Archaeology in the news

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 thrown between them – was seeded in the 19th century by Marxist theory, taking root in archaeology without much evidence. From there it spread to public consciousness. Continue reading…

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’re only a few hundred metres from a bronze‑age stone circle.Forget the mighty 4-metre-tall megaliths of Stonehenge, this modest, ground-hugging construction could almost be mistaken for a series of natural stony outcrops. The 29 miniliths are less than knee-high, set earthfast among wiry mats of heather and whortleberry, more trip hazard than landmark. Absent from early maps, the monument wasn’t rediscovered until 1898, when a rider, led astray in the mist, stumbled over one of the markers. Continue reading…

The latest find is likely from the 16th century and could have originated as far away as the CaribbeanFlorida already claims to be the world capital of golf, shark bites and lightning strikes. Now a remarkable discovery following a devastating hurricane has enhanced its position as a global leader in another distinctive field: ancient canoes – some even prehistoric.State archeologists have just completed a painstaking preservation of an ancient wooden canoe discovered by a resident of Fort Myers during the cleanup from Hurricane Ian in 2022. Continue reading…

Exclusive: Author challenges assumption monks on Iona created manuscript, instead positing its origins are PictishThe Book of Kells was likely to have been created 1,200 years ago in Pictish eastern Scotland, rather than on the island of Iona, according to research that challenges long-held assumptions about one of the world’s most famous medieval manuscripts.The Book of Kells is an intricate, illuminated account of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that was long thought to have been started in the late eighth century at the monastery on Iona before being taken in the 9th century to the monastery of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, after a Viking raid.The Book of Kells by Victoria Whitworth (Bloomsbury Publishing, £35). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Continue reading…

Scientists say Netanyahu government and its US backers are trying to construct a history shorn of all complexityWhen the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, visited Jerusalem this month, the itinerary his Israeli hosts laid on involved more archaeology than anything else. On his first day, Benjamin Netanyahu took Rubio underground to excavations near the Western Wall. On the second day, Israel’s prime minister gave his American visitor the honour of inaugurating a tunnel burrowed under a Palestinian district, along a Roman-era street nicknamed the Pilgrimage Road, in a “City of David” archaeological park established by an Israeli settler organisation.Both events were intended to emphasise Jerusalem’s Jewish roots and its status, Netanyahu stressed, as “our eternal and undivided capital”. Continue reading…

About 1,400 visitors were evacuated but hundreds were left stuck because of action linked to bus contract dispute, say Peru authoritiesAt least 900 tourists were stranded near the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu on Tuesday, Peru’s tourism minister said, after a passenger train service was suspended due to a protest.PeruRail said service was suspended on Monday because the route in Peru’s mountainous Cusco region had been blocked by “rocks of various sizes” as residents clashed with authorities and bus companies. PeruRail’s local unit also said “third parties” had excavated part of its rail route, which affected the track’s stability and slowed down the evacuation of tourists. Continue reading…

Officials hurriedly remove nearly three decades of finds in ‘high-risk operation’An official in charge of nearly three decades of archaeological finds in Gaza has described how the artefacts were hurriedly evacuated from a Gaza City building threatened by an Israeli strike.“This was a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved – a real last-minute rescue,” said Olivier Poquillon, director of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), which housed the relics. Continue reading…

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…