Traders poured in, London flourished, and in ten years it became the biggest town in Britain. But then, disaster! Boudica rebelled and London was destroyed: traces of burning from this episode are still visible in the lower layers of excavations.
The site began life as a simple farmstead in the 1st century AD and transformed over the centuries into quite a grandiose stone structure, with a swimming pool and bath complex, by the mid-2nd century AD.
The people of Chichester – or Noviomagus Reginorum, as the settlement was known in the 1st century AD – have much to celebrate when it comes to their Roman heritage. Claire Walton and James Kenny explore the city’s Roman archaeology, and explain how it has served as both a platform for public engagement and the inspiration for an annual celebration of all things Roman.
Review by Russell Ó Ríagáin. This book is the third in a series associated with the Glenmorangie Company Research Project at National Museums Scotland, treating various aspects of Iron Age and medieval northern Britain. Arguably, it has been the most…
Review by AB. The term ‘street furniture’ encompasses a wide range of everyday objects that are found along roads and in towns and cities around the world, from manhole covers and postboxes to bus stops and cabman’s shelters. In this…
How can understanding the archaeology of peatlands help to ameliorate the current climate crisis? Rosie Everett and Gillian Taylor share the latest research.
Review by Stephen R Cosh. Anthony Beeson has been among those at the forefront of mosaic research in Britain for many years, particularly on mythological subjects. This little book is very much a personal journey and summarises his own research…
This newly colourised image, based on an black-and-white photograph taken over a century ago, shows Edwardian labourers excavating the granaries at Roman Corbridge, an ancient town and supply base that began life as a military fort 2.5 miles south of…
The story was seen as a further blow to the argument that the Marbles must stay in London – replicas ‘accurate to a millimetre’ could be displayed at the British Museum and few visitors would know the difference.
Phil Harding and Emily Glass describe recent excavations by the charity Waterloo Uncovered, which has made exciting new discoveries on the eponymous Belgian battlefield.
Review by Robin Hughes. Ruins, Remains and Relics: Sussex is a miscellany, organised into the three titular groups, of various historical curiosities from across the historic county of Sussex. Horlock explicitly emphasises the ‘unusual, offbeat, and decidedly quirky’, and the…
This small lion figurine, which probably dates to c.AD 1300-1500, was found last year by a metal-detectorist on cultivated land near St Teath in Cornwall. The 6.8cm-high animal, which is made from copper-alloy and weighs 173g, was most likely cast…
Review by HB. In this deep-dive into the archaeology of the Ilich – the people of Islay – Steven Mithen toys with the concept of insularity, presenting an account of Scotland’s southernmost Hebridean island which demonstrates that the area is…
One of the most celebrated works of ancient Greek sculpture, Phidias’ statue of Zeus, was once housed in a temple at Olympia. Though this lost wonder was much admired by ancient visitors, it was not the only attraction at the site, for centuries the home of great panhellenic games. A new book by Judith Barringer explores the many transformations Olympia experienced, even before the creation of Phidias’ masterpiece, as David Stuttard reports.
Vast quantities of artefacts were found in a mound in Oklahoma in the 1930s. Together they tell an intriguing story of ritual and cosmic renewal. As an exhibition reuniting some of these objects travels to Texas, Lucia Marchini speaks to Michelle Rich and Eric Singleton to find out more.
Last year, the restored mosaics of the lavish audience hall and bathhouse of Hisham’s Palace near Jericho were opened to the public. Marie-Louise Winbladh explores the early Islamic art that embellished this Umayyad winter resort, built not by Hisham, but by his nephew al-Walid.
The difference between a historian and a poet is not that one uses prose and the other verse. After all, you could take the History of Herodotus and turn it into verse, but it would still be history, not poetry.
Review by David Stuttard. On an August morning just over two and a half millennia ago in 490 BC, a numerically inferior army of democratic Athenians, their liberated slaves, and Plataean allies won an overwhelming victory over Persian invaders on…
A small selection of the thousands of drawings compiled by Regency architect Sir John Soane have gone on display in London, among them exquisite works that bring us visions of ancient monuments abroad and of unrealised splendour in England. Lucia Marchini takes a look.
Having brought together ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian artefacts to create a museum of comparative sculpture, Baron Giovanni Barracco gave his collection of antiquities to the city of Rome in 1902. Now housed in a 16th-century palace in the Italian capital, the little-known Museo Barracco showcases ancient artistry and the activities of collectors, both at the turn of the century and in ancient Rome. Dalu Jones is our guide.
Persepolis paintings perfectly glorious’ was the verdict Prentice Duell cabled from Egypt to James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (OI). He had just seen the work American artist Joseph Lindon Smith (1863-1950) created…
Review by Lucia Marchini. The myth of Heracles, his heroic strength and ability to meet seemingly insurmountable challenges, has proven an enduringly popular one. Emperors and kings made use of his mighty image, and he was even the subject of…
Review by Andrew Robinson. All academics would presumably regard writing as one of the world’s great inventions, perhaps even the greatest invention. Philologist Silvia Ferrara certainly does. An expert on the undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script, she is the founder of a…
“The Dieulafoys were unconventional to the point of scorn: Jeanne routinely wore male clothes…”
From buttons to artillery shells, a range of items from battlefields have been transformed – often by soldiers – into powerful and personal pieces of ‘trench art’. Nicholas J Saunders explores some of the human stories of life and death sealed within these creations.
The Roman fort at Maryport is best known for the collection of altars, dedicated to the god Jupiter, that were found buried in a series of large pits just outside its walls. Where was this religious stonework originally displayed – and what can we learn from the remains of two temples first discovered almost 150 years ago? Carly Hilts explores a wide-ranging report on the site by Ian Haynes and Tony Wilmott.
While many volunteer excavations were mothballed during COVID-19 restrictions, this summer has plenty of opportunities for you to get involved in fieldwork. Carly Hilts and Emilie Clowry have put together some regional highlights of what is on offer for 2022, but see www.archaeology.co.uk/digs for even more options for archaeological experiences.
This copper-alloy Roman vessel mount, produced sometime between AD 43 and AD 410, was found last year by a metal-detectorist on farmland near St Ives, Cornwall. The c.4.5cm-tall mount, most likely for a tripod, may once have supported some kind…
One of Berkshire’s oddities is that it is often forgotten that perhaps its most famous historic site is in the county at all – that of Windsor Castle. Such is the nature of this historic royal fortress, palace, and showpiece that the county fades away around it.
Review by Christopher Catling. Reading this book reminds me of the University of London’s Warburg Institute Library, which has a unique classification system designed by the library’s founder, Aby Warburg (1866-1929), to encourage serendipitous discovery: looking for one book, your…
Review by George Nash. The concept of a ‘Mesolithic’, a Middle Stone Age, has been with us since the early 1930s, and many thousands of sites dating to this period have been discovered since, some submerged under our coastal waters.…
Inventive Vents has a clever way of engaging younger people with scatological anecdotes, in the style of Horrible Histories. Thus we are told that the innocuously named Carting Lane was known colloquially as ‘Farting Lane’ because of the smell of sewer gas.
Last year, Historic England archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to confirm the remains of Tudor and Jacobean formal gardens at Belhus Park in Thurrock, Essex, the site of a manor built in the medieval period and rebuilt in the 16th century.…
The popular archaeology series Time Team has returned with its first new episodes in a decade. Felix Rowe took Current Archaeology behind the scenes at two very different excavations, investigating Iron Age Cornwall and Roman Oxfordshire.
Review by HB. This accessible and richly informative book, produced to accompany the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum (CA 384), treats Stonehenge as a ‘gateway’ into the interconnected worlds of British, Irish, and European prehistory. Wooden poles…
Dismissed by one distinguished architectural writer as a regrettable example of Roman pomposity, ‘typical of the rather pretentious magnificence of the [Roman] Empire’, the ‘triumphal arch’ (more correctly the ‘honorary arch’) has proved to be surprisingly enduring, with a history that extends from the Roman period to the present day. Chris Catling reviews a new book by Peter Howell tracing the history of the arch through its many manifestations.