Who is Alexander Selkirk? Aside from being our publisher‘s brother, he was also the inspiration for the world’s most famous castaway. Writer Daniel Defoe based his novel, Robinson Crusoe, on the true adventures of a Scottish sailor, one hot-headed Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned on a tiny island, off the coast of Chile, from 1704 [...]
CWA 28
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
Golden Mycenae is one of the most famous ancient towns in the world, but how did it work? In the first of a two part feature, David Mason takes us to Mycenae, walking along the little-known roads to see Mycenae as the Mycenaeans saw it, with the Treasury of Atreus carefully placed for maximum impact. [...]
CWA 27
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
The ‘Red Snake’, or Gorgan Wall, of northern Iran is one of the world’s greatest frontiers. But who built it? And when? An international team of archaeologists has been at work and here they finally unravel the secrets – and the date – of the Red Snake. In the Euphrates valley, towns and palaces are [...]
CWA 26
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
The stark, abstract Cycladic figurines found in the Aegean Cyclades islands have had enormous influence on modern art. Colin Renfrew has been studying the material since he was a young man in the 1960s. He believes Keros must have been a major ritual centre of the Cycladic civilisation in the early Bronze Age. Could it [...]
CWA 25
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
CWA 25 covers the globe from the blood and gore of the Roman amphitheatre – where a mosaic by the flamboyant Magerius describes his beneficience – to Copper Age cave burials in the Levant. This issue also includes in its travels a visit to the Great Wall of China and two trips to the Caribbean, [...]
CWA 29
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
What was Spain like before the Romans? The site of Pintia, in north central Spain, is providing surprising answers. From the 5th century BC until the arrival of the Romans in the 1st century BC, Pintia was occupied by the Vaccaei, an Iron Age people with Celtic links. Alas, the Vaccaei left no written history [...]
CWA 30
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
Penn Museum was founded on a grandiose scale in the 1880s, and we open the issue with a review of its rollercoaster history. We then follow with two features on the great civilization of the Maya of Mesoamerica. Currently, they are digging at Copán, in modern Honduras where they have uncovered the tomb of the [...]
CWA 33
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
In the 8th century BC, the Spartans subjugated their Peloponnesian neighbours, the Messenians. When eventually Sparta was conquered, the Messenians founded a new city at Messene, which flourished in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Now, a major restoration project has made it one of Greece‘s best preserved ancient cities, far triumphing over Sparta’s paltry remains. [...]
CWA 32
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
In this issue we present one of Rome’s greatest un-success stories: the extravagant yet impractical city of Clunia in northern Spain.Two thousand years ago, with the booming Roman political machine behind it, Clunia was made into the administrative capital of the province of Tarraconensis. The main aim of the city was to convey prestige. Among [...]
CWA 31
February 12, 2009 By Filed Under: Past Issues
This issue marks our fifth anniversary and in celebration, we have given the magazine a splendid new look.As ever, we offer the latest on digs and discoveries from around the world, such as our cover feature on how archaeology is rewriting the Bible. According to the Old Testament, David and Solomon were the important kings [...]
Through the gates of the museum
August 26, 2008 By Filed Under: World News
The founding of the University of Pennsylvania Museum in the 1880s was part of the great wave of institution-building that took place in the United States after the American Civil War. The new wealth created after the Civil War gave incentive to philanthropy as a means of earning social recognition, and many wealthy and civic [...]
Jordan: The secrets of Petra
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
At Petra, the “Rose red city half as old as time”, the highlight is the ‘Treasury’ dramatically sited at the end of a long winding cleft in the rocks But how did it actually work? The answer is being revealed in an excavation at a site known as the Soldiers Tomb, hidden away down a [...]
Butrint, on the Adriatic coast
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
The magical city of Butrint Visiting the city of Butrint is sheer magic. Today it is easily accessible from Corfu, but in Greek and Roman times it was a major port along the Adriatic coast, where Aeneas called in on his way to Rome. It was extensively excavated in the 1930s but then Albania became [...]
Pompeii: the city before Vesuvius
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
Perhaps surprisingly, Pompeii still continues to be at the centre of modern work. Traditionally, work at Pompeii has been devoted to elucidating the city that was destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 AD, but by that time it was already over five centuries old, and there is a splendid opportunity to excavate down beneath the destruction [...]
The Idols of Malta: Neolithic temples
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
The idols of Malta The great neolithic temples on Malta, are among the oldest temples in the world. Many of them were erected before even the pyramids were built. Yet, what were their purpose, and how were they used? The temples are sometimes accompanied by underground burial places and one of these, at the Brockdorff [...]
Greece: Massacre at Paros
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
It is rare that archaeology can combine both written accounts and pictorial evidence with an archaeological excavation. But dramatic excavations on the Greek island of Paros did just that.This wonderfully simple geometric style vase (left) shows a battle in process, with arrows flying hither and thither, slingers whirling their slings above their heads, a dead [...]
Jordan: Lot's Cave and monastery
August 25, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the wickedest cities in the world. God therefore decided to destroy them both, but there was just one good family in the city, so God decided to save them. Lot and his family were told to flee the city, but not to look back. Unfortunately his wife looked back [...]
Turkey: rebuilding Roman Ephesus
August 23, 2008 By Filed Under: First Five Years
The very first issue looked at one of the largest town in the Roman empire- Ephesus, in Asia Minor, modern Turkey. Here the Austrian Archaeological Institute has been conducting a major campaign of reconstruction. Their first success was the reconstruction of the Library of Celsus (right) but more recently they have just completed their excavation [...]
CWA 2
July 10, 2008 By Filed Under: Past Issues
For this second issue, we have a cornucopia of projects from all over the world. A look at one of the most stunningly beautiful – yet little known – archaeological sites in the world, Butrint; The story of Elizabethan explorer, pirate, business entrepreneur and naval hero Martin Frobisher’s quest for the North-west frontier; A 40,000 [...]
