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Object Lesson – ‘Ahu ‘ula

What is it? This glorious 18th-century Hawaiian cloak, measuring 175cm in length and c.223cm in width, is made of olona¯ fibre and black rooster feathers, with a border of yellow feathers from the now-extinct ‘o‘o (a honeyeater) and red ones…

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You are what you eat? Excavating the Oxford Jewry

Excavations in the historic heart of Oxford have shed light on the city’s origins and development – including uncovering some of its earliest-known Anglo-Saxon structures, remarkable evidence for the medieval city’s Jewish inhabitants, and aspects of city life away from the colleges, as Edward Biddulph explains.

War Reporters: Julius Caesar

He was a charismatic leader, a seasoned military veteran, and a formidable politician. It is little wonder that he is rarely thought of as being an ancient example of the modern-day war reporter. Seema Syeda examines battlefield scoops throughout the ages.

Left A late 19th century Royal Arsenal ballast lighter, pictured at Tripcockness in 2010.

The Thames Discovery Programme at ten

The Thames Discovery Programme – whose volunteers record the archaeology of the Thames foreshore – has recently celebrated its tenth birthday. Eliott Wragg, Nathalie Cohen, and Josh Frost explore some of the initiative’s most important findings from its first decade of life.

Above Egyptian boatbuilding. Here, the keel is being trimmed with an adze, as shown in a 3rd millennium BC depiction in the Tomb of Ti at Saqqara. Traditionally, the study of Egyptian boats has been heavily dependent on such images.

Ship 17: a wreck in the Nile

The emporium of Thonis-Heracleion lay at the westernmost entrance to the Nile. When this city sank into the Mediterranean, it created an extraordinary underwater repository of ancient activity, complete with ports and canals crammed with traces of ancient craft. Alexander Belov told Matthew Symonds what the first ship from the city to be excavated reveals about rivercraft that once caught Herodotus’ eye.

OPPOSITE Sark’s connectivity is summed up in this image of a figure standing at the southern end of the island looking north west to Guernsey on the horizon. Barry Cunliffe believes that Sark might have been one of the many sacred islands along the Atlantic interface that Strabo wrote about at the end of the 1st century BC. BELOW Sheer cliffs rise steeply on every side, home to many seabirds. The gently undulating plain is fertile, well watered and extensively cultivated. Between the cliffs and the fields, the ‘skirt’ lands were traditionally used for sheep grazing.

Sark: the unexplored isle – investigating millennia of isolation and connectivity

Even today, getting to the Channel Island of Sark is an adventure, involving a 55-minute journey by sea from Guernsey, and then a climb from the quay through a tunnel in the rock to reach the top of the sheer cliffs that surround the island on all sides. Given the challenges of getting to Sark, the island provides the perfect opportunity to study connectivity and isolation down the ages – one of Sir Barry Cunliffe’s perennial preoccupations, sparking his excavations there. Who came here, when, and why? And what does it tell us about the mobility of past visitors? Chris Catling reports.

6. Dedication to the deified Augusta (Livia), circa AD 50 54, from the Porticus at Herculaneum. W. 67cm. 7. A 50cm section of the Marble Plan of Rome, circa AD 203 11, showing a plan of the now lost Porticus of Livia. Dedicated in 7 BC, it was a complex containing a temple, colonnades, a library and schools. 8. Detail of a marble panel from the north processional frieze of the Ara Pacis in Rome, commissioned in 13 BC and dedicated in 9 BC. It shows Agrippa (left) and probably Julia (right). Beween them is their son Gaius, the grandson of Augustus. H. circa 1.6m.

Roman women: following the female line

Guy de la Bédoyère tracks the Roman women who were held in high esteem because they exemplified the virtues of the state and thereby ensured the succession of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Left The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great has been described by the Financial Times as ‘probably among the nicest in England’.

Nooks, Corners, and Cloister Cafés

The Cloister Cafe at London’s St Bartholomew the Great (used as a location for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shakespeare in Love, Sherlock Holmes, and Muppets: Most Wanted) is described as ‘an extraordinary cafe for an extraordinary church.

Above Painted sculptures sealed burial shafts in grand tombs, some of them towers, outside the ancient city of Palmyra. Here, a range of portraits of men and women, young and old, are presented in rows to give an idea of how they were arranged in the tower tombs.

The Road to Palmyra

Halfway between the Mediterranean and the River Euphrates, the Efqu spring offered refreshing respite for ancient traders crossing the dusty Syrian desert. The city of Palmyra flourished at the oasis, its merchants amassing their wealth through trade networks that brought…

Above Digital X ray render picks out a ghostly image of Unstan chambered cairn.

Capturing Orkney’s chambered cairns

What can cutting-edge photographic technology add to our understanding of Orkney’s Neolithic chambered tombs? Georgina Ritchie explores the possibilities of photogrammetry, with contributions from Steve Farrar and Hugo Anderson-Whymark.

Below Overlooking the excavation at Craig Rhos y Felin, where archaeologists have found evidence for Neolithic quarrying and a source for some of the Stonehenge bluestones.

Secondhand Stonehenge? Welsh origins of a Wiltshire monument

It has long been understood that the Stonehenge ‘bluestones’ – a catch-all term used to describe any of the monument’s uprights that are not thought to have been sourced locally – represent a variety of different types of rock, but their origins have been a subject for heated debate. Now archaeological and geological research have combined to pin down some of their sources, and to shed new light on how – and why – the stones were brought to Salisbury Plain. Mike Parker Pearson explains.

Below Dug into beach shingle, the graves held relatively well preserved human remains contained in wooden coffins. The bones of nine individuals were recovered during the recent excavation.

Exercise Magwitch and the prisoners of Rat Island

Popular legend has long told of the presence of graves on an island in Portsmouth Harbour, holding the remains of convicted criminals or Napoleonic-era prisoners of war. In the wake of severe storms that exposed human remains below the cliff, would archaeological investigation confirm the tale? Richard Osgood reports.

1. The Julius Caesar dish or tazza, circa 1587 99, gilded silver by an anonymous (Netherlandish?) goldsmith. D. 37.6m. Museo Galdiano, Madrid.

The wrong Caesars

As a dozen Renaissance gilded silver treasures, the Aldobrandini Tazze or Twelve Caesars, go on show at Waddesdon Manor, Professor Mary Beard unscrews the puzzle of how the Roman emperors and dishes got mixed up

Above A double Beaker grave from Trumpington Meadows in Cambridgeshire, excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. It contained two individuals in their late teens, one male and one female, as well as two distinctive Beaker vessels. Such pots are commonly found next to crouched human burials, giving these graves their name.

Prehistoric pop culture: deciphering the DNA of the Bell Beaker Complex

More than 4,500 years ago, a hugely popular cultural phenomenon – today known as the Bell Beaker Complex – captured the prehistoric imagination, flourishing across much of Europe. Archaeologists are still deliberating over how this Complex, first identified in the 19th century, developed so quickly and effectively. Now the largest ancient DNA study to-date has shed revolutionary new light on the question, with surprising implications for our understanding of ancient populations – particularly that of Britain, which seems to have undergone an almost complete genetic turnover in just a few centuries. Kathryn Krakowka reports.

Below London’s Black Friars, showing the precinct at its most developed, in the early 16th century.

Urban orders: touring the friaries of medieval London

Almost nothing remains above ground of London’s medieval friaries: only the names of places like Blackfriars Bridge and station, the street – and City pub – called Crutched Friars, and the City street of Austin Friars, now overshadowed by Tower 42 (the former NatWest Tower), testify to their presence. By combining maps, archives, and archaeology, Nick Holder has succeeded in reconstructing their stories and assessing their impact on the London landscape, as Chris Catling reports.

Left Around 8,000 terracotta warriors were created to guard the burial place of China’s first emperor. Among them was this armoured infantryman, whose right hand once clasped a weapon. The finished sculpture was painted and traces of the original red can still be seen.

Army for the dead: inside the first Chinese emperor’s underground kingdom

Creating the Terracotta Army was an extraordinary achievement. Around 8,000 life-size ceramic men and horses were created in battle formation to protect the burial place of China’s first emperor. But what can modern technology reveal about these faithful soldiers? As a cadre of the figures go on display at Liverpool’s World Museum, Xiuzhen (Janice) Li revealed to Matthew Symonds some of the secrets they took to the grave.