Staff and students from Bournemouth University, together with local volunteers, have been excavating Iron Age settlements around Winterborne Kingston in Dorset as part of the Durotriges Project since 2009. This past excavation season, however, while investigating an enclosed Iron Age…
REVIEW BY KATE WADDINGTON This very readable book discusses the archaeology from a beautiful stretch of coastal north-west Wales: the Llŷn peninsula. As this volume demonstrates, it has produced a diverse range of well-preserved monuments that are of national importance.…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH One of the most impressive archaeological site-types in the British Isles is the Iron Age hillfort. Archaeological evidence has shown that it took many generations to construct and remodel these structures. Even after Roman occupation, hillforts…
REVIEW BY EMILY C KRACHT Lucayan Legacies evaluates the lives of the early Indigenous peoples in the Bahama archipelago and celebrates their legacy, identity, and descendants today. The book presents one of the most comprehensive discussions of Bahamian archaeology to…
Excavations at Conington, Cambridgeshire, uncovered the remains of a young woman who, unusually, had been laid face-down in her early medieval grave. What can this burial tell us about her life and death, and how she may have been perceived by her community? Carly Hilts reports.
REVIEW BY ALLISON FOX Tim Clarkson’s aim, to ‘present a narrative political history of the Isle of Man’, is achieved in this book, which covers the pre-Viking era through to the end of Scandinavian influence on the island, and the…
Review by John Blair On the whole, classics are better left unrevised. New material unbalances a familiar format, and the less it feels like the same book the less one sees the point. But there are exceptions, of which this…
Medieval monasteries and their communities have been (and continue to be) well studied, but not so the structures associated with those who chose a more solitary route to salvation: hermits and anchorites. Dr Simon Roffey’s new book, An Archaeological History of Hermitages and Eremitic Communities in Medieval Britain and Beyond, sets out to remedy that omission, as Chris Catling reports.
Such objects were used to play a variety of medieval board games known as ‘tables’, some of which resembled modern-day backgammon.
Ongoing excavations on the grounds of the Besselsleigh estate in south-west Oxfordshire are revealing a rich palimpsest of settlement activity spanning the Roman period through to the modern day, bringing to life a once-thriving place that had been forgotten over…
In which English county would you find Silbury Hill, the tallest Neolithic human-made mound in Europe?
The archaeological gems on show in a neglected region of Greece help to shed light on the success of Alexander the Great, as Alex Rowson reveals.
The Scots borders have it all in terms of archaeological content. Within a discrete area, this column spans the Neolithic through to the post-medieval period
Fragments of Trevisker ware pottery, with slightly different styles perhaps reflecting the different phases of the site, were found throughout each of the four roundhouses.
In 2022, archaeologists from the University of Toronto and the University of Trujillo began the first excavations of Cerro Prieto Espinal, a mountainside fortress-temple and settlement in north coastal Peru. Across the 3km-wide site, the team identified massive concentric walls,…
The settlement was discovered by a team of researchers at the site of Le Peu in the Charente department, a landscape scattered with Middle Neolithic (c.3700-4700 BC) dolmens and long barrows.
This evidence adds to recent research focused on Iona suggesting that multiple monasteries across Britain may have been able to continue or re-establish themselves after initial Viking raids at the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 9th centuries.
Review by Simon Esmonde Cleary The excavations at Druce Farm in Dorset were carried out by local volunteers between 2012 and 2018, along with geophysical, drone, and laser surveys of the environs. The full publication of the results only four…
Bronze pins, a bracelet, metal spirals, amber beads, and more than 70 pottery vessels were recovered from the well remains.
A large mill complex was discovered in the south-east corner, on the banks of the River Nore.
In 2020, we reported on intriguing discoveries emerging from a Roman villa site near Corby, Northamptonshire. Now further excavations have been carried out at Priors Hall, illuminating the area’s industrial heritage, its interconnectivity with other villa sites, and its Iron Age origins. Paddy Lambert reports.
Since the first hints of Neolithic masonry emerged at the Ness of Brodgar in 2003, two decades of excavations have uncovered an extraordinary complex of monumental stone buildings dating back 5,000 years. The site continues to revolutionise our understanding of this period of prehistory both in Orkney and further afield, and last summer Carly Hilts visited the site and spoke to Nick Card to find out the latest news from the Ness.
Excavations at Rendlesham in eastern England have unearthed the remains of a high-status early medieval settlement, including a royal hall built for the first kings of East Anglia.
Review by Ronan Toolis The excavation of Clachtoll in 2017 examined the interior of a broch buried beneath a conflagration that had occurred during the early 1st century AD and untouched since. This book examines an impressive assemblage of finds…
Archaeologists tend to reserve the term ‘civilisation’ for the settled villages and towns of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Many of the innovations that we think are characteristic of human civilisation were, however, the inventions of Ice Age hunter-gatherers. Just…
Review by Sadie Watson Scholars of Roman London might wait years for a major synthesis such as Dominic Perring’s London in the Roman World to be published. This is hardly surprising when you consider the amount of research that has…
Analysing pottery fragments recovered from the site, archaeologists have dated the construction of the settlement to between the 5th and 7th centuries AD.
‘The results of this season’s excavation are of international importance. Rendlesham is the most extensive and materially wealthy settlement of its date known in England.'
If there is a challenger to Piddington’s crown as the ‘prime’ site of Northamptonshire, then the multi-period site of Raunds in the north-east of the county, with its intriguing history of early medieval and later settlement, is a strong contender.
The 2,500-year-old fortifications are perched on the edge of a cliff, and are fast disappearing due to processes of natural coastal erosion.
The team has unearthed evidence of settlements ranging in date from the Neolithic to the medieval period, though most features relate to the Bronze and Iron Age (c.1500 BC-AD 100).
The settlement has been dated to the Early Classic Period (c. AD 250-600).
Occupation of the fortress appears to have been relatively short-lived, with the main phase of activity probably dating to the 1st century BC.
A 'luxurious estate’ featuring painted wall frescoes and marble-paved halls was also unearthed within the vicinity.
Scientific analysis of sediments, pollen, and ancient DNA preserved at Blick Mead in Wiltshire has revealed a detailed picture of the Mesolithic landscape close to Stonehenge. David Jacques and Sam Hudson report.
On the edge of a former prehistoric river channel, archaeologists found mammal bones, plant fossils, insect remains, and mollusc shells, along with stone tools, indicating that humans were exploiting this resource at least 500,000 years ago.