Pottery

IMAGE: National Trust/Stephen Haywood Text: C Hilts

Britain’s first 5th-century mosaic identified?

New dating evidence from Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire may have identified Britain’s first-known 5th-century mosaic, researchers have announced. Founded in the 2nd century and reaching its zenith 200 years later, the Cotswold site is one of the country’s largest…

The remains of circular structures resembling those still found in the region today (ABOVE) have been found at all of the archaeological

Life and Death in Sefidkuh

An ongoing study in the Makran Sefidkuh region of Iran is shedding light on the culture and archaeological remains of communities in the area, stretching back to prehistory. The project, led by Hossein Vahedi in collaboration with the Research Institute…

Charles Higham opt

In praise of volunteers

My excavations, including Khok Phanom Di, have yielded well over 1,000 human graves, and often the dead were interred with multiple mortuary offerings from fine pottery vessels to thousands of ornaments in gold, silver, bronze, iron, carnelian, glass, shell, and agate.

OEDIPUS AND THE SPHINX. /nThe young Oedipus ponders the riddle of the Sphinx. Red figured Greek pottery painting.

Thebes: city of myths

Sparta is famous for its warrior tradition, Athens for its intellectual and artistic achievement. But what of Thebes? As ancient historian Paul Cartledge explains, Thebes too had a most distinctive image.

RIGHT Part of the curving foundations of the round house were revealed beneath an early medieval mortar mixer.

Roundhouse revealed at Bamburgh Castle

Excavations within the West Ward of Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland have revealed the partial foundations of what appears to have been a substantial roundhouse. Based on its stratigraphy, it is thought to be late Romano-British, but could potentially be earlier…

PHOTO: University of Reading

Anglo-Saxon ‘warrior’ burial uncovered

The grave of a 6th-century man – a possible warrior – has been uncovered on a hilltop near Marlow, overlooking the Thames Valley. Its location within the borderlands of prominent neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms – at different times Wessex, Kent, and…

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Windsor Castle: ‘The most Romantique castle that is in the world’

The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on 19 May took place against a backdrop of buildings that have been inhabited almost continuously since the 11th century. The fire of November 1992 at Windsor Castle (in what the Queen later called her annus horribilis) could have brought an end to that 1,000-year history; instead, the restoration that ensued was accompanied by extensive research into the castle’s fabric and development. The following edited extracts come from a new and exhaustive history of the building complex, which Samuel Pepys, visiting on 26 February 1666, described as ‘the most Romantique castle that is in the world’.

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.

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Neolithic food miles: feeding the ‘builders of Stonehenge’

A newly opened exhibition at Stonehenge documents the diet of the community thought to have been responsible for erecting the main phase of the monument – including the surprisingly far-flung origins of some of their food. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts spoke to Susan Greaney, Richard Madgwick, and Mike Parker Pearson at the exhibition launch to find out more.

Must Farm: an extraordinary tale of the everyday

The remarkable preservation at Must Farm promised insights into day-to-day life that would revolutionise our knowledge of the late Bronze Age. As excavations at the site reach completion, it is already clear that we will never see that era in the same way again. Mark Knight, Susanna Harris, and Grahame Appleby told Matthew Symonds about life in a Bronze Age settlement.

ABOVE Overlooking Dorstone Hill’s short lived Neolithic halls. They were burnt down and converted into burial mounds. LEFT Whereas the early stages of the Neolithic are built on plant and grain husbandry, the later stages are based on the ownership of large cattle herds. This striking image of a prehistoric farmer in Neolithic Central Europe imagines that the patterns found on the Early Neolithic Linear Pottery (Bandkeramik) might also have been used as a form of body decoration.

Invasion, colonisation or imitation? Debating how and why Britain joined ‘The Neolithic Club’

The Neolithic was a period of momentous change in which can be seen the birth of our modern world. It marks the moment when humans took control of the planet (not necessarily for the good), rather than simply existing upon it. Chris Catling reports on a recent debate hosted by the Royal Archaeological Institute focusing on why Britain and Ireland finally became Neolithic almost 1,000 years after farming had become the predominant lifestyle on the Continent.