From buttons to artillery shells, a range of items from battlefields have been transformed – often by soldiers – into powerful and personal pieces of ‘trench art’. Nicholas J Saunders explores some of the human stories of life and death sealed within these creations.
Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 and 54 BC. But which emperor began the Roman conquest in earnest in AD 43?
Your views on the latest issues in Current Archaeology.
Review by Andrew Tibbs. As a collection of maps covering almost every imaginable aspect of landscape-usage, from the Bronze Age to the early medieval period, this book covers many types of ancient landscape-use, including settlement, foodways, belief, mobility, defence, and…
January 2022 saw the launch of a new phase in the first ever archaeological study of a human habitat in space. The project, which began in 2015, is led by Dr Alice Gorman at Flinders University and Dr Justin Walsh…
These beads are some of the world’s oldest fully manufactured ornaments
A remarkable group of luxurious wall paintings has been discovered at a rich Roman residence called the House of the Harpist in Arles, southern France. The house was discovered beneath an 18th-century glassworks factory in the Trinquetaille district, on the…
Take Roman family portraits, for example. Either they were on public display to advertise the social standing of the family, or they were objects of veneration in the cult of ancestor-worship; or both.
The instrument from Dzhetyasar closely matches the 7th-century lyre discovered in the 1930s at Sutton Hoo.
For many centuries, the outside world knew little of the Japanese way of life. Before the Meiji Restoration of 1868 – after which the country rapidly modernised and opened itself up to global trade – only a handful of books…
I’d wager that every one of us has beachcombed at some point in our lives. Collecting intriguing, eye-catching, and occasionally useful objects from the foreshore of beaches, lakes, and rivers is an instinctual behaviour likely as old as our earliest…
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…
Tesserae played a central role in which Roman art form?
A new exhibition at the British Museum explores the landscape that Stonehenge emerged from, and the social, cultural, and technological transformations it witnessed. Neil Wilkin and Jennifer Wexler told CA more.
The British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) recently passed the milestone of one million records generated since the project’s foundation in 1997. Among the highlights announced at the launch of the latest PAS annual report (for 2020) is this gold…
This solid 459-page work by John Chapman summarises his life-long work in the Balkans and, as he states in the preface, was first conceived as a synthesis of Balkan prehistory but subsequently developed along a specific research path focusing on…
The statues of five elephants surrounding this part of the cemetery have led to the belief that these and other circus animals are buried here along with the human victims of the Hammond circus train disaster of 22 June 1918.
Cutting-edge analysis of 18th-century West African textiles collected by the abolitionist campaigner Thomas Clarkson has shed vivid light on their manufacture, make-up, and where they may have been made. Sarah Coleman, Margarita Gleba, and Malika Kraamer explain what has been revealed so far.
Lisbon's Núcleo Arqueológico da Rua dos Correeiros museum, London's Courtauld Gallery, and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts have all reopened.
Quarreling was commonplace, especially over who was entitled to sit in ‘the best’ pews. Clergy complained about being assaulted: one Kentish aristocrat took his hawk to church in 1514 and punched the vicar in the face when chastised for doing so.
Carrying on the ornithological theme from last issue’s ‘Finds Tray’, which profiled an early medieval brooch featuring a bird, this Roman lock component was cheerfully cast in the shape of a duck. The copper-alloy object was found last autumn near…
Ireland has been very well served in recent years by modern scholarship on her medieval castellated landscape. This book by O’Keeffe takes this research much further, especially in the way he rightly sets the castles within their greater European context.…
‘Helicopters flew in, and prices flew up.’ James Miller’s summary of the Chatsworth attic sale of 2010 sets the tone for much of Country House Collections, a fascinating series of meditations on the fate of the art-objects and artefacts that…
The Incas dominate perceptions of Peru’s past, but their empire did not appear out of nowhere. Instead, it drew on traditions and concepts that developed across the central Andes for thousands of years, as Cecilia Pardo and Jago Cooper told Matthew Symonds.
The suit was made in around 1830 in the Japanese province of Kaga, an important centre of armour production
The passage of time reveals two things – the forgetfulness of human memory, and the clarity of hindsight – neither of which of course is a law. For the archaeology of modern conflict, in this case the First World War,…
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This new study of tools from Roman London is a hefty volume, but it more than justifies the bookshelf space. Thorough coverage of dozens of crafts and tool types will ensure that it becomes a standard reference work for artefact…
Crafted from copper-alloy, this early medieval disc brooch features a bird holding a branch (outlined above by Peter Reavill, Finds Liaison Officer for Shropshire and Hereford). The item is thought to date to between c.AD 800 and c.AD 1000, and…
It is one of hundreds of images of the investigation that are now available to browse online thanks to the conservation and digitisation efforts of the National Trust.
Although Bronze Age finds make up just a fraction of the Portable Antiquities Scheme database, the discoveries recorded still number over 12,000. The objects presented here, in the latest publication in the 50 Finds series, reflect both the most common…
Probably dating to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD, the holder is formed into a zoomorphic creature.
This artist’s impression shows the scale of the 58-room mansion, with its halls, kitchens, and chapel, as well as the largest private garden in the city.
In this latest book in the 50 Finds series, Arwen Wood, Finds Liaison Officer for Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes, presents Britain’s history through the objects found across the county and recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). Sadly lacking in…
Belonging and Belongings is the latest BAR publication in the Archaeology of Roman Britain series. Focusing on the portable archaeology of the ‘Iceni’, Natasha Harlow presents an enormous volume of work that challenges the traditional, Roman historians’ accounts of the…
Due to changing coronavirus measures, the dates listed below may have changed since we went to print, and museums and galleries may close. Check the websites and social-media accounts of the museums for the most up-to-date information and bookings.