REVIEW BY SAM LEGGETT This volume reads as a ‘Who’s Who’ of early medieval cremation research, with most of the top historians, funerary-, and bio-archaeologists assembled. Williams and Lippok have been truly innovative here with how they have assembled the…
National Museums Scotland holds one of the largest collections of archaeological human remains from Scotland. Following the creation of cutting-edge facilities to care for and study these remains, as well as the recruitment of Scotland’s first Curator of Osteoarchaeology, Jess Thompson, Matthew Knight, Kirsty Owen, Adrián Maldonado, Bethany Simpson, and Vesna Podržaj explore what excavated individuals can tell us about past populations, and consider the ethical issues surrounding such research.
In 1350, the Black Death had begun to ravage Scotland after spreading north from London. Over the next three centuries, the plague would return to Scotland multiple times, with the last major outbreak occurring in 1644-1649, thought to have been…
Excavation of execution sites in Sweden has shed light on the realities of capital punishment in the country. Caroline Arcini and Emma Karlsson explain what can be revealed by examining the skeletons of those condemned to death and the sites where their sentences were carried out.
Archaeologists excavating an Anglo-Saxon monastery in Cookham have unearthed 23 intact human burials, along with the disturbed remains of multiple other individuals. The site, which has been excavated by the University of Reading since 2021 (see CA 392) with permission…
German researchers analysing 12 severed hands that were discovered at Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a) in 2011 have published their findings, suggesting that the amputations were part of a ritual, rather than a punishment for crime. The hands, dating to about 1500…
A round-up of some of the latest archaeology news from around the world.
A recent study aimed to determine whether stone axes and adzes – common tools during the Neolithic – were also used as weapons.
This discovery represents the earliest example of its kind found in the ancient Near East.
When an unusual female burial was discovered in the apse of All Saints Church, York, it was interpreted as possibly representing the remains of a religious recluse. Since then, archaeological science and historical research have given new perspectives on the woman’s life, as Carly Hilts reports.
According to indigenous Mapuche culture, burial within a canoe symbolises the soul's journey to the final abode of the dead.
Review by E O’Brien. In Buried, Alice Roberts, derives information relating not only to the death of individuals but to the lives lived by those individuals from examination of their bones. Topics explored include infant mortality in the Roman world;…
Genetic analysis of 35 individuals buried in a Gloucestershire long cairn has reconstructed a 5,700-year-old family tree spanning five generations, shedding unprecedented light on Neolithic social structures and how people of this period related to each other. Carly Hilts reports.
Radiocarbon dating has indicated that the skull is c.220 years old, making it possibly the earliest example currently known from the region
These results could be used to distinguish between skeletal remains that have been cremated, and those that may have been heated as part of ritualistic defleshing practices
Radiocarbon dating revealed the child, nicknamed 'Neve’, lived around 10,000 years ago
‘Males had greater access to marine fish at Herculaneum and more broadly in Roman Italy.’
Wax tablet archives revealed that the deceased was a public slave and a custodian of the Temple of Venus.
These new discoveries could indicate that the harsh treatment on these prison ships was not a punishment solely reserved for men.
The high bacterial load of plague bacterium in their bloodstream indicates it was likely transmitted through the bite of an infected rodent, resulting in septicemia plague.
The eerie experience of writing about quarantine whilst in quarantine truly highlighted the relevance of archaeology in the modern world.
Through radiographs and computed tomography (CT) scanning of human skeletons, cancerous lesions can be accurately identified...
The Antiquity paper presents a new theory about the significance of these diadems as emblems of power and suggests that they may reflect the central position of these women in the governance of Argaric society.
Overall, these results seem to be consistent with lay individuals who may have entered into a monastic life as children and subsequently gained access to a higher-status diet.
The team from the ORAU and a group of researchers from across Europe have applied a compound-dating technique to Neanderthals, this time from Belgium, and once again the results have caused a re-evaluation of the timeline of Neanderthals in Eurasia.
Recent analysis of 12 teeth, first excavated at the Palaeolithic site of La Cotte de St Brelade in Jersey between 1910 and 1911, may provide new evidence of cross-breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans in this region. The teeth were…
Analysis of more than 300 human skeletons, recovered from three different medieval burial sites across Cambridge, has provided interesting new details of the city’s inhabitants, and the individual risks they may have faced based on their position in life. The…
This book provides a brief history of how humans have dealt with their dead over the centuries – mainly focusing on the early medieval period through to the modern day. It is, at times, a dizzying whirlwind of a tour,…
‘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…
More than a decade in the making, this book was well worth the wait. It is a thorough compendium of knowledge on not only the history and (bio)archaeology of leprosy, but also its epidemiology and evolution. At its heart, it…
Neanderthals have long been stereotyped as our less-capable cousins, but advances in archaeological research have given fascinating new insights into the lives of our closest hominin relatives and the world they inhabited, as Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains.
The discovery of a two-million-year-old skull in South Africa is shedding important new light on microevolution in an early hominin species, as Jesse Martin and Angeline Leece reveal.
The remains of two individuals who died during the eruption of Vesuvius have been found at a suburban villa near Pompeii.
A sub-adult burial dating to the early-mid Holocene, c.8000 BP, has been found in Makpan Cave on Alor Island, south-eastern Indonesia. To date, only a few complete pre-Neolithic burials have been found in Island South-east Asia, despite the region’s vast…
Grave Disturbances focuses on a much-neglected area of funerary archaeology. Disturbed human remains are frequently encountered within burial contexts, but are often given scant attention in comparison to more complete remains in expected anatomical configuration. The case studies in the…
Recent assessment of a unique burial assemblage from the Isle of Man has helped illuminate a rare type of funerary practice also found in parts of Wales and northern England. This new work provides a blueprint for moving away from…