In 1929, a bright young scholar named Eric Birley arrived at Vindolanda, the Roman fort and settlement lying just south of Hadrian’s Wall. Eric was to embark on an archaeological journey that forms an important part of British history, and is a voyage of discovery pursued by his family to this day. From his son’s […]

The religious reforms of Henry VIII changed not only English ecclesiastical life, they also tore into the social fabric of England. The Catholic Church had been the cornerstone of society, and children in particular had benefited from its monastic institutions through alms, sanctuary, and education. But how were children affected by the Reformation’s Dissolution of […]

When I launched Current Archaeology in 1967 I never thought that  we would ever reach issue 300. To my surprise, 12,000 pages and  more than 1,000 articles later, issue 300 is now upon us, and so  we have taken the opportunity to look back at the archaeology of  these past 48 years, and to think […]

What is the lost island of Drumclay, as featured on this month’s cover? Established in the 8th century, on the shore of Knockalough in Northern Ireland, it was in use for a millennium. But this is no ordinary island: it is a crannog — an artificial island — that was built on top of a […]

What do we really know about the Vikings? Yes, they raided, and they hoarded (as illustrated by our richly tangled cover shot). But what cultural footprint did they leave in Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland, and how does their archaeological legacy differ from place to place? Carly Hilts explores a wealth of data on the […]

All that glitters is not gold? According to the latest research  on the Staffordshire Hoard, it certainly seems so. Ongoing  investigations are revealing that sophisticated Saxon goldsmiths  had developed a technique to make their gold appear to be  rather more golden than it really was. But how did they do it?  Carly Hilts spoke with […]

What lies beneath the ground at Stonehenge? A major initiative to map the geophysics of some 12 square kilometres of surrounding landscape is now all but complete. This has revealed a startling amount of archaeology, including the footprints of hundreds of previously unknown features that range from henge-like monuments to ditches and pits. Turn to […]

This issue of CA has a watery theme. We start with Graeme Young’s account of excavating burnt mounds in the wetlands of Bamburgh in Northumberland. Are these mounds the waste from large-scale brewing or were the heated stones used to provide steam for a sauna? Next, Robert Van de Noort tells our Assistant Editor, Carly […]

When archaeologists announced they had found the body of King  Richard III beneath a car park on the site of Leicester’s Grey Friars,  it made world news. But project leader Richard Buckley’s original  plan had been simply to discover more about the friary, rating the  chance of actually finding the king’s body as close to […]

When a hole appeared in the summit of Silbury Hill, English Heritage had a crisis on their hands. As a major conservation operation swung into action, a team of archaeologists grasped this opportunity to re-enter the mound. Their remarkable discoveries have demolished views of Silbury Hill as a chieftain’s vanity project. A powerful figure may […]