Ever been had? What makes a good April Fools’ Day hoax? Certainly not the infamous spaghetti-tree documentary that was shown on Panorama in 1957, which is often cited by journalists too young to know as ‘the spoof that fooled the nation’. It didn’t, of course. A nation brought up on macaroni cheese and spag bol [...]

Does civilisation start with beer? According to archaeologist Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Neolithic Revolution was driven not by the desire for bread, rice, millet or sorghum, but by the thirst for soul food in the form of beer. In other words, we turned from the harsh and [...]

The triumph of the numerologists Chairing a meeting at the Society of Antiquaries on the life of Jacquetta Hawkes recently, the Society’s President (Geoff Wainwright) observed approvingly that she had had no time for numerologists with their cabalistic papers on the ‘megalithic yard’ (the unit of measurement supposed to underlie the layout of every megalithic [...]

Great Scott! World’s oldest butter There are two ways to write an archaeological news story that are best avoided (but frequently deployed): claiming that something is the oldest example of its kind – or the earliest (which amounts to the same thing). So when the press reported that the ‘oldest butter in the world had [...]

Treasure found in river Seeing the headline ‘Treasure found in river’, most Current Archaeology readers would probably think ‘Bronze Age deposition’, but this haul of loot, found by amateur divers Trevor and Gary Bankhead on the bed of Durham’s River Wear, are of a more recent vintage. In the course of the 300 dives conducted, [...]

Pee for the Planet Despite having a woman as its Director General, the National Trust has issued some surprisingly sexist advice on saving the planet: they want men to pee on their compost heaps. Doing so will make better fertiliser and save the water that would have been used to flush the lavatory. The result [...]