Researchers from the University of Bristol have revealed the chemical constituents of embalming fluids by analysing the air surrounding mummies, rather than removing physical samples. The team captured the gases emitted by the embalming materials of 19 mummies, ranging in…
Since the early days of archaeology, people have been analysing the architecture of burial monuments, seeking connections between them to understand better how ancient populations were related. The advent of modern ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis added a new way of…
Highgate Cemetery, consecrated on 20 May 1839, was created to provide a more hygienic alternative to ‘intramural’ burial (within church walls) or in overcrowded church- and chapel yards. Today, Highgate is known as one of the so-called ‘magnificent seven’ cemeteries…
In the first of two articles describing the practice of tattooing in ancient Egypt and Nubia, Renée Friedman looks at the surviving evidence from the Predynastic Period to the Middle Kingdom.
Andrew Fulton ends his series exploring this famous Book of the Dead with a final scene featuring Hathor and Tawaret.
A few years ago, Sarah Paris – then a graduate student at Cambridge University – asked if she could access the human skeletons from Khok Phanom Di in order to study the mortuary use of red ochre. I excavated this great Neolithic site in 1985, and I willingly agreed. Last year, she completed her doctoral dissertation and at the last Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, she won the prize for the best presentation by a graduate student.
A recently published study has shed new light on the ways in which kinship was tied to monuments from Ireland in the Neolithic period, suggesting that biological relationships and social status were not strong factors in deciding who was buried…
‘Sacrificial’ burial uncovered in Ecuador The remains of a woman who suffered a violent death between AD 771 and AD 953 have been excavated in Buen Suceso, a site in coastal Ecuador. The woman was aged 17-20, and was between…
Tacitus, in his book on the life and character of his father-in-law Julius Agricola, the Roman Governor of Britain from c.AD 77 to 84, makes the often-quoted observation that ‘Britons make no distinction of sex in their leaders’. In his Annals (XIV.35), the same author depicts Boudica (AD 30-61) rallying her supporters with the cry: ‘we British are used to women commanders in war’.
The mummy of a woman with a screaming facial expression (below) has attracted a great deal of press attention recently, with headlines suggesting she died in agony. However, in spite of a recent examination using advanced scanning techniques, the cause…
Jessica Coughtrey asks what ancient skeletons can tell us about the role of women in the ancient Egyptian workforce.
REVIEW BY EILEEN MURPHY Exploring the mortuary record for Ireland from 8000 BC to AD 400, Death in Irish Prehistory is an inspirational book. Professor Gabriel Cooney draws on his rich experience of Irish prehistory to provide a thought-provoking and…
In the second of a two-part feature examining Monte Cassino, Richard Hodges examines how the monastery developed from the late 9th century onwards.
Burials in the Arctic? A recent re-evaluation of the Tainiaro site in Finnish Lapland, c.80km south of the Arctic Circle, suggests that it could be one of the most northernly prehistoric cemeteries known in Europe. Although the site was first…
Stone beads found near Lake Turkana in Kenya are offering a new way to study how early pastoralists in the area interacted with the landscape around them at a time of environmental and cultural change around 5,000 years ago. The…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH The burial monumentality associated with the Neolithic is very much a global phenomenon. This desire to bury the dead in an artificial cave covered with an earthen or cairn mound occurs over at least six millennia.…
REVIEW BY BRYAN SITCH This authoritative work by one of the UK’s leading sinologists explores the early history and archaeology of China through 12 tombs and discoveries, some already well known in the West – including Sanxingdui with its otherworldly…
REVIEW BY MICHELLE GAMBLE This book is the culmination of almost two decades of research on Bronze Age burial practices and the social context of the body by Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, evolving from a wider corpus…
REVIEW BY JENNIFER FOSTER This most useful, extensive analysis concerns Iron Age inhumed bones in eastern England. The burial types start in the late Bronze Age, with most people buried in settlements: ‘normal’ pit/ditch, crouched, and north–south orientated; disarticulated bones;…
REVIEW BY ROGER FORSHAW The 21st annual Current Research in Egyptology (CRE) conference was held online by the Department of Mediterranean Studies of the University of the Aegean (Rhodes, Greece) in May 2021, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the…
In the concluding part of our Orkney trilogy (see also CA 394 and 395), Carly Hilts reports on her visit to the Knowe of Swandro on Rousay, where Julie Bond and Caz Mamwell took her through the latest findings from this long-lived but rapidly eroding site.
The title of this book is perhaps rather misleading. Although a hundred objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun (among which are counted two scenes from the walls of its burial chamber) are indeed listed, mentioned, and illustrated, they are arguably…
In the middle-to-late Neolithic in southern and eastern Britain a number of important monumental landscapes were host to a series of cremation cemeteries, the deposition of the dead in some cases being a catalyst and inspiration for the elaborate monument-building and…
According to Slavic folklore, sharp instruments such as sickles could be used to decapitate the deceased should it try to leave its grave.
A team of researchers have identified two individuals excavated at the Neolithic site of Tell Qarassa in modern-day Syria as dating to the Umayyad Period (AD 661–750), and found evidence that they could represent some of the earliest examples of…
A round-up of some of the latest discoveries from across the globe.
Many of the jar sites in Assam contain engraved stone slabs decorated with human figures and other motifs.
The vertebrae-on-posts, which have been found at indigenous burial sites around the Chincha Valley, are believed to be connected to ideas about bodily integrity after death
Although the Chimú are known to have practised human sacrifice, it is currently not possible to say whether this is the case here.
The practice appears to have begun in central Europe sometime before the 6th-century AD, and then spread across the continent before reaching its peak around two-hundred-years later.
How much can we know about the role of women in Roman society? Natalya Kahn examines inscriptions from Geneva to build up a picture of their experiences of life within the Roman Empire.
The 17th- to 18th-century graves contain features designed to stop the deceased returning after death, such as a sickle across the neck or body, and a stone beneath the chin.
There really have been so few instances when Time Team sites have yielded any evidence pertaining to children - despite having dug more than 150 sites over the 13 years the series has been running.