Archaeology in the news

With sandals that look fresher than last year’s Birkenstocks, gossipy messages recovered from writing tablets and 73,000 shards of pottery, London Museum’s new collection is like falling head-first into the first centuryArchaeologists don’t always get lucky when a site is redeveloped in the middle of London. People have been building in the city for millennia and, in more recent times, bombing it. But if the building before went too deep, or there has been too much exposure to the air by bomb damage in the past, there won’t be much to find. Things were especially bad before 1991, when there was no planning protection for anything but scheduled ancient monuments. “We used to have to beg to get on site,” says Sophie Jackson, archaeologist at Museum of London Archaeology (Mola).It’s not that developers are insensitive, says Jackson: “When we did the excavation at Barts hospital, [it] was functioning above us – we were right under the MRI machines. Developers recognise the social value.” It’s just that the stars don’t often align. Continue reading…

Palestinian experts and British archaeologists say more than two-thirds of heritage, cultural and archaeological sites in Gaza have been damagedHamouda al-Dahda stands in the ruins of Pasha Palace in Gaza City, where before the war the golden limestone walls of the 800-year-old building towered above him, the gardens shaded visitors, and the cool vaulted halls held hundreds of priceless historical artefacts.“The palace was like a small paradise on Earth. Now, there is no life here at all and anyone who comes is sad. They can remember what it once was,” the 40-year-old museum director says. Continue reading…

Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets show extraordinary detail and reach of government in cradle of world civilisationsThe red tape of government bureaucracy spans more than 4,000 years, according to new finds from the cradle of the world’s civilisations, Mesopotamia.Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation. Continue reading…

Remains are of an adult member of an extinct species who lived up to 1.4m years ago, researchers sayBone fragments unearthed at an ancient cave in Spain belong to the oldest known human face in western Europe, researchers say.The fossilised remains make up the left cheek and upper jaw of an adult member of an extinct human species who lived and died on the Iberian peninsula between 1.1m and 1.4m years ago. Continue reading…

Archaeologists identify a possible Celtic settlement on the island and believe the trove was hurriedly transported thereThe mystery of why the world’s largest iron age Celtic hoard was buried on the south-east coast of Jersey more than 2,000 years ago may have been solved by archaeologists.When about 70,000 silver coins, 11 gold torques and jewellery were unearthed in a field at Le Câtillon in the Grouville district in 2012, experts were unable to explain why they had been transported to a remote and unpopulated area with dangerous coastal reefs. Continue reading…

Re-dating of Flagstones monument to about 3,200BC came after analysis by Exeter University and Historic EnglandA prehistoric burial site in Dorset is now thought to be the earliest known large circular enclosure in Britain prompting researchers to question whether current dating of Stonehenge may need revising.The Flagstones monument, near Dorchester in Dorset, has been re-dated to about 3200BC, approximately two centuries earlier than previously thought, following analysis by the University of Exeter and Historic England. Continue reading…

More than 450 artefacts from a waka found in pieces in the Chatham Islands expected to reveal new insights about Polynesian voyagingParts of a carved and decorated traditional ocean-going canoe (waka) found in the Chatham Islands, around 800km east of New Zealand, could be the most significant discovery of its kind in Polynesia, archaeologists say.The Chatham Islands is an archipelago administered as part of New Zealand. Over the past month, archaeologists and local volunteers have unearthed more than 450 artefacts from the waka found smashed to pieces in a creek on the northern coast of the main island, known as Rēkohu to the Indigenous Moriori . Continue reading…

Archaeologists suggest ‘woodhenge’ was built between 2600 and 1600BC on similar axis to English stone circleAn “extraordinary” timber circle believed to be thousands of years old and connected to Stonehenge in England has been discovered in the ground in Denmark.The circle of at least 45 wooden posts in Aars, North Jutland, has a diameter of about 30 metres and is believed to have been constructed between 2600 and 1600BC. Continue reading…

An educator, archaeologist and scientist were among the thousands of government workers culled by Musk’s agencyThe Trump administration has fired at least 20,000 government employees in its first month, as Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overhauls work at federal agencies. Some economists have speculated that these terminations, which could affect nearly 300,000 workers, will be the biggest job cuts in US history.Most of the workers cut were in probationary periods and lacked job protections that come with longer terms of employment. In social media spaces, especially the r/fednews subreddit, these workers described scenes of confusion and feelings of anger directed at Musk, an unelected billionaire dubbed a “special government employee” by the White House. Last week, unions for federal workers sued the Trump administration for unlawfully using probationary periods to cut staff. Continue reading…

Archaeologist believes his ‘find of the century’ – of Pharaoh Thutmose II – could be surpassed by ongoing excavationTo uncover the location of one long-lost pharaoh’s tomb is a career-defining moment for an archaeologist. But to find a second is the stuff of dreams.Last week British archaeologist Piers Litherland announced the find of the century – the first discovery of a rock-cut pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt since Tutankhamun’s in 1922. Continue reading…

Uncovering rock-cut tomb of Thutmose II hailed as most significant discovery since Tutankhamun in 1922It was when British archaeologist Piers Litherland saw that the ceiling of the burial chamber was painted blue with yellow stars that he realised he had just discovered the first rock-cut tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh to be found in more than a century.Litherland had been exploring the western wadis near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt for more than a decade when he discovered a staircase that led to the tomb, now known to have belonged to Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493 to 1479BC. Continue reading…

Scientists hope that smell could be a non-invasive way to judge how well-preserved a mummy isSpicy, woody and sweet: it sounds like a description of a fancy air freshener. But researchers say the mix of aromas arise from something rather different: mummies.Researchers have used both human noses and scientific instruments to probe how ancient Egyptian mummies smell today, and to what extent the odours reflect the materials used during the mummification process. Continue reading…

Archaeologists hail discovery of near-2,000-year-old structure as one of most significant recent finds in the cityThe remains of London’s earliest Roman basilica have been discovered under an office block, in what archaeologists have described as one of the most significant recent discoveries in the capital.The almost 2,000-year-old structure was part of the forum, the Roman capital’s social and administrative centre, and built around the late 70s or early 80s AD, just a few decades after the Romans invaded Britain and 20 years after Boudicca sacked and burned the city in AD60. Continue reading…

I found the history of the world there, told through the medium of pots. The orgy of earthenware was bafflingHaving lived in London since 1986, it was to my shame and discredit that I’d never been to the British Museum. I was not proud of the fact. This wasn’t a one-man boycott over the Parthenon marbles or anything like that. I’d just never got round to it. And this wasn’t good enough. So last week, at the ripe old age of nearly 58, I paid the British Museum a visit.“Ah, Mr Chiles,” exclaimed no one when I walked in, “about time!” But there must have been something trepidatious about me, because a nice chap asked if I needed any help. I stammered something about looking for room 41. A friend had told me room 41 was special, so it seemed as good a place as any to start. This room tells the story of Europe from AD300. Which was amazing and all that, except it was a story told mainly through the medium of pots. Urns, pots and assorted drinking vessels of all shapes and sizes. I moved from room 41 to other rooms, going backwards and forwards in time and to all points of the compass, and found yet more pots, urns and drinking vessels. Ornate pots, rustic pots, arty pots, functional pots. Continue reading…

A runic inscription on one of the Galloway hoard’s elaborately decorated arm rings has been decipheredWhen the Galloway hoard was discovered in a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it proved to be the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. Now the long-standing mystery of who might have owned it when it was buried more than 1,000 years ago may have been solved.The spectacular silver and gold treasure had in fact belonged to everybody – “the community” – just as it does today, having been acquired in 2017 by National Museums Scotland (NMS). Continue reading…

Archaeologists using 3D mapping are uncovering the remains of thousands of green metropolises with composted gardens, fisheries, and forests groomed into orchards For decades, archaeologists have believed that human occupation of the Amazon basin was far older, vaster and more urbanised than the textbooks suggested. But hard evidence was scant, artefacts were scattered, and there were too few people on the ground to fully assess the magnitude of what lay cached in the dense forest. Then they found a shortcut – lidar.Lidar (light detection and ranging) scans use pulses of light to create a 3D map of terrain in a fraction of the time it would take to survey from the ground. One of those making the most of the technology is a team of experts led by Vinícius Peripato, an analyst with the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research. Continue reading…

Writing on PHerc. 172 papyrus, found at Roman mansion in Herculaneum, revealed after 3D X-rays and software competitionResearchers have peered inside an ancient scroll that was burned to a crisp in the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.The scroll is one of hundreds found in the library of a Roman mansion in Herculaneum, a town on the west coast of Italy that was wiped out when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79. Continue reading…

My father, Donald Gordon, who has died aged 90, enjoyed two successful and influential careers, first in education and then in Roman history, as he put Trimontium, Scotland’s largest Roman fort, back on the map.Donald was one of the key founders of the Trimontium Trust in the late 1980s, following an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to move the route of the Melrose bypass away from the Roman site, which neighboured Donald’s village of Newstead, in the Borders. Continue reading…

DeepSeek’s home | Bare bones | Liquid lift-off | Labour faithfuls? | School sports | Questionable teachingRachel Reeves is behind the tech curve in proposing to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” (Report, 28 January). She should surely be considering an equivalent of Hangzhou, home of DeepSeek, the company that knocked $1tn off the value of US tech stocks in a day.John LoweryLondon• A “spectacular” vertebra has been “found online” (Report, 28 January). Given the recent changes to Meta, I doubt it was Mark Zuckerberg’s.Dr Jonathan J RossSheffield Continue reading…

Vertebra spotted by fossil hunters on online marketplace is part of first stegosaur ever described by scientistsThe spectacular remains of the first stegosaur to be described by scientists – discovered in a clay pit in Swindon in 1874 – are on display in the grand surroundings of the Natural History Museum in London.But 150 years on, a little piece of the Swindon Stegosaur has been returned to the Wiltshire town, after two fossil hunters spotted one of its vertebrae for sale on an online marketplace site. Continue reading…