Esfahan, Iran
Esfahan is little known in the West, but it has some of the world’s great architecture – not only mosques, but also its palaces, its gardens, and last but not least, its fine bridges.
World
New dating for Australia’s ancient paintings
While the kangaroo is the oldest known painting in Australia so far, there may even be older paintings yet to be discovered.
Discoveries in the desert
Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s, the caves - which have preserved fragile objects like the scrolls – have been the target of looters.
Brescia: Wings of Victory
After it was discovered hidden in a Roman temple with other works of art, a bronze statue of Victory attracted the attention of rulers and writers, who praised and sought copies of the ancient masterpiece. Now restored, the winged statue is back on view in its former home. Dalu Jones tells the story of Brixia’s beautiful bronzes.
Pompeii’s VIP Vehicle
Excavations at the Roman villa of Civita Giuliana have uncovered a remarkable four-wheeled ceremonial chariot.
The lost city of al-Qata’i‘
Just decades after it was founded, ibn Tulun’s capital al-Qata’i‘ was razed to the ground. The Great Mosque of ibn Tulun, the oldest mosque in Africa to survive in its original form, still stands in Cairo today, and through its magnificent architecture offers a chance to encounter the former glory of al-Qata’i‘. Nigel Fletcher-Jones is our guide to this lost city.
World news: Indonesia, Germany, Mexico
Earliest known rock art ever found in Indonesia; skulls relating to sacrificial ceremony found in Tenochtitlan; German enigma machine discovered in Bay of Gelting.
Altai rock art: Visions of the past in Mongolia
Survey and excavation in a remote region of Mongolia are revealing a wealth of information about an extraordinary concentration of rock art.
Indonesia’s oldest cave art discovered
Archaeologists now believe that they have found a painting on the island of Sulawesi that pre-dates all other examples in the region, and may even be the earliest piece of representational art currently known.
Digging into databases
Arguably, one of the biggest challenges that continually faces archaeology is accessibility. While that can be interpreted in several different ways, what I’m going to concentrate on in this month’s ‘Science Notes’ is access to data. With the advent of…
World News: Italy, Norway, New Mexico
Victims of Vesuvius Excavations at a large villa in Civita Guiliana, 700m north-west of Pompeii’s city walls, have uncovered two more victims of the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed many settlements in this region of Italy in AD 79. The…
Secrets of a Maya sweat bath
Recent research on an intriguing assemblage of artefacts excavated from a Classic Maya sweat bath in Guatemala is revealing new details about ritual activity at the unusual structure. This sweat bath at Xultun, named Los Sapos (‘the toads’), was explored…
Green-fingered finds
Home-improvements and gardening have been on the rise under lockdown in the UK, and, in a few cases, work in the garden has led to archaeological discoveries. One household in the New Forest area in southern England uncovered a Tudor…
A pyramid puzzle
A missing piece of wood, one of the three objects collected from the Great Pyramid of Giza by engineer Waynman Dixon in 1872, has been rediscovered in a cigar box in the University of Aberdeen’s museum collection. Two of the…
Painting prehistoric pigs
A Sulawesi warty pig painted in red ochre on an Indonesian cave wall may be the world’s oldest known representational image of an animal, dating back at least 45,500 years, according to a study recently published in Science Advances. Archaeologists…
Frescoed food-shop unearthed at Pompeii
Recent excavations in the Regio V district of Pompeii have unearthed a well-preserved Roman thermopolium – a hot-food shop – in its entirety. The counter, with a painting of a Nereid (a sea nymph) riding on a seahorse was partially…
Stabiae: The pursuit of leisure
Buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, the Roman seaside resort of Stabiae and its opulent villas have long been overshadowed by nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum. As Dalu Jones reports, a new museum puts this ancient playground of the rich in the spotlight.
Sacred Light, Brilliant Matter
Why are we drawn to bright things? When and where did our fascination with sparkle and shine begin? Were ancient ideas of beauty and value the same as ours – or rooted more deeply in the magical worlds of sorcery and spiritual belief?
Kerma, 1913
The sands of ancient Nubia, a region over-lapping southern Egypt and northern Sudan, are home to remains of cities, forts, and numerous pyramids. It was to these archaeologically rich sands that the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition headed…
Saving Tigray’s painted churches
Over the past few years, the Ethiopian Heritage Fund has been scaling cliffs and mountains to study and conserve the remarkable rock-hewn painted churches of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, currently in the grips of conflict. Blair Priday, Stephen Rickerby, and Lisa Shekede guide us through their work.
Galen: The Emperor’s Doctor
Medical stories have dominated the news this past year. While the pandemic is closing museums, some are heading online. A new virtual exhibition by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World sheds light on the life and accomplishments of Galen, the Roman physician who worked during a deadly ancient plague. Geraldine Fabrikant finds out more.
Voyagers: The settlement of the Pacific
When the many islands that are scattered across the waters of Oceania were first settled, how, and by whom are questions that have generated much discussion over the centuries. It is such questions and responses to them that Nicholas Thomas,…
The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates
Disease tearing through a community; mass fatalities; and no apparent end in sight: the pestilences plaguing Greeks at Troy at the start of Homer’s Iliad or Thebes in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King seem all too familiar in our COVID-haunted world.…
World News: Norway, Indonesia, Spain
Viking ship burial in Norway A Viking ship burial was recently discovered at Gjellestad, Norway, during a ground-penetrating radar survey. It is now being excavated by the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. The ship is just one part of…
Grand Designs at Heraculaneum
One of the most lavish dwellings in Roman Herculaneum, the House of the Bicentenary reopened to the public in 2019 after decades of conservation efforts. Francesco Sirano, Director of the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano, and Leslie Rainer from the Getty Conservation Institute tell the story of this magnificent house, its discovery, its decline, and how it has been brought to life once more.
Amelia Edwards
This major figure in Egyptian archaeology was also a novelist, journalist, artist, erstwhile musician, and dauntless travel writer.
The Secret History of Writing
This intelligent, articulate, and visually imaginative three-part BBC documentary series about five millennia of writing – shortened into two parts for US transmission as A to Z in the PBS series NOVA – is particularly welcome, and will probably be watched for many years.
The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
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…
Shaping the Word: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now
It is the comprehensive yet unconventional way in which Gayford and Gormley shine new light on objects from prehistory to the early 21st century that make this volume so truly spectacular.
The Greek dead and the Great Beyond
The ancient Greeks thought much about the dead – how their remains should be disposed of, how their spirits might be summoned, how malignant they could be if unavenged. Classicist David Stuttard brings us face to face with the Greek dead.
More mummies unveiled at Saqqara
As well as the coffins, which date to the Late Period (525-332 BC) and Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BC), Egyptian archaeologists found shabtis, amulets, four gilded funerary masks, and 40 statues of Ptah Sokar, a prominent god of Saqqara.
Roman discoveries at ancient Augustodunum
Excavations directed by Carole Fossurier found a range of different burial practices. There were mausoleums, a wooden building, and a tile structure, which resembled burials of the early empire, as well as five sandstone sarcophagi and 15 lead coffins.
Animal archaeology
News about an 800 year old turkey-feather blanket found in Utah, the Nasca feline in Peru, and investigations into British pet cemeteries.
An unknown manuscript by a medieval master
‘The Lucas Psalter is of clear artistic and cultural significance, and tells a fascinating English story.'
A study in purple
Today, more than 1,000 of these mummy portraits survive in museums and collections around the world.
Etruscans: pushing boundaries
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.