The Aineta aryballos is an Ancient Greek aryballos, made in Corinth between approximately 625 and 570BCE. Approximately 6.35 centimetres (2.50 in) in both height and diameter, it was intended to contain perfumed oil, and is likely to have been owned by a high-class courtesan (hetaira) by the name of Aineta, who may be portrayed in a drawing on its handle. The vase's illegal sale to the British Museum in 1865 led to the prosecution of its seller, the Athenian art dealer Athanasios Rhousopoulos, and exposed the latter's widespread involvement in antiquities crime.
The vase is inscribed with a portrait, generally agreed to be that of a woman and probably that of Aineta, who is named in the inscription upon the vase. Below the portrait are the names of several men, generally taken to be Aineta's admirers or lovers. It is likely to have been found in a grave, probably that of Aineta herself. According to Rhousopoulos, it was discovered in Corinth around 1852. In 1877, Panagiotis Efstratiadis, the Ephor General of Antiquities in charge of the Greek Archaeological Service, had Rhousopoulos fined for selling the vase in contravention of Greek law. The case has been called "a milestone in the trafficking of Greek antiquities", in that it represented a relatively rare successful use of state power against the illegal trade in Ancient Greek artefacts. (Full article...)
Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, to a working-class family, Aston developed an early interest in archaeology, studying it as a subsidiary to geography at the University of Birmingham. In 1970, he began his career working for the Oxford City and County Museum and there began his work in public outreach by running extramural classes in archaeology and presenting a series on the subject for Radio Oxford. In 1974, he was appointed the first County Archaeologist for Somerset, there developing an interest in aerial archaeology and establishing a reputation as a pioneer in landscape archaeology—a term that he co-invented with Trevor Rowley—by authoring some of the earliest books on the subject. In 1978 he began lecturing at the University of Oxford and in 1979 became a tutor at the University of Bristol, supplementing these activities by working as an archaeological tour guide in Greece.
In 1988, Aston teamed up with television producer Tim Taylor and together they created two shows which focused on bringing archaeology into British popular consciousness. The first was the short-lived Time Signs (1991), followed by the more successful Time Team, which was produced for Channel 4 from 1994 to 2013. Aston was responsible for identifying sites for excavation and for selecting specialists to appear on the show, and through the programme became well known to the viewing public for his trademark colourful jumpers and flowing, untidy hairstyle. In 1996 he was appointed to the specially-created post of Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University, and undertook a ten-year project investigating the manor at Shapwick, Somerset.
He retired from his university posts in 2004, but continued working on Time Team until 2011 and in 2006 commenced writing regular articles for British Archaeology magazine until his death. Although Aston did not believe that he would leave a significant legacy behind him, after his death various archaeologists claimed that he had a major impact in helping to popularise the discipline among the British public. (Full article...)
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The Gozo Phoenician shipwreck is a seventh-century-BC shipwreck of a Phoenician trade ship lying at a depth of 110 meters (360 ft). The wreck was discovered in 2007 during a sonar survey off the coast of Malta's Gozo island. Since 2014 it has been the object of a multidisciplinary project led by University of Malta along with many other national and international entities. The Gozo shipwreck archaeological excavation is the first maritime archaeological survey to explore shipwrecks with divers beyond a depth of 100 meters (330 ft). (Full article...)
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Porlock Stone Circle is a stone circle located on Exmoor, near the village of Porlock in the south-westernEnglish county of Somerset. The Porlock ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circles' builders.
Although Exmoor witnessed the construction of many monuments during the Bronze Age, only two stone circles survive in this area, the other being Withypool Stone Circle. The Porlock circle is about 24 metres (79 feet) in diameter and contains thirteen green micaceous sandstone rocks; there may originally have been more. Directly to the north-east of the circle is a cairn connected to a linear stone row. No evidence has been found that allows for absolute dating of the monument's construction, although archaeologists have suggested that the cairn dates from the Early Bronze Age, the circle being a Middle Bronze Age addition.
A small lead wheel found inside Porlock Stone Circle suggests that the site was visited during the Romano-British period. The site was rediscovered in the 1920s and since then a variety of stones have been added to it; its current appearance is a composite of prehistoric and modern elements. In 1928 the site was surveyed and excavated by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray. A second excavation took place under the leadership of Mark Gillings in 2013. (Full article...)
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Addington Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths. Of these, it lies near to both Chestnuts Long Barrow and Coldrum Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as the destroyed Smythe's Megalith and possible survivals such as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are located on the Medway's eastern side.
After the Early Neolithic, the long barrow fell into ruins, with a small road being built through the centre of the monument by the 19th century at the latest. Local folklore grew up around the site, associating it with the countless stones motif. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the early 18th century, and was studied by local archaeologists in the 20th. Both it and the nearby Chestnuts Long Barrow are on private land and are no longer (as of October 2019) accessible to the public. (Full article...)
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Leslie Valentine GrinsellOBEFSA (14 February 1907 – 28 February 1995) was an English archaeologist and museum curator. Publishing over twenty books on archaeology during his lifetime, he was renowned as a specialist on the prehistoric barrows of southern England.
Born in London and raised largely in Brighton, Grinsell developed an early interest in archaeology through visits to Brighton Museum. Later working as a bank clerk in London, he embarked on archaeological research in an amateur capacity, visiting prehistoric barrows during his weekends and holidays to record their shape, dimensions, and location. On the basis of his research, he published a range of academic articles and books on barrows during the 1930s, gaining recognition as Britain's foremost expert on the subject. In 1933, he carried out his only archaeological excavation, at the Devil's Humps in Sussex.
During the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force and served in Egypt, where he acquainted himself with the archaeological remains of Ancient Egyptian society; after the war he published a book on the Egyptian pyramids. On his return to Britain, Grinsell became the treasurer of the Prehistoric Society, a position that he held from 1947 till 1970. Moving to Devizes, in 1949 he entered the archaeological profession as an assistant to Christopher Hawkes and Stuart Piggott at the Victoria County History project. From 1952 to 1972, Grinsell worked as Keeper of Anthropology and Archaeology at Bristol City Museum, during which time he continued his examination of barrows, focusing on those in south-west England. On retirement, he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire and a festschrift was published in his honour.
Over the course of his lifetime, Grinsell examined and catalogued around 10,000 barrows and advanced the archaeological understanding of such monuments. His use of non-excavatory fieldwork influenced much British archaeology in the latter part of his 20th century, while his willingness to pay attention to other sources of information, such as folklore and place-names, has been deemed ahead of its time. (Full article...)
Somerset is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is a rural county of rolling hills, such as the Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. Modern man came to what is now known as Somerset during the Early Upper Palaeolithic era. In the Neolithic era, from about 3500 BC, there is evidence of farming when people started to manage animals and grow crops on farms cleared from the woodland, rather than act purely as hunter gatherers. It is also likely that extraction and smelting of mineralores to make tools, weapons, containers and ornaments in bronze and then iron started in the late Neolithic and into the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The construction of hillforts began in Britain in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, roughly the start of the first millennium BC. The reason for their emergence, and their purpose, has been a subject of debate. It has been argued that they could have been military sites constructed in response to invasion from continental Europe, sites built by invaders, or a military reaction to social tensions caused by an increasing population and consequent pressure on agriculture. The dominant view since the 1960s has been that the increasing use of iron led to social changes in Britain. Deposits of iron ore were separated from the sources of tin and copper necessary to make bronze, and as a result trading patterns shifted and the old elites lost their economic and social status. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe believes that population increase played a role and has stated "the forts provided defensive possibilities for the community at those times when the stress of an increasing population burst out into open warfare. But I would not see them as having been built because there was a state of war. They would be functional as defensive strongholds when there were tensions and undoubtedly some of them were attacked and destroyed, but this was not the only, or even the most significant, factor in their construction".
There are numerous Iron Age hillforts and ancient settlement sites in the county, some of which were later reused in the Dark Ages, such as Cadbury Castle, Worlebury Camp and Ham Hill. Other hillforts, such as Small Down Knoll, Solsbury Hill, Dolebury Warren and Burledge Hill, may have had a domestic purpose as well as a defensive role. The Iron Age tribes of the Somerset area were the Dobunni in north Somerset, Durotriges in south Somerset and Dumnonii in west Somerset. Iron Age sites on the Quantock Hills, include major hillforts at Dowsborough and Ruborough, as well as smaller earthwork enclosures, such as Trendle Ring, Elworthy Barrows and Plainsfield Camp. In addition to the hillforts, several sites have been identified as settlements during the pre Roman period including Cambria Farm and the "Lake Villages" at Meare and Glastonbury which were built on a morass, on an artificial foundation of timber filled with brushwood, bracken, rubble and clay. Most of the sites fell out of use with the coming of the Romans and therefore this list covers those sites occupied until that time.
:Any building, structure or work above or below the surface of the land, any cave or excavation; any site comprising the remains of any such building, structure or work or any cave or excavation; and any site comprising or comprising the remains of any vehicle, vessel or aircraft or other movable structure or part thereof... (Section 61 (7)).
Damage to a scheduled monument is a criminal offence and any work taking place at one of these sites requires Scheduled Monument Consent from the Secretary of State. In England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport keeps the register, or schedule, of nationally important sites which receive state protection, which now includes over 31,000 sites. (Full article...)
Authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC, the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius, including his ancestry and lineage. Later in the inscription, Darius provides a lengthy sequence of events following the death of Cambyses II in which he fought nineteen battles in a period of one year (ending in December 521 BC) to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire. The inscription states in detail that the rebellions were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed himself king during the upheaval following Cambyses II's death. Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the "grace of Ahura Mazda".
The inscription is approximately 15 m (49 ft) high by 25 m (82 ft) wide and 100 m (330 ft) up a limestone cliff from an ancient road connecting the capitals of Babylonia and Media (Babylon and Ecbatana, respectively). The Old Persian text contains 414 lines in five columns; the Elamite text includes 260 lines in eight columns, and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines. A copy of the text in Aramaic, written during the reign of Darius II, was found in Egypt. The inscription was illustrated by a life-sized bas-relief of Darius I, the Great, holding a bow as a sign of kingship, with his left foot on the chest of a figure lying supine before him. The supine figure is reputed to be the pretender Gaumata. Darius is attended to the left by two servants, and nine one-meter figures stand to the right, with hands tied and rope around their necks, representing conquered peoples. A Faravahar floats above, giving its blessing to the king. One figure appears to have been added after the others were completed, as was Darius's beard, which is a separate block of stone attached with iron pins and lead. (Full article...)
In his Dream Pool Essays or Dream Torrent Essays (夢溪筆談; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the pole star and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancers' compasses in regard to declination).
Alongside his colleague Wei Pu, Shen planned to map the orbital paths of the Moon and the planets in an intensive five-year project involving daily observations, yet this was thwarted by political opponents at court. To aid his work in astronomy, Shen Kuo made improved designs of the armillary sphere, gnomon, sighting tube, and invented a new type of inflow water clock. Shen Kuo devised a geological hypothesis for land formation (geomorphology), based upon findings of inland marinefossils, knowledge of soil erosion, and the deposition of silt. He also proposed a hypothesis of gradual climate change, after observing ancient petrifiedbamboos that were preserved underground in a dry northern habitat that would not support bamboo growth in his time. He was the first literary figure in China to mention the use of the drydock to repair boats suspended out of water, and also wrote of the effectiveness of the relatively new invention of the canal pound lock. Although not the first to invent camera obscura, Shen noted the relation of the focal point of a concave mirror and that of the pinhole. Shen wrote extensively about movable typeprinting invented by Bi Sheng (990–1051), and because of his written works the legacy of Bi Sheng and the modern understanding of the earliest movable type has been handed down to later generations. Following an old tradition in China, Shen created a raised-relief map while inspecting borderlands. His description of an ancient crossbow mechanism he unearthed as an amateur archaeologist proved to be a Jacob's staff, a surveying tool which wasn't known in Europe until described by Levi ben Gerson in 1321.
Shen Kuo wrote several other books besides the Dream Pool Essays, yet much of the writing in his other books has not survived. Some of Shen's poetry was preserved in posthumous written works. Although much of his focus was on technical and scientific issues, he had an interest in divination and the supernatural, the latter including his vivid description of unidentified flying objects from eyewitness testimony. He also wrote commentary on ancient Daoist and Confucian texts. (Full article...)
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Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 581 (P. Oxy. 581 or P. Oxy. III 581) is a papyrusfragment written in Ancient Greek, apparently recording the sale of a slave girl. Dating from 29 August 99 AD, P. Oxy. 581 was discovered, alongside hundreds of other papyri, by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt while excavating an ancient landfill at Oxyrhynchus in modern Egypt. The document's contents were published by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1898, which also secured its donation to University College, Dundee, later the University of Dundee, in 1903 – where it still resides. Measuring 6.3 x 14.7 cm and consisting of 17 lines of text, the artifact represents the conclusion of a longer record, although the beginning of the papyrus was lost before it was found. P. Oxy. 581 has received a modest amount of scholarly attention, most recently and completely in a 2009 translation by classicist Amin Benaissa of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
The fragment probably documents the registration of a slaving sale with Oxyrhynchus' agoranomeion, a Roman civic institution involved with record-keeping and the supervision of taxation. P. Oxy. 581 mentions four individuals; the slave herself, likely an eight year-old female; the unnamed purchaser, for whom the transaction is being registered; Demas, brother of the purchaser as well as the slave's previous owner and Caecilius Clemens, an unspecified notary also connected to four other Oxyrhynchus Papyri dating from 86 AD–c.100 AD. An "inadvertent scribal omission", whereby the stated value of 3,000 bronzedrachmas, a largely obsolete currency, was not converted into its equivalent worth in silver, is regarded as an unusual mistake and has served to distinguish the record. (Full article...)
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The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of humanculture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistoceneglacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period (10,500–2,800 years ago) American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period (beginning about AD 900) increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state. (Full article...)
To his contemporaries, "Vay" Morley was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day. Although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications, particularly on calendric inscriptions, are still cited. In his role as director of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution, he oversaw and encouraged many others who later established notable careers in their own right. His commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies helped inspire the necessary sponsorship for projects that would ultimately reveal much about ancient Maya civilization.
Morley also conducted espionage in Mexico on behalf of the United States during World War I, but the scope of those activities only came to light well after his death. His archaeological field work in Mexico and Central America provided suitable cover for his work with the United States' Office of Naval Intelligence investigating German activities and anti-American activity. (Full article...)
Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known: they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument.
Knap Hill is notable as the first causewayed enclosure to be excavated and identified. In 1908 and 1909, Benjamin and Maud Cunnington spent two summers investigating the site, and Maud published two reports of their work, noting that there were several gaps in the ditch and bank surrounding the enclosure. In the late 1920s, after the excavation of Windmill Hill and other sites, it became apparent that causewayed enclosures were a characteristic monument of the Neolithic period. About a thousand causewayed enclosures have now been found in Europe, including around seventy in Britain.
This site was excavated again in 1961 by Graham Connah, who kept thorough stratigraphic documentation. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates which included several new dates from Connah's finds. It concluded that there was a 91% chance that the Knap Hill enclosure was constructed between 3530 and 3375 BC.
Two barrows lay within the Neolithic enclosure, and at least one more outside it. The hilltop also contains the remains of a Romano-British settlement on an adjoining smaller area called the plateau enclosure, along with some evidence of occupation in the 17th century. An Anglo-Saxon sword was found in the smaller enclosure, and there is evidence of an intense fire in the same area, which implies a violent end to the Romano-British occupation of the hilltop. (Full article...)
Born to a wealthy middle-class English family in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her junior lecturer in 1898. In 1902–03, she took part in Petrie's excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both of which established her reputation in Egyptology. Supplementing her UCL wage by giving public classes and lectures at the British Museum and Manchester Museum, it was at the latter in 1908 that she led the unwrapping of Khnum-nakht, one of the mummies recovered from the Tomb of two Brothers – the first time that a woman had publicly unwrapped a mummy. Recognising that British Egyptomania reflected the existence of a widespread public interest in Ancient Egypt, Murray wrote several books on Egyptology targeted at a general audience.
Murray also became closely involved in the first-wave feminist movement, joining the Women's Social and Political Union and devoting much time to improving women's status at UCL. Unable to return to Egypt due to the First World War, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. Although later academically discredited, the theory gained widespread attention and proved a significant influence on the emerging new religious movement of Wicca. From 1921 to 1931, she undertook excavations of prehistoric sites on Malta and Menorca and developed her interest in folkloristics. Awarded an honorary doctorate in 1927, she was appointed assistant professor in 1928 and retired from UCL in 1935. That year she visited Palestine to aid Petrie's excavation of Tall al-Ajjul and in 1937 she led a small excavation at Petra in Jordan. Taking on the presidency of the Folklore Society in later life, she lectured at such institutions as the University of Cambridge and City Literary Institute, and continued to publish in an independent capacity until her death.
Murray's work in Egyptology and archaeology was widely acclaimed and earned her the nickname of "The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology", although after her death many of her contributions to the field were overshadowed by those of Petrie. Conversely, Murray's work in folkloristics and the history of witchcraft has been academically discredited and her methods in these areas heavily criticised. The influence of her witch-cult theory in both religion and literature has been examined by various scholars, and she herself has been dubbed the "Grandmother of Wicca". (Full article...)
Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres (212 km2) near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table", or more specifically "green table mountain") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings in North America.
Starting c. 7500 BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture.
The Pueblo people survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash (the "Three Sisters"). They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they migrated south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Rio Chama, the Albuquerque Basin, the Pajarito Plateau, and the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. (Full article...)
The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC.However, the discovery of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions near the Nile River suggests that the script originated in Egypt. The evolution of Proto-Sinaitic and the small number of Proto-Canaanite inscriptions from the Bronze Age is based on rather scant epigraphic evidence; it is only with the Bronze Age collapse and the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the Levant that Proto-Canaanite is clearly attested (Byblos inscriptions 10th–8th century BC, Khirbet Qeiyafa inscription c. 10th century BC).
The first published group of Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie. These ten inscriptions, plus an eleventh published by Raymond Weill in 1904 from the 1868 notes of Edward Henry Palmer, were reviewed in detail, and numbered (as 345–355), by Alan Gardiner in 1916. To this were added a number of short Proto-Canaanite inscriptions found in Canaan and dated to between the 17th and 15th centuries BC, and more recently, the discovery in 1999 of the two Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, found in Middle Egypt by John and Deborah Darnell. The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC. (Full article...)
Rundkvist has studied and excavated various sites in Sweden, particularly in the country's south. In 2003 and 2004, he published a three-volume work which doubled as his PhD dissertation, cataloguing the finds from Barshalder [sv; de], the largest prehistoric cemetery on the Swedish island of Gotland. A subsequent book identified nine possible regional power centres in Östergötland, and attempted to determine where the "Beowulfian mead halls" of the day once stood. Excavating years later at one of these sites, Aska [sv], Rundkvist uncovered the foundations of a large mead hall, and 30 ornate gold figures that might have represented gods or royals. In other works, Rundkvist has excavated a Vikingboat grave, and analysed both the placement of deposited artefacts in the landscape and the lifestyles of the Scandinavian élite during the Middle Ages.
The fragment is 40 mm (1.6 in) long and made of silver. Its elongated head is semi-naturalistic, depicting a crouching quadruped on either side of the skull, divided by a mane along the centre. The boar's eyes are formed from garnet, and its eyebrows, skull, mouth, tusks, and snout are gilded. Its head is hollow; in the space underneath, which was filled with soil and plant matter when found, are three rivets that would have attached it to a larger object, probably a helmet. The fragment would probably have formed the crest terminal of one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe during the sixth through eleventh centuries.
The boar's head terminal is one of several representations of the animal on contemporaneous helmets. Boars surmount the Benty Grange and Wollaston helmets, and form the ends of the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo and perhaps York helmets. These evidence a thousand-years-long tradition in Germanic paganism associating boars with both deities and protection. The Roman historian Tacitus suggested that the BalticAesti wore boar symbols in battle to invoke the protection of a mother goddess, and in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the poet writes that boar symbols on helmets kept watch over the warriors wearing them. (Full article...)
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CIL 4.5296 (or CLE 950) is a poem found graffitied on the wall of a hallway in Pompeii. Discovered in 1888, it is one of the longest and most elaborate surviving graffiti texts from the town, and may be the only known love poem from one woman to another from the Latin world. The poem is nine verses long, breaking off in the middle of the ninth verse; a single line in a different hand is written underneath. It is in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. (Full article...)
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Whitley Castle (Epiacum) is a large, unusually shaped Romanfort (Latin: castra) north-west of the town of Alston, Cumbria, England. The castrum, which was first built by the Roman Army early in the 2nd century AD, was partly demolished and rebuilt around 200 AD. It appears to have been sited to protect lead mining in the area as well as to support the border defences of Hadrian's Wall.
Unlike most Roman forts that have a "playing-card shape" (rectangular with rounded corners), Whitley Castle is lozenge-shaped to fit the site. Numerous banks and ditches ring the stone ramparts, making it among the most complex defensive earthworks of any fort known in the Roman Empire.
The site was surveyed by the geologist Thomas Sopwith in the 19th century and the historian R.G. Collingwood in the 20th century. In 2012, a geophysics survey was conducted by a team from Durham University but it has not been fully excavated. Among finds at the fort are altars with inscriptions to Hercules by Legio VI Victrix (normally stationed at Eboracum [York]) and to Apollo by the 2nd Cohort of Nervians, the garrison of auxiliaries. Other finds include a midden containing shoes; coins, fragments of Samian pottery, beads, nails, and a bronze handle shaped like a dolphin. (Full article...)
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The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the EgyptologistHoward Carter, more than 3,300 years after Tutankhamun's death and burial. Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun's tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.
The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort. The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public. To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt's ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team. The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse.
After Lord Carnarvon's death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb. In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb's contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun's mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last two chambers of the tomb were cleared from 1926 to 1930, and the last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.
The tomb's discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun's time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it did establish the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, the era of radical innovation that preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun's time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers. The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself. (Full article...)
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West Somerset was a local government district in the English county of Somerset. It merged with Taunton Deane to form Somerset West and Taunton on 1 April 2019. The council covered a largely rural area, with a population of 35,075 in an area of 740 square kilometres (290 sq mi). According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics in 2009, the population of West Somerset had the oldest average age in the United Kingdom at 52. The largest centres of population were the coastal towns of Minehead (population 10,000) and Watchet (4,400).
A scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or monument which is given legal protection by being placed on a list (or "schedule") by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; English Heritage takes the leading role in identifying such sites. The legislation governing this is the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The term "monument" can apply to the whole range of archaeological sites, and they are not always visible above ground. Such sites have to have been deliberately constructed by human activity. They range from prehistoric standing stones and burial sites, through Roman remains and medieval structures such as castles and monasteries, to later structures such as industrial sites and buildings constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War.
There are 201 scheduled monuments in West Somerset. Some of the oldest, particularly on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills are Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age including hillforts, cairns, bowl barrows and other tumulis. More recent sites include several motte-and-bailey castles and church or village crosses which date from the Middle Ages. The geography with large numbers of streams is reflected by the number of packhorse and other bridges included in the list. The mining history of the area is also represented by several sections of the West Somerset Mineral Railway and associated ruins of mine buildings which are now scheduled. The most recent monuments are World War II pillboxes. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...)
Castleshaw Roman fort was a castellum in the Roman province of Britannia. Although there is no evidence to substantiate the claim, it has been suggested that Castleshaw Roman fort is the site of Rigodunum, a Brigantian settlement. The remains of the fort are located on Castle Hill on the eastern side of Castleshaw Valley at the foot of Standedge but overlooking the valley. The hill is on the edge of Castleshaw in Greater Manchester. The fort was constructed in c. AD 79, but fell out of use at some time during the 90s. It was replaced by a smaller fortlet, built in c. 105, around which a civilian settlement grew. It may have served as a logistical and administrative centre, although it was abandoned in the 120s.
The site has been the subject of antiquarian and archaeological investigation since the 18th century, but the civilian settlement lay undiscovered until the 1990s. The fort, fortlet, and civilian settlement are all protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, recognising its importance as a "nationally important" archaeological site or historic building, and protecting it against unauthorised change. (Full article...)
The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (14 C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting 14 C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire 14 C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of 14 C it contains begins to decrease as the 14 C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of 14 C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less 14 C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of 14 C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the 14 C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.
Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of 14 C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of 14 C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its 14 C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no 14 C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of 14 C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.
Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying 14 C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the 14 C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. (Full article...)
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A war elephant was an elephant that was trained and guided by humans for combat. The war elephant's main use was to charge the enemy, break their ranks, and instill terror and fear. Elephantry is a term for specific military units using elephant-mounted troops. (Full article...)
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A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to build with unskilled labour, but still militarily formidable, these castles were built across northern Europe from the 10th century onwards, spreading from Normandy and Anjou in France, into the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Low Countries it controlled, in the 11th century, when these castles were popularized in the area that became the Netherlands. The Normans introduced the design into England and Wales. Motte-and-bailey castles were adopted in Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark in the 12th and 13th centuries. By the end of the 13th century, the design was largely superseded by alternative forms of fortification, but the earthworks remain a prominent feature in many countries. (Full article...)
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Al-Rahba (/ALA-LC: al-Raḥba, sometimes spelled Raḥabah), also known as Qal'at al-Rahba, which translates as the "Citadel of al-Rahba", is a medieval Arab fortress on the west bank of the Euphrates River, adjacent to the city of Mayadin in Syria. Situated atop a mound with an elevation of 244 meters (801 ft), al-Rahba oversees the Syrian Desert steppe. It has been described as "a fortress within a fortress"; it consists of an inner keep measuring 60 by 30 meters (197 ft × 98 ft), protected by an enclosure measuring 270 by 95 meters (886 ft × 312 ft). Al-Rahba is largely in ruins today as a result of wind erosion.
The original site, which was known as "Rahbat Malik ibn Tawk" after its Abbasid namesake and founder, was located along the Euphrates. It was viewed by Muslim armies, caravans and travelers as the key to Syria from Iraq and sometimes vice versa. Bedouin tribes often took control of it and used it as a launching point for invasions of northern Syria. Because of its strategic location, al-Rahba was frequently fought over by Muslim powers, including local lords, the Hamdanids, the Uqaylids, the Mirdasids and the Seljuks, among others. Rahbat Malik ibn Tawk was destroyed in an earthquake in 1157.
A few years later, the current fortress was built close to the desert edge by the Zengid–Ayyubid lord Shirkuh. The latter's descendants held al-Rahba as a hereditary fief granted by Saladin until 1264. One of them, Shirkuh II, oversaw a third major reconstruction in 1207. Through the early Mamluk era (late 13th–14th centuries), the fortress was continuously restored and strengthened as a result of frequent sieges by the Ilkhanid Mongols of Iraq. Al-Rahba was the most important Mamluk fortress along the Euphrates, an administrative center and the terminal stop on the sultanate's postal route. It fell into disuse during Ottoman rule (1517–1918) and from then until the early 20th century, the fortress primarily served as a shelter for local shepherds and their flocks. Excavations were carried out at the site between 1976 and 1981. (Full article...)
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Miri Qalat is an archaeological site located in the Kech Valley, Pakistan, dating back to the 3rd millennium BC. The name itself can be translated to "Prince's Fortress," with the term "Mir" stemming from Arabic ancestry, meaning "prince," and the word "Qalat" stemming from the Arabic and Persian word for "fortress." Situated in the larger region of Kech-Makran in the southwestern part of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Miri Qalat is often regarded as "the most important archaeological site of the Kech Valley," although it represents only a small part of the entire region.
Excavations of the site of Miri Qalat took place during the late 20th century, initially revealing signs of settlement which consisted of mud-brick and stone structures. Through various dating methods, archaeologists dated the site to the beginnings of the Indus Valley Civilization (2500-1900 BCE), placing it in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC.
Led by archaeologist Roland Besenval, the excavation was aimed at understanding the site's strata along with its paleo-economical and paleo-environmental context. These findings are crucial for understanding the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods in South Asia, and provide insight on the region's first urban civilization.
The archaeological trench excavation not only led to a greater historical understanding of local tradition and its connection to Iranian culture, but also shed light on trade interactions within the region and with the Oman Peninsula. (Full article...)
As it might be recognised today, Chat Moss is thought to be about 7,000 years old, but peat development seems to have begun there with the ending of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The depth of peat ranges from 24 to 30 feet (7 to 9 m). A great deal of reclamation work has been carried out, particularly during the 19th century, but a large-scale network of drainage channels is still required to keep the land from reverting to bog. In 1958 workers extracting peat discovered the severed head of what is believed to be a Romano-BritishCelt, possibly a sacrificial victim, in the eastern part of the bog near Worsley.
Rupert Leo Scott Bruce-MitfordFBAFSA (14 June 1914 – 10 March 1994) was a British archaeologist and scholar. He spent the majority of his career at the British Museum, primarily as the Keeper of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities, and was particularly known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial. Considered the "spiritus rector" of such research, he oversaw the production of the monumental three-volume work The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, termed by the president of the Society of Antiquaries as "one of the great books of the century".
Though Bruce-Mitford was born in London, the preceding two generations had lived largely abroad: his maternal grandparents as early settlers of British Columbia, his paternal grandparents as missionaries in India, and his parents as schoolteachers recently returned from Japan. When Bruce-Mitford was five, his father, who had returned to Japan two years earlier, died. His mother was left to raise the four sons, of which Bruce-Mitford was the youngest, on a tiny salary; the stresses were substantial, and Bruce-Mitford was fostered for a time after his mother had a breakdown. Bruce-Mitford attended preparatory school with the support of a relative, was admitted to the charity schoolChrist's Hospital five years later, and, in 1933, was awarded a Baring Scholarship in History to attend Hertford College, Oxford. Recommending him for a museum curatorship in 1936, the University Appointments Board noted that he "has an exceptional gift for research, a sphere in which he could do work of outstanding merit".
After spending a year as an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum, during which he produced "the first serious study of medieval pottery", in December 1937, Bruce-Mitford was appointed to the British Museum's Department of British and Medieval Antiquities. The ship-burial was excavated in 1939, weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War; Bruce-Mitford spent 1940 to 1946 in the Royal Corps of Signals, and returned with a warning from the department's Keeper: "You will also be responsible for Sutton Hoo. Brace yourself for this task." Bruce-Mitford spent much of the next four decades focused on the subject, publishing dozens of works, studying contemporary graves in Scandinavia (excavating a boat-grave in Sweden and learning Swedish and Danish along the way), and leading a second round of excavations at Sutton Hoo from 1965 to 1970.
The Burzahom archaeological site is located in the Srinagar district of the Kashmir Valley of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Archaeological excavations have revealed four phases of cultural significance between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE. Periods I and II represent the Neolithic era; Period III the Megalithic era (of massive stone menhirs and wheel turned red pottery); and Period IV relates to the early Historical Period (Post-megalithic period). The findings, recorded in stratified cultural deposits representing prehistoric human activity in Kashmir, are based on detailed investigations that cover all aspects of the physical evidence of the site, including the ancient flora and fauna.
The Burzahom site revealed the transition from the subterranean and ground level housing features of the Neolithic people to the mudbrick structures of the Megalithic people. The large cache of tools and implements made of bone and stone found at the site shows that the inhabitants were hunting and farming.
The unearthed Antiquities (of art, architecture, customs and rituals) indicate that the prehistoric people of the Burzahom established contact with Central Asia and South West Asia and also had links to the Gangetic plains and peninsular India. The interaction of local and foreign influences is demonstrated by the art, architecture, customs, rituals and language demonstrated by some engravings on pottery and other artifacts.. (Full article...)
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Deir ed Derb ("The monastery of the road") is a monumental Jewish tomb with an elaborate façade dated to the 1st century CE. The site is located in the West Bank about 1/2-mile SE of the village center of Qarwat Bani Hassan. Its Arab name derives from the ancient road passing near it and refers to a monastery. (Full article...)
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West Somerset was a local government district in the English county of Somerset. It merged with Taunton Deane to form Somerset West and Taunton on 1 April 2019. The council covered a largely rural area, with a population of 35,075 in an area of 740 square kilometres (290 sq mi). According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics in 2009, the population of West Somerset had the oldest average age in the United Kingdom at 52. The largest centres of population were the coastal towns of Minehead (population 10,000) and Watchet (4,400).
A scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or monument which is given legal protection by being placed on a list (or "schedule") by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; English Heritage takes the leading role in identifying such sites. The legislation governing this is the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The term "monument" can apply to the whole range of archaeological sites, and they are not always visible above ground. Such sites have to have been deliberately constructed by human activity. They range from prehistoric standing stones and burial sites, through Roman remains and medieval structures such as castles and monasteries, to later structures such as industrial sites and buildings constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War.
There are 201 scheduled monuments in West Somerset. Some of the oldest, particularly on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills are Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age including hillforts, cairns, bowl barrows and other tumulis. More recent sites include several motte-and-bailey castles and church or village crosses which date from the Middle Ages. The geography with large numbers of streams is reflected by the number of packhorse and other bridges included in the list. The mining history of the area is also represented by several sections of the West Somerset Mineral Railway and associated ruins of mine buildings which are now scheduled. The most recent monuments are World War II pillboxes. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...)
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Maya stelae (singular stela) are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall, sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief, although plain monuments are found throughout the Maya region. The sculpting of these monuments spread throughout the Maya area during the Classic Period (250–900 AD), and these pairings of sculpted stelae and circular altars are considered a hallmark of Classic Maya civilization. The earliest dated stela to have been found in situ in the Maya lowlands was recovered from the great city of Tikal in Guatemala. During the Classic Period almost every Maya kingdom in the southern lowlands raised stelae in its ceremonial centre.
Stelae became closely associated with the concept of divine kingship and declined at the same time as this institution. The production of stelae by the Maya had its origin around 400 BC and continued through to the end of the Classic Period, around 900, although some monuments were reused in the Postclassic (c. 900–1521). The major city of Calakmul in Mexico raised the greatest number of stelae known from any Maya city, at least 166, although they are very poorly preserved.
Hundreds of stelae have been recorded in the Maya region, displaying a wide stylistic variation. Many are upright slabs of limestone sculpted on one or more faces, with available surfaces sculpted with figures carved in relief and with hieroglyphic text. Stelae in a few sites display a much more three-dimensional appearance where locally available stone permits, such as at Copán and Toniná. Plain stelae do not appear to have been painted nor overlaid with stucco decoration, but most Maya stelae were probably brightly painted in red, yellow, black, blue and other colours.
Stelae were essentially stone banners raised to glorify the king and record his deeds, although the earliest examples depict mythological scenes. Imagery developed throughout the Classic Period, with Early Classic stelae (c. 250–600) displaying non-Maya characteristics from the 4th century onwards, with the introduction of imagery linked to the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan. This influence receded in the 5th century although some minor Teotihuacan references continued to be used. In the late 5th century, Maya kings began to use stelae to mark the end of calendrical cycles. In the Late Classic (c. 600–900), imagery linked to the Mesoamerican ballgame was introduced, once again displaying influence from central Mexico. By the Terminal Classic, the institution of divine kingship declined, and Maya kings began to be depicted with their subordinate lords. As the Classic Period came to an end, stelae ceased to be erected, with the last known examples being raised in 909–910. (Full article...)
Stone tools found at the site were dated based on magnetostratigraphy in a 2018 study. Artefacts were found in 17 layers, dated to between 1.26 Ma (palaeosol S15) and 2.12 Ma (loess L28). The date of 2.12 Ma predates the earliest known fossils of archaic humans in Eurasia (Homo erectus georgicus) by 300,000 years. (Full article...)
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The Corleck Head is an Irish three-faced stone idol usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD. It is 33 cm (13 in) high and carved from a single block of limestone. Each face has a similarly enigmatic expression, closely set eyes, a broad, flat nose, and a simply drawn mouth. Although its origin cannot be known for certain, its dating to the early Iron Age is based on similar iconography from contemporary northern European Celtic artifacts; similar three-faced stone carvings are known from Romano-British and Gallo-Roman culture. Archaeologists believe it represents a Celtic god and was part of a larger shrine associated with either a Celtic head cult or the Lughnasadh pagan harvest festival.
The sculpture was found c. 1855 in the nearby townland of Drumeague during the excavation of a large passage tomb dated to c. 2500 BC. The archaeological evidence indicates the head was used for ceremonial purposes at Corleck hill; a significant cult centre during the late Iron Age that for millennia was a major site of celebration during the Lughnasadh. As with any stone artifact, its dating and cultural significance are difficult to establish. The three faces may represent an all-knowing, all-seeing god representing the unity of the past, present and future or ancestral mother figures representing strength and fertility. The head was found alongside the Corraghy head; a two-headed sculpture with a ram's head at one side and a human head on the other. Today only the human head survives. The idols are collectively known as the "Corleck Gods". Historians assume that they were hidden during the Early Middle Ages due to their paganism and association with human sacrifice; traditions the early Christian church actively suppressed.
It came to national attention in 1937 after its prehistoric dating was realised by the historian Thomas J. Barron; when found it was a local curiosity placed on top of a farm gatepost. Today it is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. It is listed as number 11 in the 2011 Irish Times anthology A History of Ireland in 100 Objects. (Full article...)
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The Alepotrypa Cave is an archaeological site in the Mani region of the Peloponnese peninsula. In addition to being inhabited by early farmers, this site was used for burial and cult purposes. Archaeological evidence has revealed that this is one of the largest Neolithic burial sites ever found in Europe. Two adult human skeletons were found at the site from a burial dating to the 4th millennium BC, as well as remains from at least 170 separate persons. Archaeologists are uncertain about the significance of a Mycenaen ossuary, which has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and appears to have been reburied at Alepotrypa. While there is no direct evidence, it is possible that the ossuary may link Alepotrypa to Tainaron, which was regarded as the entrance to Hades in classical mythology. (Full article...)
The sanctuary's originated in the sixth century BC with the establishment of rural agricultural centers near the growing city of Tyre. Initially, a temple was likely constructed from perishable materials. Only fragments of stone cultic statues survive from this phase. Around three centuries later during the Hellenistic period, a new, larger building, which was fronted by a paved courtyard and consisted of a square hall leading to a smaller rectangular room., replaced the original structure. The interior was embellished with stucco, a central mosaic flooring and gem-like, glass-paste wall decorations. The exterior had a cavetto cornice, a lintel with a sun disk and two uraei—representations of a sacred snake used as a symbol of sovereignty and divinity in Ancient Egypt—and the entrance was flanked by two standing Egyptian-style, male-figure statues. The architecture followed pre-Classical Phoenician temple design, which is characterized by features such as a "bent-entry" and an east-west orientation.
The sanctuary yielded a collection of artifacts, including thousands of terracotta figurines and miniature vessels, and inscriptions, which provide evidence of the religious practices of the local, rural, Phoenician population. The terracotta figurines from the Iron Age II and Persian periods depicted subjects including pregnant women, male figures, and deities. During the Hellenistic period, new molding techniques introduced Greek themes, and images of deities such as Aphrodite and Hermes. The religious practices observed at the sanctuary remained faithful to local Phoenician traditions, and were part of a wider cultic system that was practiced in the Tyre hinterland, involving similar rituals in other sanctuaries in the region. The deity to whom the sanctuary was dedicated remains unidentified because the unearthed inscriptions lack specific god names. Child figurines that were excavated from the site suggest the sanctuary served as a small, rural, religious site that focused on healing and salvation deities, and rituals associated with childbearing and childhood. The discovery of around 8,000 terracotta figurines indicates intensive religious activity spanning centuries that ended in the first century BC. (Full article...)
Rundkvist has studied and excavated various sites in Sweden, particularly in the country's south. In 2003 and 2004, he published a three-volume work which doubled as his PhD dissertation, cataloguing the finds from Barshalder [sv; de], the largest prehistoric cemetery on the Swedish island of Gotland. A subsequent book identified nine possible regional power centres in Östergötland, and attempted to determine where the "Beowulfian mead halls" of the day once stood. Excavating years later at one of these sites, Aska [sv], Rundkvist uncovered the foundations of a large mead hall, and 30 ornate gold figures that might have represented gods or royals. In other works, Rundkvist has excavated a Vikingboat grave, and analysed both the placement of deposited artefacts in the landscape and the lifestyles of the Scandinavian élite during the Middle Ages.
Withypool Stone Circle, also known as Withypool Hill Stone Circle, is a stone circle located on the Exmoormoorland, near the village of Withypool in the southwestern English county of Somerset. The ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
Many monuments were built in Exmoor during the Bronze Age, but only two stone circles survive in this area: the other is Porlock Stone Circle. The Withypool ring is located on the south-western slope of Withypool Hill, on an area of heathland. It is about 36.4 metres (119 feet 5 inches) in diameter. Around thirty small gritstones remain, although there may originally have been around 100; there are conspicuous gaps on the northern and western sides of the monument. The site was rediscovered in 1898 and surveyed by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray in 1905. (Full article...)
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Two views of the Venus of Hohle Fels figurine, which may have been worn as an amulet, and is the earliest known, undisputed example of a depiction of a human being
The figure is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being. In terms of figurative art only the lion-headed, zoomorphicLöwenmensch figurine is older. The Venus is housed at the Prehistoric Museum of Blaubeuren (Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren). (Full article...)
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A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars usually consider a castle to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for pleasance and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.
European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures: they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offered protection from enemies. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures also served as centres of administration and symbols of power. Urban castles were used to control the local populace and important travel routes, and rural castles were often situated near features that were integral to life in the community, such as mills, fertile land, or a water source.
Many northern European castles were originally built from earth and timber but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits and relying on a central keep. In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire. Many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castle's firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, and inspiration from earlier defences, such as Roman forts. Not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape.
Although gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 14th century, it did not significantly affect castle building until the 15th century, when artillery became powerful enough to break through stone walls. While castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery star forts with no role in civil administration, and château or country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of mock castles, part of a Romanticrevival of Gothic architecture, but they had no military purpose. (Full article...)
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Motul de San José is an ancient Maya site (known anciently as Ik'a', 'Windy Water') located just north of Lake Petén Itzá in the Petén Basin region of the southern Maya lowlands. It is a few kilometres from the modern village of San José, in Guatemala's northern department of Petén. A medium-sized civic-ceremonial centre, it was an important political and economic centre during the Late Classic period (AD 650–950).
The site was first settled between 600 and 300 BC, in the latter portion of the Middle Preclassic period, when it most likely was a fairly small site. This Maya city then had a long and continuous occupational history until the Early Postclassic, up to around AD 1250, with peaks in the Late Preclassic and Late Classic periods. Motul de San José had begun to refer to Tikal as its overlord in the late 4th century AD; by the 7th century it had switched its allegiance to Calakmul, Tikal's great rival, before returning its allegiance to Tikal in the early 8th century. In the late 8th century Motul de San José appears to have been conquered by Dos Pilas, capital of the Petexbatún kingdom.
Most natural resources were easily available in the immediate vicinity of the city. The nearby port at La Trinidad de Nosotros was an important hub for the import of exotic goods and export of local products such as chert and ceramics. Other goods not immediately available were likely to have been provided by the city's satellite sites. The local area provided a number of different soils suitable for varied agricultural use, and the port at La Trinidad de Nosotros provided the city with freshwater products such as turtles, crocodiles and freshwater molluscs. Deer were hunted locally and provided an important source of protein for the upper class, while freshwater snails were the main source of protein for commoners.
Motul de San José has been identified as the source of Ik-style polychrome ceramics bearing painted scenes of the Late Classic Maya aristocracy involved in a variety of courtly activities. The Ik-style was characterised by hieroglyphs painted in a pink or pale red colour, scenes with dancers wearing masks, and the realistic representation of subjects as they appeared in life. The city was the capital of a polity that included various satellite sites of varying importance, including a port on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá. (Full article...)
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Colonel Marie Augstin Gaston Cros (known as Gaston Cros) (6 October 1861 – 10 May 1915) was a French army officer and archaeologist. He was born in Alsace and was displaced when that territory was incorporated into the German Empire. He joined the French Army as a lieutenant and saw action in Tonkin before spending several years surveying in Tunisia, receiving the honours of membership of Vietnamese and Tunisian orders and appointment as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. In 1901 Cros was appointed head of the French archaeological expedition to Girsu, Iraq to continue the work of Ernest de Sarzec. His work over the next five years included the tracing of the 32.5 feet (9.9 m) thick city wall and for his work there received a letter of commendation from Gaston Doumergue, the Minister of Fine Arts, and the award of the Golden Palms of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Promoted to lieutenant-colonel, Cros served in the French protectorate of Morocco from 1913, seeing action in the Zaian War.
Upon the outbreak of the First World War Cros was recalled to metropolitan France and fought in defence of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne, leading an ad hoc unit of zouaves and tirailleurs. He was wounded and spent two days directing his troops from a horse-drawn carriage before he was forced to leave his command. On 15 September 1914 he was promoted to colonel and subsequently received command of the 2nd Moroccan Brigade which he led at the Battle of the Yser and the Second Battle of Artois. It was at Artois that he was killed in a German counter-attack. Cros' name is recorded alongside that of Colonel Pein, who commanded the 1st Moroccan Brigade at Artois, on the Moroccan Division Memorial at Vimy. (Full article...)
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Su Bai (Chinese: 宿白; pinyin: Sù Bái; Wade–Giles: Su Pai; 3 August 1922 – 1 February 2018) was a Chinese archaeologist and bibliographer who served as the first head of the Department of Archaeology of Peking University from 1983 to 1988. Known for his pioneering research in the archaeology of Buddhism, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chinese Archaeology Association in 2016. (Full article...)
Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL.
In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Agehill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects.
Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...)
The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרהḤaqra(h)), with the meaning of "stronghold" (see under "Etymology"), was a place in Jerusalem thought to have had a fortified compound built by Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, following his sack of the city in 168 BCE. The name Acra was also used at a later time for a city quarter probably associated with the by-then destroyed fortress, known in his time to Josephus (1st century CE) as both Acra and "the lower city". The fortress played a significant role in the events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt, which resulted in the formation of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The "upper city" was captured by Judas Maccabeus, with the Seleucid garrison taking refuge in the "Acra" below, and the task of destroying this last enemy stronghold inside Jerusalem fell to Simon Maccabeus surnamed Thassi. Our knowledge about the Acra is based almost exclusively on the writings of Josephus, which are of a later date, and on the First and Second Books of Maccabees, which were written not long after the described events.
The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used the name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly doesn't help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near the Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location").
The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. (Full article...)
In 2007, the Tussauds Group was purchased by the Blackstone Group, which merged it with Merlin Entertainments. Warwick Castle was then sold to Nick Leslau's investment firm, Prestbury Group, under a sale and leaseback agreement. Merlin continues to operate the site under a renewable 35-year lease. (Full article...)
The development of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune began in 2005, and saw Naughty Dog altering their approach to development, as they sought to create a humanized video game that was distinct from their other entries, settling on an action-adventure game with platforming elements and a third-person perspective. The team regularly updated or wholly changed various aspects related to the story, coding, and the game's design which lead to delays. The development team found influence for many of the game's aesthetic elements from film, pulp magazines, and movie serials.
Extensively marketed as a PlayStation exclusive, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune received generally favorable reviews, with praise for its technical achievements, cast, characters, story, music, and production values, drawing similarities to blockbuster films. It faced some criticism for its graphical issues, short length, vehicle sections, and marked difficulty. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune sold one million copies after ten weeks of release. It was followed by the sequel Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in 2009, and was re-released on PlayStation 4 as part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection. (Full article...)
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The Luttra Woman is a skeletonised bog body from the Early Neolithic period (radiocarbon-dated 3928–3651 BC) that was discovered near Luttra, Sweden, on 20 May 1943. The skull had been preserved well, but some bones of the skeleton, in particular many of those between the skull and the pelvis, were missing. The skeleton was assessed as that of a young female. She was deemed short for a Neolithic woman of the region, with an estimated height of 145 cm (4 ft 9 in). Because her stomach contents showed that raspberries had been her last meal and she was estimated to have been in her early to mid-twenties at her death, she was nicknamed Hallonflickan (Swedish:[ˈhalɔnflɪkːˌan]ⓘ; lit.'Raspberry Girl'). , she was the earliest-known Neolithic person from Western Sweden.
No trace of injuries or fatal diseases was found on her remains. She appeared to have been tied up and placed in shallow water at her death or soon afterwards. Axel Bagge, an archaeologist who assisted at the initial investigation of her remains, suspected that she had been deliberately drowned as either a human sacrifice or the victim of a witch execution. Her skeleton has been part of a permanent exhibition titled Forntid på Falbygden (Prehistory in Falbygden) at the Falbygden Museum [sv] in Falköping, Sweden, beginning in 1994. The exhibition was later supplemented by a bust of her reconstructed using forensic methods. (Full article...)
Gedi is one of many medieval Swahili coastal settlements that stretch from Barawa, Somalia to the Zambezi River in Mozambique. There are 116 known Swahili sites stretching from southern Somalia to Vumba Kuu at the Kenya-Tanzania border. Since the rediscovery of the Gedi ruins by colonialists in the 1920s, Gedi has been one of the most intensely excavated and studied of those sites, along with Shanga, Manda, Ungwana, Kilwa, and the Comoros.
The site of Gedi includes a walled town and its outlying area. All of the standing buildings at Gedi, which include mosques, a palace, and numerous houses, are made from stone, are one-story, and are distributed unevenly in the town. There are also large open areas in the settlement which contained earth and thatch houses. Stone "pillar tombs" are a distinctive type of Swahili Coast architecture found at Gedi as well.
Gedi's location along the coast and association with similar sites along the Swahili Coast made it an important trade center. Although there are few historical documents specifically associating Gedi with Indian Ocean trade, the site is thought to have been one of the most important sites along the coast. Gedi's architecture and an abundance of imported material culture including pottery, beads, and coins provide evidence of the city's rising prosperity over the course of its occupation from as early as the eleventh century to its abandonment in the early seventeenth century. (Full article...)
Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL.
In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Agehill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects.
Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...)
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The Crosby Garrett Helmet is a copper alloyRoman cavalry helmet dating from the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD. It was found by an unnamed metal detectorist near Crosby Garrett in Cumbria, England, in May 2010. Later investigations found that a Romano-British farming settlement had occupied the site where the helmet was discovered, which was located a few miles away from a Roman road and a Roman army fort. It is possible that the owner of the helmet was a local inhabitant who had served with the Roman cavalry.
The helmet appears to have been deliberately folded up and deposited in an artificial stone structure. It is thought to have been used for ceremonial occasions rather than for combat, and may already have been an antique by the time it was buried. It is of the same type as the Newstead Helmet (found in 1905) and its design also has similarities with the Ribchester Helmet (found in 1796) and the Hallaton Helmet (found in 2000), though its facial features are more akin to those of helmets found in southern Europe. Its design may allude to the Trojans, whose exploits the Romans re-enacted in cavalry tournaments.
Ralph Jackson, Senior Curator of Romano-British Collections at the British Museum, has described the helmet as "... an immensely interesting and outstandingly important find ... Its face mask is both extremely finely wrought and chillingly striking, but it is as an ensemble that the helmet is so exceptional and, in its specifics, unparalleled. It is a find of the greatest national (and, indeed, international) significance."
On 7 October 2010, the helmet was sold at Christie's for £2.3 million (US$3.6 million) to an undisclosed private buyer. Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle sought to purchase the helmet with the support of the British Museum, but was outbid. The helmet has so far been publicly displayed four times, once in a 2012 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, at Tullie House in 2013–14, followed by display at the British Museum in 2014. The helmet returned to Tullie House to be displayed in the Hadrian's Cavalry exhibition in the summer of 2017. (Full article...)
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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates World Heritage Sites of outstanding universal value to cultural or natural heritage which have been nominated by countries which are signatories to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, established in 1972. Cultural heritage consists of monuments (such as architectural works, monumental sculptures, or inscriptions), groups of buildings, and sites (including archaeological sites). Natural features (consisting of physical and biological formations), geological and physiographical formations (including habitats of threatened species of animals and plants), and natural sites which are important from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty, are defined as natural heritage. Serbia succeeded the convention on 11 September 2001, following the breakup of Yugoslavia.
, there are five sites in Serbia on the list and eleven on the tentative list. The first site in Serbia to be added to the list was Stari Ras and Sopoćani, inscribed at the 3rd UNESCO session in 1979. Further sites were added to the list in 1986, 2004, 2007, and 2017. All are listed as cultural sites, as determined by the organization's selection criteria. Four out of five sites date to the medieval period while the fifth, the Gamzigrad complex, dates to late antiquity. The Medieval Monuments in Kosovo site, first added to the list in 2004 and expanded two years later, has been on UNESCO's list of endangered sites since 2006 due to difficulties in its management and conservation stemming from the region's political instability. The Stećci Medieval Tombstones Graveyards site is a transnational entry, shared with three neighboring countries. (Full article...)
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West Somerset was a local government district in the English county of Somerset. It merged with Taunton Deane to form Somerset West and Taunton on 1 April 2019. The council covered a largely rural area, with a population of 35,075 in an area of 740 square kilometres (290 sq mi). According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics in 2009, the population of West Somerset had the oldest average age in the United Kingdom at 52. The largest centres of population were the coastal towns of Minehead (population 10,000) and Watchet (4,400).
A scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or monument which is given legal protection by being placed on a list (or "schedule") by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; English Heritage takes the leading role in identifying such sites. The legislation governing this is the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The term "monument" can apply to the whole range of archaeological sites, and they are not always visible above ground. Such sites have to have been deliberately constructed by human activity. They range from prehistoric standing stones and burial sites, through Roman remains and medieval structures such as castles and monasteries, to later structures such as industrial sites and buildings constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War.
There are 201 scheduled monuments in West Somerset. Some of the oldest, particularly on Exmoor and the Quantock Hills are Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age including hillforts, cairns, bowl barrows and other tumulis. More recent sites include several motte-and-bailey castles and church or village crosses which date from the Middle Ages. The geography with large numbers of streams is reflected by the number of packhorse and other bridges included in the list. The mining history of the area is also represented by several sections of the West Somerset Mineral Railway and associated ruins of mine buildings which are now scheduled. The most recent monuments are World War II pillboxes. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...)
The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song (Chinese: 北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song (Chinese: 南宋; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng, Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.
Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first surviving records of the chemical formula for gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses. The Northern Song census recorded 20 million households, double of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90 million people, and 200 million by the time of the Ming dynasty. This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.
Scotland during the Roman Empire refers to the protohistorical period during which the Roman Empire interacted within the area of modern Scotland. Despite sporadic attempts at conquest and government between the first and fourth centuries AD, most of modern Scotland, inhabited by the Caledonians and the Maeatae, was not incorporated into the Roman Empire with Roman control over the area fluctuating.
In the Roman imperial period, the area of Caledonia lay north of the River Forth, while the area now called England was known as Britannia, the name also given to the Roman province roughly consisting of modern England and Wales and which replaced the earlier Ancient Greek designation as Albion. Roman legions arrived in the territory of modern Scotland around AD 71, having conquered the Celtic Britons of southern Britannia over the preceding three decades. Aiming to complete the Roman conquest of Britannia, the Roman armies under Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Gnaeus Julius Agricola campaigned against the Caledonians in the 70s and 80s. The Agricola, a biography of the Roman governor of Britannia by his son-in-law Tacitus mentions a Roman victory at "Mons Graupius" which became the namesake of the Grampian Mountains but whose identity has been questioned by modern scholarship. In 2023 a lost Roman road built by Julius Agricola was rediscovered in Drip close to Stirling: it has been described as "the most important road in Scottish history."
Agricola then seems to have repeated an earlier Greek circumnavigation of the island by Pytheas and received submission from local tribes, establishing the Roman limes of actual control first along the Gask Ridge, and then withdrawing south of a line from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne, i.e. along the Stanegate. This border was later fortified as Hadrian's Wall. Several Roman commanders attempted to fully conquer lands north of this line, including a second-century expansion that was fortified as the Antonine Wall.
The history of the period is complex and not well-documented. The province of Valentia, for instance, may have been the lands between the two Roman walls, or the territory around and south of Hadrian's Wall, or Roman Wales. Romans held most of their Caledonian territory only a little over 40 years; they probably only held Scottish land for about 80 years. Some Scottish historians such as Alistair Moffat maintain Roman influence was inconsequential. Despite grandiose claims made by an eighteenth-century forged manuscript, it is now believed that the Romans at no point controlled even half of present-day Scotland and that Roman legions ceased to affect the area after around 211.
"Scots" and "Scotland" proper would not emerge as unified ideas until the eighth century. In fact, the Roman Empire influenced every part of Scotland during the period: by the time of the End of Roman rule in Britannia around 410, the various Iron Age tribes native to the area had united as, or fallen under the control of, the Picts, while the southern half of the country was overrun by tribes of Romanized Britons. The Scoti (GaelicIrish raiders who would give Scotland its Anglicised name) had begun to settle along the west coast. All three groups may have been involved in the Great Conspiracy that overran Roman Britannia in 367. The era saw the emergence of the earliest historical accounts of the natives. The most enduring legacies of Rome, however, were Christianity and literacy, both of which arrived indirectly via Irish missionaries. (Full article...)
Herbert James MaryonOBEFSAFIIC (9 March 1874 – 14 July 1965) was an English sculptor, conservator, goldsmith, archaeologist and authority on ancient metalwork. Maryon practiced and taught sculpture until retiring in 1939, then worked as a conservator with the British Museum from 1944 to 1961. He is best known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial, which led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
By the time of his mid-twenties Maryon attended three art schools, apprenticed in silversmithing with C. R. Ashbee, and worked in Henry Wilson's workshop. From 1900 to 1904 he served as the director of the Keswick School of Industrial Art, where he designed numerous Arts and Crafts works. After moving to the University of Reading and then Durham University, he taught sculpture, metalwork, modelling, casting, and anatomy until 1939. He also designed the University of Reading War Memorial, among other commissions. Maryon published two books while teaching, including Metalwork and Enamelling, and many articles. He frequently led archaeological digs, and in 1935 discovered one of the oldest gold ornaments known in Britain while excavating the Kirkhaugh cairns.
In 1944 Maryon was brought out of retirement to work in the Sutton Hoo finds. His responsibilities included restoring the shield, the drinking horns, and the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet, which proved academically and culturally influential. Maryon's work, much of which was revised in the 1970s, created credible renderings upon which subsequent research relied; likewise, one of his papers coined the term pattern welding to describe a method employed on the Sutton Hoo sword to decorate and strengthen iron and steel. The initial work ended in 1950, and Maryon turned to other matters. He proposed a widely publicised theory in 1953 on the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, influencing Salvador Dalí and others, and restored the Roman Emesa helmet in 1955. He left the museum in 1961, a year after his official retirement, and began an around-the-world trip lecturing and researching Chinese magic mirrors. (Full article...)
The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity. (Full article...)
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Ursula Martius FranklinCCOOntFRSC (16 September 1921 – 22 July 2016) was a Canadian metallurgist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto campus, have been named in her honor.
For Franklin, technology was much more than machines, gadgets or electronic transmitters. It was a comprehensive system that includes methods, procedures, organization, "and most of all, a mindset". She distinguished between holistic technologies used by craft workers or artisans and prescriptive ones associated with a division of labour in large-scale production. Holistic technologies allow artisans to control their own work from start to finish. Prescriptive technologies organize work as a sequence of steps requiring supervision by bosses or managers. Franklin argued that the dominance of prescriptive technologies in modern society discourages critical thinking and promotes "a culture of compliance".
For some, Franklin belongs in the intellectual tradition of Harold Innis and Jacques Ellul who warn about technology's tendency to suppress freedom and endanger civilization. Franklin herself acknowledged her debt to Ellul as well as to several other thinkers including Lewis Mumford, C. B. Macpherson, E. F. Schumacher, and Vandana Shiva. She recognized that this list had few women. In addition to the philosophy of technology, she believed that science was "severely impoverished because women are discouraged from taking part in the exploration of knowledge". (Full article...)
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Barkhale Camp is a Neolithiccausewayed enclosure, an archaeological site on Bignor Hill, on the South Downs in West Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The Barkhale Camp enclosure was first identified in 1929, by John Ryle, and was surveyed the following year by E. Cecil Curwen, who listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a 1930 paper which was the first attempt to list all the causewayed enclosures in England.
A small trench was dug in 1930 by Ryle, and a more extensive excavation was undertaken by Veronica Seton-Williams between 1958 and 1961, which confirmed Curwen's survey and found a characteristically Neolithic assemblage of flints. Peter Leach conducted another excavation before the southern part of the site was cleared of trees in 1978, examining several mounds within the enclosure, and attempting to determine the line of the ditch and bank along the southern boundary. No material suitable for radiocarbon dating was recovered, which meant that dating the site was not possible with any precision, but Leach suggested that the site had been constructed in the earlier Neolithic, between 4000 BC and 3300 BC.
Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
The Emesa helmet (also known as the Homs helmet) is a Roman cavalry helmet from the early first century AD. It consists of an iron head piece and face mask, the latter of which is covered in a sheet of silver and presents the individualised portrait of a face, likely its owner. Decorations, some of which are gilded, adorn the head piece. Confiscated by Syrian police soon after looters discovered it amidst a complex of tombs in the modern-day city of Homs in 1936, eventually the helmet was restored thoroughly at the British Museum, and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. It has been exhibited internationally, although as of 2017, due to the Syrian civil war, the more valuable items owned by the National Museum are hidden in underground storage.
Ornately designed yet highly functional, the helmet was probably intended for both parades and battle. Its delicate covering is too fragile to have been put to use during cavalry tournaments, but the thick iron core would have defended against blows and arrows. Narrow slits for the eyes, with three small holes underneath to allow downward sight, sacrificed vision for protection; roughly cut notches below each eye suggest a hastily made modification of necessity.
The helmet was found in a tomb near a monument to a former ruler of Emesa and, considering the lavishness of the silver and gold design, likely belonged to a member of the elite. As it is modelled after those helmets used in Roman tournaments, even if unlikely to have ever been worn in one, it may have been given by a Roman official to a Syrian general or, more likely, manufactured in Syria after the Roman style. The acanthusscroll ornamentation seen on the neck guard recalls that used on Syrian temples, suggesting that the helmet may have been made in the luxury workshops of Antioch. (Full article...)
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Nigel Reuben Rook Williams (15 July 1944 – 21 April 1992) was an English conservator and expert on the restoration of ceramics and glass. From 1961 until his death he worked at the British Museum, where he became the Chief Conservator of Ceramics and Glass in 1983. There his work included the successful restorations of the Sutton Hoo helmet and the Portland Vase.
Joining as an assistant at age 16, Williams spent his entire career, and most of his life, at the British Museum. He was one of the first people to study conservation, not yet recognised as a profession, and from an early age was given responsibility over high-profile objects. In the 1960s he assisted with the re-excavation of the Sutton Hooship-burial, and in his early- to mid-twenties he conserved many of the objects found therein: most notably the Sutton Hoo helmet, which occupied a year of his time. He likewise reconstructed other objects from the find, including the shield, drinking horns, and maplewood bottles.
The "abiding passion of his life" was ceramics, and the 1970s and 1980s gave Williams ample opportunities in that field. After nearly 31,000 fragments of shattered Greek vases were found in 1974 amidst the wreck of HMS Colossus, Williams set to work piecing them together. The process was televised, and turned him into a television personality. A decade later, in 1988 and 1989, Williams's crowning achievement came when he took to pieces the Portland Vase, one of the most famous glass objects in the world, and put it back together. The reconstruction was again televised for a BBC programme, and as with the Sutton Hoo helmet, took nearly a year to complete.
Williams died at age 47 of a heart attack while in Aqaba, Jordan, where he was working on a British Museum excavation. The Ceramics & Glass group of the Institute of Conservation awards a biennial prize in his honour, recognising his significant contributions in the field of conservation. (Full article...)
Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology and is surrounded by a moat more than 5 km (3.1 mi). Enclosed within an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west with scholars divided as to the significance of this.
The temple complex fell into disuse before being restored in the 20th century with various international agencies involved in the project. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and devatas adorning its walls. The Angkor area was designated as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1992. It is regarded as one of the best examples of Khmer architecture and a symbol of Cambodia, depicted as a part of the Cambodian national flag. The Angkor Wat is a major tourist attraction and attracts more than 2.5 million visitors every year. (Full article...)
It is usually assigned to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, but has been associated with her Armenian equivalent Anahit, whose major temple was located not far from Satala. Consequently, head has been widely depicted in Armenian culture as a symbol of the country's pre-Christian heritage. Although not found in modern-day Armenia, there have been unsuccessful efforts to move the fragments to Armenia. (Full article...)
A scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or monument which is given legal protection by being placed on a list (or "schedule") by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; English Heritage takes the leading role in identifying such sites. The legislation governing this is the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The term "monument" can apply to the whole range of archaeological sites, and they are not always visible above ground. Such sites have to have been deliberately constructed by human activity. They range from prehistoric standing stones and burial sites, through Roman remains and Medieval structures such as castles and monasteries, to later structures such as industrial sites and buildings constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War.
The Medieval period is represented by several churchyard crosses. The defensive walls and part of Taunton Castle, which has Anglo-Saxon origins and was expanded during the Medieval and Tudor eras, is included. More recent sites include Poundisford Park, Buckland Priory, Bradford Bridge and a duck decoy from the 17th century. Some of the sites such as Balt Moor Wall are of uncertain date; however the most recent are air traffic control buildings, pillboxes and fighter pens from RAF Culmhead, situated at Churchstanton on the Blackdown Hills. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...)
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by a pastoralist community shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long-barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Shrub's Wood Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Stour. Of these, it lies on the eastern side of the river with Julliberrie's Grave, while the third known example in this tumuli group, Jacket's Field Long Barrow, is located on the western side. Shrub's Wood Long Barrow was discovered in the late 1960s, although it has yet to undergo thorough archaeological investigation. (Full article...)
The Trundle is an Iron Agehillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England. It was built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
A chapel dedicated to St Roche was built on the hill around the end of the 14th century; it was in ruins by 1570. A windmill and a beacon were subsequently built on the hill. The site was occasionally used as a meeting place in the post-medieval period.
The hillfort is still a substantial earthwork, but the Neolithic site was unknown until 1925 when archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford obtained an aerial photograph of the Trundle, clearly showing additional structures inside the ramparts of the hillfort. Causewayed enclosures were new to archaeology at the time, with only five known by 1930, and the photograph persuaded archaeologist E. Cecil Curwen to excavate the site in 1928 and 1930. These early digs established a construction date of about 500 BC to 100 BC for the hillfort and proved the existence of the Neolithic site.
In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates from almost forty British causewayed enclosures, including some from the Trundle. The conclusion was that the Neolithic part of the site was probably constructed no earlier than the mid-fourth millennium BC. A review of the site in 1995 by Alastair Oswald noted the presence of fifteen possible Iron Age house platforms within the hillfort's ramparts. (Full article...)
Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres (212 km2) near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table", or more specifically "green table mountain") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings in North America.
Starting c. 7500 BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture.
The Pueblo people survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash (the "Three Sisters"). They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they migrated south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Rio Chama, the Albuquerque Basin, the Pajarito Plateau, and the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. (Full article...)
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Prehistoric religion is the religious practice of prehistoric cultures. Prehistory, the period before written records, makes up the bulk of human experience; over 99% of human experience occurred during the Paleolithic period alone. Prehistoric cultures spanned the globe and existed for over two and a half million years; their religious practices were many and varied, and the study of them is difficult due to the lack of written records describing the details of their faiths.
The cognitive capacity for religion likely first emerged in Homo sapiens sapiens, or anatomically modern humans, although some scholars posit the existence of Neanderthal religion and sparse evidence exists for earlier ritual practice. Excluding sparse and controversial evidence in the Middle Paleolithic (300,000–50,000 years ago), religion emerged with certainty in the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000 years ago. Upper Paleolithic religion was possibly shamanic, oriented around the phenomenon of special spiritual leaders entering trance states to receive esoteric spiritual knowledge. These practices are extrapolated based on the rich and complex body of art left behind by Paleolithic artists, particularly the elaborate cave art and enigmatic Venus figurines they produced.
The Neolithic Revolution, which established agriculture as the dominant lifestyle, occurred around 12,000 BC and ushered in the Neolithic. Neolithic society grew hierarchical and inegalitarian compared to its Paleolithic forebears, and their religious practices likely changed to suit. Neolithic religion may have become more structural and centralised than in the Paleolithic, and possibly engaged in ancestor worship both of one's individual ancestors and of the ancestors of entire groups, tribes, and settlements. One famous feature of Neolithic religion were the stone circles of the British Isles, of which the best known today is Stonehenge. A particularly well-known area of late Neolithic through Chalcolithic religion is Proto-Indo-European mythology, the religion of the people who first spoke the Proto-Indo-European language, which has been partially reconstructed through shared religious elements between early Indo-European language speakers.
Bronze Age and Iron Age religions are understood in part through archaeological records, but also, more so than Paleolithic and Neolithic, through written records; some societies had writing in these ages, and were able to describe those which did not. These eras of prehistoric religion see particular cultural focus today by modern reconstructionists, with many pagan faiths today based on the pre-Christian practices of protohistoric Bronze and Iron Age societies. (Full article...)
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Kenilworth Castle is a castle in the town of Kenilworth in Warwickshire, England, managed by English Heritage; much of it is in ruins. The castle was founded during the Norman conquest of England; with development through to the Tudor period. It has been described by the architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship".
Kenilworth played an important historical role: it was the subject of the six-month-long siege of Kenilworth in 1266, thought to be the longest siege in Medieval English history, and formed a base for Lancastrian operations in the Wars of the Roses. Kenilworth was the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne, the perceived French insult to Henry V in 1414 of a gift of tennis balls (said by John Strecche to have prompted the campaign that led to the Battle of Agincourt), and the Earl of Leicester's lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575. It has been described as "one of two major castles in Britain which may be classified as water-castles or lake-fortresses...".
The castle was built over several centuries. Founded in the 1120s around a powerful Normangreat tower, the castle was significantly enlarged by King John at the beginning of the 13th century. Huge water defences were created by damming the local streams, and the resulting fortifications proved able to withstand assaults by land and water in 1266. John of Gaunt spent lavishly in the late 14th century, turning the medieval castle into a palace fortress designed in the latest perpendicular style. The Earl of Leicester then expanded the castle during his tenure in the 16th century, constructing new Tudor buildings and exploiting the medieval heritage of Kenilworth to produce a fashionable Renaissance palace. (Full article...)
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The Street House Anglo-Saxon cemetery is an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, dating to the second half of the 7th century AD, that was discovered at Street House Farm near Loftus, in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, England. Monuments dating back as far as 3300 BC are located in the vicinity of the cemetery, which was discovered after aerial photography revealed the existence of an Iron Age rectangular enclosure. The excavations, carried out between 2005 and 2007, revealed over a hundred graves dating from the 7th century AD and the remains of several buildings. An array of jewellery and other artefacts was found, including the jewels once worn by a young high-status Anglo-Saxon woman who had been buried on a bed and covered by an earth mound.
The woman's identity is unknown, but the artefacts and the layout of the cemetery are similar to finds in the east and south-east of England. There are contradictory indications of whether the occupants of the cemetery were Christian or pagan, as signs of both traditions are present. It perhaps represents a fusion of the two traditions during the "Conversion Period" when Christianity was taking hold among the Anglo-Saxons but pagan rituals had not yet been displaced, even among Christians. Archaeologists have suggested that the woman and at least some of the people buried around her may have migrated from the south, where bed burials were more common. They may all have been buried together within the space of a single generation, after which the cemetery was abandoned. The finds were acquired by Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar, in 2009 and have been on display there since 2011. (Full article...)
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Letocetum is the ancient remains of a Roman settlement. It was an important military staging post and posting station near the junction of Watling Street, the Roman military road to north Wales, and Icknield (or Ryknild) Street (now the A38). The site is now within the parish of Wall, Staffordshire, England. It is owned and run by the National Trust, under the name Letocetum Roman Baths Site & Museum. The site is in the guardianship of English Heritage as Wall Roman Site.
The Romans came to Letocetum in 50 CE to establish a fortress during the early years of the invasion of Britain. The land could not support large numbers of soldiers and Letocetum, at an important cross-roads, became a large scale posting station. The settlement developed with successive bath houses and mansiones built to serve the official travellers as well as the growing civilian population. It is known mainly from detailed excavations in 1912–13, which concentrated on the sites of the mansio and bath-house.
The remains visible today are those of the stone bath house and mansio, built in approximately 130 CE after Letocetum ceased to have a military function and became a civilian settlement. The settlement reached its peak during the 2nd and 3rd centuries and at this time occupied 8.1–12 hectares (20–30 acres). At the end of the 3rd century, the town relocated within high defensive walls astride Watling Street. After the Romans left early in the 5th century the settlement went into decline. The modern village of Wall emerged in the land once occupied by Letocetum. (Full article...)
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Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
The Hoxne Hoard (/ˈhɒksən/HOK-sən) is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £4.5 million in 2023).
The hoard was buried in an oak box or small chest filled with items in precious metal, sorted mostly by type, with some in smaller wooden boxes and others in bags or wrapped in fabric. Remnants of the chest and fittings, such as hinges and locks, were recovered in the excavation. The coins of the hoard date it after AD 407, which coincides with the end of Britain as a Roman province. The owners and reasons for burial of the hoard are unknown, but it was carefully packed and the contents appear consistent with what a single very wealthy family might have owned. It is likely that the hoard represents only a part of the wealth of its owner, given the lack of large silver serving vessels and of some of the most common types of jewellery.
The Hoxne Hoard contains several rare and important objects, such as a gold body-chain and silver-gilt pepper-pots (piperatoria), including the Empress pepper pot. The hoard is also of particular archaeological significance because it was excavated by professional archaeologists with the items largely undisturbed and intact. The find helped to improve the relationship between metal detectorists and archaeologists, and influenced a change in English law regarding finds of treasure. (Full article...)
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The Bonn–Oberkassel dog (German: Hund von Bonn–Oberkassel) is a Late Paleolithic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) whose skeletal remains were found buried alongside two humans. Discovered in early 1914 by quarry workers in Oberkassel, Bonn, Germany, the double burial site was analyzed by a team of archaeologists from the University of Bonn. The dog's lower jaw was first thought to be from a wolf and placed into museum storage with the human remains, while the other bones from the dog were placed into the university's Geological Collections.
The bones of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog were reunited in the late 1970s and reidentified as a domestic dog attributed to the Magdalenian culture, dating to the beginning of the Late Glacial Interstadial, c. 14,000 BP. 32 identifiable bone fragments have been attributed to the dog. These have been used to estimate a number of the animal's characteristics. It was around 7.5 months old at death, 40–50 cm (16–20 in) tall at shoulder height and weighed 13–18 kg (29–40 lb), suggesting a slender build similar to the Indian wolf or some modern sighthounds.
Osteoarthritis, alongside signs of enamel defects, missing teeth, and gum disease indicate that the Bonn–Oberkassel dog suffered from a canine distemper infection as a puppy. Despite the high likelihood of death without assistance, the puppy survived, probably due to human care. Such care would have involved providing food and water, as well as frequent cleaning. Expansive human care suggests significant compassion towards the dog, possibly indicating that the dog was seen as a pet. It is unknown how the dog died; it may have been due to effects of its illness or other natural causes. An alternate possibility is that it was killed or sacrificed to be buried alongside the humans, an archaeologically attested practice linked to spiritual and religious motives. A dog molar belonging to a separate, older dog was found at the site, likely used as a grave good. (Full article...)
There has been human activity on the site since the Upper Palaeolithic. During the Victorian era, it was heavily quarried, and in recent years tourism has become significant – it receives more than one million visitors annually. The various habitats on the Head provide a home for many plants, birds and insects, some of them rare and critically endangered. Erosion remains a threat to the site, although long-term projects are intended to secure it for the future. (Full article...)
A double concentric circle consisting of sarsenmegaliths, Fir Clump stone circle was oval-shaped. The outer ring measured 107 metres (351 ft) by 86.5 metres (284 ft) in diameter; the inner ring was 86.5 metres (284 ft) by 73.7 metres (242 ft). It was one of at least seven stone circles that are known to have been erected in the area south of Swindon in northern Wiltshire. Around the 1860s, the megaliths of Fir Clump stone circle were levelled. In the 1890s, the antiquarian A. D. Passmore observed that the circle was no longer visible. Some of the fallen megaliths were rediscovered in 1965 by the archaeologist Richard Reiss, who described and measured the monument. In 1969, these stones were removed during construction of the M4 motorway. (Full article...)
The structure comprises three defensive fronts, each one with two bastions, two half bastions and three curtains, and is positioned at the top of a hill that overlooks the city The castle served as a prison for war heroine Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi between November 1815 and January 1816. She was held captive by the Spanish forces on an attempt to bow down her husband, Juan Bautista Arismendi, who was the chief of the patriotic forces on the island. Simón Bolívar's arrival to the island prompted the partial destruction and abandonment of the fort in May 1816. By 1899, the facility serviced as headquarters, and later as quarters for the National Army. It was declared as a National Monument in 1965. (Full article...)
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The Old Exe Bridge is a ruined medieval arch bridge in Exeter in south-western England. Construction of the bridge began in 1190, and was completed by 1214. The bridge is the oldest surviving bridge of its size in England and the oldest bridge in Britain with a chapel still on it. It replaced several rudimentary crossings which had been in use sporadically since Roman times. The project was the idea of Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and influential local merchants, who travelled the country to raise funds. No known records survive of the bridge's builders. The result was a bridge at least 590 feet (180 metres) long, which probably had 17 or 18 arches, carrying the road diagonally from the west gate of the city wall across the River Exe and its wide, marshy flood plain.
St Edmund's Church, the bridge chapel, was built into the bridge at the time of its construction, and St Thomas's Church was built on the riverbank at about the same time. The Exe Bridge is unusual among British medieval bridges for having had secular buildings on it as well as the chapel. Timber-framed shops, with houses above, were in place from at least the early 14th century, and later in the bridge's life, all but the most central section carried buildings. As the river silted up, land was reclaimed, allowing a wall to be built from the side of St Edmund's which protected a row of houses and shops which became known as Frog Street. Walter Gervase also commissioned a chantry chapel, built opposite the church, which came into use after 1257 and continued until the Reformation in the mid-16th century.
The medieval bridge collapsed and had to be partially rebuilt several times throughout its life; the first recorded rebuilding was in 1286. By 1447 the bridge was severely dilapidated, and the mayor of Exeter appealed for funds to repair it. By the 16th century, it was again in need of repairs. Nonetheless, the bridge was in use for almost 600 years, until a replacement was built in 1778 and the arches across the river were demolished. That bridge was itself replaced in 1905, and again in 1969 by a pair of bridges. During construction of the twin bridges, eight and a half arches of the medieval bridge were uncovered and restored, some of which had been buried for nearly 200 years, and the surrounds were landscaped into a public park. Several more arches are buried under modern buildings. The bridge's remains are a scheduled monument and grade II listed building. (Full article...)
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Arniston was an East Indiaman that made eight voyages for the British East India Company (EIC). She was wrecked on 30 May 1815 during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives – only six on board survived. She had been chartered as a troopship and was underway from Ceylon to England on a journey to repatriate wounded soldiers from the Kandyan Wars.
Controversially, the ship did not have a marine chronometer on board, a comparatively new navigational instrument that was an "easy and cheap addition to her equipment" that would have enabled her to determine her longitude accurately. Instead, she was forced to navigate through the heavy storm and strong currents using older, less reliable navigational aids and dead reckoning. Navigational difficulties and a lack of headway led to an incorrect assumption that Cape Agulhas was Cape Point. Consequently, Arniston was wrecked when her captain headed north for St Helena, operating on the incorrect belief the ship had already passed Cape Point. (Full article...)
The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (14 C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting 14 C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire 14 C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of 14 C it contains begins to decrease as the 14 C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of 14 C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less 14 C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of 14 C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the 14 C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.
Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of 14 C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of 14 C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its 14 C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no 14 C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of 14 C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.
Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying 14 C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the 14 C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. (Full article...)
Widely recognised for her book A Land (1951), she wrote widely on archaeology, fusing a literary style of writing with a deep knowledge of landscape and past human lives, as well as using film and radio to enable archaeology to reach new audiences. In 1953 she married J. B. Priestley, with whom she authored several works. She was co-founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and an active campaigner in the Homosexual Law Reform Society. In 1967 she published Dawn of the Gods, a "feminine" interpretation of the Minoan civilisation. In 1971, the Council for British Archaeology rewarded her advocacy for the discipline with the role of vice-president. (Full article...)
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Worlebury Camp (also known as Worlebury Hillfort) is the site of an Iron Agehillfort on Worlebury Hill, north of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. The fort was well defended with numerous walls, embankments and ditches around the site. Several large triangular platforms have been uncovered around the sides of the fort, lower down on the hillside. Nearly one hundred storage pits of various sizes were cut into the bedrock, and many of these contained human remains, coins, and other artefacts. During the 19th and 20th centuries the fort suffered damage and was threatened with complete destruction on multiple occasions. Now, the site is a designated Scheduled monument. It falls within the Weston Woods Local Nature Reserve which was declared to Natural England by the North Somerset Council in 2005. (Full article...)
Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, to a working-class family, Aston developed an early interest in archaeology, studying it as a subsidiary to geography at the University of Birmingham. In 1970, he began his career working for the Oxford City and County Museum and there began his work in public outreach by running extramural classes in archaeology and presenting a series on the subject for Radio Oxford. In 1974, he was appointed the first County Archaeologist for Somerset, there developing an interest in aerial archaeology and establishing a reputation as a pioneer in landscape archaeology—a term that he co-invented with Trevor Rowley—by authoring some of the earliest books on the subject. In 1978 he began lecturing at the University of Oxford and in 1979 became a tutor at the University of Bristol, supplementing these activities by working as an archaeological tour guide in Greece.
In 1988, Aston teamed up with television producer Tim Taylor and together they created two shows which focused on bringing archaeology into British popular consciousness. The first was the short-lived Time Signs (1991), followed by the more successful Time Team, which was produced for Channel 4 from 1994 to 2013. Aston was responsible for identifying sites for excavation and for selecting specialists to appear on the show, and through the programme became well known to the viewing public for his trademark colourful jumpers and flowing, untidy hairstyle. In 1996 he was appointed to the specially-created post of Professor of Landscape Archaeology at Bristol University, and undertook a ten-year project investigating the manor at Shapwick, Somerset.
He retired from his university posts in 2004, but continued working on Time Team until 2011 and in 2006 commenced writing regular articles for British Archaeology magazine until his death. Although Aston did not believe that he would leave a significant legacy behind him, after his death various archaeologists claimed that he had a major impact in helping to popularise the discipline among the British public. (Full article...)
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Kronan, also called Stora Kronan, was a Swedish warship that served as the flagship of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic Sea in the 1670s. When built, she was one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world. The construction of Kronan lasted from 1668 to 1672 and was delayed by difficulties with financing and conflicts between the shipwright Francis Sheldon and the Swedish admiralty. After four years of service, the ship sank in rough weather at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676: while making a sharp turn under too much sail she capsized, and the gunpowdermagazine ignited and blew off most of the bow. Kronan sank quickly, taking about 800 men and more than 100 guns with her, along with valuable military equipment, weapons, personal items, and large quantities of silver and gold coins.
The loss of Kronan was a hard blow for Sweden during the Scanian War. Besides being the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Swedish Navy, she had been an important status symbol for the monarchy of the young Charles XI. Along with Kronan, the navy lost a sizeable proportion of its best manpower, acting supreme commander Lorentz Creutz, numerous high-ranking fleet officers, and the chief of the navy medical staff. A commission was set up to investigate whether any individuals could be held responsible for the defeat at the Battle of Öland and other major defeats during the war.
Most of the guns that sank with Kronan were salvaged in the 1680s, but eventually the wreck fell into obscurity. Its exact position was rediscovered in 1980 by the amateur researcher Anders Franzén, who had also located the 17th-century warship Vasa in the 1950s. Yearly diving operations have since surveyed and excavated the wreck site and salvaged artifacts, and Kronan has become the most widely publicized shipwreck in the Baltic after Vasa. More than 30,000 artifacts have been recovered, and many have been conserved and put on permanent public display at the Kalmar County Museum in Kalmar. The museum is responsible for the maritime archaeological operations and the permanent exhibitions on Kronan. (Full article...)
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An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectilemass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as signaling.
The earliest arrowheads were made of stone and of organic materials; as human civilizations progressed, other alloy materials were used. Arrowheads are important archaeological artifacts; they are a subclass of projectile points. Modern enthusiasts still "produce over one million brand-new spear and arrow points per year".
Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore the history of SETI as a field; archaeological comparisons for human-alien communication, such as the difficulties of translating ancient languages; the inferential gap between humans and aliens, and the consequences this would have for communication and trade; and the potential nature of alien intelligences.
Originally scheduled for publication in June 2014, a PDF of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication was accidentally released a month before the intended date and reviewed by Gizmodo. The positive response to the review inspired NASA to bring forward its release as an e-book, making it available on their website from May of that year.
The book gained widespread media coverage upon release. As well as receiving generally positive reviews, it was at the center of controversy regarding misinterpretation of one of its essays. A quote about ancient terrestrial stone carvings, rhetorically stating that they "might have been made by aliens" for all that they were understood by modern anthropologists, was misreported by publications such as TheBlaze, The Huffington Post, and Artnet. (Full article...)
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Scotland during the Roman Empire refers to the protohistorical period during which the Roman Empire interacted within the area of modern Scotland. Despite sporadic attempts at conquest and government between the first and fourth centuries AD, most of modern Scotland, inhabited by the Caledonians and the Maeatae, was not incorporated into the Roman Empire with Roman control over the area fluctuating.
In the Roman imperial period, the area of Caledonia lay north of the River Forth, while the area now called England was known as Britannia, the name also given to the Roman province roughly consisting of modern England and Wales and which replaced the earlier Ancient Greek designation as Albion. Roman legions arrived in the territory of modern Scotland around AD 71, having conquered the Celtic Britons of southern Britannia over the preceding three decades. Aiming to complete the Roman conquest of Britannia, the Roman armies under Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Gnaeus Julius Agricola campaigned against the Caledonians in the 70s and 80s. The Agricola, a biography of the Roman governor of Britannia by his son-in-law Tacitus mentions a Roman victory at "Mons Graupius" which became the namesake of the Grampian Mountains but whose identity has been questioned by modern scholarship. In 2023 a lost Roman road built by Julius Agricola was rediscovered in Drip close to Stirling: it has been described as "the most important road in Scottish history."
Agricola then seems to have repeated an earlier Greek circumnavigation of the island by Pytheas and received submission from local tribes, establishing the Roman limes of actual control first along the Gask Ridge, and then withdrawing south of a line from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne, i.e. along the Stanegate. This border was later fortified as Hadrian's Wall. Several Roman commanders attempted to fully conquer lands north of this line, including a second-century expansion that was fortified as the Antonine Wall.
The history of the period is complex and not well-documented. The province of Valentia, for instance, may have been the lands between the two Roman walls, or the territory around and south of Hadrian's Wall, or Roman Wales. Romans held most of their Caledonian territory only a little over 40 years; they probably only held Scottish land for about 80 years. Some Scottish historians such as Alistair Moffat maintain Roman influence was inconsequential. Despite grandiose claims made by an eighteenth-century forged manuscript, it is now believed that the Romans at no point controlled even half of present-day Scotland and that Roman legions ceased to affect the area after around 211.
"Scots" and "Scotland" proper would not emerge as unified ideas until the eighth century. In fact, the Roman Empire influenced every part of Scotland during the period: by the time of the End of Roman rule in Britannia around 410, the various Iron Age tribes native to the area had united as, or fallen under the control of, the Picts, while the southern half of the country was overrun by tribes of Romanized Britons. The Scoti (GaelicIrish raiders who would give Scotland its Anglicised name) had begun to settle along the west coast. All three groups may have been involved in the Great Conspiracy that overran Roman Britannia in 367. The era saw the emergence of the earliest historical accounts of the natives. The most enduring legacies of Rome, however, were Christianity and literacy, both of which arrived indirectly via Irish missionaries. (Full article...)
After the war, Heurtley studied classical archaeology at Oriel College, Oxford, under Percy Gardner and with Stanley Casson, the assistant director of the British School at Athens (BSA). Heurtley followed Casson to the BSA, excavating in 1921 with him in Macedonia, and with the school's director, Alan Wace, at Mycenae. In 1923, Heurtley succeeded Casson as the BSA's assistant director, and also assumed the role of its librarian; he held both posts until his dismissal, on financial grounds, in 1932. He subsequently became the librarian of the Department of Antiquities of the Mandate for Palestine, a position he held until 1939, and ended his career as bursar of The Oratory School.
Heurtley was elected as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1936. He excavated widely in northern Greece during the 1920s and 1930s, and published his monograph, Prehistoric Macedonia, in 1939. He also excavated on the island of Ithaca between 1930 and 1932, and spent a season at Troy under Carl Blegen in 1932. He was often accompanied on his excavations by his wife, Eileen, who cooked for his excavators. He retired to her ancestral home in County Kerry in 1945, and died of cancer in 1955. (Full article...)
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Withypool Stone Circle, also known as Withypool Hill Stone Circle, is a stone circle located on the Exmoormoorland, near the village of Withypool in the southwestern English county of Somerset. The ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
Many monuments were built in Exmoor during the Bronze Age, but only two stone circles survive in this area: the other is Porlock Stone Circle. The Withypool ring is located on the south-western slope of Withypool Hill, on an area of heathland. It is about 36.4 metres (119 feet 5 inches) in diameter. Around thirty small gritstones remain, although there may originally have been around 100; there are conspicuous gaps on the northern and western sides of the monument. The site was rediscovered in 1898 and surveyed by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray in 1905. (Full article...)
Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565, when it was abandoned. It was a fortified city. Chronicles left by Persian and European travellers, particularly the Portuguese, say that Hampi was a prosperous, wealthy and grand city near the Tungabhadra River, with numerous temples, farms and trading markets. By 1500 CE, Hampi-Vijayanagara was the world's second-largest city, after Beijing, and probably India's richest at that time, attracting traders from Persia and Portugal. The Vijayanagara Empire was defeated by a coalition of Muslim sultanates; its capital was conquered, pillaged and destroyed by Sultanate armies in 1565, after which Hampi remained in ruins.
Located in Karnataka near the small modern town of Hampi with the city of Hosapete 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) away, Hampi's ruins are spread over 4,100 hectares (16 sq mi) and it has been described by UNESCO as an "austere, grandiose site" of more than 1,600 surviving remains of the last great Hindu kingdom in South India that includes "forts, riverside features, royal and sacred complexes, temples, shrines, pillared halls, mandapas, memorial structures, water structures and others". (Full article...)
The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type siteHarappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861. There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. The early Harappan cultures were populated from Neolithic cultures, the earliest and best-known of which is named after Mehrgarh, in Balochistan, Pakistan. Harappan civilisation is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures.
The cities of the ancient Indus were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and techniques of handicraft and metallurgy. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilisation may have contained between one and five million individuals during its florescence. A gradual drying of the region during the 3rd millennium BCE may have been the initial stimulus for its urbanisation. Eventually it also reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise and to disperse its population to the east.
Although over a thousand Mature Harappan sites have been reported and nearly a hundred excavated, there are five major urban centres: Mohenjo-daro in the lower Indus Valley (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 as "Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro"), Harappa in the western Punjab region, Ganeriwala in the Cholistan Desert, Dholavira in western Gujarat (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 as "Dholavira: A Harappan City"), and Rakhigarhi in Haryana. The Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliations are uncertain, as the Indus script has remained undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars. (Full article...)
The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.
The fragment is an ornate piece, but nothing else remains of the helmet; it might be the single remnant of a disintegrated helmet, or it might have been lost or discarded. It is one of two Scandinavian eyepieces discovered alone, giving rise to the suggestion that it was intentionally deposited in an invocation of the one-eyed god Odin. It would have been part of a decorated "crested helmet", the type of headgear that was common to England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries AD. These are particularly known from the examples found at Vendel, Valsgärde, and Sutton Hoo; the Tjele helmet fragment is the only other Danish example known.
Gevninge is three kilometres (1.9 mi) upriver from Lejre, a one-time centre of power believed to be the setting for Heorot, the fabled mead hall to which the poetical hero Beowulf journeys in search of the monster Grendel. The settlement's location suggests that it functioned as an outpost through which anyone would have to pass when sailing to the capital, and in which trusted and loyal guardians would serve. This mirrors Beowulf's experience on his way to Heorot, for upon disembarking he is met with a mounted lookout whose job it is "to watch the waves for raiders, and danger to the Danish shore." Upon answering his challenge, Beowulf is escorted down the road to Heorot, much as an Iron Age visitor to Lejre might have been led along the road from Gevninge. The Gevninge helmet fragment, a military piece from a riverside outpost, therefore sheds light on the relationship between historical fact and legend. (Full article...)
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The Old Exe Bridge is a ruined medieval arch bridge in Exeter in south-western England. Construction of the bridge began in 1190, and was completed by 1214. The bridge is the oldest surviving bridge of its size in England and the oldest bridge in Britain with a chapel still on it. It replaced several rudimentary crossings which had been in use sporadically since Roman times. The project was the idea of Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and influential local merchants, who travelled the country to raise funds. No known records survive of the bridge's builders. The result was a bridge at least 590 feet (180 metres) long, which probably had 17 or 18 arches, carrying the road diagonally from the west gate of the city wall across the River Exe and its wide, marshy flood plain.
St Edmund's Church, the bridge chapel, was built into the bridge at the time of its construction, and St Thomas's Church was built on the riverbank at about the same time. The Exe Bridge is unusual among British medieval bridges for having had secular buildings on it as well as the chapel. Timber-framed shops, with houses above, were in place from at least the early 14th century, and later in the bridge's life, all but the most central section carried buildings. As the river silted up, land was reclaimed, allowing a wall to be built from the side of St Edmund's which protected a row of houses and shops which became known as Frog Street. Walter Gervase also commissioned a chantry chapel, built opposite the church, which came into use after 1257 and continued until the Reformation in the mid-16th century.
The medieval bridge collapsed and had to be partially rebuilt several times throughout its life; the first recorded rebuilding was in 1286. By 1447 the bridge was severely dilapidated, and the mayor of Exeter appealed for funds to repair it. By the 16th century, it was again in need of repairs. Nonetheless, the bridge was in use for almost 600 years, until a replacement was built in 1778 and the arches across the river were demolished. That bridge was itself replaced in 1905, and again in 1969 by a pair of bridges. During construction of the twin bridges, eight and a half arches of the medieval bridge were uncovered and restored, some of which had been buried for nearly 200 years, and the surrounds were landscaped into a public park. Several more arches are buried under modern buildings. The bridge's remains are a scheduled monument and grade II listed building. (Full article...)
Richard III, the final ruler of the Plantagenet dynasty, was killed on 22 August 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. His body was taken to Greyfriars, Leicester, where it was buried in a crude grave in the friary church. Following the friary's dissolution in 1538 and subsequent demolition, Richard's tomb was lost. An erroneous account arose that Richard's bones had been thrown into the River Soar at the nearby Bow Bridge.
A search for Richard's body began in August 2012, initiated by Philippa Langley and the Looking for Richard project with the support of the Richard III Society. The archaeological excavation was led by University of Leicester Archaeological Services, working in partnership with Leicester City Council. On the first day a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered showing signs of severe injuries. The skeleton, which had several unusual physical features, most notably scoliosis, a severe curvature of the back, was exhumed to allow scientific analysis. Examination showed that the man had probably been killed either by a blow from a large bladed weapon, probably a halberd, which cut off the back of his skull and exposed the brain, or by a sword thrust that penetrated all the way through the brain. Other wounds on the skeleton had probably occurred after death as "humiliation injuries", inflicted as a form of posthumous revenge.
The age of the bones at death matched that of Richard when he was killed; they were dated to about the period of his death and were mostly consistent with physical descriptions of the king. Preliminary DNA analysis showed that mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones matched that of two matrilineal descendants, one 17th-generation and the other 19th-generation, of Richard's sister Anne of York. Taking these findings into account along with other historical, scientific and archaeological evidence, the University of Leicester announced on 4 February 2013 that it had concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.
As a condition of being allowed to disinter the skeleton, the archaeologists agreed that, if Richard were found, his remains would be reburied in Leicester Cathedral. A controversy arose as to whether an alternative reburial site, York Minster or Westminster Abbey, would be more suitable. A legal challenge confirmed there were no public law grounds for the courts to be involved in that decision. Reinterment took place in Leicester on 26 March 2015, during a televised memorial service held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior members of other Christian denominations. (Full article...)
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The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרהḤaqra(h)), with the meaning of "stronghold" (see under "Etymology"), was a place in Jerusalem thought to have had a fortified compound built by Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, following his sack of the city in 168 BCE. The name Acra was also used at a later time for a city quarter probably associated with the by-then destroyed fortress, known in his time to Josephus (1st century CE) as both Acra and "the lower city". The fortress played a significant role in the events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt, which resulted in the formation of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The "upper city" was captured by Judas Maccabeus, with the Seleucid garrison taking refuge in the "Acra" below, and the task of destroying this last enemy stronghold inside Jerusalem fell to Simon Maccabeus surnamed Thassi. Our knowledge about the Acra is based almost exclusively on the writings of Josephus, which are of a later date, and on the First and Second Books of Maccabees, which were written not long after the described events.
The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used the name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly doesn't help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near the Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location").
The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. (Full article...)
Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL.
In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Agehill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects.
Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...)
As a representative of the Bavarocracy – the dominance by northern Europeans, especially Bavarians, of Greek government and institutions under the Bavarian King Otto of Greece – Ross attracted the enmity of the native Greek archaeological establishment. He was forced to resign as Ephor General over his delivery of the Athenian "Naval Records", a series of inscriptions first unearthed in 1834, to the German August Böckh for publication. He was subsequently appointed as the first professor of archaeology at the University of Athens, but lost his post as a result of the 3 September 1843 Revolution, which removed most non-Greeks from public service in the country. He spent his final years as a professor in Halle, where he argued unsuccessfully against the reconstruction of the Indo-European language family, believing the Latin language to be a direct descendant of Ancient Greek.
Ross has been called "one of the most important figures in the cultural revival of Greece." He is credited with creating the foundations for the science of archaeology in independent Greece, and for establishing a systematic approach to excavation and conservation in the earliest days of the country's formal archaeological practice. His publications, particularly in epigraphy, were widely used by contemporary scholars. At Athens, he educated the first generation of natively trained Greek archaeologists, including Panagiotis Efstratiadis, one of the foremost Greek epigraphers of the 19th century and a successor of Ross as Ephor General. (Full article...)
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DonaTeresa Cristina (14 March 1822 – 28 December 1889), nicknamed "the Mother of the Brazilians", was Empress of Brazil as the consort of Emperor Dom Pedro II from their marriage on 30 May 1843 until 15 November 1889, when the monarchy was abolished. Born a princess of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in present-day southern Italy, Teresa Cristina was the daughter of King Don Francesco I (Francis I) of the Italian branch of the House of Bourbon and his wife Maria Isabel (Maria Isabella). It was long believed by historians that the Princess was raised in an ultra-conservative, intolerant atmosphere which resulted in a timid and unassertive character in public and an ability to be contented with very little materially or emotionally. Recent studies revealed a more complex character, who despite having respected the social norms of the era, was able to assert a limited independence due to her strongly opinionated personality as well as her interest in learning, sciences and culture.
The Princess was married by proxy to Pedro II in 1843. Her spouse's expectations had been raised when a portrait was presented that depicted Teresa Cristina as an idealized beauty, but he was displeased by his bride's appearance upon their first meeting later that year. Despite a cold beginning on the part of Pedro, the couple's relationship improved as time passed, due primarily to Teresa Cristina's patience, kindness and generosity. These traits also helped her win the hearts of the Brazilian people, and her distance from political controversies shielded her from criticism. She also sponsored archaeological studies in Italy and Italian immigration to Brazil.
The marriage between Teresa Cristina and Pedro II never became passionately romantic, although a bond based upon family, mutual respect and fondness did develop. The Empress was a dutiful spouse and unfailingly supported the Emperor's positions and never interposed with her own views in public. She remained silent on the topic of his suspected extra-marital relationships—including a liaison with her daughters' governess. In turn, she was treated with unfailing respect and her position at court and home was always secure. Of the imperial couple's four children, two boys died in infancy and a daughter died of typhoid fever at the age of 24.
The imperial family was sent into exile after a coup d'état staged by a clique of army officers in 1889. Being cast from her beloved adopted land had a devastating effect on Teresa Cristina's spirit and health. Grieving and ill, she died of respiratory failure leading to cardiac arrest a month after the monarchy's collapse. She was greatly loved by her subjects, both during her lifetime and afterwards. She was even respected by the republicans who overthrew the Empire. Despite having had no direct impact on Brazil's political history, Teresa Cristina is well regarded by historians not only for her character and irreproachable behavior, but also for her sponsorship of Brazilian culture. (Full article...)
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The Trundle is an Iron Agehillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England. It was built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.
A chapel dedicated to St Roche was built on the hill around the end of the 14th century; it was in ruins by 1570. A windmill and a beacon were subsequently built on the hill. The site was occasionally used as a meeting place in the post-medieval period.
The hillfort is still a substantial earthwork, but the Neolithic site was unknown until 1925 when archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford obtained an aerial photograph of the Trundle, clearly showing additional structures inside the ramparts of the hillfort. Causewayed enclosures were new to archaeology at the time, with only five known by 1930, and the photograph persuaded archaeologist E. Cecil Curwen to excavate the site in 1928 and 1930. These early digs established a construction date of about 500 BC to 100 BC for the hillfort and proved the existence of the Neolithic site.
In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates from almost forty British causewayed enclosures, including some from the Trundle. The conclusion was that the Neolithic part of the site was probably constructed no earlier than the mid-fourth millennium BC. A review of the site in 1995 by Alastair Oswald noted the presence of fifteen possible Iron Age house platforms within the hillfort's ramparts. (Full article...)
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Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
The track extended across the now largely drained marsh between what was then an island at Westhay and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, a distance close to 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) or around 1.1 mi. The track is one of a network that once crossed the Somerset Levels. Various artifacts and prehistoric finds, including a jadeitite ceremonial axe head, have been found in the peat bogs along its length.
Construction was of crossed wooden poles, driven into the waterlogged soil to support a walkway that consisted mainly of planks of oak, laid end-to-end. The track was used for a period of only around ten years and was then abandoned, probably due to rising water levels. Following its discovery in 1970, most of the track has been left in its original location, with active conservation measures taken, including a water pumping and distribution system to maintain the wood in its damp condition. Some of the track is stored at the British Museum and at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. A reconstruction has been made on which visitors can walk, on the same line as the original, in Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve. (Full article...)
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A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars usually consider a castle to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for pleasance and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.
European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures: they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offered protection from enemies. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures also served as centres of administration and symbols of power. Urban castles were used to control the local populace and important travel routes, and rural castles were often situated near features that were integral to life in the community, such as mills, fertile land, or a water source.
Many northern European castles were originally built from earth and timber but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits and relying on a central keep. In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire. Many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castle's firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, and inspiration from earlier defences, such as Roman forts. Not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape.
Although gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 14th century, it did not significantly affect castle building until the 15th century, when artillery became powerful enough to break through stone walls. While castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery star forts with no role in civil administration, and château or country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of mock castles, part of a Romanticrevival of Gothic architecture, but they had no military purpose. (Full article...)
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Nico Ditch is a six-mile (9.7 km) long linear earthwork between Ashton-under-Lyne and Stretford in Greater Manchester, England. It was dug as a defensive fortification, or possibly a boundary marker, between the 5th and 11th century. The ditch is still visible in short sections, such as a 330-yard (300 m) stretch in Denton Golf Course. For the parts which survived, the ditch is 4–5 yards (3.7–4.6 m) wide and up to 5 feet (1.5 m) deep. Part of the earthwork is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. (Full article...)
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Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh; also Tell Misrife or Tell Mishrifeh) was an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center through most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period.
First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swaths of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s.
Qatna was inhabited by different peoples, most importantly the Amorites, who established the kingdom, followed by the Arameans; Hurrians became part of the society in the 15th century BC and influenced Qatna's written language. The city's art is distinctive and shows signs of contact with different surrounding regions. The artifacts of Qatna show high-quality workmanship. The city's religion was complex and based on many cults in which ancestor worship played an important role. Qatna's location in the middle of the Near East trade networks helped it achieve wealth and prosperity; it traded with regions as far away as the Baltic and Afghanistan. The area surrounding Qatna was fertile, with abundant water, which made the lands suitable for grazing and supported a large population that contributed to the prosperity of the city. (Full article...)
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The Corp Naomh ([kɔɾˠpˠn̪ˠiːvˠ], KORPNEEV, English: Holy or Sacred Body) is an Irish bell shrine made in the 9th or 10th century to enclose a now-lost hand-bell, which probably dated to c. 600 to 900 AD and belonged to an early Irish saint. The shrine was rediscovered sometime before 1682 at Tristernagh Abbey, near Templecross, County Westmeath. The shrine is 23 cm (9.1 in) high and 12 cm (4.7 in) wide. It was heavily refurbished and added to during a second phase of embellishment in the 15th century, and now consists of cast and sheetbronze plates mounted on a wooden core decorated with silver, niello and rock crystal. It is severely damaged with extensive losses and wear across almost all of its parts, and when discovered a block of wood had been substituted for the bell itself. The remaining elements are considered of high historical and artistic value by archaeologists and art historians.
Sections from its original, early Medieval phase include the cross on the reverse and the ornate semi-circular cap, which shows a bearded cleric holding a book. He is surrounded by horsemen above whom are large birds seemingly about to take flight. It was extensively refurbished in the 15th (and possibly 16th) centuries when the central bronze crucifix, the griffin and lion panel, the stamped border panels and the backing plate were added. The badly damaged crucifix and large enamel stud on the front date from at least the 15th century.
The shrine's medieval provenance is incomplete. It was probably held by hereditary keepers after the dissolution of Tristernagh Abbey in 1536 until it passed into the possession of the Anglo-Irish owners of the site. The Corp Naomh was first exhibited in 1853 by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and was transferred to the National Museum of Ireland in 1887. (Full article...)
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Alan John Bayard WaceFBAFSA (13 July 1879 – 9 November 1957) was an English archaeologist, who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly, Laconia and Egypt and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery.
In 1914, Wace returned to the BSA as its director, though his archaeological work was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he worked for the British intelligence services and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou. This project generated Wace and Blegen's theory of the long-term continuity of mainland Greek ("Helladic") culture, which contradicted the established scholarly view that Minoan Crete had been the dominant culture of the Aegean Bronze Age, and became known as the "Helladic Heresy". Wace excavated at Mycenae in the early 1920s, and established a chronological schema for the site's tholos tombs which largely proved the "Helladic Heresy" correct.
Wace lost his position at the BSA in 1923, and spent ten years as a curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge as the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and resumed his covert work during the Second World War, serving as a section head for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Athens, Alexandria and Cairo. He retired from Cambridge in 1944 and was appointed to a post at Alexandria's Farouk I University. During his tenure there, he continued to excavate at Mycenae and unsuccessfully attempted to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great. He was sacked after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, but continued to excavate, publish and study until his death in 1957. His daughter, Lisa French, accompanied him on several campaigns at Mycenae and later directed excavations there. (Full article...)
Ancient Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Levant. After this period, it entered an era of slow decline. During the course of its history, ancient Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled until 30BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. Egypt remained under Roman control until the 640s AD, when it was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.[1] The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians has led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy. (Full article...)
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Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known: they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument.
Knap Hill is notable as the first causewayed enclosure to be excavated and identified. In 1908 and 1909, Benjamin and Maud Cunnington spent two summers investigating the site, and Maud published two reports of their work, noting that there were several gaps in the ditch and bank surrounding the enclosure. In the late 1920s, after the excavation of Windmill Hill and other sites, it became apparent that causewayed enclosures were a characteristic monument of the Neolithic period. About a thousand causewayed enclosures have now been found in Europe, including around seventy in Britain.
This site was excavated again in 1961 by Graham Connah, who kept thorough stratigraphic documentation. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates which included several new dates from Connah's finds. It concluded that there was a 91% chance that the Knap Hill enclosure was constructed between 3530 and 3375 BC.
Two barrows lay within the Neolithic enclosure, and at least one more outside it. The hilltop also contains the remains of a Romano-British settlement on an adjoining smaller area called the plateau enclosure, along with some evidence of occupation in the 17th century. An Anglo-Saxon sword was found in the smaller enclosure, and there is evidence of an intense fire in the same area, which implies a violent end to the Romano-British occupation of the hilltop. (Full article...)
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Bodiam Castle (/ˈboʊdiəm/) is a 14th-century moatedcastle near Robertsbridge in East Sussex, England. It was built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a former knight of Edward III, with the permission of Richard II, ostensibly to defend the area against French invasion during the Hundred Years' War. Of quadrangular plan, Bodiam Castle has no keep, having its various chambers built around the outer defensive walls and inner courts. Its corners and entrance are marked by towers, and topped by crenellations. Its structure, details and situation in an artificial watery landscape indicate that display was an important aspect of the castle's design as well as defence. It was the home of the Dalyngrigge family and the centre of the manor of Bodiam.
Possession of Bodiam Castle passed through several generations of Dalyngrigges, until their line became extinct, when the castle passed by marriage to the Lewknor family. During the Wars of the Roses, Sir Thomas Lewknor supported the House of Lancaster, and when Richard III of the House of York became king in 1483, a force was despatched to besiege Bodiam Castle. It is unrecorded whether the siege went ahead, but it is thought that Bodiam was surrendered without much resistance. The castle was confiscated, but returned to the Lewknors when Henry VII of the House of Lancaster became king in 1485. Descendants of the Lewknors owned the castle until at least the 16th century.
By the start of the English Civil War in 1641, Bodiam Castle was in the possession of Lord Thanet. He supported the Royalist cause, and sold the castle to help pay fines levied against him by Parliament. The castle was subsequently dismantled, and was left as a picturesque ruin until its purchase by John Fuller in 1829. Under his auspices, the castle was partially restored before being sold to George Cubitt, 1st Baron Ashcombe, and later to Lord Curzon, both of whom undertook further restoration work. The castle is protected as a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument. It has been owned by The National Trust since 1925, donated by Lord Curzon on his death, and is open to the public. (Full article...)
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St Melangell's Church (Welsh:[meˈlaŋeɬ]) is a Grade I listed medieval building of the Church in Wales located in the former village of Pennant Melangell, in the Tanat Valley, Powys, Wales. The church was founded around the 8th century to commemorate the reputed grave of Melangell, a hermit and abbess who founded a convent and sanctuary in the area. The current church was built in the 12th century and the oldest documentation of it dates to the 13th century. The building was renovated several times, including major restoration work in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1980s the church was in danger of demolition, but under new leadership it was renovated and a cancer ministry was started. In 1958, and again between 1987 and 1994, the site was subject to major archaeological excavations, which uncovered information about prehistoric and medieval activity at Pennant Melangell, including evidence of Bronze Age burials.
St Melangell's Church contains the reconstructed shrine to Melangell, considered the oldest surviving Romanesque shrine in northern Europe. The shrine dates to the 12th century, and was a major centre of cult activity in Wales until the Reformation. It was dismantled at some point, probably in the early modern era, and reconstructed in 1958 out of fragments found in and around the church. In 1989 the shrine was dismantled again and restored in 1991 according to newer scholarship. Pennant Melangell has continued to attract pilgrims of various backgrounds and motivations into the 21st century.
The church is built of several types of stone and has a single nave and a square tower. On the east end is an apse, known as the cell-y-bedd, which contains Melangell's traditional grave. The interior of the church holds historically valuable objects including a 15th-century rood screen depicting Melangell's legend, two 14th-century effigies, paintings, and liturgical fittings. The churchyard contains thousands of graves—the majority unmarked—and several yew trees. (Full article...)
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Porlock Stone Circle is a stone circle located on Exmoor, near the village of Porlock in the south-westernEnglish county of Somerset. The Porlock ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circles' builders.
Although Exmoor witnessed the construction of many monuments during the Bronze Age, only two stone circles survive in this area, the other being Withypool Stone Circle. The Porlock circle is about 24 metres (79 feet) in diameter and contains thirteen green micaceous sandstone rocks; there may originally have been more. Directly to the north-east of the circle is a cairn connected to a linear stone row. No evidence has been found that allows for absolute dating of the monument's construction, although archaeologists have suggested that the cairn dates from the Early Bronze Age, the circle being a Middle Bronze Age addition.
A small lead wheel found inside Porlock Stone Circle suggests that the site was visited during the Romano-British period. The site was rediscovered in the 1920s and since then a variety of stones have been added to it; its current appearance is a composite of prehistoric and modern elements. In 1928 the site was surveyed and excavated by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray. A second excavation took place under the leadership of Mark Gillings in 2013. (Full article...)
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Buckton Castle was a medievalenclosure castle near Carrbrook in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England. It was surrounded by a 2.8-metre-wide (9 ft) stone curtain wall and a ditch 10 metres (33 ft) wide by 6 metres (20 ft) deep. Buckton is one of the earliest stone castles in North West England and only survives as buried remains overgrown with heather and peat. It was most likely built and demolished in the 12th century. The earliest surviving record of the site dates from 1360, by which time it was lying derelict. The few finds retrieved during archaeological investigations indicate that Buckton Castle may not have been completed.
In the 16th century, the site may have been used as a beacon for the Pilgrimage of Grace. During the 18th century, the castle was of interest to treasure hunters following rumours that gold and silver had been discovered at Buckton. The site was used as an anti-aircraft decoy site during the Second World War. Between 1996 and 2010, Buckton Castle was investigated by archaeologists as part of the Tameside Archaeology Survey, first by the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit then the University of Salford's Centre for Applied Archaeology. The project involved community archaeology, and more than 60 volunteers took part. The castle, close to the Buckton Vale Quarry, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. (Full article...)
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The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the EgyptologistHoward Carter, more than 3,300 years after Tutankhamun's death and burial. Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun's tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.
The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort. The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public. To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt's ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team. The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse.
After Lord Carnarvon's death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb. In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb's contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun's mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last two chambers of the tomb were cleared from 1926 to 1930, and the last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.
The tomb's discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun's time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it did establish the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, the era of radical innovation that preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun's time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers. The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself. (Full article...)
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Volubilis (Latin pronunciation:[wɔˈɫuːbɪlɪs]; Arabic: وليلي, romanized: walīlī; Berber languages: ⵡⵍⵉⵍⵉ, romanized: wlili) is a partly-excavated Berber-Roman city in Morocco situated near the city of Meknes that may have been the capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania, at least from the time of King Juba II. Before Volubilis, the capital of the kingdom may have been at Gilda.
Built in a fertile agricultural area, it developed from the 3rd century BC onward as a Berber, then proto-Carthaginian, settlement before being the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania. It grew rapidly under Roman rule from the 1st century AD onward and expanded to cover about 42 hectares (100 acres) with a 2.6 km (1.6 mi) circuit of walls. The city gained a number of major public buildings in the 2nd century, including a basilica, temple and triumphal arch. Its prosperity, which was derived principally from olive growing, prompted the construction of many fine town-houses with large mosaic floors.
The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome because of its remoteness and indefensibility on the south-western border of the Roman Empire. It continued to be inhabited for at least another 700 years, first as a Latinised Christian community, then as an early Islamic settlement. In the late 8th century it became the seat of Idris ibn Abdallah, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty of Morocco. By the 11th century Volubilis had been abandoned after the seat of power was relocated to Fes. Much of the local population was transferred to the new town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, about 5 km (3.1 mi) from Volubilis.
The ruins remained substantially intact until they were devastated by an earthquake in the mid-18th century and subsequently looted by Moroccan rulers seeking stone for building Meknes. It was not until the latter part of the 19th century that the site was definitively identified as that of the ancient city of Volubilis. During and after the period of French rule over Morocco, about half of the site was excavated, revealing many fine mosaics, and some of the more prominent public buildings and high-status houses were restored or reconstructed. Today it is a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site, listed for being "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire". (Full article...)
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The Pioneer Helmet (also known as the Wollaston Helmet or Northamptonshire Helmet) is an Anglo-Saxonboar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior.
The sparsely decorated nature of the helmet, a utilitarian iron fighting piece, belies its rarity. It is one of just six Anglo-Saxon helmets yet discovered, joined by finds from Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009); its basic form is nearly identical to that of the richer Coppergate helmet found in York. Like these, the Pioneer Helmet is an example of the "crested helmets" that flourished in England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries.
The distinctive feature of the helmet is the boar mounted atop its crest. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Pioneer Helmet is one of three—together with the Benty Grange helmet and the detached Guilden Morden boar—known to have survived. These boar crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, speaks of a funeral pyre "heaped with boar-shaped helmets forged in gold," forging a link between the warrior hero of legend and the Pioneer Helmet of reality.
Archaeologists have established that long barrows were built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Representing an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Chestnuts Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional style of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway. The long barrows built in this area are now known as the Medway Megaliths. Chestnuts Long Barrow lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Coldrum Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as the destroyed Smythe's Megalith and possible survivals as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are on the eastern side of the Medway.
The long barrow was built on land previously inhabited in the Mesolithic period. It consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus, estimated to have been 15 metres (50 feet) in length, with a chamber built from sarsenmegaliths on its eastern end. Both inhumed and cremated human remains were placed within this chamber during the Neolithic period, representing at least nine or ten individuals. These remains were found alongside pottery sherds, stone arrow heads, and a clay pendant. In the 4th centuryAD, a Romano-British hut was erected next to the long barrow. In the 12th or 13th century, the chamber was dug into and heavily damaged, either by treasure hunters or iconoclastic Christians. The mound gradually eroded and was completely gone by the twentieth century, leaving only the ruined stone chamber. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 18th and 19th centuries, while archaeological excavation took place in 1957, followed by limited reconstruction. The site is on privately owned land. (Full article...)
Peter Charles van GeersdaeleOBE (3 July 1933 – 20 July 2018) was an English conservator best known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial. Among other work he oversaw the creation of a plaster cast of the ship impression, from which a fibreglass replica of the ship was formed. He later helped mould an impression of the Graveney boat, in addition to other excavation and restoration work.
Van Geersdaele studied at Hammersmith Technical College from 1946 to 1949, after which he engaged in moulding and casting at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 1951. From 1954 to around 1976 he was a conservator at the British Museum, rising to the position of senior conservation officer in the British and Medieval department. Following that he became an assistant chief of archaeology in the conservation division of the National Historic Sites of Canada for Parks Canada, and then the deputy head of the conservation department at the National Maritime Museum in London. He retired in 1993, and during that year's Birthday Honours was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services to museums. (Full article...)
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Panagiotis Kavvadias or Cawadias (Greek: Παναγιώτης Καββαδίας; 14 May [O.S. 2 May] 1850 – 20 July 1928) was a Greek archaeologist. He was responsible for the excavation of ancient sites in Greece, including Epidaurus in Argolis and the Acropolis of Athens, as well as archaeological discoveries on his native island of Kephallonia. As Ephor General (the head of the Greek Archaeological Service) from 1885 until 1909, Kavvadias oversaw the expansion of the Archaeological Service and the introduction of Law 2646 of 1899, which increased the state's powers to address the illegal excavation and smuggling of antiquities.
Kavvadias's work had a particular impact on the Acropolis of Athens, and has been credited with completing its "transformation[...] from castle to monument". Between 1885 and 1890, he removed almost all of the Acropolis's remaining medieval and modern structures, uncovering many ancient monuments in the process. He also played a role in the extensive reconstruction of the site by the architect and engineer Nikolaos Balanos. Though praised initially, the work caused considerable damage to several monuments and was almost completely deconstructed and rebuilt during the later 20th and early 21st centuries. Kavvadias oversaw the opening of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, organised its first collections, and wrote some of its first catalogues.
As an administrator, Kavvadias was regarded as energetic, centralising and autocratic. His career saw significant modernisation in the practice of archaeology in Greece, and he reformed and professionalised the Archaeological Service. His patronage of Athens's foreign archaeological schools was credited with promoting the development of Greek archaeology, but was also criticised by native Greek archaeologists. He created further discontent among the Archaeological Society of Athens by reducing its role in favour of the governmental Archaeological Service. After the Goudi coup of 1909, dissatisfaction in the Greek press and among his subordinates in the Archaeological Service led to his removal from office, from the Archaeological Society and from his professorship at the University of Athens, though he was able to return to public and academic life from 1912, and remained active in Greek archaeology until his death in 1928. (Full article...)
The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity. (Full article...)
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Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known: they may have been settlements, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument.
Knap Hill is notable as the first causewayed enclosure to be excavated and identified. In 1908 and 1909, Benjamin and Maud Cunnington spent two summers investigating the site, and Maud published two reports of their work, noting that there were several gaps in the ditch and bank surrounding the enclosure. In the late 1920s, after the excavation of Windmill Hill and other sites, it became apparent that causewayed enclosures were a characteristic monument of the Neolithic period. About a thousand causewayed enclosures have now been found in Europe, including around seventy in Britain.
This site was excavated again in 1961 by Graham Connah, who kept thorough stratigraphic documentation. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates which included several new dates from Connah's finds. It concluded that there was a 91% chance that the Knap Hill enclosure was constructed between 3530 and 3375 BC.
Two barrows lay within the Neolithic enclosure, and at least one more outside it. The hilltop also contains the remains of a Romano-British settlement on an adjoining smaller area called the plateau enclosure, along with some evidence of occupation in the 17th century. An Anglo-Saxon sword was found in the smaller enclosure, and there is evidence of an intense fire in the same area, which implies a violent end to the Romano-British occupation of the hilltop. (Full article...)
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The Emesa helmet (also known as the Homs helmet) is a Roman cavalry helmet from the early first century AD. It consists of an iron head piece and face mask, the latter of which is covered in a sheet of silver and presents the individualised portrait of a face, likely its owner. Decorations, some of which are gilded, adorn the head piece. Confiscated by Syrian police soon after looters discovered it amidst a complex of tombs in the modern-day city of Homs in 1936, eventually the helmet was restored thoroughly at the British Museum, and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. It has been exhibited internationally, although as of 2017, due to the Syrian civil war, the more valuable items owned by the National Museum are hidden in underground storage.
Ornately designed yet highly functional, the helmet was probably intended for both parades and battle. Its delicate covering is too fragile to have been put to use during cavalry tournaments, but the thick iron core would have defended against blows and arrows. Narrow slits for the eyes, with three small holes underneath to allow downward sight, sacrificed vision for protection; roughly cut notches below each eye suggest a hastily made modification of necessity.
The helmet was found in a tomb near a monument to a former ruler of Emesa and, considering the lavishness of the silver and gold design, likely belonged to a member of the elite. As it is modelled after those helmets used in Roman tournaments, even if unlikely to have ever been worn in one, it may have been given by a Roman official to a Syrian general or, more likely, manufactured in Syria after the Roman style. The acanthusscroll ornamentation seen on the neck guard recalls that used on Syrian temples, suggesting that the helmet may have been made in the luxury workshops of Antioch. (Full article...)
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Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
Egyptian temples were built for the official worship of the gods and in commemoration of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and regions under Egyptian control. Temples were seen as houses for the gods or kings to whom they were dedicated. Within them, the Egyptians performed a variety of rituals, the central functions of Egyptian religion: giving offerings to the gods, reenacting their mythological interactions through festivals, and warding off the forces of chaos. These rituals were seen as necessary for the gods to continue to uphold maat, the divine order of the universe. Housing and caring for the gods were the obligations of pharaohs, who therefore dedicated prodigious resources to temple construction and maintenance. Out of necessity, pharaohs delegated most of their ritual duties to a host of priests, but most of the populace was excluded from direct participation in ceremonies and forbidden to enter a temple's most sacred areas. Nevertheless, a temple was an important religious site for all classes of Egyptians, who went there to pray, give offerings, and seek oracular guidance from the god dwelling within.
The most important part of the temple was the sanctuary, which typically contained a cult image, a statue of its god. The rooms outside the sanctuary grew larger and more elaborate over time, so that temples evolved from small shrines in late Prehistoric Egypt (late fourth millennium BC) to large stone edifices in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) and later. These edifices are among the largest and most enduring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture, with their elements arranged and decorated according to complex patterns of religious symbolism. Their typical layout consisted of a series of enclosed halls, open courts, and entrance pylons aligned along the path used for festival processions. Beyond the temple proper was an outer wall enclosing a wide variety of secondary buildings.
A large temple also owned sizable tracts of land and employed thousands of laymen to supply its needs. Temples were therefore key economic as well as religious centers. The priests who managed these powerful institutions wielded considerable influence, and despite their ostensible subordination to the king, they may have posed significant challenges to his authority.
Temple-building in Egypt continued despite the nation's decline and ultimate loss of independence to the Roman Empire in 30 BC. With the coming of Christianity, traditional Egyptian religion faced increasing persecution, and temple cults died out during the fourth through sixth centuries AD. The buildings they left behind suffered centuries of destruction and neglect. At the start of the nineteenth century, a wave of interest in ancient Egypt swept Europe, giving rise to the discipline of Egyptology and drawing increasing numbers of visitors to the civilization's remains. Dozens of temples survive today, and some have become world-famous tourist attractions that contribute significantly to the modern Egyptian economy. Egyptologists continue to study the surviving temples and the remains of destroyed ones as invaluable sources of information about ancient Egyptian society. (Full article...)
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The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרהḤaqra(h)), with the meaning of "stronghold" (see under "Etymology"), was a place in Jerusalem thought to have had a fortified compound built by Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, following his sack of the city in 168 BCE. The name Acra was also used at a later time for a city quarter probably associated with the by-then destroyed fortress, known in his time to Josephus (1st century CE) as both Acra and "the lower city". The fortress played a significant role in the events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt, which resulted in the formation of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The "upper city" was captured by Judas Maccabeus, with the Seleucid garrison taking refuge in the "Acra" below, and the task of destroying this last enemy stronghold inside Jerusalem fell to Simon Maccabeus surnamed Thassi. Our knowledge about the Acra is based almost exclusively on the writings of Josephus, which are of a later date, and on the First and Second Books of Maccabees, which were written not long after the described events.
The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used the name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly doesn't help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near the Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location").
The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. (Full article...)
The grave was discovered by members of a metal detecting club in May 2004, and excavated by archaeologists that November. Ploughing had destroyed much of the surrounding Anglo-Saxon cemetery, leaving this as the only individually identifiable grave. The helmet had fragmented into around 400 pieces, perhaps in part because of subsoiling, and was originally identified as a "fragmentary iron vessel". Only after it was acquired by the British Museum and reconstructed was it identified as a helmet. It remains in the museum's collection, but as of 2019 is not on display.
Exhibiting hardly any decoration other than a speculative exterior leather covering, the Shorwell helmet was a utilitarian fighting helmet. It was simply and sturdily designed out of eight pieces of riveted iron; its only decorative elements were paired with functional uses. The helmet's plainness belies its significance, for helmets were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, and appear to have been limited to the higher classes. The recovery of only six Anglo-Saxon helmets despite the excavation of thousands of graves suggests that their owners had some status. (Full article...)
The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (14 C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting 14 C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire 14 C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of 14 C it contains begins to decrease as the 14 C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of 14 C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less 14 C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of 14 C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the 14 C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.
Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of 14 C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of 14 C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its 14 C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no 14 C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of 14 C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of 14 C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.
Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying 14 C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the 14 C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. (Full article...)
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The Benty Grange hanging bowl is a fragmentary Anglo-Saxonartifact from the seventh century AD. All that remains are parts of two escutcheons: bronze frames that are usually circular and elaborately decorated, and that sit along the outside of the rim or at the interior base of a hanging bowl. A third one disintegrated soon after excavation, and it no longer survives. The escutcheons were found in 1848 by the antiquaryThomas Bateman, while excavating a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in western Derbyshire. They were presumably buried as part of an entire hanging bowl. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, including the hanging bowl and the boar-crestedBenty Grange helmet.
The surviving escutcheons are made of enameled bronze and are 40 mm (1.6 in) in diameter. They show three dolphin-like creatures arranged in a circle, each biting the tail of the one ahead of it. Their bodies and the background are made of enamel, likely all yellow; the creatures' outlines and eyes are tinned or silvered, as are the borders of the escutcheons. Although three escutcheons from a hanging bowl at Faversham also contain dolphin-like creatures, the Benty Grange design is most closely paralleled by Insular manuscripts, particularly figures in the Durham Gospel Fragment and the Book of Durrow. Surviving illustrations of the third escutcheon show that it was of a different size and style, exhibiting a scroll-like pattern. It parallels the basal disc of a hanging bowl from Winchester and may have been originally placed at the bottom of the Benty Grange bowl.
The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the site consists of a Neolithiccausewayed enclosure and bank barrow. In about 1800 BC, during the Bronze Age, the site was used for growing crops before being abandoned. Maiden Castle itself was built in about 600 BC; the early phase was a simple and unremarkable site, similar to many other hill forts in Britain and covering 6.4 ha (16 acres).
Around 450 BC it was greatly expanded and the enclosed area nearly tripled in size to 19 ha (47 acres), making it the largest hill fort in Britain and, by some definitions, the largest in Europe. At the same time, Maiden Castle's defences were made more complex with the addition of further ramparts and ditches. Around 100 BC, habitation at the hill fort went into decline and became concentrated at the eastern end of the site. It was occupied until at least the Roman period, by which time it was in the territory of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe.
After the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD, Maiden Castle appears to have been abandoned, although the Romans may have had a military presence on the site. In the late 4th century AD, a temple and ancillary buildings were constructed. In the 6th century AD the hill top was entirely abandoned and was used only for agriculture during the medieval period. Maiden Castle has provided inspiration for composer John Ireland and authors Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. The study of hill forts was popularised in the 19th century by archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers. In the 1930s, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Verney Wheeler undertook the first archaeological excavations at Maiden Castle, raising its profile among the public. Further excavations were carried out under Niall Sharples, which added to an understanding of the site and repaired damage caused in part by the large number of visitors. Today the site is protected as a Scheduled Monument and is maintained by English Heritage. (Full article...)
The tetrastyleprostyle building has two doors that connect the pronaos to a square cella. To the back of the temple lie the remains of the adyton where images of the deity once stood. The ancient temple functioned as an aedes, the dwelling place of the deity. The temple of Bziza was converted into a church and underwent architectural modification during two phases of Christianization; in the Early Byzantine period and later in the Middle Ages. The church, colloquially known until modern times as the Lady of the Pillars, fell into disrepair. Despite the church's condition, Christian devotion was still maintained in the nineteenth century in one of the temple's niches. The temple of Bziza is featured on multiple stamps issued by the Lebanese state. (Full article...)
Born in Sydney to a middle-class English migrant family, Childe studied classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to study classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. There, he embraced the socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War, viewing it as a conflict waged by competing imperialists to the detriment of Europe's working class. Returning to Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his socialist activism. Instead, he worked for the Labor Party as the private secretary of the politician John Storey. Growing critical of Labor, he wrote an analysis of their policies and joined the radical labour organisation Industrial Workers of the World. Emigrating to London in 1921, he became librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute and journeyed across Europe to pursue his research into the continent's prehistory, publishing his findings in academic papers and books. In doing so, he introduced the continental European concept of an archaeological culture—the idea that a recurring assemblage of artefacts demarcates a distinct cultural group—to the British archaeological community.
From 1927 to 1946 he worked as the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, and then from 1947 to 1957 as the director of the Institute of Archaeology, London. During this period he oversaw the excavation of archaeological sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland, focusing on the society of NeolithicOrkney by excavating the settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tombs of Maeshowe and Quoyness. In these decades he published prolifically, producing excavation reports, journal articles, and books. With Stuart Piggott and Grahame Clark he co-founded The Prehistoric Society in 1934, becoming its first president. Remaining a committed socialist, he embraced Marxism, and—rejecting culture-historical approaches—used Marxist ideas such as historical materialism as an interpretative framework for archaeological data. He became a sympathiser with the Soviet Union and visited the country on several occasions, although he grew sceptical of Soviet foreign policy following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His beliefs resulted in him being legally barred from entering the United States, despite receiving repeated invitations to lecture there. Upon retirement, he returned to Australia's Blue Mountains, where he committed suicide.
One of the best-known and most widely cited archaeologists of the twentieth century, Childe became known as the "great synthesizer" for his work integrating regional research with a broader picture of Near Eastern and European prehistory. He was also renowned for his emphasis on the role of revolutionary technological and economic developments in human society, such as the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution, reflecting the influence of Marxist ideas concerning societal development. Although many of his interpretations have since been discredited, he remains widely respected among archaeologists. (Full article...)
The Nine Stones is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread through much of Great Britain, Ireland, and Brittany between 3,300 and 900 BCE, during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The stone circle tradition was accompanied by the construction of timber circles and earthen henges, reflecting a growing emphasis on circular monuments. The purpose of such rings is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. At least nine of these stone circles are known to have been constructed near modern Dorset. They are smaller than those found elsewhere in Great Britain and are typically built from sarsen stone.
Located in the bottom of a narrow valley, the Nine Stones circle has a diameter of 9.1 by 7.8 metres (29 feet 10 inches by 25 feet 7 inches). It consists of nine irregularly spaced sarsen megaliths, with a small opening on its northern side. Two of the stones on the northwestern side of the monument are considerably larger than the other seven. This architectural feature has parallels with various stone circles in southwestern Scotland, and was potentially a deliberate choice of the circle's builders, to whom it may have had symbolic meaning.
Antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley first took an interest in the site during the eighteenth century. It later received archaeological attention, although it has not been excavated. Local folklore has grown up around the circle, associating it with the Devil and with children petrified into rock. The Nine Stones are regarded as a sacred site by local Druids, who perform religious ceremonies there. The circle is adjacent to the A35 road and encircled by trees. The site is owned by English Heritage and is open without charge to visitors. (Full article...)
Richard III, the final ruler of the Plantagenet dynasty, was killed on 22 August 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. His body was taken to Greyfriars, Leicester, where it was buried in a crude grave in the friary church. Following the friary's dissolution in 1538 and subsequent demolition, Richard's tomb was lost. An erroneous account arose that Richard's bones had been thrown into the River Soar at the nearby Bow Bridge.
A search for Richard's body began in August 2012, initiated by Philippa Langley and the Looking for Richard project with the support of the Richard III Society. The archaeological excavation was led by University of Leicester Archaeological Services, working in partnership with Leicester City Council. On the first day a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered showing signs of severe injuries. The skeleton, which had several unusual physical features, most notably scoliosis, a severe curvature of the back, was exhumed to allow scientific analysis. Examination showed that the man had probably been killed either by a blow from a large bladed weapon, probably a halberd, which cut off the back of his skull and exposed the brain, or by a sword thrust that penetrated all the way through the brain. Other wounds on the skeleton had probably occurred after death as "humiliation injuries", inflicted as a form of posthumous revenge.
The age of the bones at death matched that of Richard when he was killed; they were dated to about the period of his death and were mostly consistent with physical descriptions of the king. Preliminary DNA analysis showed that mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones matched that of two matrilineal descendants, one 17th-generation and the other 19th-generation, of Richard's sister Anne of York. Taking these findings into account along with other historical, scientific and archaeological evidence, the University of Leicester announced on 4 February 2013 that it had concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.
As a condition of being allowed to disinter the skeleton, the archaeologists agreed that, if Richard were found, his remains would be reburied in Leicester Cathedral. A controversy arose as to whether an alternative reburial site, York Minster or Westminster Abbey, would be more suitable. A legal challenge confirmed there were no public law grounds for the courts to be involved in that decision. Reinterment took place in Leicester on 26 March 2015, during a televised memorial service held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior members of other Christian denominations. (Full article...)
The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song (Chinese: 北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song (Chinese: 南宋; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng, Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.
Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first surviving records of the chemical formula for gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses. The Northern Song census recorded 20 million households, double of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90 million people, and 200 million by the time of the Ming dynasty. This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.
Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh; also Tell Misrife or Tell Mishrifeh) was an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center through most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period.
First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swaths of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s.
Qatna was inhabited by different peoples, most importantly the Amorites, who established the kingdom, followed by the Arameans; Hurrians became part of the society in the 15th century BC and influenced Qatna's written language. The city's art is distinctive and shows signs of contact with different surrounding regions. The artifacts of Qatna show high-quality workmanship. The city's religion was complex and based on many cults in which ancestor worship played an important role. Qatna's location in the middle of the Near East trade networks helped it achieve wealth and prosperity; it traded with regions as far away as the Baltic and Afghanistan. The area surrounding Qatna was fertile, with abundant water, which made the lands suitable for grazing and supported a large population that contributed to the prosperity of the city. (Full article...)
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The Old Exe Bridge is a ruined medieval arch bridge in Exeter in south-western England. Construction of the bridge began in 1190, and was completed by 1214. The bridge is the oldest surviving bridge of its size in England and the oldest bridge in Britain with a chapel still on it. It replaced several rudimentary crossings which had been in use sporadically since Roman times. The project was the idea of Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and influential local merchants, who travelled the country to raise funds. No known records survive of the bridge's builders. The result was a bridge at least 590 feet (180 metres) long, which probably had 17 or 18 arches, carrying the road diagonally from the west gate of the city wall across the River Exe and its wide, marshy flood plain.
St Edmund's Church, the bridge chapel, was built into the bridge at the time of its construction, and St Thomas's Church was built on the riverbank at about the same time. The Exe Bridge is unusual among British medieval bridges for having had secular buildings on it as well as the chapel. Timber-framed shops, with houses above, were in place from at least the early 14th century, and later in the bridge's life, all but the most central section carried buildings. As the river silted up, land was reclaimed, allowing a wall to be built from the side of St Edmund's which protected a row of houses and shops which became known as Frog Street. Walter Gervase also commissioned a chantry chapel, built opposite the church, which came into use after 1257 and continued until the Reformation in the mid-16th century.
The medieval bridge collapsed and had to be partially rebuilt several times throughout its life; the first recorded rebuilding was in 1286. By 1447 the bridge was severely dilapidated, and the mayor of Exeter appealed for funds to repair it. By the 16th century, it was again in need of repairs. Nonetheless, the bridge was in use for almost 600 years, until a replacement was built in 1778 and the arches across the river were demolished. That bridge was itself replaced in 1905, and again in 1969 by a pair of bridges. During construction of the twin bridges, eight and a half arches of the medieval bridge were uncovered and restored, some of which had been buried for nearly 200 years, and the surrounds were landscaped into a public park. Several more arches are buried under modern buildings. The bridge's remains are a scheduled monument and grade II listed building. (Full article...)
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Buckton Castle was a medievalenclosure castle near Carrbrook in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England. It was surrounded by a 2.8-metre-wide (9 ft) stone curtain wall and a ditch 10 metres (33 ft) wide by 6 metres (20 ft) deep. Buckton is one of the earliest stone castles in North West England and only survives as buried remains overgrown with heather and peat. It was most likely built and demolished in the 12th century. The earliest surviving record of the site dates from 1360, by which time it was lying derelict. The few finds retrieved during archaeological investigations indicate that Buckton Castle may not have been completed.
In the 16th century, the site may have been used as a beacon for the Pilgrimage of Grace. During the 18th century, the castle was of interest to treasure hunters following rumours that gold and silver had been discovered at Buckton. The site was used as an anti-aircraft decoy site during the Second World War. Between 1996 and 2010, Buckton Castle was investigated by archaeologists as part of the Tameside Archaeology Survey, first by the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit then the University of Salford's Centre for Applied Archaeology. The project involved community archaeology, and more than 60 volunteers took part. The castle, close to the Buckton Vale Quarry, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. (Full article...)
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Kronan, also called Stora Kronan, was a Swedish warship that served as the flagship of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic Sea in the 1670s. When built, she was one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world. The construction of Kronan lasted from 1668 to 1672 and was delayed by difficulties with financing and conflicts between the shipwright Francis Sheldon and the Swedish admiralty. After four years of service, the ship sank in rough weather at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676: while making a sharp turn under too much sail she capsized, and the gunpowdermagazine ignited and blew off most of the bow. Kronan sank quickly, taking about 800 men and more than 100 guns with her, along with valuable military equipment, weapons, personal items, and large quantities of silver and gold coins.
The loss of Kronan was a hard blow for Sweden during the Scanian War. Besides being the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Swedish Navy, she had been an important status symbol for the monarchy of the young Charles XI. Along with Kronan, the navy lost a sizeable proportion of its best manpower, acting supreme commander Lorentz Creutz, numerous high-ranking fleet officers, and the chief of the navy medical staff. A commission was set up to investigate whether any individuals could be held responsible for the defeat at the Battle of Öland and other major defeats during the war.
Most of the guns that sank with Kronan were salvaged in the 1680s, but eventually the wreck fell into obscurity. Its exact position was rediscovered in 1980 by the amateur researcher Anders Franzén, who had also located the 17th-century warship Vasa in the 1950s. Yearly diving operations have since surveyed and excavated the wreck site and salvaged artifacts, and Kronan has become the most widely publicized shipwreck in the Baltic after Vasa. More than 30,000 artifacts have been recovered, and many have been conserved and put on permanent public display at the Kalmar County Museum in Kalmar. The museum is responsible for the maritime archaeological operations and the permanent exhibitions on Kronan. (Full article...)
Probably constructed in the 4th millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, it was discovered in 1822, at which point it was dismantled. Built out of earth and at least five local sarsenmegaliths, the long barrow consisted of a roughly rectangular earthen tumulus with a stone chamber in its eastern end. Human remains were deposited into this chamber.
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building widespread across Neolithic Europe, Smythe's Megalith belonged to a localised regional variant produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths.
The site may have been ransacked during the Middle Ages, as other Medway Megaliths were. By the early 19th century it was buried beneath soil, largely due to millennia of hillwash coming down from the adjacent Blue Bell Hill. In 1822, it was discovered by farm labourers ploughing the land; the local antiquarians Clement Smythe and Thomas Charles were called in to examine it. Shortly after, the labourers pulled away the stones and dispersed most of the human remains, destroying the monument. Smythe and Charles produced, but did not publish, reports on their findings, and these have been discussed by archaeologists since the mid-20th century. (Full article...)
Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology and is surrounded by a moat more than 5 km (3.1 mi). Enclosed within an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west with scholars divided as to the significance of this.
The temple complex fell into disuse before being restored in the 20th century with various international agencies involved in the project. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and devatas adorning its walls. The Angkor area was designated as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1992. It is regarded as one of the best examples of Khmer architecture and a symbol of Cambodia, depicted as a part of the Cambodian national flag. The Angkor Wat is a major tourist attraction and attracts more than 2.5 million visitors every year. (Full article...)
The priory was established as an Augustinian foundation in the 12th century, and was raised to the status of an abbey in 1391. The abbey was closed in 1536, as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. Nine years later the surviving structures, together with the manor of Norton, were purchased by Sir Richard Brooke, who built a Tudor house on the site, incorporating part of the abbey. This was replaced in the 18th century by a Georgian house. The Brooke family left the house in 1921, and it was partially demolished in 1928. In 1966 the site was given in trust for the use of the general public.
Excavation of the site began in 1971, and became the largest to be carried out by modern methods on any European monastic site. It revealed the foundations and lower parts of the walls of the monastery buildings and the abbey church. Important finds included: a Norman doorway; a finely carved arcade; a floor of mosaic tiles, the largest floor area of this type to be found in any modern excavation; the remains of the kiln where the tiles were fired; a bell casting pit used for casting the bell; and a large medieval statue of Saint Christopher.
The priory was opened to the public as a visitor attraction in the 1970s. The 42-acre site, run by an independent charitable trust, includes a museum, the excavated ruins, and the surrounding garden and woodland. In 1984 the separate walled garden was redesigned and opened to the public. Norton Priory offers a programme of events, exhibitions, educational courses, and outreach projects. In August 2016, a larger and much extended museum opened. (Full article...)
Mylonas was born in Smyrna, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and received an elite education. He enrolled in 1919 at the University of Athens to study classics, joined the Greek Army, and fought in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. He witnessed the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922, and was subsequently taken prisoner; he was recaptured after a brief escape, but was released in 1923 after bribing his captors with money sent by his American contacts.
Mylonas's excavation work included the sites of Pylos, Artemision, Mekyberna, Polystylos and Aspropotamos. Along with John Papadimitriou [el], he was given responsibility for the excavation of Mycenae's Grave Circle B in the early 1950s, and from 1957 until 1985 excavated on the citadel of the site. His excavations helped to establish the chronological relationships between Mycenae's structures, which had been excavated piecemeal over the preceding century, and to determine the religious function of the site's Cult Center, to which he gave its name. He was awarded the Order of George I, the Royal Order of the Phoenix and the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America, of which he was the first foreign-born president. His work at Mycenae has been credited with bringing coherence to the previously scattered and sporadically published record of excavation at the site. At the same time, his belief that ancient Greek mythical traditions, particularly concerning the Trojan War and the Eleusinian Mysteries, could be verified by archaeological excavation was controversial in his day and has generally been discredited since. (Full article...)
Obtaining sufficient fresh water was difficult during early colonial times. A catchment called the Tank Stream sourced water from what is now the CBD but was little more than an open sewer by the end of the 1700s. The Botany Swamps Scheme was one of several ventures during the mid-1800s that saw the construction of wells, tunnels, steam pumping stations, and small dams to service Sydney's growing population.
The Upper Nepean Scheme came into operation in 1886. It transports water 100 km (62 mi) from the Nepean, Cataract, and Cordeaux rivers and continues to service about 15% of Sydney's water needs. Dams were built on these three rivers between 1907 and 1935. In 1977 the Shoalhaven Scheme brought several more dams into service.
Perth is served by Perth Airport in the city's east for regional, domestic and international flights and Jandakot Airport in the city's southern suburbs for general aviation and charter flights.
Perth has a road network with three freeways—Mitchell, Kwinana and Graham Farmer—and nine metropolitan highways. The Northbridge Tunnel, part of the Graham Farmer Freeway, is the only significant road tunnel in Perth.
Rail freight terminates at the Kewdale Rail Terminal, 15 km (9 mi) south-east of the city centre.
Perth's main container and passenger port is at Fremantle, 19 km (12 mi) south west at the mouth of the Swan River. The Fremantle Outer Harbour at Cockburn Sound is one of Australia's major bulk cargo ports. (Full article...)
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Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms a strategic transport hub for east–west and north–south routes. The city itself has a metropolitan public transport system managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of a contracted bus system including the O-Bahn Busway, 6 commuter rail lines (diesel and electric), and a small tram network operating between inner suburb Hindmarsh, the city centre, and seaside Glenelg. Tramways were largely dismantled in the 1950s, but saw a revival in the 2010s with upgrades and extensions.
Road transport in Adelaide has historically been easier than many of the other Australian cities, with a well-defined city layout and wide multiple-lane roads from the beginning of its development. Adelaide was known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters having been able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. However, such arterial roads often experience traffic congestion as the city grows.
The Adelaide metropolitan area has one freeway and four expressways. In order of construction, they are:
The South Eastern Freeway (M1), connects the south-east corner of the Adelaide Plain to the Adelaide Hills and beyond to Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend, where it then continues as National Highway 1 south-east to Melbourne.
The Southern Expressway (M2), connecting the outer southern suburbs with the inner southern suburbs and the city centre. It duplicates the route of South Road.
The North-South Motorway (M2), is an ongoing major project that will become the major north–south corridor, replacing most of what is now South Road, connecting the Southern Expressway and the Northern Expressway via a motorway with no traffic lights. As of 2020 the motorway's northern half is complete (save for a small link under construction at Croydon Park), connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west is awaiting funding.
The Port River Expressway (A9), connects Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor to Port Wakefield Road at the northern "entrance" to the metropolitan area.
The Northern Expressway (Max Fatchen Expressway) (M2), is the northern suburbs bypass route connecting the Sturt Highway (National Highway 20) via the Gawler Bypass to Port Wakefield Road at a point a few kilometres north of the Port River Expressway connection.
The Northern Connector, completed in 2020, links the North South Motorway to the Northern Expressway.
Perth is served by Perth Airport in the city's east for regional, domestic and international flights and Jandakot Airport in the city's southern suburbs for general aviation and charter flights.
Perth has a road network with three freeways—Mitchell, Kwinana and Graham Farmer—and nine metropolitan highways. The Northbridge Tunnel, part of the Graham Farmer Freeway, is the only significant road tunnel in Perth.
Rail freight terminates at the Kewdale Rail Terminal, 15 km (9 mi) south-east of the city centre.
Perth's main container and passenger port is at Fremantle, 19 km (12 mi) south west at the mouth of the Swan River. The Fremantle Outer Harbour at Cockburn Sound is one of Australia's major bulk cargo ports. (Full article...)
Image 2
Obtaining sufficient fresh water was difficult during early colonial times. A catchment called the Tank Stream sourced water from what is now the CBD but was little more than an open sewer by the end of the 1700s. The Botany Swamps Scheme was one of several ventures during the mid-1800s that saw the construction of wells, tunnels, steam pumping stations, and small dams to service Sydney's growing population.
The Upper Nepean Scheme came into operation in 1886. It transports water 100 km (62 mi) from the Nepean, Cataract, and Cordeaux rivers and continues to service about 15% of Sydney's water needs. Dams were built on these three rivers between 1907 and 1935. In 1977 the Shoalhaven Scheme brought several more dams into service.
Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms a strategic transport hub for east–west and north–south routes. The city itself has a metropolitan public transport system managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of a contracted bus system including the O-Bahn Busway, 6 commuter rail lines (diesel and electric), and a small tram network operating between inner suburb Hindmarsh, the city centre, and seaside Glenelg. Tramways were largely dismantled in the 1950s, but saw a revival in the 2010s with upgrades and extensions.
Road transport in Adelaide has historically been easier than many of the other Australian cities, with a well-defined city layout and wide multiple-lane roads from the beginning of its development. Adelaide was known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters having been able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. However, such arterial roads often experience traffic congestion as the city grows.
The Adelaide metropolitan area has one freeway and four expressways. In order of construction, they are:
The South Eastern Freeway (M1), connects the south-east corner of the Adelaide Plain to the Adelaide Hills and beyond to Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend, where it then continues as National Highway 1 south-east to Melbourne.
The Southern Expressway (M2), connecting the outer southern suburbs with the inner southern suburbs and the city centre. It duplicates the route of South Road.
The North-South Motorway (M2), is an ongoing major project that will become the major north–south corridor, replacing most of what is now South Road, connecting the Southern Expressway and the Northern Expressway via a motorway with no traffic lights. As of 2020 the motorway's northern half is complete (save for a small link under construction at Croydon Park), connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west is awaiting funding.
The Port River Expressway (A9), connects Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor to Port Wakefield Road at the northern "entrance" to the metropolitan area.
The Northern Expressway (Max Fatchen Expressway) (M2), is the northern suburbs bypass route connecting the Sturt Highway (National Highway 20) via the Gawler Bypass to Port Wakefield Road at a point a few kilometres north of the Port River Expressway connection.
The Northern Connector, completed in 2020, links the North South Motorway to the Northern Expressway.