Mohenjo-daro (c.2600-1900 BC) has long invited questions about the relationship between urbanisation and social inequality. With an estimated population of 40,000 at its peak, it was one of the largest cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation. However, unlike other ancient…
Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has been used to great effect to map underlying archaeology on open-area sites, but how well does it perform in urban environments? John Creighton, Thomas Matthews Boehmer, Martin Millett, and Lieven Verdonck describe the trials and triumphs of recent surveys in York’s historic centre.
This comprehensive site report details the excavation that was carried out by Oxford Archaeology, on behalf of the Isle of Man Airport division (part of the Isle of Man government’s Department of Transport), at Ronaldsway Airport in the south of…
Prehistoric cultural exchange in Germany Excavations at Eilsleben in northern Germany have revealed a fortified settlement site, dating to c.5375 BC, that may have been founded by some of the first farmers to arrive in this part of Europe. The…
The remains of a complete Byzantine monastic residential complex have been discovered by an Egyptian mission working at the al-Qarya archaeological site, in the Tima district of Sohag. The team found the remains of rectangular mud-brick structures with dimensions ranging…
The remains of the Valley Temple from the Sun Temple complex of the Fifth Dynasty king Nyuserra (c.2445-2421 BC) have been uncovered at Abu Ghurab, in the Abusir necropolis. The location of the temple – one of only two or…
Ben Lomond is one of Scotland’s most famous mountains, lying on the edge of the Highland boundary fault, with its shouldered profile dominating the skyline of the Central Belt and the Trossachs. Over the last three decades, National Trust for Scotland staff have been unpicking the archaeological and historical stories preserved within this landscape, bringing them to the attention of the public once more. Derek Alexander and Alasdair Eckersall report.
REVIEW BY STEPHEN RIPPON The character of the countryside all around us plays an important part in many communities’ sense of place. This is particularly clear in the south-west of Britain, where Cornwall’s distinctive place-names – those that pre-date its…
A recent geophysical survey in Margam Country Park, near Port Talbot in South Wales, has revealed the clear outline of a large Roman villa. The building’s footprint was identified during a geophysical survey carried out as part of the ArchaeoMargam…
A little urbanism can be a dangerous thing. Sometimes all it takes is a patch. In the modern world, for all its cities, there are still many places where one does not need to travel far to meet landscapes of villages, fields, and farm animals.
REVIEW BY JONATHAN LAST Cable routes and similar projects are a challenge to archaeologists because their narrow footprints are not necessarily representative of the broad landscapes they pass through. Yet they often offer glimpses into areas little touched by other…
The Lords of the Isles ruled large swathes of the western islands and highlands of Scotland between 1140 and 1493, but documentary evidence for their activities is thin and the period is shrouded in myth. By excavating two islands in Loch Finlaggan, reputed to be the site of inauguration ceremonies and meetings of the Council of the Isles, a team led by David Caldwell of National Museums Scotland has enriched the story of this powerful Gaelic state. Chris Catling reports.
REVIEW BY KEITH RAY Neolithic Tombs of Wales is a revised edition of a book with similar scope that was published 20 years ago by the same publisher. It is fundamentally a field guide to around 100 sites whose remains…
An exhibition currently running at the University of Nottingham Museum showcases finds from Breedon Hill and Burrough Hill, hillforts that are both located in the East Midlands where such monuments are relatively scarce and poorly understood compared to other regions. Carly Hilts visited the displays, speaking to John Thomas, Clare Pickersgill, and Helen Sharp.
REVIEW BY RACHEL BALLANTYNE Fabulously comprehensive and systematic, this is primarily a resource assessment of later prehistoric structural footprints for homes – places of social reproduction, craft activities, food storage and consumption. Of note are the many composite illustrations that…
REVIEW BY TADGH O’KEEFFE Back in the 1980s, when the study of settlement and landscape in high and later medieval Ireland began to take off in earnest, little attention was paid to the world of the native Irish. Things have…
Surveying an area of remote Mexican jungle that was previously devoid of Maya sites has produced remarkable results. Ivan Šprajc told Matthew Symonds how he set about discovering lost settlements in an archaeological black hole.
For the first time in 40 years, a new effort is under way by archaeologists from the University of Toronto, in collaboration with local scholars, to document the pre-Hispanic city of Pacatnamu in the Jequetepeque Valley of northern coastal Peru.…
Archaeologists, like most people, have an urge to grasp the world through something tangible or, even better, countable. There can be a great comfort in numbers, and numbers also convince; many have been the attempts to define cities by countable characteristics: an area of at least 10ha, 10,000 inhabitants, a certain number of public meeting places, a particular thickness of city walls in metres.
New research is exploring how ancient Pueblo communities in the Southwest United States may have been connected by sound. Chaco Canyon in north-west New Mexico was once a bustling ancient Pueblo settlement, occupied c.AD 850-1150. Among the items found in…
Excavations associated with a major road scheme in Co. Wexford and Kilkenny identified more than 35 previously undocumented archaeological sites spanning 9,000 years. James Eogan, Senior Archaeologist at Transport Infrastructure Ireland, reports.
REVIEW BY CH ‘Linn gu linn, bho ainm gu ainm – “from one generation to the next, from one name to another” – people make this story what it is.’ So writes Alistair Moffat in the introduction to this energetic…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS In his 2014 book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (reviewed in AE 85) Eric Cline charted the ‘perfect storm of calamities’ that led to the sudden collapse of the thriving interconnected Bronze Age civilisations. In…
REVIEW BY STEPHEN RIPPON ‘Landscape history’ is often written as a chronological story, of which there are innumerable examples at the scale of individual parishes and counties. This innovative study is refreshingly different, both in its more thematic approach and…
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on the complexities of communal living.
The Cotswolds these days have a reputation as a playground of the rich and famous. The Roman occupation of this area certainly had its social high society too.
Your thoughts on issues raised by CA.
REVIEW BY IAN RALSTON This monograph on Welsh hillforts is by a man who knows them well. It builds on Driver’s innovative doctoral examination of those in Ceredigion, and his general book on Cardigan Bay, to consider the entirety of…
It is often thought that AD 900-1100 was a time when nothing much happened in the area that is today the Netherlands; many overviews of Dutch history have a tendency to skip straight from the Romans to the later Middle…
Rubina Raja & Søren M Sindbæk on heterogeneity.
Archaeologists have found what may be Europe’s oldest pile-dwelling site, dating to almost 8,000 years ago, preserved by the waters of Lake Ohrid, which straddles the border between Albania and North Macedonia. The discovery comes as part of the EXPLO…
How did the construction of Hadrian’s Wall affect the communities living in its shadow? In CA 277, we reported on the apparent depopulation of Iron Age settlements in lowland Northumberland and Tyne & Wear after the Roman frontier was fortified c.AD 122. Now, Philippa Hunter, Rupert Lotherington, Clive Waddington, and Nick Hodgson describe how recent research and two developer-funded excavations in County Durham and Northumberland add to our understanding of the Wall’s social and economic impact.
The Konya Plain presents an extraordinary glimpse of what the shift from a mobile existence to Neolithic lifestyles could mean for individuals. Douglas Baird, Ian Hodder, and Michele Massa share some exciting results from the long-running investigations of a set of sites in central Anatolia.
Recent survey has revolutionised our knowledge of rock art created on an imposing natural landmark in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). What can archaeology reveal about how humans used a landscape that periodically became more or less hospitable in response to climate shifts? George H Nash, Yale Fox, Dillon von Petzinger, Genevieve von Petzinger, Aitor Ruiz Redondo, Juan F Ruiz Lopez, and Yamandu H Hilbert, provide us with a first glimpse of the fruits of their work.
Review by Andrew Tibbs. A nalysis of ‘big data’ (large datasets of information) is a technique used to expose patterns for archaeologists to interpret, and it is utilised effectively in this book to undertake a detailed study of the rural…
Based on the architectural association between Rabana-Merquly’s rock reliefs, fortifications, and settlements, and some specific types of pottery, the team have tentatively dated the site’s main building phase to the 1st century BC.