Archaeology news

• Current Archaeology 425

  03-07-2025 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  If you are interested in Roman mosaics, then this issue of CA will be something of a treat for you! Three of this month’s articles touch on different aspects of these fabulous floors, beginning with our cover feature, which highlights the latest discoveries from Wroxeter, once one of the largest urban centres in Britain. There, the first research excavations to take place on the site in over 30 years have uncovered illuminating new insights into the Roman settlement’s city centre &nd
  
  Read more

• Excavating the CA Archive – Palaeolithic Caves

  04-12-2025 23:23 via archaeology.co.uk
  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
  
  Read more

• Rendlesham rediscovered

  04-12-2025 22:40 via archaeology.co.uk
  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
  
  Read more

• Current Archaeology 430 – ON SALE NOW

  04-12-2025 09:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  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
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Rescue Project of the Year 2026 – Nominees

  02-12-2025 19:49 via archaeology.co.uk
  Rescue archaeology is carried out in areas threatened by human or natural agency. We’ve collated some of the best rescue projects that have been highlighted in Current Archaeology over the past year. Below are the nominees for Rescue Project of the Year.Voting is now open, and all the winners of the Current Archaeology Awards will be announced on 28 February 2026 as part of Current Archaeology Live! 2026. Click here to find out more about the event.Under the i
  
  Read more

• Research Project of the Year 2026 – Nominees

  02-12-2025 18:57 via archaeology.co.uk
  This has been another exceptional year for archaeological research. The following are some of the most exciting projects to have featured in CA over the last 12 months – the nominees for Research Project of the Year.Voting is now open, and all the winners of the Current Archaeology Awards will be announced on 28 February 2026 as part of Current Archaeology Live! 2026. Click here to find out more about the event.
  Sponsor of Research Project of the Yea
  
  Read more

• Book of the Year 2026 – Nominees

  02-12-2025 16:27 via archaeology.co.uk
  Below are some of the publications we feel most deserve to be recognised for their contribution to the field – the nominees for the Book of the Year award.Voting is now open, and all the winners of the Current Archaeology Awards will be announced on 28 February 2026 as part of Current Archaeology Live! 2026. Click here to find out more about the event.Click here for links to all the other categories.Sponsor of Book of the Year 2026
  An Irish Civil War Dugout –
  
  Read more

• Archaeologist of the Year 2026 – Nominees

  02-12-2025 15:14 via archaeology.co.uk
  Below are the three individuals nominated for 2026’s ‘Archaeologist of the Year’, whose achievements reflect the diverse work taking place within our field.Voting is now open, and all the winners of the Current Archaeology Awards will be announced on 28th February 2026 as part of Current Archaeology Live! 2026. Click here to find out more about the event.Find out more about the awards here.
  Sponsor of Archaeologist of the Year 2026Dr Jane Kershaw
  Jane i
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Shells found in Spain could be among oldest known musical instruments

  02-12-2025 06:00
  Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcherAs a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off
  
  Read more

• Archaeologists say they have proof humans carved huge pits near Stonehenge

  27-11-2025 15:02
  Research team uses range of novel methods and equipment to analyse ‘extraordinary’ Durrington pit circleThe presence of an extraordinary circle of yawning pits created by Neolithic people near Stonehenge has been proved thanks to a novel combination of scientific techniques, a team of archaeologists is claiming.The architects of Stonehenge may have had the heavens in mind when they built the great stone monument in Wiltshire, but the team believes the makers of the Durrington pit cir
  
  Read more

• DNA reveals stone age teenager as chewer of 10,500-year-old ‘gum’

  23-11-2025 21:26
  The prehistoric birch tar found in Estonia contained traces of saliva that were analysed by genetics expertsA piece of stone age “gum” chewed by a teenage girl 10,500 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists in Estonia.The Institute of History and Archaeology at the University of Tartu discovered the prehistoric birch tar had impressions of teeth marks and traces of saliva. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Rosemary Church obituary

  23-11-2025 18:33
  My mother, Rosemary Church, who has died aged 86, was a primary school teacher and a local historian whose work focused on Faringdon in Oxfordshire, the town where she lived for much of her life.In 1978 she founded the Faringdon and District Archaeological and Historical Society, whose members catalogued gravestones in churches, transcribed documents of local interest, collected photographs from a bygone age, put on exhibitions and talks, and set up a history resource centre for use by the commu
  
  Read more

• Rare bronze and iron age log boats reveal details of Cambridgeshire prehistory

  14-11-2025 01:01
  Well-preserved oak and maple boats used for transport and fishing to be displayed in PeterboroughAfter lying undisturbed in mud for more than 3,000 years, three rare bronze and iron age log boats have emerged to offer fresh insights into prehistoric life.The boats were among nine discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry 13 years ago – the largest group of prehistoric boats found in the same UK site. Most were well preserved, with one still able to float despite its long incarceration. Continu
  
  Read more

• Excavating the CA Archive – Palaeolithic Kent and Sussex

  06-11-2025 18:10 via archaeology.co.uk
  In last month’s column, I explored Palaeolithic important prehistoric sites not just in Britain but in the whole of western Europe. Here I will follow up on that review by moving south into Kent and Sussex. A series of discoveries made in these counties has further enriched our knowledge of the deep past of what were to become the British Isles, and played a crucial part in the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project of 2001-2011, which transformed our understanding of this peri
  
  Read more

• Current Archaeology 429 – ON SALE NOW

  06-11-2025 17:28 via archaeology.co.uk
  This month’s articles are bookended by unusual artefacts with intriguing tales to tell. The first is an elaborate pendant bearing emblems associated with Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Analysis of its imagery has revealed a much wider story than was previously imagined, illuminating not only a royal marriage and the world of the Tudor court, but political ambitions and hopes for a lasting peace in 16th-century Europe. The other is a mysterious Roman dodecahedron. Theories abound for h
  
  Read more

• Current Archaeology 429

  06-11-2025 17:28 via archaeology.co.uk
  This month’s articles are bookended by unusual artefacts with intriguing tales to tell. The first is an elaborate pendant bearing emblems associated with Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Analysis of its imagery has revealed a much wider story than was previously imagined, illuminating not only a royal marriage and the world of the Tudor court, but political ambitions and hopes for a lasting peace in 16th-century Europe. The other is a mysterious Roman dodecahedron. Theories abound for
  
  Read more

• A multi-sided story

  06-11-2025 09:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  Examining the Norton Disney dodecahedron in its wider contextThe Norton Disney dodecahedron. IMAGE: University of Nottingham Museum/Alan Fletcher
  Around 130 dodecahedra have been found across the northern Roman Empire, but the purpose of these ornate objects is unknown, and few have been recovered from datable contexts in modern excavations. An important exception forms the focus of an exhibition exploring the archaeology of Potter Hill, Lincolnshire. Carly Hilts visited the displays and spoke t
  
  Read more

• Archaeologists discover how oldest American civilisation survived a climate catastrophe

  05-11-2025 14:50
  Experts find artefacts left behind in Caral showing how population survived drought without resorting to violenceArchaeologists in Peru have found new evidence showing how the oldest known civilization in the Americas adapted and survived a climate catastrophe without resorting to violence.A team led by the renowned Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady, 78, concluded that about 4,200 years ago, severe drought forced the population to leave the ancient city of Caral, and resettle nearby. Continue re
  
  Read more

• Bigger on the inside

  29-10-2025 20:02 via tenthmedieval.wordpress.com
  The very helpful discussion on blog alternatives a few posts back, still bubbling on, seems for now to be pointing to trying to regrow an audience here. I think that means I need to start posting more than once every few months, don’t you? And things are sufficiently exciting just now that I am starting to stub bloig posts again, for the first time in ages. But I have left it late for today, so let me just bounce some medievalist photography off you once again, if I may?This is the view yo
  
  Read more

• The big ‘what’s going on’

  21-10-2025 21:39 via tenthmedieval.wordpress.com
  The time has come (the blogger said) to talk of big things. I have flown flags enough, over the last few posts, sporadic as they have been, to give the impression that change was afoot in my life as well as maybe in the blog, and so here at last is the announcement. These are the headlines.
  For reasons which the blog more or less makes clear, if you read back over the doldrums, hiatuses, shortage of news and posts about industrial action, despite having had a secure academic appointment in a top
  
  Read more

• ‘It would be wonderful’: the team hoping to unearth ‘Cornwall’s Stonehenge’

  12-10-2025 14:00
  Experts and volunteers working at Castilly Henge have been trying determine if it is the county’s lost great stone circleIt was a grey Cornish autumn day, but Henry Stevens’s tough shift digging in a field next to the A30 was about to get very exciting.Her eye was caught by something glinting in the soil and she picked up a flake of flint that had lain for thousands of years within what might just turn out to be a Cornish version of Stonehenge. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Why it’s worth taking a wider look at biarchal cultures | Letters

  10-10-2025 18:23
  In places such as Canada, the US, parts of Africa, southern India and Polynesia, biarchal traditions are almost within living memory, says Simon DawsonLaura Spinney offers a compelling glimpse into the possibility that gender-egalitarian societies once flourished in the past – cultures where women held substantial autonomy and influence (The big idea: Was prehistory a feminist paradise?, 5 October). However, her article remains constrained by a predominantly Eurocentric lens.Most of Spinne
  
  Read more

• Excavating the CA Archive – Palaeolithic Norfolk and Suffolk

  07-10-2025 19:14 via archaeology.co.uk
  In the previous few columns I have explored some of the great towns of Roman Britain – so, as a change of pace, here I will begin a new mini-series on the country’s great prehistoric sites. I will commence this month with a series of locations in Norfolk and Suffolk where there is evidence for Palaeolithic activity, some dating back to the Lower Palaeolithic (c.3.3 million-300,000 years ago), others spanning the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic (c.300,000-50,000 and c.50,000-12,000 year
  
  Read more

• A battlefield hit by HS2 – and planning rules | Letter

  07-10-2025 18:41
  Permitted development regulations allowed the contractor to strip topsoil and damage potential archaeology, writes Simon MarshIt isn’t just the countryside and its residents that are suffering due to HS2 (‘It’s been beyond difficult’: earthworks of HS2 take toll on Chilterns residents, 2 October). The high-speed rail contractor has recently done considerable damage to potential archaeology on the nationally important registered battlefield at Edgcote, a Wars of the Roses
  
  Read more

• The people of St Peter’s

  07-10-2025 17:30 via archaeology.co.uk
  Encountering a community from 19th-century BlackburnHeadland Archaeology’s excavation of the remains of St Peter’s, Blackburn, and its burial ground revealed a wealth of information about people buried there in the 19th century. IMAGE: Headland Archaeology
  On 30 September 1820, the cornerstone for a new Anglican church was laid in Blackburn town centre. Consecrated the following year, St Peter’s had been built to help accommodate the Lancashire town’s rapidly growing popu
  
  Read more

• New Orleans couple discovers ancient Roman grave marker in their yard

  07-10-2025 11:00
  Discovery of 1,900-year-old headstone dedicated to Roman sailor sets off effort to repatriate item to ItalyA New Orleans couple clearing away undergrowth in their home’s yard unearthed a grave marker, setting off a quest for answers about how the roughly 1,900-year-old relic ended up there – and an effort to repatriate it to Italy.The remarkable discovery was the work of Tulane University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, according to a report published o
  
  Read more

• Current Archaeology 428 – ON SALE NOW

  06-10-2025 16:04 via archaeology.co.uk
  You might notice that our first three features all begin with a photograph of a burial. Spanning c.3,000 years and hundreds of miles, together they highlight the diverse ways in which past populations have interacted with the dead, and what these practices can tell us about the living.This month’s cover feature takes us to Blackburn in Lancashire, where one of the largest cemetery excavations of its kind outside London has recovered the remains of almost 2,000 men, women, and children who
  
  Read more

• Current Archaeology 428

  06-10-2025 16:04 via archaeology.co.uk
  You might notice that our first three features all begin with a photograph of a burial. Spanning c.3,000 years and hundreds of miles, together they highlight the diverse ways in which past populations have interacted with the dead, and what these practices can tell us about the living.This month’s cover feature takes us to Blackburn in Lancashire, where one of the largest cemetery excavations of its kind outside London has recovered the remains of almost 2,000 men, women, and children who
  
  Read more

• Was prehistory a feminist paradise?

  05-10-2025 13:00
  Visions of matriarchal utopia may be wishful thinking, but there’s growing evidence of women wielding powerThere is a stubborn and widely held idea that in some earlier phase of our species’ existence, women had equal status to men, or even ruled, and societies were happier and more peaceful for it. Then along came the patriarchy, and much bloodshed and oppression later, here we all are.This notion of matriarchy and patriarchy as polar opposites – with a switch having been thro
  
  Read more

• Country diary: Just how low can a stone circle go? | Sara Hudston

  02-10-2025 06:30
  Withypool, Somerset: This is a landscape where things can lie hidden – not least a bronze-age structure that is more trip hazard than landmarkSeen from the barrow at the top of Withypool Hill, the common stretches away south like a lion’s back, tawny grass glinting as the land dips and then rises to the open skyline. Apart from a bridle path worn through like a rubbed seam, and a distant, narrow thread of road, the ground appears empty. But it’s not – we’r
  
  Read more

Follow @archaeology_uk1 on Twitter!