Dyfed Archaeological Trust has many exciting opportunities to get involved with throughout the year. The CALCH project, for example, is investigating the forgotten history of the lime industry on the Black Mountain, located in south-east Wales. There are all sorts of ways to take part, from excavation to research, with no experience necessary. There is [...]
Meet George: the Curious History of an Egyptian Coffin Lid
In ‘Sherds’, CA 275, we brought you the story of ‘George’, a sarcophagus lid now housed by the University of Birmingham’s archaeology museum. We were intrigued by the artefact’s long and eventful history, and Collections Assistant Emily Millward has kindly written us a biography of George, to shed a little light on his past – and to [...]
Secrets of an Iron Age smith
New finds at Beechwood Farm, Inverness may help to reveal the ancient techniques of prehistoric Ironworkers, and provide new perspectives on metalworking in northern Scotland.
10 things you might not know about the Mary Rose
Launched in 1511, the Mary Rose was intended to be the flagship of King Henry VIII’s fleet. She was a new breed of warship with purpose-built gun-ports that made her a fearsome floating fortress. But on 19 July 1545, for reasons still unknown, she sank in the Solent whilst leading 60 ships against the French. [...]
Do Irish Bog Oaks Date the Shang Dynasty?
In CA 111 Chris Scarre pointed out that the explosion of Thera could be dated to 1626 BC. This may, however, only be the beginning. There are at least 4 other prehistoric dates that the readers of CA should learn by heart; I believe that our work on tree-rings has revealed several major volcanic eruptions which may have caused climatic upset on a world wide basis. [...]
Volcanoes and population
In 1985 I presented a population graph for Britain extending from the Mesolithic to recent times, which was characterised by periodic ups and downs, the lows being the result of catastrophic processes in which an overall loss of the order of 50% in a century was envisaged. This was on the level of the historical population disasters of the 6th and 14th centuries AD. Just such [...]
Volcanoes, Catastrophe and the Global Crisis of the Late Second Millennium BC
When Andrew Selkirk asked me to append some comments to Mike Baillie’s piece on volcanic “events”, it prompted the notion that I had written on catastrophes in Current Archaeology some years ago. It proved after a long search to be exactly ten years ago (CA 67) and to be a paragraph entitled “Catastrophe?” I postulated then a [...]
Phosphate-analysis pudding
This cake was made for Dr Johanna Ullrich, a phosphate-analysis specialist, to mark her departure from the University College Dublin School of Archaeology last October. On top of the cake there is an Ogham stone, a grey box marked ‘phosphate analysis’, and the blue book is Renfrew and Bahn’s Archaeology: theories, methods and practice. Sent in by Niamh Kelly, featured in [...]



















