REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The Oman Peninsula and the surrounding Gulf States have been the focus of archaeological research for at least 120 years. Although the region’s archaeological record extends as far back as the Middle Palaeolithic – including evidence…
Two decades of excavations in East Sussex farmland have uncovered the remains of an unusual enclosed settlement linking the Roman road network with the River Ouse. Rob Wallace and David Millum explain more.
Excavations in Derbyshire have revealed that an apparently solitary standing stone in Farley Wood is in fact part of a larger ceremonial complex dating to the early Bronze Age. Standing 2m (6.6ft) tall, the upright was long believed to be…
REVIEW BY REBECCA JONES This is not a traditional archaeology or history book. It defies conventional modern categorisation, taking its inspiration from the writings of antiquarian travellers, such as Jessie Mothersole. Indeed, the author is an expert in antiquarians, and…
My column this month is on one of the least-known ‘great sites’ of all: Offa’s Dyke, the linear earthwork that stretches along the Welsh/English border. Most people know Hadrian’s Wall, and a fair few the Antonine Wall, but how many of us can say that we are familiar with Offa’s Dyke, either the standing sections of it that survive or the National Trail of that name that runs from Sedbury in the south to Prestatyn in the north?
REVIEW BY TADGH O’KEEFFE Back in the 1980s, when the study of settlement and landscape in high and later medieval Ireland began to take off in earnest, little attention was paid to the world of the native Irish. Things have…
REVIEW BY RP Have you ever wondered about the ancestor of the quiche? How about the origins of French toast? Who do we need to thank for the improvement of English cheese-making? Emma Kay has been foraging for tasty titbits…
REVIEW BY ROB IXER Many recent popular archaeology books are text-heavy, with indifferently reproduced black-and-white illustrations printed on poor-quality paper, and with a few token colour plates. This wonderful paperback, a landscape book in both senses of the word, is…
Shining a light on Reedham I was delighted to read Mike Fulford’s article on Reedham (CA 420). In 2021, as part of a Diploma in Archaeology at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education, I wrote a long essay about the Roman…
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.
Recently published archaeological research has shed vivid light on the power centres of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy that were swept away by the Norman Conquest – including a site associated with Harold Godwinson. Carly Hilts spoke to Duncan Wright and Oliver Creighton to learn more.
A thought-provoking photography exhibition explores how contemporary communities relate to stone circles. Carly Hilts visited, and spoke to the artists to learn more.
REVIEW BY SOPHIE AMBLER Battlefield commemoration has hitherto been the territory of historians of the modern age, leaning too heavily on the First World War and US Civil War, and linking battlefield memorialisation to the rise of nationalism. Atherton instead…
Karl Harris sets off on two wheels to visit the site of Amenhotep III’s palace on the West Bank of the Nile at Luxor.
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
REVIEW BY PENNY BICKLE For the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland, there is a tendency for the usual famous monuments – such as Stonehenge or Newgrange – to capture the majority of both public and academic imagination. This leaves many…
REVIEW BY GARY LOCK The Baltinglass area has rightly been called ‘Ireland’s Hillfort Capital’ due to the 13 or so large enclosures on hilltops surrounding the modern town. The area has been intensively studied by a team from University College…
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.
Renewed support for Salisbury mental-health heritage project Well-City Salisbury, a project aiming to help people with mental-health needs using arts and heritage courses, has received £368,135 from The National Lottery Community Fund. Bringing together four Salisbury-based partner organisations (ArtCare, Wessex…
My first experience of fieldwork in Southeast Asia found me in Roi et province of Northeast Thailand. It was a total accident that led me to this spot. The mighty Mekong River was then in the early stages of being seriously affected by the construction of hydro dams on its tributaries.
The Culver Archaeological Project has been running for almost 20 years. Carly Hilts reviews a new exhibition exploring its discoveries at two major Roman sites in Sussex’s Upper Ouse Valley.
REVIEW BY AMY BAKER Bringing together work conducted by Historic Environment Scotland (previously Historic Scotland), Glasgow University, and various commercial archaeological units, this highly readable and comprehensive synthesis of two decades of geophysical survey work along the Antonine Wall offers…
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.
On Saturday 4 May 1471 the ‘Wars of the Roses’ came to a head at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. The Yorkist army commanded by Edward IV and his brother, the future Richard III, chased down and defeated the Lancastrian army of Queen…
On a cold March day in 1995, fortune blessed me. I had written to the ancient historian N G L Hammond to see if he might meet me. He was 87, so it was a long shot. Not only did…
New research is exploring how ancient Pueblo communities in the Southwest United States may have been connected by sound. Chaco Canyon in north-west New Mexico was once a bustling ancient Pueblo settlement, occupied c.AD 850-1150. Among the items found in…
A recent initiative has been working to restore the profile of the Uffington White Horse, a Bronze Age hill-figure in the care of the National Trust. When a drone survey (fundraised by David Miles and Simon Palmer, and undertaken by…
REVIEW BY ROB IXER This is a book for stone circle fans. After a brief but succinct account of prehistoric stone circle-building, the stones are described starting at the geographical (and perhaps interest-wise) top in Orkney, around the Ness of…
Aidan Dodson describes a forgotten royal necropolis of the early Old Kingdom.
Recent investigations on the slopes of Pen y Foel, and a wider survey of its surrounding landscape, have shed new light on a previously undocumented
dolmen and other later prehistoric monuments. Mike Woods, Arwyn Owen, and George Nash take up the story of a long-forgotten and recently rediscovered ritualised landscape.
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
What can artificial intelligence bring to archaeology? Maurizio Forte introduces recent work dedicated to reconstructing ancient landscapes, and weighs some of the risks and rewards.
Researchers working in Venezuela and Colombia are documenting some of the largest prehistoric rock engravings in world. Amy Brunskill spoke to Philip Riris, who led the research, to find out more.
A wide-ranging LiDAR survey in Co. Wicklow has revealed hundreds of previously undocumented archaeological features, including a cluster of five cursus monuments that are helping to illuminate this enigmatic site-type. Carly Hilts reports.
REVIEW BY CH ‘Linn gu linn, bho ainm gu ainm – “from one generation to the next, from one name to another” – people make this story what it is.’ So writes Alistair Moffat in the introduction to this energetic…
Researchers from the University of North Carolina (USA), using remote sensing and other geophysical methods, have identified sections of an extinct branch of the Nile which flowed close to the line of Old and Middle Kingdom pyramids between Giza and…