Sometime in the 1st century AD, a crass graffiti artist carved a 2m-long graffito into the wall of a stairwell within the House of Julia Felix at Pompeii. The mudslinger didn’t mince words. In it, they mocked a man who…
Taylor Downing reviews the latest film and television releases.
Between the 12th and the 16th centuries, the city of Bruges in Belgium was an important commercial hub, home to a number of foreign merchant communities, several of whom set up their own ‘nation houses’, which served as administrative seats…
An exhibition at Pompeii explores the less glamorous side of life in the ancient city.
The first archaeological project ever mounted on São Tomé is examining a 16th-century sugar mill. Results are shedding fresh light on the origins of the tropical plantation system, which would go on to shape the Atlantic world at a terrible human cost, as M Dores Cruz told Matthew Symonds.
'Indo + Caribbean: The creation of a culture' is free and will run until 19 November as part of the museum’s 'London, Sugar, and Slavery' gallery.
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological news from across the globe.
The discovery grants us a glimpse of the people who were behind the day-to-day running of the villa
How many enslaved Africans are estimated to have been forcibly transported to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries?
Cutting-edge analysis of 18th-century West African textiles collected by the abolitionist campaigner Thomas Clarkson has shed vivid light on their manufacture, make-up, and where they may have been made. Sarah Coleman, Margarita Gleba, and Malika Kraamer explain what has been revealed so far.
During 2020, 'squeezes' – copies – made in the 1930s of Butrint’s exceptional inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Asclepius were rediscovered by chance. Enrico Giorgi shares the story of these texts and their facsimiles.
The sealed funerary chamber ensured the preservation of the remains buried in the tomb, including some hair as well as a skeleton.
The skeleton of a Roman man with iron shackles locked around his ankles has been described as ‘perhaps the most convincing candidate for the remains of a Roman slave yet to be found in Britain’. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts reports on recently published analysis illuminating this unique burial.
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…
Britain’s involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade and the historical injustices of colonialism and the British Empire have been much in the news in recent months. In Britain and the Ocean Road, maritime historian Ian Friel asks how Britain got caught up in these nefarious activities. Chris Catling reports on what the new book reveals.
There has been much debate about what to call the people of medieval Scandinavia now known widely as ‘Vikings’. The term stems from the Old Norse vikingr, used to describe someone who went on seafaring expeditions, but this was not…
No doubt those early Christians would say it was relatively mild revenge for the sufferings of the martyrs.
National Trust report on colonialism The National Trust has released their Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, including Links with Historic Slavery (read more in ‘Sherds’ on p.64). Commissioned…
In 1995 the discovery of part of a Royal Navy warship hidden in the Wheelwrights’ Shop at The Historic Dockyard Chatham sparked a hunt to determine both the name of the vessel and what it was doing there. Now, this unique find has proven to be the final twist in the tale of an exceptional warship, as Alex Patterson explained to Matthew Symonds.