Recovering an assemblage of trafficked prehistoric swords from Iran presented an opportunity to undertake scientific analysis of these weapons. The results reveal both the skills of ancient metalworkers and how these swords have been tailored to meet the expectations of the illicit antiquities trade, as Alex Rodzinka explains.
A line of pits unearthed during excavations in Dijon contained rare examples of Iron Age individuals buried in a seated position. Hervé Laganier reveals what has been found, and how it compares to other examples of this enigmatic phenomenon.
Iron Age artefacts that were discovered beneath an airfield in Wales have been declared national treasure. Parts of a Celtic chariot, believed to be around 2,000 years old, were found on the site of RAF Valley in Anglesey in April…
Newly published research has illuminated the evolution of an enigmatic monument at Crickley Hill, near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. Its role as a religious or ceremonial complex can be traced back to the Neolithic period, but it continued to be used and rebuilt numerous times over the next 3,000 years, and perhaps even longer, as Steve Vaughan reports.
A recent metal-detector survey undertaken ahead of maintenance work at the RAF Valley airfield in Anglesey has recovered artefacts thought to belong to one of the most significant Iron Age collections in Europe. Carly Hilts spoke to Adam Gwilt and Richard Osgood to learn more.
Mentioning money I wanted to comment on the excellent article ‘Fields of Gold’ in CA 419.Snettisham is not only notable for buried torcs but it is also a ‘hot spot’ for coins – less spectacular, maybe, than torcs, but equally…
A new, more precise way of analysing historic ancestries has revealed previously unknown waves of human movement during the 1st millennium AD. Carly Hilts and Rebecca Preedy report.
REVIEW BY TIM PESTELL Only a handful of British archaeological sites can be truly described as iconic, but Snettisham in Norfolk has a strong claim, having become synonymous with the presence and hoarding there of Iron Age torcs. The questions…
REVIEW BY MARIANNE HEM ERIKSEN Human sacrifice constitutes a perennially fascinating topic for scholars and general audiences alike. It is also a research area where the risk of leaning into sensationalism and exoticisation can be relatively high. In the Darkest…
Over the course of eight decades, at least 14 separate hoards of Iron Age metalwork have been recovered from a single field at Snettisham in Norfolk. Now, following the publication of a new book describing the excavation, conservation, and scientific investigation of these spectacular finds, Jody Joy and Julia Farley describe how they came to be discovered, and reveal some of the secrets that have come to light since then.
Excavations at an Iron Age fort in County Dublin have uncovered evidence of the exotic tastes of its inhabitants, including the earliest archaeological remains of a fig discovered in Ireland. Drumanagh promontory fort consists of c.46 acres of land enclosed…
Intertidal archaeological sites are challenging to investigate, often being exposed for just a few hours at a time, but they can be rich repositories of organic finds and environmental evidence. Martin Bell, Thomas Walker, and Adam Turner describe the illuminating discoveries that have been made at Goldcliff in the Severn Estuary over the last three decades.
What is it? This broken knife blade is almost 2,000 years old. Currently preserved at a length of c.8cm, its original length is unknown, but was probably just slightly longer than this. On one side, the iron blade is incised…
REVIEW BY CH Located more than 100 miles from the Scottish mainland, the cluster of islands collectively known as St Kilda have variously been mythologised as a romantically remote place whose hardy inhabitants were torn from their traditional way of…
Recent excavations at Bodicote, just south of Banbury, have revealed the remains of an Iron Age farmstead where ten storage pits had been repurposed as graves. This was not an uncommon practice for the period – but other aspects of the inhumations were rather more unusual, as Rebecca Trow, Milena Grzybowska, Roger Doonan, and Robin Holgate report.
REVIEW BY ADAM DAUBNEY This volume sets out the results of excavations and survey along a 5km stretch of the A160/A180 in north-east Lincolnshire. Excavations were carried out within an archaeologically important landscape of drained former marshland near the Humber…
Restoring Boden Fogou Volunteers from the Meneage Archaeology Group have restored part of a passageway in an Iron Age fogou, which was rediscovered near Boden in west Cornwall in 2003 (see CA 414 for more about excavations on the site…
Your observations, your objections, and your opinions: send them to cwaletters@world-archaeology.com
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH In recent years there has been a lot of interest in unearthing the secrets of the diverse landscapes of the eastern Arabian Peninsula – lands that form the modern United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unsurprisingly, much of…
The Hallaton Helmet, an ornately decorated piece of Roman cavalry equipment discovered in rural Leicestershire in 2000, is undeniably an important artefact – but how do you interpret its now-fragmentary imagery for museum visitors? Helen Sharp describes an initiative that created two contrasting reproductions using traditional and cutting-edge techniques.
A prehistoric cemetery excavated at Winterborne Kingston, near Bere Regis in Dorset, is providing evidence of how locals adapted during the aftermath of the Roman invasion. Among the grave goods, excavated by students from Bournemouth University and a team of…
I concluded last month’s column just east of Avebury at the Sanctuary, a Neolithic and Bronze Age site that is also the start and end point of the Ridgeway, an 87-mile route rich in archaeology that runs between there and Ivinghoe Beacon across Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire
A long-running community excavation in rural west Cornwall has been exploring an enigmatic network of Iron Age tunnels, as well as Bronze Age and Romano-British features, for more than 15 years. Carly Hilts spoke to James Gossip on site this summer.
This month sees a return of the Council for British Archaeology’s annual Festival of Archaeology, with a wealth of in-person and online events taking place across the UK between 13 and 28 July. The theme for 2024 is ‘Archaeology and Community’. Here is a selection of regional highlights, see www.archaeologyuk.org/festival/festival-event-listing.html for more details, and to explore the full programme.
Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) have discovered archaeological material ranging from the prehistoric to the medieval period during work on the new Springstead Village development in Cherry Hinton, Cambridge. The extensive findings of the excavations, which started in 2022 and will…
The skeleton of an Iron Age woman found in Winterborne Kingston, Dorset, has revealed rare material evidence of possible human sacrifice from this period. The site has been extensively excavated by Bournemouth University teams for more than 15 years, owing…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS In his 2014 book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (reviewed in AE 85) Eric Cline charted the ‘perfect storm of calamities’ that led to the sudden collapse of the thriving interconnected Bronze Age civilisations. In…
This glass bead was a surface find by a metal-detectorist in Wanston. It is an example of an ‘eye’ bead, possibly dating to the Early Iron Age (c.800-c.350 BC), and was found on an area of farmland known to have…
Advances in digital technology are opening up ever-more realistic ways to depict archaeological sites and events from the past. John Reid describes how excavated evidence has been used to create a detailed and dramatic model of a Roman attack on a hillfort in Dumfriesshire.
REVIEW BY MIKE SHAW Northamptonshire is a county rich in archaeological remains, many of them discovered along the Nene Valley in the south of the county. Hence the present volume is valuable in looking at a transect of land in…
REVIEW BY FINOLA O’CARROLL This book details the results of research into the monument known as Tlachtga, which combined LiDAR and geophysics to build a picture of an extensive multi-phase monument, confirmed by three seasons of excavations from 2014 to…
A 40km trench dug to accommodate cables linking an offshore windfarm to the National Grid sparked eight years of archaeological excavations along its route. With the results of Wessex Archaeology’s wide-ranging work now published in a new monograph, Ashley Tuck summarises key findings from the heavy clay marshes of northern Lincolnshire.
Pioneering excavations in Winchester in the 1960s and 1970s made a major contribution to the development of modern archaeological practice and trained many of those who subsequently became the leading professional and academic archaeologists of our day. So the publication of the latest Winchester Studies volume – a concise synthesis of the city’s prehistoric, Roman, and post-Roman development – is a landmark event, as Chris Catling reports.
REVIEW BY PATRICK DANIEL This book summarises 17 years of work by MOLA Northampton/Northamptonshire Archaeology at a 70ha development by the Roman road north of Doncaster. The earliest remains comprised a ring ditch with early Bronze Age cremation burials, an…
REVIEW BY AB The archaeological exploration of Worcester began with antiquarian works several hundred years ago, but the bulk of the research has been carried out since the mid-20th century. These excavations have revealed a wealth of information about Worcester’s…
Llanfair-Mathafarn-Eithaf Community, Anglesey