Ongoing excavations at Maryport, Cumbria, have uncovered a Roman altar – the first to be found at the site in over 140 years. In 1870, landowner and antiquarian Humphrey Senhouse discovered 17 altars buried at the Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall. Now Newcastle University archaeologists have added an 18th to this number. Like those found by [...]
Jupiter, best and greatest – Revisiting Maryport’s ritual pits
New excavations have revealed why the country’s finest set of Jupiter altars were committed to the earth in gigantic pits. Ian Haynes and Tony Wilmott explained the contents of the Maryport pits to Matthew Symonds. ‘Never before’, the great Hadrian’s Wall scholar John Collingwood Bruce declared in July 1870 ‘were the antiquaries of this district [...]
CA 270
When thousands of bodies were discovered in Medieval mass graves at Spitalfields cemetery, the Black Death was believed to be responsible. Then the radiocarbon dates came back. These placed the burials almost a century before the plague. Seeking an alternative explanation for the deaths, the archaeologists found historical accounts of a famine, and a tantalising [...]
London’s volcanic winter
Is a Medieval mass grave in London’s Spitalfields cemetery linked to a massive volcanic eruption?
Reading the bones: Spitalfields’ human remains
August 6, 2012 By Filed Under: Features
Spitalfields in London is thought to be the largest excavated cemetery in the world. Recent research has focussed on the site’s mass graves, uncovering a wealth of new information about the population of Medieval London. One of the archaeological advantages of mass burials is that the urgency of the situation leaves no time to [...]
Do Irish Bog Oaks Date the Shang Dynasty?
August 6, 2012 By Filed Under: Features
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
August 6, 2012 By Filed Under: Features
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 [...]
Officers and gentlemen hoarders
Restoration work at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich has revealed a cache of hundreds of Victorian objects, from champagne bottles to tennis balls – hidden beneath a bricked-up flight of steps.
Cookery through the ages
July 23, 2012 By Filed Under: News
From Roman recipes to Victorian victuals, the Museum of London is hosting a series of cookery workshops exploring how our ancestors prepared their favourite dishes. Between September and December, members of the public can learn how to prepare ancient dishes and sample bygone flavours – including ancient Rome’s infamous fish sauce. Led by Sally Grainger and [...]
Valhalla opens its gates
July 20, 2012 By Filed Under: News
‘Valhalla: examining Viking burials in the British Isles’, a new exhibition exploring Viking burials across the British Isles, opens tomorrow (21 July) in York.
Iron Age olives and pampered pets
Recent discoveries from Silchester include the burial of a ‘poodle’ and Britain’s first Iron Age olive.
Missing copies of CA? Free to a good home…
July 20, 2012 By Filed Under: Articles
Do you have gaps in your collection of Current Archaeology back issues? John Allistone in Poole, Dorset, has duplicate copies of issues 148-203 and 205-214 that are free to a good home to anyone willing to come and collect them.
Roman cemetery discovered in Great Ellingham
Excavations in Norfolk have uncovered one of the largest Romano-British cemeteries ever found in the region.
Festival of British Archaeology 2012
July 16, 2012 By Filed Under: Articles
This July over 750 archaeological events are taking place across the UK. Co-ordinated by the Council for British Archaeology, we picked out some highlights in CA 269 but there is plenty more still to see – find out more at www.archaeologyfestival.org.uk/whatson
The Rose rises again
July 13, 2012 By Filed Under: News
Almost a quarter of a century after the 16th-century Rose Theatre was rediscovered during archaeological work ahead of the construction of a new office block (see CA 115), its trustees today (13 July) launched a Heritage Lottery Fund bid to secure its future.
Lifetime achievement award for Mick Aston
Professor Mick Aston has been presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2012 British Archaeological Awards.
British Archaeological Awards results
July 9, 2012 By Filed Under: News
The results are in: the winners of this year’s British Archaeological Awards were announced today (9 July) at the British Museum in London.
Archaeological opera
July 6, 2012 By Filed Under: News
After featuring in CA 269 Sherds, there is an opportunity to catch the London première of The Chalk Legend at The Forum in Kentish Town. Based on the discovery of a mass grave of fifty-one decapitated Viking skeletons in Dorset, this opera-oratorio depicts the moment when a band of Viking warriors lands on the Dorset coast and encounters an encampment of Anglo-Saxons, with fateful results. [...]
Raising the Curtain: Excavating Shakespeare’s lost playhouse
Immortalised in Henry V as ‘this wooden O’, the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch was home to Shakespeare’s company of players until the completion of the Globe in 1599. Yet despite staging some of the playwright’s most famous works, barely 50 years after its opening in 1577 the theatre faded into obscurity and was lost– until [...]
