Across 7 Phoenician city state destroyed by Rome in 146 BC (8) 9 Light cavalryman originating in Hungary in the 15th century (6) 10 Sailing vessel developed in Macau in the 16th century (6) 11 Germanic people who invaded Italy…
The study suggests that the site may represent an early colonisation attempt by modern humans.
Review by HB. From traces of Palaeolithic life along the coast to deserted medieval villages and a Cold War airfield, A History of Norfolk in 100 Places is a whistle-stop tour of the county’s most intriguing buildings, archaeological sites, and…
The find has been dubbed the ‘biggest mammoth discovery for a generation’
Humans and jungles are often seen as a poor combination. It is easy to write off the environment as challenging at best and a ‘green hell’ at worst. But could it be that tropical forests have repeatedly helped rather than hindered humanity’s progress? Patrick Roberts told Matthew Symonds why it is time to rethink the archaeology of the jungle.
According to a recent estimate by the World Gold Council, the total quantity of this precious pale yellow metal discovered around the world throughout all of human history amounts to just 201,296 tonnes. If the whole lot were melted down to form a single cube, it would measure just 22 metres on each side.
Gillis Kersting explores the lost worlds of Doggerland and prehistoric Malta through two new exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.
Researchers propose that knowledge of fire was transmitted across vast regions within a short period of time due to cultural diffusion.
According to the researchers, this is the most elaborate and well-preserved depiction of honey-gathering documented within Levantine art to date.
Growing Up in the Ice Age represents both the first book-length work on the lives of children throughout the Plio-Pleistocene, and a superlative example of how the study of children can be fully integrated into more traditional areas of Palaeolithic…
Kent is a county with a rich and unique archaeological record. Situated as it is, surrounded by sea to the north and east, cut off from London and Essex by rivers to the north-west, and divided from Surrey and Sussex…
The Les Pradelles hyena bone is ‘potentially the earliest known example of this type of mark-making’, and suggests Neanderthals possessed the cognitive abilities for numeracy.
The footprints were left by a group children, aged between six to seven years old, playing in the cave recess sometime during the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic c. 60,000-15,000 years ago.
Wonderwerk Cave was first excavated in the 1940s. Its archaeological stratigraphy comprises evidence of human activity spanning from the Early Stone Age in South Africa to the present day.
Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.
A few days ago I saw a notice that said ‘BeGambleAware’. It warned of the dangers of addiction, but it could have referred to the author of this book. Readers of Current Archaeology will already be aware that Clive Gamble,…
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.
As a first-year undergraduate at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology in London, I spent seven weeks during the summer of 1991 at Boxgrove, enjoying stints working at several sites there, including GTP17, Q2/D, and Q1/A (as well as a week as…
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…
Cave painting is one of the earliest forms of human culture, one of the first outlets of our creativity. But the meaning that these paintings had to the communities who created them remains a bit of a mystery. Who painted…
Archaeologists excavating a 15,000-year-old campsite at Les Varines, Jersey, have recovered ten fragments of stone decorated with hundreds of interweaving lines. Recently published analysis of these ‘plaquettes’ suggests that they may represent the earliest artworks yet identified in the British Isles. Carly Hilts reports.
Viking ship burial in Norway A Viking ship burial was recently discovered at Gjellestad, Norway, during a ground-penetrating radar survey. It is now being excavated by the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. The ship is just one part of…
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.
Humans have been calling the Arctic home for tens of thousands of years. But over the millennia, changes in climate have repeatedly forced groups to adapt or make way for incomers bearing superior tools. Amber Lincoln and Jago Cooper told Matthew Symonds about the archaeology of the circumpolar world.
Over the last decade, developments in genetic sequencing, as well as in the successful extraction of DNA from increasingly older and even contaminated remains, have allowed our knowledge of ancient hominins to expand exponentially. But even with these advances, our…
Ochre mining in Mexico Evidence for the mining of red ochre has been discovered in the now-submerged caves of Quintana Roo in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Dated to between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, this is the earliest-known exploitation of this…
As far as I could tell, every minor contour of the original has been replicated, as of course have the paintings themselves.
Charles Higham looks at how a routine DNA analysis resulted in a stunning discovery about the prehistory of our human past
A team from UCL and the Natural History Museum has successfully sequenced his DNA for the first time, revealing a wealth of details about his physical appearance.