Archaeology news

• Two Roman reactions to the Emperor Philippikos

  20-10-2026 20:00 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  Let us move onto slightly lighter topics, if long-term demonic possession, Church Schism, the nature of the Christian Incarnation, invisible crucifixion of women, destruction of political imagery and, worst of all, numismatics, count as lighter. But than the last post, or indeed what must now come soon, I think this is still lighter, and besides, on what other blog are you going to get that combination? So: this post is about the very little-known Emperor Philippikos “Bardanes”, an e
  
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• Something for Marie

  18-10-2026 08:24 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  I only venture onto Academia.edu sporadically these days, usually to check for messages, hoover up any interesting-looking PDFs and run away again, maybe every few weeks. I did this on 27th September and one of the things I found was a review of Marie Kelleher’s second book, which I was delighted by because I knew a little of how much of a battle it had been to finish the thing, and I hadn’t gathered she had.1 Then I read the first line, and discovered it contained the words, "publis
  
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• Direction Elsewhere I

  10-10-2026 17:23 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  I meant to have a post up here last weekend, and now it’s this weekend. Teaching here started this week, you see, and there was a lot going on last week, and paradoxically rather a lot of it was blogging, just not blogging here. (I did say this might happen…) You see, I had worked through to where I wanted to write up something about stuff I’d been to or seen, and, well, you remember I laid down some guidelinees about what such things needed to be like to qualify for blogging
  
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• What do you do with a problem like Vives?

  27-09-2026 08:14 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  We go back, with this post, to January of 2022, when I was slowly doing my first pass through the newly edited charters of the Barcelona area in the Catalunya Carolíngia series.1 I should explain why. I have ambitions, you may remember, to write a life-and-times study of Count-Marquis Borrell II of Barcelona. Since there are only fragments of narrative which mention him, all more or less incompletely informed, that has to be done from the charters.2 This is one of a good few sentences I&r
  
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• Working Elsewhere

  20-09-2026 19:27 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  It must be a scant post this week, because I have as the title says very largely been using my blogging time elsewhere. But I want to tell you about that! You probably remember, unless you’re new here (is anyone? Hi! and thanks for tuning in!) that since 2015 I have sporadically been promoting a project called Rethinking the Medieval Frontier. It’s formed a network, it’s done some sessions at the International Medieval Congress, it got some money and held its own conference, no
  
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• Seminar CLXXXIII: limited evidence of Mozarabic cultural broking

  13-09-2026 18:45 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  How long is it since I blogged a seminar? Apparently more than two years, and this blog used to be (in)famous for them. It doesn’t bode well for contemporaneity that the seminar I now want to report on comes from only a year later than the last one I blogged, which is to say May 2022. Believe it or not, though, I have junked a lot of things I might once have written up by way of trying to cut backlog. I’ve decided that the two criteria a seminar has to fulfil still to be worth bloggi
  
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• Wulfsige the Moor

  06-09-2026 09:01 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  Here is a curiosity I found a while back. A very long time ago I gave a paper at the Leeds International Medieval Congress (to which as you will have seen I aim to return) about church archives that preserved documents from before their own existence. There were reasons that couldn’t be published then, and I never properly returned to it, but apparently towards the end of 2021 I felt as if I might need some professional insurance and started looking again at whether it could be quickly com
  
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• Small call for papers about places large in the mind

  30-08-2026 06:16 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  For this week’s post, can I bring things into the present day for once? I am trying, for various reasons quite late in the day, to put together a session or two for next year’s International Medieval Congress back at the University of Leeds, and my old networks are failing me.1 But this blog, and the places it reaches, are also a network, and so I want to put the idea out there in front of you all in case anyone else is interested in having a go with it.
  L’Esquerda, Roda de Ter
  
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• Clearing around the Middle Ages in Bristol

  23-08-2026 21:53 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  I spent pretty much all of yesterday in transport systems, the full 24 hours, and so I hope you will forgive a second photo post about Bristol this weekend, but I do have a point to make with it, I hope. You see, as well as the Temple Church we looked at a few weeks back, there is a cluster of medieval buildings in the old centre of Bristol, and having seen them on a map on that same trip, my companion and I then went to see what remained.
  The west face of the tower of St Mary le Port, inclusion
  
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• That this volume even exists

  16-08-2026 22:50 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  You must put up with something slightly more light-weight than usual this week, as I am currently in my research area either climbing stuff or eating very well (which will hopefully balance each other out in some calorific way). So, here is something I stubbed to write back in January 2022 and am only now reaching. You would need to go a long way back to remember that occasionally here, as I think happens to every early medieval Iberianist, I have had to deal with the work of a man named Claudio
  
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• Three successful Doctors of Philosophy

  09-08-2026 21:47 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  A little while back, in the spirit of clearing my backlog of blogging material, I was going through a stack of notes from long ago, working out which if any of the seminars I went to in that time which (still) have not been reported here were still worth talking about. Among those I passed over was a set from a doctoral work-in-progress seminar in the University of Leeds’s Institute for Medieval Studies, back in 2021. This was one of the good practices of the IMS, and presumably still is,
  
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• A Bombed Temple

  02-08-2026 18:52 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  For one reason or another, though my family has no particular connection with the place, I’ve quite often had UK-based relatives who live in Bristol. When I used to visit them there when I was young, it was before I’d so determinedly become a medievalist, and I mainly visited the waterfront. It wasn’t till a more recent visit, in March 2022, that I discovered that Bristol’s medieval past is actually visible in places. I admit, I’d assumed that a combination of devel
  
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• Diplomatic emendation can only get you so far

  26-07-2026 13:37 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  The last time I did any serious work on my next book – though the queue of opuscula before that can resume is diminishing now – seems to my horror to have been about five years ago. I can tell you this because it came to an abrupt halt after I’d written my way through quite a complicated justification of trying to get some historical value out of another pretty-obviously forged charter, it being one of the nearly-famous three I’ve published about in which Count-Marquis Bo
  
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• Without Rosamond McKitterick

  19-07-2026 19:51 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  This excellent picture is linked through from an obituary in the journal Reti Medievali, who I hope won’t mind; I can’t find any explicitly copyright-free pictures of Rosamond on the web and somehow don’t have any of my own.
  Obviously I do not love writing obituary posts, even if I have realised now that I set myself up for the inevitability of it some years ago now. But this one I probably hate doing more than all the others, because this is for a person who mattered a great d
  
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• Another enigmatic stone of Scotland

  12-07-2026 14:58 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  I didn’t mean to drop into another hiatus, but in my defence I’ve been in three countries dragging a lot of suitcases in the last month, and getting ready for that was also a battle involving a lot of chasing bureaucracy and heavy lifting. Now I, my significant belongings and my significant other are all in India and I’m not teaching till Autumn. I have some deadlines to meet and targets to hit in that time, but I am also very keen to get this blog properly going again. So, her
  
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• Knowing better than them: diplomatic judgement at Santa Cecília d’Elins

  02-06-2026 19:17 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  (Note: this post was all ready to go on Sunday night when I drifted onto Academia.edu for no very good reason and found an exactly relevant article that seriously affected some of what was here. If it looks a bit scrappy now, that is me trying not to do a full rewrite and delay things further… Hopefully it’s not evident though!)
  I have, at times, been known to claim that I’m an expert in diplomatic. That’s not diplomacy, or diplomatic history, but an older, I’d eve
  
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• One-Man Churches in the Western Isles

  27-05-2026 20:27 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  
  In recent years a lot of my posts have been collections of photos from very long ago of things medieval, and while that is in some ways fine – I’m here to tell you about them – it has struck me of late that they haven’t all had a point. I felt the last one worked better for having even the semblance of one, but then having promised there to talk about the Islay church of Kilmeny, had to wonder what the actual point of doing so was. Then a friend of mine coincidentally ran
  
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• Frontier warlords in Ankara

  17-05-2026 13:40 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  [This is a post that got shunted down the queue for reasons of respect and priority; I originally wrote it about four months ago. It still might want reporting, though, so here you are.] Every now and then I remember that the ostensible purpose of this blog is to publicise my endeavours, rather than report on academic things that happened years ago or sadly commemorate dead scholars. Of course, for much of the last decade, and especially the last few years, there hasn’t been as much to rep
  
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• It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good (c. 985)

  13-05-2026 18:45 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  Let’s go back to my actual research area for a post, shall we? You remember, perhaps—gosh, it seems a while ago—that in one of my two brief interludes of research leave in my previous job I got hold of the Barcelona volumes, nearly the last, of the monumental Catalunya Carolíngia project to publish all the pre-1000 charters preserved in Catalonia, and found numerous real gems in there?1 Or in some cases, the opposite, in the form of horrible people? Well, this is another
  
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• Wet Hillforts in Islay, or, Large-Scale Oblivion

  05-05-2026 20:49 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  I intended a light post to follow the last one, and this is lighter, but a point got in my way while I was drafting it, so it develops weight towards the end. We begin in September of 2021, when my then-partner, now-wife and I went for a short break to Islay. We loved it, but it was right at the end of the holiday season and the weather was, how to put it, fairly "soft". What this means is that, after passing on one drive a structure that seemed pretty obviously to be a hillfort, we decided ther
  
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• Deaths of the titans

  26-04-2026 18:28 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  I almost wish I had never started writing obituaries on this blog. Obviously, there were good reasons to do so (as well as some bad ones) and people I felt I owed, but still. I should have realised that it would mean chronicling the passage of the generation where as a student and young academic I found my teachers and patrons, and as that generation reaches the kind of extent which can be expected, of course the bad news keeps coming.However, very rarely am I expecting it when it comes, and cer
  
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• In and on an abbey

  07-02-2026 11:07 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  There is more spare time in my new life than there was but somehow it keeps being taken up… I haven’t yet worked out where blogging fits into the new régime, either. I should, really, be able to post more regularly soon, but in the meantime, may I keep your attention at least a little with some more West Midlands medieval ecclesiastical architecture? These are photos from the same trip as the last such post, which we rounded off with a proper wander around this place.First si
  
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•  Excavating the CA archive – medieval and modern mines

  05-02-2026 10:00
  Last month’s column explored prehistoric mines, and this month I will follow up on the topic by visiting medieval and modern examples that have been examined in past issues of CA. The range is wide: from Welsh slate to English coal, and from salt in the Midlands to tin in the south-west. For those seeking an overview of this subject, the key starting point is Neil Cossons’ exploration of Britain’s industrial archaeology in CA 216 (March 2008); see also the ‘Odd Socs&rsquo
  
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• Current Archaeology 432 – ON SALE NOW

  05-02-2026 10:00
  The picturesque landscape around Loch Lomond has long been celebrated for its natural beauty, including the slopes of Ben Lomond, which attract tens of thousands of hill-walking enthusiasts every year. What, though, is known about the mountain’s historic environment? For the last 30 years, the National Trust for Scotland have been working to document archaeological sites stretching from the lochside to the summit of Ben Lomond. In our cover feature, we highlight some of the key discoverie
  
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• ‘By yon bonnie banks’

  05-02-2026 10:00
  Exploring the archaeology of Ben LomondDigging the iron bloomery mound on the Ardess Hidden History Trail (Site 6). IMAGE: National Trust for ScotlandBen Lomond is one of Scotland’s most famous mountains, lying on the edge of the Highland boundary fault, with its shouldered profile dominating the skyline of the Central Belt and the Trossachs. Over the last three decades, National Trust for Scotland staff have been unpicking the archaeological and historical stories preserved within this la
  
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• Correction III: at least one is black on one side

  21-01-2026 19:15 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  I suppose it is not inappropriate that after lamenting Josep María Salrach’s death I return to a long-stubbed post in which I put one of the books he allowed me to get for free, and in whose publication he was a major part, to work.1 This comes, you see, out of that brief patch of research leave I had back in 2022 which I spent trying to find Count-Marquis Borrell II and his contacts in the newly-available charters from the county of Barcelona, and it’s one of the bits where t
  
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• Excavating the CA Archive – Neolithic and Bronze Age mines

  13-01-2026 22:52
  Since CA 428, my columns have focused on prehistoric Britain, and while researching these I read about a series of mines dating to the Neolithic and/or Bronze Age. This is a fascinating rabbit-hole to climb into, and next month I will follow it with an exploration of medieval and modern mines. For those of you interested in this subject, there have been wider surveys of early mining in CA 117 (November 1989), CA 352 (July 2019), and CA 384 (March 2022); of metallurgy in CA 99 (February 1986) and
  
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• Excavating the CA Archive – Neolithic and Bronze Age Caves

  13-01-2026 22:52
  Since CA 428, my columns have focused on prehistoric Britain, and while researching these I read about a series of mines dating to the Neolithic and/or Bronze Age. This is a fascinating rabbit-hole to climb into, and next month I will follow it with an exploration of medieval and modern mines. For those of you interested in this subject, there have been wider surveys of early mining in CA 117 (November 1989), CA 352 (July 2019), and CA 384 (March 2022); of metallurgy in CA 99 (February 1986) and
  
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• Blazing a trail

  12-01-2026 22:55
  Earliest evidence of humans making fire discovered in SuffolkExcavation of 400,000-year-old pond sediments at Barnham, near Thetford in Suffolk, have revealed the oldest known evidence of early humans (in this case, Neanderthals) making fire. IMAGE: Courtesy of the Pathways to Ancient Britain project and by Jordan MansfieldExcavations at East Farm, Barnham, have uncovered the oldest-known traces of deliberate fire-making – a game-changing step in the human story that we now know took place
  
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• Current Archaeology 431 – ON SALE NOW

  12-01-2026 22:34
  Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely break over the Christmas period.Winter always puts me in mind of cosy fireplaces – but when did humans first learn how to create fire for themselves, rather than relying on embers from lightning strikes and wildfires? New evidence from Barnham in Suffolk has pushed this story back hundreds of thousands of years further than previously thought. Our cover feature explores this exciting discovery, and the revolutionary biological, technological, and so
  
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• Current Archaeology 431

  12-01-2026 22:34
  Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely break over the Christmas period.Winter always puts me in mind of cosy fireplaces – but when did humans first learn how to create fire for themselves, rather than relying on embers from lightning strikes and wildfires? New evidence from Barnham in Suffolk has pushed this story back hundreds of thousands of years further than previously thought. Our cover feature explores this exciting discovery, and the revolutionary biological, technological, and so
  
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• From iron age tunnels to YouTube: Time Team’s ‘extraordinary’ digital renaissance

  03-01-2026 07:00
  Three decades after its modest beginnings on Channel 4, the TV juggernaut now has its own channel and global subscribersThirty-two years ago, a small group of archaeologists gathered for a weekend in Somerset to make a TV programme about a field in Athelney, the site where once, 1,200 years ago, King Alfred the Great rallied resistance to the invading Viking army.There weren’t many concessions to showbiz glitz. Instead, a group of blokes with unruly hair and a couple of women walked across
  
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• Cremation pyre in Africa thought to be world’s oldest containing adult remains

  01-01-2026 20:00
  9,500-year-old pyre uncovered in Malawi offers rare insight into rituals of ancient African hunter-gatherer groupsA cremation pyre built about 9,500 years ago has been discovered in Africa, offering a fresh glimpse into the complexity of ancient hunter-gatherer communities.Researchers say the pyre, discovered in a rock shelter at the foot of Mount Hora in northern Malawi, is thought to be the oldest in the world to contain adult remains, the oldest confirmed intentional cremation in Africa, and
  
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• A post for Josep María Salrach

  30-12-2025 00:19 via A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe
  This is very old news now, partly because I didn’t hear it when it was new, but also because I’m afraid I left it until I’d got some of my own news out of the way, as the subject wasn’t going to mind the delay. Because yes, alas, this is another post of passing: one of the great contributors to my field is no more.The late Josep María SalrachIf you read this blog, and also read my footnotes, then you’ve heard of Josep María Salrach i Marès, who
  
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• The best of the long read in 2025

  23-12-2025 06:00
  Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the yearVictor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist? Continue reading...
  
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• How we hold back the tide: levees, drains and a bronze age circle of skulls

  19-12-2025 07:00
  Were children’s bones found at the edge of European lake settlements an attempt to appease water gods?Flood protection takes many forms, from the levees of Louisiana to the drains of East Anglia. Some villages in bronze age Europe may have had a more unusual barrier: a circle of skulls.Researchers from Basel University have found children’s skulls at the edge of lake settlements vulnerable to flooding, dating to the ninth century BC. As flooding became worse, villages in the Circum-A
  
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• Why west Cornwall is the perfect place to mark the winter solstice

  18-12-2025 08:00
  With ancient standing stones and modern midwinter festivals, the West Penwith peninsula is a land of magic and mysteryThe light is fading fast as I stand inside Tregeseal stone circle near St Just. The granite stones of the circle are luminous in this sombre landscape, like pale, inquisitive ghosts gathered round to see what we’re up to. Above us, a sea of withered bracken and gorse rises to Carn Kenidjack, the sinister rock outcrop that dominates the naked skyline. At night, this moor is
  
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• Warmers and Shelley to get through winter | Brief letters

  17-12-2025 18:59
  Raynaud’s syndrome | What follows winter | Beaver bones | Honda Jazz | Maga | LagerYour article on how to cope with winter (17 December) left one point out. Raynaud’s syndrome causes sufferers to lose blood circulation in their hands in cold weather. The best help I have found for it is buying a couple of HotRox – little metal eggs that can be charged up to release heat and restore blood supply. Bring on the snowballs!
  Clare Passingham
  Oxford• Re your 10 ways to thrive as
  
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• Beachy Head Woman may be ‘local girl from Eastbourne’, say scientists

  17-12-2025 11:14
  Exclusive: DNA advances show Roman-era skeleton, once hailed as first black Briton, came from southern EnglandBeachy Head Woman, a Roman-era skeleton once hailed as the earliest known black Briton and who scientists later speculated could be of Cypriot descent, has now been shown to have originated from southern England.The mystery of the skeleton’s shifting identity was finally resolved after advances in DNA sequencing produced a high-quality genetic readout from the remains. Continue rea
  
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• Relief and reward for passengers as Rome’s ‘museum stations’ finally open

  16-12-2025 19:02
  Archaeological treasures revealed during construction at two metro stops led to years of delaysMetro passengers in Rome can now peruse ancient history while in transit after the opening of two long-awaited stations showcasing a vast trove of treasures unearthed during their construction – including the remnants of a military barracks built during the reign of the emperor Trajan and 28 wells, along with the votives offered up in thanks.The Colosseo-Fori Imperiali, a sprawling station beside
  
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• Little Foot hominin fossil may be new species of human ancestor

  14-12-2025 15:00
  Australian researchers think the skeleton found in South Africa is not the same species as two found in the same South Africa cave system Little Foot, one of the world’s most complete hominin fossils, may be a new species of human ancestor, according to research that raises questions about our evolutionary past.Publicly unveiled in 2017, Little Foot is the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever found. The foot bones that lend the fossil its name were first discovered in South Africa
  
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• Country diary: An unlikely job for a farmer – preserving a roman fort | Andrea Meanwell

  10-12-2025 06:30
  Tebay, Cumbria: We have 30 acres of Roman remains underground here, but thanks to recent storms and a redirected river, I fear they’re not safeToday I am out in freezing temperatures photographing a riverbank. Mist, which we call “clag”, swirls over the higher ground and I cannot see any of our livestock that are overwintering on the hills.The reason I’ve turned photographer may come as a surprise: on Low Borrowbridge farm we have a Roman fort and civilian settl
  
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• Ancient Egyptian pleasure boat found by archaeologists off Alexandria coast

  08-12-2025 10:00
  First-century luxury vessel matches description by the Greek historian Strabo, who visited city around 29-25BC An ancient Egyptian pleasure boat that matches a description by the first-century Greek historian Strabo has been discovered off the coast of Alexandria, to the excitement of archaeologists.With its palaces, temples and the 130 metre-high Pharos lighthouse – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – Alexandria had been one of the most magnificent cities in antiquity. T
  
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• Linguists start compiling first ever complete dictionary of ancient Celtic

  08-12-2025 06:00
  More than 1,000 words used as far back as 325BC to be collected for insight into past linguistic landscapeIt is not likely to be a hefty volume because the vast majority of the material has been lost in the mists of time. But the remnants of a language spoken in parts of the UK and Ireland 2,000 years ago are being collected for what is being billed as the first complete dictionary of ancient Celtic.The dictionary will not be huge because relatively few words survive, but experts from Aberystwyt
  
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• Water leak in the Louvre damages hundreds of works, museum says

  07-12-2025 18:37
  Open valve in heating system affects 300 to 400 items just weeks after a brazen jewel theft raised security concernsA water leak in late November damaged several hundred works in the Louvre’s Egyptian department, the Paris museum said on Sunday, weeks after a brazen jewel theft raised concerns over its infrastructure.“Between 300 and 400 works” were affected by the leak discovered on 26 November, the museum’s deputy administrator, Francis Steinbock, said, describing them
  
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• Excavating the CA Archive – Palaeolithic Caves

  04-12-2025 23:23
  or my third and final column on the of the most famous caves in the country. Even better – as I will outline at the end of this selection – the majority are open to the public, offering unparalleled opportunities to visit these stunning prehistoric sites.KENTS CAVERN, DEVONCA 262 explores the long history of settlement by both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in Kents Cavern.The first sustained mention of the Palaeolithic in the pages of Current Archaeology comes in issue 65 (February 1
  
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• Rendlesham rediscovered

  04-12-2025 22:40
  Exploring landscapes of power in early medieval East AngliaOverlooking the excavation of Rendlesham’s early medieval royal residence in 2022; the foundations of the timber great hall can be seen in Trench 14. IMAGE: Jim Pullen © Suffolk County CouncilOver the last two decades, evidence of a high-status early medieval settlement has been emerging just four miles from Sutton Hoo. What can Rendlesham tell us about the evolution and exercise of royal power in early medieval England? Carly
  
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• Current Archaeology 430 – ON SALE NOW

  04-12-2025 09:00
  The turning of the year is always a point to pause and reflect. For me, this issue marks a mindful milestone, as it is my 100th since I became Editor. But there is also much to reflect on in the ever-evolving world of archaeology. CA 430 showcases the diversity of disciplines that make up our field, combining a report on a major excavation, thought-provoking scientific and ethical insights, a historic building with an intriguing story to tell, and opportunities to take part in underwater invest
  
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• Current Archaeology 430

  04-12-2025 09:00
  The turning of the year is always a point to pause and reflect. For me, this issue marks a mindful milestone, as it is my 100th since I became Editor. But there is also much to reflect on in the ever-evolving world of archaeology. CA 430 showcases the diversity of disciplines that make up our field, combining a report on a major excavation, thought-provoking scientific and ethical insights, a historic building with an intriguing story to tell, and opportunities to take part in underwater invest
  
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• Country Diary: A lonely chapel that whispers and roars | Sara Hudston

  04-12-2025 06:30
  Abbotsbury, Dorset: Long ago this was the place to come and wish for a husband. It is empty today, but still so full of presenceTwo ascending buzzards dazzle against the sun as I climb to St Catherine’s Chapel alone on its hill above the sea. It is the saint’s own feast day (25 November), when women once came to recite a charm for getting married. The traditional wording was blunt: “A husband, St Catherine, a handsome one, St Catherine, a rich one, St Catherine,
  
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