News Features
Digging with the Time Team
What is archaeology alongside a film crew like? Matthew Symonds found out. There is something different about a Time Team dig. Excavations normally have an air of calm, with people quietly troweling, sectioning features or wrestling with drawing frames. The hustle and bustle comes at tea time, when diggers compete for the best biscuits and [...]
Reconstructing the Hallaton Helmet
A Roman imperial jigsaw puzzle The discovery of fragmentary remains of several Roman helmets at Hallaton, Leicestershire, set conservators quite a challenge. Now, over a decade later their work is complete. Helen Sharp and Simon James reveal what has been learnt. It is 11 years since a mass of corroded iron was found in a [...]
Digging Jacob’s Island
A new chapter for Oliver Twist February 7th marks the 200th anniversary of novelist Charles Dickens’ birth. But how might archaeology offer a new chapter to his blockbusting London slum story, Oliver Twist? David Saxby, of Museum of London Archaeology, explains all. Few writers conjure up images of Victorian London more readily than Charles Dickens, [...]
Time Team series 19
The Time Team are back! Join Tony Robinson and friends at a number of noted and less well known archaeological sites across Britain. Expect grubby hands, evocative insights, intriguing discoveries, revealing reconstructions, plenty of arguments amongst the experts and the usual excitement from the team.We are very excited to mark the start of series 19 of the [...]
East, West, Who’s Best?
I was down in the very splendid library of the Society for Roman Studies, looking for a book and happened by chance to notice a title Rome and China. I thought, ha ha!, this is a book for me. Since I am devoting my semi-retirement to writing my ‘big book’, a history of the world [...]
Waterworld
Must Farm’s Bronze Age boats The discovery of six Bronze Age boats and an intact prehistoric riverside at Must Farm, Cambridgeshire, is a stunning find. It also provides a glimpse of the human struggle with a changing environment, as David Gibson, Mark Knight and Kerry Murrell from Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) told Matthew Symonds. The [...]
News: Dragons, Death and Deadly Sins
Exposing hidden sinners in a rural Welsh church Deep in the Vale of Glamorgan, the interior of the 13th-century church of St Cadoc in Llancarfan was once a riot of colour. Dramatic images of saints and allegorical scenes competed for space while vivid depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins cavorted around the arch of [...]
Return to Kent’s Cavern
New excavations in Britain’s oldest Scheduled Ancient Monument In the first half of the 19th century John MacEnery’s excavations in Kent’s Cavern produced objects that seemed to challenge the Bible’s version of creation, leaving the excavator grappling with the meaning of his findings. Now Paul Pettitt and Mark White have returned to the cavern [...]
News: Abbey Craig – a burning question
The hilltop of Abbey Craig is best-known as the site of the National Wallace Monument, which commemorates the 13th-century Battle of Stirling Bridge. But while the Scottish commander William Wallace reportedly watched the armies of Edward I massing from the rocky outcrop before his famous victory in 1297, the site might have witnessed another [...]
News: How do you date a hoard? The case of Bredon Hill
The chance discovery of a cache of over 3800 Roman coins outside Evesham has raised interesting questions about how accurately we can date finds of this kind. Hoards are typically found in isolated spots, without other archaeological remains, so their date of burial is usually established by when the latest coin was minted. The discovery [...]
