pigment analysis

Bacon Hole: Rediscovering Britain’s forgotten Ice Age cave art

Hidden within the limestone cliffs of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales is a cave that has witnessed dramatic changes in climate, landscape, and human history. Bacon Hole, overlooking what is today the Bristol Channel, is home to one of the most intriguing and controversial stories in British prehistoric archaeology. It is a story that began more than a century ago with the discovery of possible Ice Age paintings, continued through decades of doubt, and has now been reopened through modern scientific investigation. George Nash explains.

Worth a thousand words: Examining medieval wall-paintings at Goodrich Castle

Tiny traces of medieval wall-paintings have been discovered at Goodrich Castle in Herefordshire, transforming our understanding of how its chapel was decorated. Carly Hilts spoke to Sophie Stewart to learn more.

Britain’s oldest rock art rediscovered on the Gower?

A series of ten red horizontal lines, recently rediscovered in Bacon Hole on the southern coast of the Gower Peninsula in Wales, has been interpreted as rock art possibly dating to the Upper Palaeolithic period c.17,100 years ago. If this…

The false door of Neferiu

Dr Campbell Price describes an architectural portal between the realms of the living and the dead.

The Past

Newly-discovered Spanish cave art depicts honey-gathering

According to the researchers, this is the most elaborate and well-preserved depiction of honey-gathering documented within Levantine art to date.

The Archaeology of Seeing

We, as modern humans, tend to look at ancient art with a 21st-century mindset. It is all too easy to stare (in wonder) at Palaeolithic rock art and conceive some idea, however complex, and consider it to be a plausible interpretation.