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 […]

In CA 237 I reported on the re-opening of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Now it is the turn of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, best known for its pictures and magnificent porcelain collection. But there is also an important antiquities department on the ground floor, which has just received a complete overhaul. The big […]

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, […]

Listening to tales told by his blacksmith grandfather in the semi-darkness of his fire-lit forge, Alan Garner absorbed the Cheshire folklore that he then transformed into a classic work of fiction — The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Inspired by Garner’s story, archaeologists have recently begun to unravel the truth behind the legends of Alderley Edge, as […]

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 […]

Bye bye nursery rhymes? The readers of the Daily Telegraph thrive on apocalyptic stories predicting the end of civilisation as we know it, usually because of a European directive — banning the sale of ‘traditional’ 100 watt light bulbs, for example, or forbidding the sale of fruit by the imperial pound (never mind that the […]

Will the media’s recent glamourisation of the Staffordshire Hoard’s monetary value cause a rise in illegal metal-detecting? Dr Pete Wilson puts his point of view. The discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard and the subsequent Birmingham Archaeology project to examine the findspot, undertaken in co-operation with the finder and the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) with funding […]

On Monday, 12 October 2009, Sir David Attenborough participated in the Cambridge University Personal-Histories in Archaeology project. I was there, along with a capacity crowd of over 700 guests, to listen to one of television’s great pioneers.