Archaeology news

• Viking 'horned' Odin figurine found in Denmark

  20-10-2016 21:42
  
  A fine little figure, only 5 cm (2”) tall, popped out of the earth in late August when metal-detector operator Søren Andersen searched for metal artefacts in a field near Mesinge. The figure is of a man with a beard and a well-groomed pageboy haircut. Its most remarkable feature is an impressive headdress with two “horns”. The figure is from the 8th century and possibly represents the god Odin from Nordic mythology.The 8th century...
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• Banquet room with preserved frescoes unearthed among Pompeii ruins

  11-04-2024 17:10 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘Black room’ with frescoes inspired by Trojan war described as one of most striking discoveries ever made at site in southern ItalyA banquet room replete with well preserved frescoes depicting characters inspired by the Trojan war has been unearthed among the ruins of Pompeii in what has been described as one of the most striking discoveries ever made at the southern Italy archaeological site.The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nol
  
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• Great Barrier Reef discovery overturns belief Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery, archaeologists say

  09-04-2024 22:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Paper dates 82 pottery pieces found in single dig site at between 3,000 and 2,000 years oldFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastGroundbreaking archaeological research may have upended the longstanding belief that Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery.A paper published in the Quaternary Science Reviews on Wednesday details the finding of 82 pottery pieces from a single dig site on a Great Barrier Reef
  
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• Christie’s withdraws Greek vases from auction over links to convicted dealer

  09-04-2024 19:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: four vases in New York auction traced to Gianfranco Becchina, convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquitiesChristie’s has withdrawn four ancient Greek vases from Tuesday’s auction after a leading archaeologist discovered that each of them was linked to a convicted antiquities dealer.Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a specialist in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, told the Guardian that there
  
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• Silver coin boom in medieval England due to melted down Byzantine treasures, study reveals

  09-04-2024 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Chemical analysis reveals origin of coinage that stimulated trade and helped fuel development of new towns from seventh centurySeveral decades after the Sutton Hoo burial, starting in about AD660, there was a sudden rise in the number of silver coins in circulation in England, for reasons that have long puzzled archaeologists and historians.The new rush of silver coinage stimulated trade and helped fuel the development of the new towns springing up at the time – but where did it come from?
  
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• Stephen Mitchell obituary

  07-04-2024 18:18 via theguardian.com
  
  My brother Stephen Mitchell, who has died aged 75, was a historian, archaeological surveyor and interpreter of inscriptions of the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine periods, particularly in what is now Turkey. Equally at home on a hillside as in a lecture theatre, he once discovered three lost cities of the Pisidian people, high in Anatolia’s Taurus mountains, in a single fortnight.Stephen joined the department of classics at Swansea University in 1976, gaining a professorship in 1993
  
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• Romans, royal ships, and a rural retreat

  04-04-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Exploring the archaeology of Smallhythe PlaceSmallhythe Place is a timber- framed house set in an intriguing archaeological landscape. For the last three years, archaeologists have been exploring its surroundings; this team photo was taken in 2023. PHOTO: National Trust/Nathalie Cohen
  Smallhythe Place, a National Trust property in Kent, is home to a picturesque timber-framed house with enigmatic origins, while the surrounding landscape preserves unique traces of a medieval shipbuilding centre t
  
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• Excavating the CA Archives – Wiltshire I

  04-04-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  I have now examined the archaeology of every county in Britain bar one – Wiltshire. This was no accident, for I have a confession to make: Wiltshire’s archaeology terrifies me. There is so much of it, so many famous names, such passion aroused. It is the toughest archaeological nut to crack in the United Kingdom, and so I left it to last. To ease my burden, I will split my examination into four different parts, with two columns on the county and two others on Stonehenge and Avebury.
  
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• Current Archaeology 410 – ON SALE NOW

  04-04-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Today, Smallhythe Place in Kent is best known as a bohemian rural retreat once owned by the Victorian actress Ellen Terry and her daughter Edy Craig. As this month’s cover feature reveals, however, the surrounding fields preserve evidence of much earlier activity, including a medieval royal shipyard and a previously unknown Roman settlement.Our next feature comes from the heavy clays of the Humber Estuary, where excavations sparked by the
  construction of an offshore windfarm have opened a
  
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• Explorers unlock the mystery of ‘pirate king’ Henry Avery who vanished after huge heist at sea

  30-03-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Letter reveals disappearance of 17th century British pirate was tied to William III’s spy ring, Daniel Defoe and an archbishopIn 1695, Henry Avery led his 160-strong crew to pull off the most lucrative heist in pirate history on the high seas, amassing gold, silver, sapphires, emeralds and diamonds worth more than £85m in today’s money. He became the most wanted criminal of his day but vanished without trace and was the stuff of legend for 300 years.Now shipwreck explorers Dr S
  
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• ‘Truth behind the myths’: Amazon warrior women of Greek legend may really have existed

  24-03-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Excavations of bronze age graves have found battle-scarred female archers, says the historian Bettany HughesIn Greek legends, the Amazons were feared and formidable women warriors who lived on the edge of the known world. Hercules had to obtain the magic girdle of the Amazonian queen Hippolyte in one of his 12 labours, and Achilles killed another queen, Penthesilea, only to fall in love with her as her beautiful face emerged from her helmet.These horseback-riding, bow-wielding nomads, who f
  
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• Bronze age objects from ‘Pompeii of the Fens’ to go on display

  20-03-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Settlement on stilts dropped into River Nene after a fire nearly 3,000 years ago and was preserved in siltA bronze age settlement built on stilts that dropped “like a coffee plunger” into a river after a catastrophic fire has provided a window on our past lives, according to the archaeologist that led the investigation of the Cambridgeshire site.Must Farm, nicknamed the Pompeii of the Fens, offers “exceptional clarity” because of a combination of charring and waterlogging
  
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• Shells from Captain Cook’s final voyage saved from skip

  12-03-2024 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Important collection rediscovered during house-clearing includes numerous rare speciesAn internationally important collection of shells, including specimens from Captain Cook’s final voyage, has been rediscovered 40 years after it was thought to have been thrown into a skip.More than 200 shells have been returned to English Heritage, which will put some of them on display in Northumberland this week. Continue reading...
  
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• Crypt by Alice Roberts review – resurrecting the past

  07-03-2024 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  From murdered Vikings to an anchorite with syphilis, how human remains are reshaping historyIn 2008 a stash of human bones was discovered in a ditch running under St John’s College, Oxford. They dated from the Anglo-Saxon period and, once reassembled, revealed themselves as the remains of 35 young adult males. The fact that these men had been thrown into a mass grave, with none of the usual pieties, suggested that they were outlaws of one kind or other. At the time England was engaged
  
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• Legion

  07-03-2024 11:57 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Tracing the impact – and the experiences – of the Roman army in BritainA standard-issue legionary helmet, made of copper-alloy. IMAGE: Trustees of the British Museum
  A major new exhibition at the British Museum shows what life was like for the men, women, and children associated with the Roman military machine – and those they encountered through campaign and conquest. Carly Hilts visited to learn more.The Roman army as we know it, has its origins in the reign of the first emp
  
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• Excavating the CA Archives – Gloucestershire

  07-03-2024 11:50 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  The county of Gloucestershire encompasses a wide variety of landscapes, from the mix of urban and traditional farming communities (now more often dormitory settlements) in the south, by way of the woodland and estuarine zones of the west, to the Cotswold hills of the north and east. It is hard to think of a definitive site or settlement that really sums up the county, and Current Archaeology’s coverage is similarly varied. This is, I should emphasise, a strength, not a weakness.NORTH AND
  
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• Current Archaeology 409 – ON SALE NOW

  07-03-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  At its peak, the Roman army acted as a military, naval, and police force to about a quarter of the population of the Earth. Our cover feature explores its impact on the inhabitants of Britain – and what life was like for the soldiers and their families who were posted here.If you’ll allow me a moment of nostalgia, our next feature brings a personal pang, as it describes the
  demolition of a place that hosted one of my first forays into journalism. While working on The Cambridge
  Studen
  
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• Current Archaeology 409

  07-03-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  At its peak, the Roman army acted as a military, naval, and police force to about a quarter of the population of the Earth. Our cover feature explores its impact on the inhabitants of Britain – and what life was like for the soldiers and their families who were posted here.If you’ll allow me a moment of nostalgia, our next feature brings a personal pang, as it describes the
  demolition of a place that hosted one of my first forays into journalism. While working on The Cambridge
  Studen
  
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• Ancient stone tools found in Ukraine offer oldest evidence of human presence in Europe

  06-03-2024 22:13 via theguardian.com
  
  Deliberately fashioned chipped stones date back more than 1m years and may have been used by homo erectusAncient stone tools found in western Ukraine may offer the oldest known evidence of the presence of humans in Europe, according to new research.The chipped stones, deliberately fashioned from volcanic rock, were excavated from a quarry in Korolevo in the 1970s. Archaeologists used new methods to date the layers of sedimentary rock surrounding the tools to more than 1m years old. Continue read
  
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• Battle to save pristine prehistoric rock art from vast new quarry in Norway

  02-03-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Archaeologists fear more than 2,000 carved figures in Vingen could be destroyed when digging beginsOne of the largest and most significant sites of rock art in northern Europe is under “catastrophic” threat.The Vingen carvings, in Vestland county, Norway, are spectacular, and include images of human skeletons and abstract and geometric designs. Even the hammer stones, the tools used by the ancient artists to create their compositions, have survived. Continue reading...
  
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• Archaeologists find Pompeii fresco depicting Greek mythological siblings

  01-03-2024 18:31 via theguardian.com
  
  Phrixus and Helle are depicted in vibrant colours with exquisite artistry in remarkable discoveryIn a remarkable discovery at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, archaeologists have unearthed a fresco depicting the Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle.Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, described the find as a poignant reflection of history unfolding once more. Continue reading...
  
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• Long-buried Atlas statue raised to guard Temple of Zeus in Sicily once more

  29-02-2024 13:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Eight-metre statue dating from fifth century BC restored and assembled piece-by-piece to be displayed in Valley of the TemplesA colossal statue of Atlas that lay buried for centuries among ancient ruins has been reconstructed to take its rightful place among the Greek temples of Agrigento in Sicily, after a 20-year research and restoration project.The statue, standing at 8 metres (26ft) tall and dating back to the fifth century BC, was one of nearly 38 that adorned the Temple of Zeus, considered
  
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• ‘Highway to horror’: 14 wrecked slavers’ ships are identified in Bahamas

  25-02-2024 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Largest cluster of sunken vessels from the 18th and 19th centuries have been identified, bearing ‘silent witness’ to the colonial pastThey were the ships that carried enslaved Africans on hellish transatlantic voyages through the 18th and 19th centuries, with up to 400 in a single vessel. Now the wrecks of 14 ships have been identified in the northern Bahamas, marking what has been described by a British marine archaeologist as a previously unknown “highway to horror”.The
  
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• ‘A Neolithic miracle’: readers’ favourite ancient UK sites

  23-02-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Our tipsters celebrate our distant ancestors at mystical and atmospheric sites from County Fermanagh to CornwallCratcliffe and Robin Hood’s Stride are a collection of gritstone crags and boulders nestled against a Derbyshire hillside not far from Bakewell. It’s a beautiful place with a magical feel. Carved into the base of the cliff is a small chapel – the “hermit’s cave” – and in the next field, the Nine Stones Close stone circle is over two metres high
  
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• ‘Very rare’ clay figurine of Mercury discovered at Roman site in Kent

  23-02-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Previously unknown settlement in Small Hythe was once an important infrastructure linkA “very rare” clay figurine of the god Mercury, one of fewer than 10 ever found in Britain, has been discovered at a previously unknown Roman settlement that once sat next to a busy port – but is now 10 miles from the sea.The site of the settlement, in the modern hamlet of Small Hythe (or Smallhythe), near Tenterden in Kent, now sits among fields, but was once an important link in the Roman em
  
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• Solar storms, ice cores and nuns’ teeth: the new science of history

  20-02-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Advances in fields such as spectrometry and gene sequencing are unleashing torrents of new data about the ancient world – and could offer answers to questions we never even knew to askScythians did terrible things. Two-thousand five-hundred years ago, these warrior nomads, who lived in the grasslands of what is now southern Ukraine, enjoyed a truly ferocious reputation. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Scythians drank the blood of their fallen enemies, took their heads back
  
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• Ancient faces brought back to life at Scottish museum – video

  17-02-2024 20:44 via theguardian.com
  
  A bronze age woman who suffered lower back pain 4,000 years ago and an iron age Pictish man who lived a life of hard labour 1,500 years ago are among our ancient ancestors who have been brought to life in dramatic facial reconstructions. Cutting-edge technology will enable visitors to Scotland’s new Perth Museum to come face to face with four individuals from our past in modern-day PerthshireAncient faces brought back to life at Scottish museum Continue reading...
  
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• Ancient faces brought back to life at Scottish museum

  17-02-2024 18:06 via theguardian.com
  
  Dramatic reconstructions of local people who lived up to 4,000 years ago will go on display thanks to advanced DNA techniquesA Bronze Age woman who suffered lower back pain 4,000 years ago and an Iron Age Pictish man who lived a life of hard labour 1,500 years ago are among our ancient ancestors who have been brought to life in dramatic facial reconstructions.Cutting-edge technology will enable visitors to Scotland’s new Perth Museum to come face to face with four individuals from our past
  
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• Egypt scraps plan to restore cladding on one of three great pyramids of Giza

  16-02-2024 18:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Antiquities authority drops proposal for Menkaure pyramid after review prompted by international outcryEgypt has scuttled a controversial plan to reinstall ancient granite cladding on the pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the three great pyramids of Giza, a committee formed by the country’s tourism minister said in a statement.Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of the supreme council of antiquities, announced the plan last month, declaring it would be “the project of the centur
  
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• David Hawkins obituary

  15-02-2024 20:40 via theguardian.com
  
  David Hawkins, my colleague and friend, who has died aged 83, was one of the world’s leading scholars of the languages of ancient Turkey.He spent all his career at Soas University of London. He was appointed fellow in Hittite at Soas in 1964 and retired as professor in 2005. Hittite, the oldest known Indo-European language, was then only taught at Oxford, by Oliver Gurney, to whom David went to learn the language in which he had been appointed. Continue reading...
  
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