Unlocking Prehistoric Houses
Down we probed into each and, before long, another surprise. Each contained a human skeleton, ranging from an adult woman to a child and, finally, a new-born infant. They were burying the dead under the floorboards!
Paid
Small is beautiful: exploring the drawbacks of megacities
Haunted by Ostrogothic and Hunnic raids, Panticapaeum still survived as a Byzantine citadel. It lived through a succession of Khazar and Slavic lordships to become the modern city of Kerch, now once more trying to persist through a precarious situation in the current war in Ukraine.
Everyday Life in the Ice Age
Archaeologists tend to reserve the term ‘civilisation’ for the settled villages and towns of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Many of the innovations that we think are characteristic of human civilisation were, however, the inventions of Ice Age hunter-gatherers. Just…
African Queen: an intact royal burial from Egypt reveals new insights into cultural connections
The identity of the ancient Egyptian ‘Qurna Queen’ remains a mystery over 100 years after the excavation of her intact burial. However, new research on her burial assemblage is revealing historic biases in interpretation and shedding light on Egypt’s place within African culture, as Margaret Maitland explains.
Ancient mounds in America
In the middle of Louisiana State University’s campus stand two earthen mounds, each c.5.5m tall. The LSU Campus Mounds have long been known to be among the c.800 mounds created by ancient indigenous communities in this region, but archaeological investigations…
DNA, diets, and dealing with the weather
Svante Pääbo is the second member of his family to be elected a Nobel laureate: his father, Sune Bergström (1916-2004) shared the same Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1982. Is there a gene, one wonders, for Nobel-Prize-winning science?
Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: the story of ancient Egypt in 100 objects
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…
The power of words: racing to read the lost secrets of Egypt
The beautiful and mysterious signs adorning ancient monuments across Egypt have excited speculation for centuries. The tale of how their meaning was finally rediscovered is just as long, and takes in many twists and turns. Success came 200 years ago, and with it a staggering insight into ancient Egyptian history, as Ilona Regulski told Matthew Symonds.
Ötzi’s one-man show
On 19 September 1991, two hikers made an alarming discovery high in the Alps. Travelling off the beaten track, they saw a human corpse in a gulley, and imagined they had stumbled across an ill-fated mountaineer. Instead, this was just the latest twist in an extraordinary murder mystery. Investigators soon realised that the victim had met his fate in prehistory. Now, over three decades on, the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology is showcasing the vivid light shed on Copper Age life thanks to the study of this man and his possessions. Richard Hodges reports.
War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes by Elizabeth N Arkush provides a well-organised analysis of the external/environmental and internal/psychological factors that shaped pre-contact Andean warfare. More specifically, the key argument is that Andean conflict was entwined with the…
Glass beads, ritual deposits, and laser beams: a sanctuary on Timpone della Motta entangled in networks of trade and resettling
Thousands of votive objects have been found buried in ritual deposits at a hilltop sanctuary in southern Italy. Cristina Boschetti, Jan Kindberg Jacobsen, Gloria Mittica, Eva Mortensen, and Rubina Raja take us to the excavations at the summit of Timpone della Motta and tie the findings together with the archaeology and history of the site. Our journey, though, begins in a laboratory in Orléans.
Military History Matters 131 Letters – November 2022
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
The Brewster F2A Buffalo
The Buffalo originated with a 1935 requirement for a carrier-based fighter to replace the US Navy’s Grumman F3F biplanes. Brewster’s XF2A-1 prototype was selected in June 1938 and the first production aircraft began to enter service as the F2A-1 in…
Campaigns of the Eastern Association: the rise of Oliver Cromwell, 1642-1645
REVIEW BY DAVID FLINTHAM At the outbreak of the English Civil War, Parliament organised much of its fighting strength geographically; in the case of East Anglia (eventually including Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire) this was the Eastern Association, which would become arguably…
Military History Crossword 131
Battle in which the Duke of Monmouth was defeated by the troops of James II? Put your military history knowledge to the test!
The USSR at 100
There were two revolutions in Russia in 1917. In March, tens of thousands of striking workers, peasants, and soldiers — exhausted by the privations of the First World War — took to the streets of Petrograd (St Petersburg) in protest.…
The Mosquito Men: the unsung heroes of 627 Squadron
The elite Pathfinders of 627 Squadron may not have achieved the renown of their Dambusting comrades in 617 Squadron but, as David Price explains in a new book, their Second World War acts of valour were equally remarkable.
War on Film – All Quiet on the Western Front
The new All Quiet on the Western Front will, I’m sure, be popular and, like the British feature film 1917 (directed by Sam Mendes), will bring the horror and futility of the war to a new generation.
Colditz: prisoners of the castle
REVIEW BY TAYLOR DOWNING Ben Macintyre is well known for his books on spies and espionage, like Agent Zigzag, Double Cross, and Philby. Earlier this year, one of his other works, Operation Mincemeat, was adapted into a hugely successful movie…
The fight for Sweden: the battle of Brunkeberg, 10 October 1471
As part of Sweden’s long struggle for independence, its army of peasant militia won a crucial battle against a Danish invasion force camped outside Stockholm. William E Welsh describes the action.
Devil Dogs: First In, Last Out – King Company from Guadalcanal to the shores of Japan
REVIEW BY TOBY CLARK Anyone who enjoyed the HBO television series The Pacific or Eugene Sledge’s memoir With the Old Breed will want to read Saul David’s new book, Devil Dogs: first in, last out – King Company from Guadalcanal…
Alexander the Great: the making of a myth
Alexander the Great: the making of a myth is at the British Library in London until 19 February 2023.
War Classic: Zola’s ‘The Debacle’
La Débâcle prefigures both the changing nature of warfare, and the ongoing struggle of France’s national identity. Within 22 years, another generation would be sacrificed defending their homeland.
Born in blood: the Irish Free State
After years of unrest and escalating violence, the Irish Free State came into being on 6 December 1922. To mark its centenary, Patrick Mercer looks at the grisly events that led to its creation.
Equestrian armour at the Wallace Collection
This magnificent equestrian armour from the 16th century is unique in that it has survived completely preserved to this day. The armour was acquired by the Wallace Collection in 1867 from the collection of the French sculptor Count Émilien de…
War of Words – ‘Britannia’
Ancient Britain was known to the Mediterranean world. The Greeks called the island Pretannia, but the Romans named it Britannia, and made it part of their empire. The term ‘Britannia’ therefore figures prominently in military history. The Roman conqueror Julius…
A battle in the mists of the Lake District? Ambleside Roman fort under attack
Recent research has shed new light on a Roman fort in the Lake District, and the violent events that may have taken place there. Manuel Fernández-Götz, John Reid, Lawrence Keppie, and Ian Hardwick report.
Ancient DNA and ‘Anglo-Frisians’
I have a personal dislike of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to describe the people and culture of southern and eastern Britain from the 4th to the 8th centuries because it is anachronistic – it implies homogeneity where I see much more interesting diversity
A Cult Centre on Rome’s North-West Frontier: excavations at Maryport, Cumbria 1870-2015
Maryport is home to one of the largest and most-impressive collections of Roman altars in the world, with the role of religion at the site debated by academics and archaeologists over many years. Deliberately buried in pits, the altars –…
Piecing together the puzzle: understanding the Late Roman hacksilver from the Traprain Hoard
Excavation work at Traprain Law, an Iron Age hillfort in East Lothian, some 30km east of Edinburgh, was interrupted by the turmoil of the First World War. Two weeks after work began again on 12 May 1919, George Pringle loosened the soil with the tip of his pick and pulled out a Roman silver vessel. This was the first artefact to be found from what would prove to be the largest hoard yet known of Late Roman hacksilver – silver which has been chopped, cut, and crushed. More than a century later, an equally massive 784-page study has been published that tells us what the hoard represents in terms of the art and lifestyles of people from both sides of Hadrian’s Wall, as Chris Catling reports.
A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain: trade networks and the importation of a southern Scandinavian silver bullion economy
This book is the third in Routledge’s ‘Archaeologies of the Viking World’ series, and maintains the high standard of the others in terms of content. The book’s core idea is that groups with connections to southern Scandinavia established an often-loose…
Little London: Nero, Silchester, and building infrastructure in the new province
Distinctive tiles stamped with the name and titles of the Roman emperor Nero have been found at only two sites from Roman Britain, both in Hampshire. Michael Fulford explores what this might mean.
Caistor St Edmund: excavating an aqueduct in Roman Norfolk
Archaeological investigations in a field outside Norwich, close to the remains of a Romano-Celtic temple, have uncovered further evidence of activity associated with the religious complex. Carly Hilts reports on a recent visit to the site.
Recovering an anchor from the North Sea
Through the combined efforts of ScottishPower Renewables and Maritime Archaeology Ltd, with support from Historic England, a wrought-iron anchor, possibly dating from the Roman period, was successfully raised from the North Sea in June of last year. The location of…
Excavating Scotland
Moving geographically west to east, we then come to Bearsden on the north-west outskirts of Glasgow. This site is, if not the most excavated of Antonine sites, then certainly that most visited by Current Archaeology.
Stonehenge and Middle to Late Neolithic Cremation Rites in Mainland Britain (c.3500-2500 BC)
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…