A new exhibition at the British Museum delves into drinking and decadence in the ancient Persian and Greek worlds. Henry Bishop-Wright tells Lucia Marchini how elements of luxury could be adopted and adapted to express power across cultures.
Review by Lucy Shipley This book is very clearly a passion project, the result of a lifetime’s love for and engagement with the Etruscan past. It provides a rare opportunity to hear the views of a specialist from another discipline,…
Inside the cist tomb were the remains of a man and a woman, thought to have died in their 30s
Extraordinary burials discovered in south-eastern Europe marked out individuals even at a time of egalitarian societies. Attila Gyucha and William A Parkinson guide us through spectacular finds from eleven countries that show how the elite grew their power in prehistory.
The dates listed below may have changed since we went to print. Check the websites of the museums for the most up-to-date information and bookings.
The inscription appears next to the image of a man – possibly a king or warlord named Jaga or Jagaz – on an early 5th-century bracteate
Known today as Tello, Girsu is one of the oldest cities in the world.
Review by Nigel Fletcher-Jones In recent years there has been increasing desire among travellers to visit the archaeological sites of southern Egypt and Sudan in search of ‘ancient Nubia’, an elongated oval that stretched either side of the Nile from…
As the Tuscan city of Siena grew in prosperity, its citizens made their mark through magnificent art and architecture, from aristocratic towers to allegorical frescoes. Historian Jane Stevenson takes us on a tour of its medieval monuments.
Moai are monolithic stone statues with elongated human faces, thought to have been created by Rapa Nui’s ancestral inhabitants more than 500 years ago.
She is a goddess of poetry, medicine, and blacksmithing, but there is no mention of the fire that becomes associated with her sainted counterpart.
An astonishing array of wooden objects has survived from Herculaneum, carbonised by the volcanic eruption that destroyed the town. This invaluable material may be less showy than the celebrated marble and bronze statuary, but it was still used for everything from beams and boats to purses and small shrines, as Dalu Jones finds out.
Radiocarbon dating found that a date of c.1500-1600 was probable
Elements were added by local weavers according to their own regional design traditions
The Fayum mummy portraits are masterpieces of ancient painting, but are they portraits? With an exhibition of these paintings and golden mummies on view in Manchester, Lucia Marchini speaks to Egyptologist Campbell Price to find out more.
These same people would not hesitate to wear a scarab-ring taken off a dead man’s hand… Their objections – their opinions even – are an offence to science.
Review by Eric Singleton It is a welcome departure to see a scholar stepping outside their regionalised field of study to offer an interconnected view of North American history that is not often discussed. This is what Timothy Pauketat, an…
Viewers of the Netflix competition series Blown Away will be familiar both with the mesmerising transformations that take place under extreme heat as glass is blown, shaped, and decorated, and with the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York,…
At another English cathedral, that of Exeter, excavations have revealed Roman remains