By applying contemporary social values and gender assumptions, late 19th- and early 20th-century scholarship tended to…
Historian Janina Ramirez tells Diana Bentley about her latest work delving into stories of celebrated archaeological discoveries and the people behind them, and of the medieval women all-too-often overlooked by history.
Few figures in our culture have been so vilified as Lilith, the first wife of Adam – who, according to Jewish tradition, insolently refused to submit to her husband's desires, preferring to leave the perfection of the Garden of Eden, and become the consort of Satan instead.
At Home in Roman Egypt offers the first full-scale investigation of life as experienced by the ordinary people of Roman Egypt in the 1st to 4th centuries AD. It approaches the subject by looking at the life course, following people’s…
Beyond Notability is a new project examining the role that women played in archaeology, history, and heritage in Britain between 1870 and 1950. The three-year £929,729 research project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, in partnership with the Society of Antiquaries of London and the University of Southampton Digital Humanities.
How much can we know about the role of women in Roman society? Natalya Kahn examines inscriptions from Geneva to build up a picture of their experiences of life within the Roman Empire.
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.