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Excavating the CA archive

Joe Flatman explores over half a century of reports from the past.

Sherds CA 404

Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.

A Cheshire treasure: Exploring the contents of the Knutsford Hoard

More than a decade ago, a metal-detectorist discovered a plough-scattered hoard of over 100 Roman coins, together with items of jewellery. Vanessa Oakden explores what has been learned about the finds since then, and what they tell us about life in Cheshire c.2,000 years ago.

Finds Tray – Eprouvette

This unusual object was recently found in a garden near Boldre in the New Forest. While its function was a bit of a mystery when the finder first brought it to the Finds Liaison Officer to be recorded, it was…

The Past

Breathing new life into an Anglo-Saxon brooch – National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh

This is one of the seven Anglo-Saxon disc brooches found within a silver vessel discovered by a metal detectorist in September 2014 – one of more than 100 objects that were subsequently excavated and are now known as the Galloway…

National Churches Trust

Many societies are concerned with a specific aspect of church heritage (monuments, sculptures, or wall paintings, for example) but the National Churches Trust (NCT) is arguably the most holistic, raising money for places of worship of all denominations and in…

From Hunter-Gatherers to Early Christians: The archaeology of ancient societies in the Llŷn peninsula

REVIEW BY KATE WADDINGTON This very readable book discusses the archaeology from a beautiful stretch of coastal north-west Wales: the Llŷn peninsula. As this volume demonstrates, it has produced a diverse range of well-preserved monuments that are of national importance.…

Beacons in the Landscape: The Hillforts of England, Wales, and the Isle of Man (2nd edition)

REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH One of the most impressive archaeological site-types in the British Isles is the Iron Age hillfort. Archaeological evidence has shown that it took many generations to construct and remodel these structures. Even after Roman occupation, hillforts…

A Woman’s Will: The changing lives of British women, told through the things they have left behind

REVIEW BY AB A hive of bees, ‘nine pair of bedde stockes’ (bed socks), ‘my worst petticoat’, and the famous Sutton Hoo treasure: these are just some of the objects left to friends, relatives, and institutions by Britain’s women over…

Fabric of the Frontier: Prospection, use, and re-use of stone from Hadrian’s Wall

REVIEW BY ANTONY LEE This volume, an output of the WallCAP project (2018-2022), directly and successfully addresses historic disconnects between archaeological and geological studies of Hadrian’s Wall. It presents a thoughtful and accessible study into how consideration of the Wall’s…

Death and the Body in Bronze Age Europe: From inhumation to cremation

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…

Ancient inscriptions in Saudi Arabia

The mountain of Jabal Ikmah, located 5km north of the ancient city of AlUla in north-west Saudi Arabia, has just been added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, which recognises documentary heritage of international significance. This is a significant…

Volos: Archaeology and myth in Thessaly

Looking for somewhere off the beaten track to explore in Greece? Martin Davies is our guide to the rich prehistoric heritage of Volos.

Ventotene: A prison that was a university

A free and united Europe is the necessary premise to the strengthening of modern civilisation… The Ventotene Manifesto (1941).

Ancient Egypt and the dawn of literature: Revisiting the oldest book in the world

Among the many treasures recovered by archaeologists and antiquarian collectors from Egypt are papyrus copies of a remarkable text written more than 4,000 years ago: The Teaching of Ptahhatp. Bill Manley investigates this often-overlooked survival from ancient Egypt and one vizier’s contributions to the dawn of literature.

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure

Rubina Raja and Søren M Sindbæk on the archaeology of waste

Sailing stony seas: Ship graffiti on Malta

A previously unsung facet of Malta’s rich maritime heritage has recently come under the spotlight. An armada of ship graffiti, with examples dating back to prehistory, can be seen sailing across numerous structures. Timmy Gambin and Julia Zerafa examine what these ships are, and why they were carved.

Past masters

When COVID-19 reached New Zealand, all my plans to continue excavating and attend conferences ground to a halt. So I turned my attention to writing my memoir, Digging Deep: a journey into South-east Asia’s past. Having kept a diary since…

China unearthed: A hidden history of tombs and offerings

Deep underground, the ancient inhabitants of what is now China built remarkable houses and palaces. But these dwellings were not homes for the living. Instead, the dead would be laid there, not to rest, but to live out their afterlife in comfort. The objects and attendants that accompanied them shed light on both the deceased and the birth of a unified China, as Jessica Rawson told Matthew Symonds.

A bitter harvest: Slave labour and sugar on São Tomé

The first archaeological project ever mounted on São Tomé is examining a 16th-century sugar mill. Results are shedding fresh light on the origins of the tropical plantation system, which would go on to shape the Atlantic world at a terrible human cost, as M Dores Cruz told Matthew Symonds.

Analysing ancestry and ancient agriculture

It is less than a decade since scientists developed swift and efficient methods of extracting and analysing ancient DNA from human remains (for which Svante Pääbo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2022) and yet scarcely…

The Scythian Empire

REVIEW BY TIMOTHY TAYLOR Christopher Beckwith’s The Scythian Empire represents a major challenge for archaeological understandings of what many pre- and proto-historians have been inclined to see as a merely ‘tribal’ phenomenon. His book is magisterial, presenting a wealth of crucial new…

The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The history of a dangerous idea

REVIEW BY ANDREW SELKIRK Edward J Watts, Professor of History at San Diego University, is not a fan of politicians who claim that society is rotten and only they can make it better. This claim, however, is nothing new: the…

Buried Beneath the City: An archaeological history of New York

REVIEW BY META F JANOWITZ Archaeologists who work in New York City often get incredulous looks from people who ask about their careers: You work where? There’s archaeology in NYC? New York City is famous for many things, perhaps especially…

Lucayan Legacies: Indigenous lifeways in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands

REVIEW BY EMILY C KRACHT Lucayan Legacies evaluates the lives of the early Indigenous peoples in the Bahama archipelago and celebrates their legacy, identity, and descendants today. The book presents one of the most comprehensive discussions of Bahamian archaeology to…

Victory in Iberia: The Peninsular War, 1808-1814

Graham Goodlad assesses the events that led to the defeat of Napoleonic France in the Peninsular War.

Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz: A tale of two sieges, January-April 1812

Graham Goodlad describes the capture of two key frontier fortresses, whose fall opened Spain to the advance of Wellington’s army.

Arminius: Hitler’s barbarian hero

The Germanic warlord who led the massacre of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest would later provide inspiration for both the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler, as Tim Newark explains.

Master of the dark arts

In the first part of a new series on deception in World War II, Taylor Downing tells the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Dudley Clarke, Britain's flamboyant pioneer of misinformation.

The British Templars: A new warrior elite

The Knights Templar were renowned for their extraordinary feats of bravery in defence of the Holy Land. But the British contribution to their story is often overlooked, argues Steve Tibble.

In Flanders Fields: Cemeteries of the First World War

A groundbreaking new exhibition draws on collections around the world to tell the complex and emotionally charged story of the cemeteries of World War I, as Nicholas Saunders reports.

War Classics: Greece and Rome at War – New Edition

Nick Spenceley recalls one of the great works of military history.

Baseball and britain: Aerial reconnaissance of the USAAF

Between 1943 and 1944, reconnaissance units from the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) trained for combat deployment over the skies of England. They flew over airfields, radar installations, and ancient monuments, as well as major settlements, in order to…