New research examining the transition between the Iron Age and Romano-British period has shed new light on the detrimental impact of Roman occupation and urbanisation on population health. Previous studies had already highlighted the likely health consequences of ‘Romanisation’ in…
Recent discharges of raw sewage into the UK’s rivers and streams are a reminder of the sanitary crisis of the 1840s to 1860s, when water pollution was identified as the major cause of rising mortality rates from ‘fever’. The response – albeit slow – involved a huge investment in waterworks that transformed public health. As revealed in a book by James Douet on water and sewage architecture, it also resulted in distinctive new building types, as Chris Catling reports.
REVIEW BY CH The earliest surviving written reference to Edinburgh is found in a charter of 17 July 1124 – and, to celebrate the city’s 900th ‘birthday’, Alistair Moffat has written an engaging biography of the Scottish capital. He begins…
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.
REVIEW BY PAUL NEWSON This lavishly produced A4 book is one outcome of a recent major exhibition jointly organised by the Netherlands and Lebanese antiquities services, and held in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden during the winter of 2022…
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…
REVIEW BY KK Rogers’ book serves well as a succinct introduction to the Roman towns of Britain. It starts by discussing how these towns evolved, whether de novo or through the expansion of pre-existing settlement sites, and highlights the different…
Analysis of Beveled Rim Bowls excavated from a Late Chalcolithic site in Iraq has challenged traditional interpretations that they were used for distributing cereal rations to state-dependent labourers.
When the Etruscans expanded to the south and the vast plains of Campania, they found a land of cultural connections and confrontations, as luxurious grave goods found across the region reveal. An exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples sheds light on these ancient Italians at the frontier. Paolo Giulierini, director of the museum, is our guide.
Following an initial season of underwater excavation in the Aegean Sea, Mantha Zarmakoupi talks to CWA about the rise and fall of the trading emporium of Delos.