The Saxon Shore (litus Saxonicum) was a military command consisting of fortifications built on both sides of the English Channel, which were established in the late 3rd century AD to defend Britain against the incursion of Saxon raiders. Its nine English forts are mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, a document that details the administrative organisation of the late Roman Empire.
During this year’s annual excavations at the Roman auxiliary fort of Vindolanda, Jim and Dilys Quinlan from Merseyside – who have been volunteering on the site for 21 years – discovered this sandstone relief. It was found in May, in…
An Egyptian mission has discovered a military fort at Tell el-Abqain (Beheira Governorate), in the north-west Delta. The fort was a key military outpost on the western military road, an area prone to attack by Libyan tribes, and later the…
Peter J Brand looks at how Sety I ensured his son and heir became the most well-prepared of all Egypt’s pharaohs.
Such wooden defences have been referenced in literature and by Julius Caesar, though no other examples are known to have survived.
Genomic analysis of skeletons excavated from the ancient Greek city of Himera, Sicily, has shed light on the diverse cultural backgrounds of those who had defended it against attacks from Carthage in the 5th century BC.
A round-up of some of the latest archaeology news from across the globe.
Discussions were prematurely halted by the receipt of a coded telegram from the War Office summoning Birley home to join Military Intelligence, to which he had previously been recruited owing to his fluent German and knowledge of the Roman army.
Formed in April 1943, the 6th Airborne Division took part in the Normandy Landings the following year, remaining in the line until the breakout to the Seine in late August 1944. During this time, casualties amounted to one in five men.
The Imperial War Museum has announced its first ever all-day live event, consisting of talks from conflict veterans, museum curators, and leading authors in the field of military history.
Military items – like a cannonball, lead shot, apparent pieces of a sword, and a ramrod tip, which were rarely traded – were found at the site complex of Stark Farms
The first trench revealed the deep V-shaped profiles of the three ditches, highlighting how heavily fortified the site was
The military museum, based in Gillingham, is the largest of its kind in Kent and contains many exhibitions telling the story of Britain’s military engineers from the Roman period through to the modern Corps of Royal Engineers.
Each of the bodies showed signs of serious injury and were buried with swords, maces, and arrows.
Many of the objects found had been repurposed by the Chickasaws into tools and ornaments
Initially commissioned in 2020, the new NMUSN campus will be in the vicinity of the historic Washington Navy Yard, allowing easy access to the public.
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls one of the great works of military history.
‘Grenade’ derives from the Old French pome grenate, on account of the bomblet’s similarity in shape to the pomegranate fruit.
Finally completed in April 1861,Napoleon’s remains were transferred into this huge object of red aventurine quartzite from a quarry in northern Russia.
How much do we really know about Hadrian’s Wall? After more than a century of scientific research into this magnificent Roman monument, it might be suspected that few mysteries remain. Instead, the recent ‘Pilgrimage’ along the Wall showed that debate is still in rude health, as Matthew Symonds reveals.
To coincide with the battle’s 275th anniversary, which fell earlier this year, the National Trust of Scotland (NTS) has published a manifesto, which it hopes the Scottish parliament will back, to grant the site UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
He became known as the ‘Flying Sikh’ because he wore a specially designed helmet that fitted over his turban.
The series is based on Donald L Miller’s non-fiction book of the same name on the American 8th Air Force.
In an online campaign, the public voted to name the sculpture ‘Silvanus’, after the Roman god of woodlands.
Excavation and survey along Hadrian’s Wall are casting doubt on old certainties, and setting new questions for the future. But how are our views of the monument changing, and why? Current World Archaeology's Matthew Symonds reports.
Symonds provides a particularly accessible and entertaining overview of this complex monument, including the history of its construction and the role of the Wall in later history.
The British Museum claims it will present Nero, who was also widely admired for popular policies, extravagant games, and building projects, in a balanced light and allow visitors to make up their own minds.
Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, she nonetheless fought valiantly against her larger opponents, allowing time for the escort carriers she was protecting to escape. Of the ship’s 327-man crew, only 141 survived the battle.
Why should we study airfields – and do these sites even count as archaeology? Bob Clarke makes a case for investigating and preserving such sites as important drivers of social change, as well as relics of military history.
This latest book in the ’50 Finds’ series from the Portable Antiquities Scheme is the first to focus on a specific artefact type rather than on a region or period. Roman coinage is a fitting choice for this new approach,…
‘The past lies in fragments… one might just as well try to reconstruct the idea of a tree from its leaves, or an ocean wave from a dripping tap.’ So writes Max Adams, author of The First Kingdom, a wide-ranging…
Do we need another book on Hadrian’s Wall? The answer in this case is a resounding ‘yes’. The authors curate the magnificent collections derived from several centuries of research, excavation, and antiquarian collection along the frontier. Their expertise and knowledge…
This is a welcome addition to the literature on confinement, a topic that has developed from a little-studied phenomenon into one of most vibrant areas within the subdiscipline of Conflict Archaeology. Gilly Carr has been a part of this through…
A century after the site was dismantled, can the ephemeral remains of Oxford’s tented First World War flying training aerodrome be rediscovered? The Wolvercote WWI Aerodrome Memorial Project, a community initiative, sought to find out with the help of scientific surveying. Roger Ainslie reports.
Today this wreck, along with several others in the Beacons, stands as a monument, a tangible example of the enormous sacrifices that were made every day during the Second World War.
For most of the second half of the 20th century, the threat of nuclear war permeated the world. What can archaeology add to our understanding of this unique period, which still lies within living memory? Bob Clarke reports.