Archaeology in the news

Evidence of millions of animal bones at sites in West Country and Surrey points to ‘age of feasting’These days, revellers converge on the West Country from all parts of the UK and beyond to take part in the wonderful craziness of the Glastonbury festival.It turns out that at the end of the bronze age – also a time of climatic and economic crisis – the same sort of impulse gripped people. Continue reading…

In this week’s newsletter: an archaeologist and gamer on why we love to walk around finding objects in-game and in real lifeThe game I’m most looking forward to right now is Big Walk, the latest title from House House, creators of the brilliant Untitled Goose Game. A cooperative multiplayer adventure where players are let loose to explore an open world, I’m interested to see what emergent gameplay comes out of it. Could Big Walk allow for a kind of community archaeology with friends? I certainly hope so.When games use environmental storytelling in their design – from the positioning of objects to audio recordings or graffiti – they invite players to role play as archaeologists. Game designer Ben Esposito infamously joked back in 2016 that environmental storytelling is the “art of placing skulls near a toilet” – which might have been a jab at the tropes of games like the Fallout series, but his quip demonstrates how archaeological gaming narratives can be. After all, the incongruity of skulls and toilets is likely to lead to many questions and interpretations about the past in that game world, however ridiculous. Continue reading…

The unprecedented find has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the AmericasArchaeologists in Peru have discovered a multicoloured three-dimensional wall that could date back 4,000 years, in an unprecedented find that has shifted archaeological understanding about the first civilisations in the Americas.The centrepiece of the three-by-six metre wall carving is a stylistic depiction of a large bird of prey with outstretched wings, its head adorned with three-dimensional diamond motifs that visually align the south and north faces of the mural. It is covered with high-relief friezes and features designs painted in blue, yellow, red and black. Continue reading…

Archaeologist whose recording of ceramics provided insights into the Mycenaean civilisation of late bronze age GreeceWhen Penelope Mountjoy, who has died aged 78, undertook her first archaeological research season in Greece in 1970, she spent time at Mycenae, in the eastern Peloponnese. One of the principal sites of the late bronze age in mainland Greece, it had given its name to a civilisation that flourished between c1650 and c1150 BC.Studying and drawing potsherds – broken pieces of ceramic material – for the project’s co-director, Lisa French, proved to be an early step towards Penelope becoming the leading authority on decorated Mycenaean pottery. The cumulative effect of her scholarship took understanding of the field to a new level. Continue reading…

Social media is helping drive trade in skulls, bones and skin products as UK legal void risks new era of ‘body snatching’“When it comes to human stuff, I’ll take anything, pretty much,” says Henry Scragg. “As long as it’s been ethically sourced, may I add.”Speaking from his macabre curiosities shop in Essex in a recent YouTube interview, Scragg wears a shabby bowler hat, has tribal-style face tattoos and a ginger beard that descends into three pendulous dreadlocks. Continue reading…

Cranes hoisted statues from depths of submerged site that authorities say may be extension of ancient city of Canopus Egypt has unveiled parts of a sunken city submerged beneath waters off the coast of Alexandria, including buildings, artefacts and an ancient dock that date back more than 2,000 years.Egyptian authorities said the site, located in the waters of Abu Qir bay, may be an extension of the ancient city of Canopus, a prominent centre during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for nearly 300 years, and the Roman empire, which governed for about 600 years. Continue reading…

Isotopes shows animal began life in Wales, adding weight to theory cattle used in hauling stones across countryA cow’s tooth from a jawbone deliberately placed beside the entrance to Stonehenge at the Neolithic monument’s very beginning in 2995 to 2900BC could offer tantalising new evidence about how the stones were transported about 125 miles from Wales to Salisbury Plain.Analysis of the third molar tooth showed the animal began life in Wales, adding weight to a theory that cows were used as beasts of burden in hauling the enormous stones across the country. Continue reading…

Crown estate owns seabed of treacherous sandbank off Kent that has entombed more than 2,000 shipwrecksOver centuries the treacherous Goodwin Sands off Kent – known as the great “ship swallower” – has entombed more than 2,000 shipwrecks, dozens of second world war aircraft and is the final resting place of thousands. Shakespeare described it as “a very dangerous flat, and fatal”.In 1703, five vessels were sucked into its shifting sands during a storm, including the English warship HMS Northumberland, which only now is yielding its well-preserved secrets. Continue reading…

Coralie Clover says having human remains on display inspires visitors and helps build empathy with the ancient worldI found Paul Daley’s opinion piece on displaying human remains an interesting read (Times change, so do people. So why does the British Museum still think it’s OK to display human remains?, 6 August). I am always glad to discuss the reasons why museums retain and display human remains. First, I completely agree that human remains taken by colonial powers should be repatriated rather than displayed in international institutions. I disagree strongly, however, with the idea that there is no value (aside from shock value) to displaying human remains. Through museums it is possible to learn about death and human remains in a respectful way – without the gore you often find in the media.At Folkestone Museum, we display the human remains of an Anglo-Saxon woman from a cemetery on the hill above our town. She was exhumed during an excavation in 1908. The rest of the skeletons excavated from that cemetery were collected together in a single tea chest and reburied, which I don’t consider especially respectful. I believe that by telling our skeleton’s story in as complete a way as we can, through our research, display and educational work, we can honour her memory best. Through this work, our skeleton has become beloved to generations of visitors to the museum. For over a hundred years, she has inspired people to learn more about the past and at least one person has become an archaeologist after meeting her. Our work aims to help visitors build empathy with the people who lived before us and our skeleton is an important part of that work. Continue reading…

Site director says ‘a kind of camp, a favela’ was founded in the ruins of city destroyed in AD79Archaeologists have discovered new evidence pointing to the reoccupation of Pompeii after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius that left the city in ruins.Despite the massive destruction suffered by Pompeii, an ancient Roman city home to more than 20,000 people before the eruption, some survivors who could not afford to start a new life elsewhere are believed to have returned to live in the devastated area. Continue reading…

Experts say the relics at Piazza Venezia appear to resemble a multistorey complex of homes and shopsThe remains of homes believed to have been lived in by working-class people around the time of the early Roman empire have been found by workers building an underground station in the city’s historic centre.The relics are the first to emerge from beneath the bustling Piazza Venezia since work began in 2023 on the station that will form part of the Italian capital’s Metro C underground line. Continue reading…

Wrexham: These plants were giants, tall and abundant enough to change the atmosphere 300m years ago – and they’re somewhere fossilised in this rockWe are at the Stori Brymbo heritage site, which was an iron mine and smelting plant until 1990. Outside it is cool, stormy and wet, but we’re sheltered under a galvanised roof with the wind rattling and the rain tapping. Beneath us, a sandy, crumbling layer of rock formed 300m years ago from a great thickness of mud and silt that settled in a vast river delta system that once covered this part of Wales.If I squint my eyes, I imagine the vast, stifling, steaming jungle; no grass or flowers, just tall trunks towering above and ferns below, insects flying all around. This was the Carboniferous era in the tropics, long before any dinosaurs or other land animals, and the first “trees” – club mosses, giant horsetails – grew by 10 to 30 metres in a few months, before dying and falling into the swamps to eventually form our coal. Continue reading…

Race against time to study HMS Northumberland as shifting sands expose part of well-preserved wreck off KentThe English warship HMS Northumberland was built in 1679 as part of a wave of naval modernisation overseen by Samuel Pepys, a decade after he had stopped writing his celebrated diary and gone on to become the Royal Navy’s most senior administrator.Twenty-four years later, after the ship had taken part in many of the major naval battles of its day, it was at the bottom of the North Sea, a victim of the Great Storm of 1703, one of the deadliest weather disasters in British history. Continue reading…

Oil lamp fragments point to presence of previously unknown Jewish population in Ibero-Roman town of CástuloSeventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity.Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andalucían town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. Continue reading…

Researchers believe humans’ closest relatives may have stored meat from their kills for months before eating itFor hungry Neanderthals, there was more on the menu than wild mammals, roasted pigeon, seafood and plants. Chemical signatures in the ancient bones point to a nutritious and somewhat inevitable side dish: handfuls of fresh maggots.The theory from US researchers undermines previous thinking that Neanderthals were “hypercarnivores” who stood at the top of the food chain with cave lions, sabre-toothed tigers and other beasts that consumed impressive quantities of meat. Continue reading…

My mother, Margret Carey, who has died aged 95, had a successful career as an ethnographer and bead expert, including being the first permanent female staff member of the British Museum’s ethnography department, when she was appointed assistant keeper in 1954.Margret had a particular interest in the beadwork of sub-Saharan Africa, and wrote two books and several articles related to those subjects and the region. She also spoke at numerous international bead conferences. Continue reading…

Aeneas program, which predicts where and when Latin texts were made, called ‘transformative’ by historiansIn addition to sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a freshwater system and public health, the Romans also produced a lot of inscriptions.Making sense of the ancient texts can be a slog for scholars, but a new artificial intelligence tool from Google DeepMind aims to ease the process. Named Aeneas after the mythical Trojan hero, the program predicts where and when inscriptions were made and makes suggestions where words are missing. Continue reading…

Archaeologists and volunteers identify Sanday timbers as from 18th-century Royal Navy frigate turned whalerWhen a schoolboy running on a beach on the island of Sanday in Orkney last year came across the timbers of a shipwreck that had been exposed after a storm, local people knew the ship might have an intriguing history.Residents of the tiny island at the edge of the Scottish archipelago are familiar with ships that have come to grief in stormy seas, hundreds of shipwrecks having been recorded there over the centuries. Continue reading…

Analysis of bones from two caves shows prehistoric people butchered the same animals in different waysNothing turns up the heat in a kitchen quite like debating the best way to chop an onion. Now researchers have found even our prehistoric cousins had distinct preferences when it came to preparing food.Archaeologists studying animal bones recovered from two caves in northern Israel have found different groups of Neanderthals, living at around the same time, butchered the same animals in different ways. Continue reading…

Author of popular archaeology books who helped to shape our understanding of ancient human historyScience is continuously revealing astonishing insights into ourselves and our world. Transmitting those advances to a wider public, while reminding specialists whom they really work for, is a rare craft. For the past half century, Brian Fagan, who has died aged 88, did that through his writing and speaking, shaping public understanding of ancient human history.Unlike Carl Sagan or David Attenborough, who brought cosmology and nature into millions of homes, Brian never fronted a television series. But his well-researched output was prodigious: including revised editions, he wrote or edited the equivalent of two books for every year of his life. Continue reading…