settlement

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Sifting through the remains of Scotland’s kelping industry

For a brief period, from around 1750 to 1820, the west coast and islands of Scotland experienced a boom in demand for kelp, a seaweed-derived substance used in the soap and glass-making industries. Kevin Grant – formerly St Kilda Archaeologist with the National Trust for Scotland, now Archaeology Manager at Historic Environment Scotland – has been studying the fragile and elusive remains of this once-thriving industry, as Chris Catling reports.

IMAGES: Tom Ferraby; Rose Ferraby, using data from Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire, CC BY SA 3.0

Illuminating Isurium: exploring Aldborough’s Roman remains

Isurium Brigantum was a thriving and prosperous Roman town in what is now North Yorkshire, but it has attracted relatively little modern archaeological attention. Now, though, a decade of geophysical surveys have shed vivid light on its make-up, and a wide-ranging new book presents a compelling narrative for how the once-bustling settlement evolved. Carly Hilts reports.

ABOVE The location of Cedrocucho. This photograph shows the steep sided and heavily vegetated mountain where ruins were recently encountered during forest clearance work (location circled in red). BELOW This 1m wide wall seems to mark the lower eastern boundary of the site. At one end, it connects to a cliff, while at the other it reportedly reaches a ravine.

Cedrocucho: a pre-Inca tropical rainforest site?

The Incas had an eye for exotic rainforest produce, but many questions remain about how and when such goods were exploited by peoples living in the Peruvian highlands. Now a major archaeological complex, discovered during deforestation, promises to shed new light on the subject. Lidio M Valdez ponders who was farming the forest.

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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 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.

Main One of the most remote places in Britain, Foula island, 15 miles west of Shetland, is dominated by high mountains to the south and west. Inset At 1220ft, the cliffs at Kame are the highest in Britain. Even the low shelf to the left is higher than Beachy Head.

Stones & solstices: on Scotland’s remotest island

Today, only 20 people live on Foula, and the ferry takes just one car at a time. More than 3,000 years ago, Bronze Age people erected a monument of 290 standing stones on the tiny, rocky, storm-battered island of Foula. As John Oswin reports, members of the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society – working a long way from home – have been exploring.