For me, the crux of this book comes on page 132. Peter Davenport explains that ‘the plan of the Classical temple [was altered] into something quite similar to the more usual plan of temples in the north-west of the empire,…
What can an extraordinary group of sculptures commemorating the dead reveal about ancient life in Palmyra? Thousands of ancient inhabitants’ portraits once graced lavish family tombs in cemeteries just beyond the desert city. Studying this artistry can reveal much about wealth, power, family, and even the balance between local tradition and outside influences in a major trading hub, as Eva Mortensen and Rubina Raja reveal.
An oasis city surrounded by Syrian desert, Palmyra was an important stop on which trade route?
Augustus was the first Roman emperor. When did he come to power?
The earliest recorded find from Piercebridge, the Roman crossing over the River Tees, was a stash of silver coins found in 1792. It was a hint of what would subsequently emerge when two divers, Rolfe Mitchinson and Bob Middlemass, began…
It is always stimulating to be reminded how much more remains to be said about Hadrian’s Wall, a Roman frontier system that is often believed – from an archaeological perspective – to have been ‘done’. Despite centuries of scholarly scrutiny,…
A brief look at some of the latest exciting archaeological stories.
This new study of tools from Roman London is a hefty volume, but it more than justifies the bookshelf space. Thorough coverage of dozens of crafts and tool types will ensure that it becomes a standard reference work for artefact…
Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars offers a series of sensational biographies of Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian, highlighting moments of depravity, viciousness, scheming, and excess.
Few people have recently had as much face time with the ghosts of the Roman emperors as Mary Beard, a well-known professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge. Her latest book – Twelve Caesars: images of power from the…
Throughout history, scripts have become established by communicating language and meaning as transparently as possible to literate readers. But, of course, scripts have an aesthetic dimension, too, which both enhances their appeal and distracts readers from their meaning – as…
After centuries of reuse and years of closure, the Mausoleum of Augustus is now open to visitors. Dalu Jones examines the structure’s long history and how, with its neighbour the Ara Pacis, it forms a modern monumental complex to the ancient emperor in the heart of Rome.
Current Archaeology explores recent news about a WWII minesweeper HMS Mercury discovered in the Irish Sea, the winner of the Kenyon Medal which is awarded in recognition of work in fields of archaeology and Classics, and new revelations about a plague hospital in Bristol.
The astonishing thing about Paul is his photographic memory. I recall he once joined a Roman sherd from Butrint with a piece from the maritime villa at Diaporit, three miles away.
The travertine stone bears an inscription detailing Claudius’ titles and honours
The idea that there was no pre-existing Roman settlement on the site of medieval Venice is hard to credit when you realise that the Italian peninsula was heavily populated under the Roman Empire
Eight glass vessels which were destroyed in the Beirut port explosion in Lebanon, 4 August 2020, are currently being restored by the British Museum, with the support of The European Fine Art Foundation.
Belonging and Belongings is the latest BAR publication in the Archaeology of Roman Britain series. Focusing on the portable archaeology of the ‘Iceni’, Natasha Harlow presents an enormous volume of work that challenges the traditional, Roman historians’ accounts of the…
Built in AD 122, Hadrian’s Wall stretched 73 miles from the North Sea to Solway Firth and marked the furthest limit of the Roman Empire.
With small tiles of marble and glass, Roman mosaicists created intricate mythological images, realistic scenes from nature, and other complex compositions to decorate the floors and walls of tombs, sanctuaries, and homes. Dalu Jones explores some mosaic masterpieces normally hidden in stores in Rome’s museums.
This report describes the results of excavations conducted in 2015-2016 on the Brooklyn Hall site, south of the River Derwent, opposite the fort at Malton, and immediately west of the main road from York. All those involved are to be…
This remarkable and important study of the art and culture of northern Roman Britain has been published almost two decades after my own – The Heirs of King Verica (Tempus, 2002; 2nd edition: Amberley, 2010), which dealt almost entirely with…
At over 500 pages, David Mason’s volume on Roman activity in County Durham is the first comprehensive analysis of Roman military and civilian activity for this part of north-east England; many of the sites have not previously been examined in…
Writing a book about the history of a Roman town in Britain is not an easy task. To create a readable and balanced account, an author has to contend with various levels of knowledge, inevitably glossing over or filling in…
In this stimulating addition to the burgeoning literature of Hadrian’s Wall, Matthew Symonds, editor of Current World Archaeology, brings fresh emphases to the study of this endlessly fascinating Roman monument in the north of Britain, and in doing so shows…
He was enthroned as Roman emperor at just 16. But history has not been kind to Nero's reputation. According to the surviving sources, he was a matricide and a multiple wife-murderer, and he also stands accused of various other horrific crimes and misdemeanours. So does Nero's name really deserve to have become a byword for depravity?
Roman literature gives us an overwhelmingly negative view of Nero, but was there any good to this matricidal ruler? As a new exhibition on the emperor opens at the British Museum, Minerva's Editor Lucia Marchini speaks to curators Thorsten Opper and Francesca Bologna to find out more about how and why this figure, popular with the people, came to be known as an enemy of the Senate and the state.
What was the name of Nero’s mother, who later became Claudius’ fourth wife and plotted to secure the throne for her teenage son in AD 54?
His talents may have been limited and he may have been fundamentally lazy: but was he bad? Could we not say that he made the best use of his limited talents – and the empire flourished?
The Roman emperor Nero has long been reviled as a notorious tyrant, prone to lavish and often murderous excesses, who headed a chaotic regime that saw Britain erupt into open insurrection led by the rebel queen Boudica. A new exhibition at the British Museum presents a more nuanced picture, however, and Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts spoke to the curator, Thorsten Opper, to find out more about what Nero’s reign had meant for Roman Britain.
The photograph shows the 1935 Basilica, named after the year it was excavated and believed to date to the 6th century AD.
Thanks to modern scientific analyses, the every-day circumstances of Tuscany’s Dark Age peoples are no longer mute. One thing is certain from this excavation: objects and nature played an active part in transforming the primitive experiences of Tuscany’s 9th-century peasants and their early feudal masters into some of the most sophisticated lifestyles in Europe by the 12th century.
Immediately beyond the Porta Maggiore in Rome, at a busy intersection, lies the impressive tomb of Eurysaces, a baker who lived through the last days of the Roman Republic. In the ensuing centuries, his lavish funerary monument was swallowed up…
Excavations at an animal burial ground in the Egyptian port of Berenice have uncovered evidence of cats, dogs, and monkeys being kept as pets.
The project aims to restore the image of the arena as it was in the 1st century AD.
When construction began in AD 122, Hadrian's Wall marked the furthermost limit of the Roman Empire. Stretching 73 miles from the North Sea to the Solway Firth, it divided conquered territory to the south from that occupied by unbeaten tribes to the north. Almost 2,000 years on, the Wall remains a potent symbol of the north-south divide between England and Scotland, referenced frequently in the ongoing and often-heated debate over Scottish independence.