In recent months, excavations in Pompeii’s Insula 10, Regio IX, have uncovered several sections of a grand domus, including a black-walled dining room decorated with scenes from the Trojan War (CWA 125), a lararium or household shrine room (CWA 126),…
The remains of a waka (traditional boat) have been found on Rēkohu Wharekauri Chatham Island, the largest of the Chatham Islands archipelago, 800km east of New Zealand. Fragments of the boat were exposed in a creek and a limited excavation…
A mass grave recently unearthed in Austria is believed to be associated with a Roman battlefield. In autumn 2024, construction workers carrying out renovations of a playing field in Simmering, a district of Vienna, had unexpectedly come across a large…
Malta is one of the most remote archipelagos in the Mediterranean, located almost 100km from the nearest landmass, Sicily. For many years, it was thought that European hunter-gatherers were unable or unwilling to travel to such remote islands; on Malta,…
Excavations at the Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala have uncovered a painted altar associated with the city of Teotihuacán, located more than 1,000km away in central Mexico. Previous archaeological work at Tikal has uncovered evidence of extensive contact between…
Iron Age cemetery in UAE An Iron Age necropolis recently discovered in Al Ain is the first to be found in the United Arab Emirates. The burial ground, which was unearthed as part of the Funerary Landscapes of Al Ain…
A project has begun to preserve the 400-year-old Swedish warship Vasa, which notoriously sank on her maiden voyage. A new metal structure is being installed to support the hull of the ship, which has its own museum in Stockholm and…
A Second World War bomber which lay at the bottom of the Aegean Sea for more than 80 years has been rediscovered. The wreck was found last year by specialist divers off the Greek island of Antikythera, more than 60…
A new display of ceramic poppies has opened at the Tower of London to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The installation, which opened on 6 May, uses some 30,000 poppies from a similar…
An ‘unprecedented’ mass grave of Roman soldiers has been uncovered in Vienna. The find was made last autumn by construction workers who were renovating a football pitch in the Simmering district of the city. In April, experts at the Vienna…
A new exhibition is exploring how Jersey recovered after five years of Nazi occupation. Life after Liberation: the road to recovery is part of the island’s celebrations to mark 80 years since the war’s end. It runs until December. Jersey…
Rare Roman coin on display at Trimontium Museum An aureus – a Roman gold coin – has recently been put on display in the Trimontium Museum. Discovered at Newstead, in the Scottish Borders, the coin is on loan from National…
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…
Recent research on a portrait believed to depict Lady Jane Grey has revealed that the painting may be the only surviving image of the ‘Nine Day Queen’ that dates to her lifetime. A devout Protestant, Lady Jane Grey was named…
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…
New light on Danish sun stones Hundreds of stone plaquettes from two Neolithic enclosure sites on the Danish island of Bornholm have been linked to the eruption of a volcano almost 5,000 years ago. The plaquettes, which are commonly engraved…
A coin hoard spanning more than 200 years of Roman history has been found near the village of Barton Bendish in Norfolk. Discovered by metal-detectorists, the 16 coins are all silver denarii minted in Rome, and are thought to have…
The face and head of an Iron Age woman whose remains were discovered in Dorset’s Kimmeridge Bay 25 years ago have been reconstructed by an MSc Bioarchaeology student at Bournemouth University. The woman’s skeleton was discovered in 2000, when cliff…
As we move into warmer months, the words ‘I’m going to go out for some Vitamin D’ are beginning to make their appearance in conversation. Vitamin D is essential for bone growth, and plays an important role in immunity and…
The discovery of a rare enamelled brooch at an Iron Age settlement site in Curragh, South Ayrshire, has revealed interesting insights into how the Britons of south-west Scotland and the Roman army interacted in the late 2nd century AD. The…
The discovery of a new Egyptian royal tomb in Western Valley C (adjacent to the Valley of the Kings) has been confirmed by a joint mission between the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the New Kingdom Research Foundation led…
• The French mission at Taposiris Magna has uncovered a finely crafted marble head depicting an elderly man (below), dating to the Ptolemaic Period. • A suitcase with the monogram ‘HC’, believed to have been owned by Howard Carter, has…
Following the discovery of the Tomb of Senebkay at Abydos in 2014 (see ‘News’ in AE 82 and AE 89), a new mystery pharaoh has been found at the site, providing further evidence of a separate Abydos Dynasty (c.1700-1600 BC)…
An Egyptian mission has discovered a new mud-brick tomb at the site of Tell el-Maskhuta, in the eastern Nile Delta (about 16km west of Ismailia). The tomb, consisting of a burial chamber linked to three other rooms, contained a skeleton,…
A complete Byzantine-era pottery workshop has been found in the village of Banawit, 24km north of Sohag, by an Egyptian mission. The complex, one of the largest pottery- and glass-manufacturing centres ever found, included a large range of ovens and…
The team from the French-Egyptian Centre for the Study of the Temples of Karnak (CFEETK) has uncovered a large collection of gold jewellery and amulets, which was in a broken pot. The treasure, found during recent excavations at Karnak, is…
An Egyptian team has completed a two-year project to excavate a 3,000 year-old gold-processing centre found on the site of the modern Sukari gold mine, near Marsa Alam on the Red Sea coast. The complex consisted of grinding and pulverising…
The Hellenistic site of Kom el-Nugus (Plinthine), 27km from Alexandria, was first discovered in 2013. Now a team from Université de Lyon has uncovered a settlement dating to the New Kingdom, as well as traces of settlement from the Late…
Research from Leiden University in the Netherlands has revealed that pyramid burials may not have been exclusively for the elite. The pyramid burials of ancient Egyptians at the site of ancient Tombos in northern Nubia, near the Third Cataract, were…
Following the release of the latest PAS and Treasure reports, Carly Hilts explores some key statistics and star objects.
A nalysis of a reliquary box long believed to house the remains of Magnus Erlendsson, Earl of Orkney in 1106-1117, has confirmed that the container is contemporary with the saint. The story of Magnus’ execution (following a power struggle with…
Archaeologists are well-used to working in trenches – and now excavations by Archaeology South-East (part of UCL Institute of Archaeology) have uncovered traces of an East Sussex site used to train troops destined for the front-line trenches of the First…
A hoard of mid- 15th-century Scottish and English coins has been discovered in the Cappercleuch area, in the Scottish Borders. The 30 gold and silver coins were discovered by a pair of metal-detectorists, who reported their find to the Treasure…
Human remains that were discovered in peatland at Ballymacombs More in Northern Ireland have been reidentified as belonging to an Iron Age woman who was possibly the victim of a sacrificial rite. When a bog body was discovered by machine…
During the English Civil War, Sheffield Castle – a Royalist stronghold – was besieged for ten days by Parliamentary forces who ultimately seized control of the fortifications. Traces of this conflict have now been uncovered during Wessex Archaeology’s ongoing excavations…
When you imagine the specimen stores of natural history collections, you might picture rows of jars containing mysterious samples suspended in an even more mysterious liquids. We might assume that these fluids are far less mysterious to those who work…