It is the immediacy of Must Farm’s archaeology that is so startling. Walking around the site it is easy to believe that the embers have barely cooled following the disaster that overtook the settlement. Instead, the charred and tumbled vestiges of roundhouses lay in Fenland silts for almost 3,000 years. This stunning preservation will bring Late Bronze Age building techniques […]

Monty Python’s pithy question ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ cuts to the heart of the pros and cons of conquest. Debate about how Britons fared under Roman rule weighs the balance between exploitation and opportunity, but rarely strays into the arena of overseas travel. There is little sign in ancient texts that Britons enthusiastically seized their chance […]

Archaeology is all about teasing out hidden details. At Verulamium, the site of the Roman city scrutinised during recent investigations is conspicuous enough, but its streets and city blocks have long since grassed over. Now geophysical survey has laid bare one of the great cities of Roman Britain. On Anglesey, a project is seeking to […]

Visiting some of Britain’s wilder landscapes today, it can be easy to overlook the mouldering machinery of past heavy industry, and the scars incised by mineral extraction. Such abstraction must have required greater mental agility in the 18th- and 19th-century Mendip Hills, though, when Romantic poets and artists seeking rural inspiration found that the Industrial […]

In March 1665 the London sailed up the Thames to collect her captain. Although this ship was laden with munitions, ready for action in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, her Thames voyage provided an opportunity for a pleasure cruise. Numerous ladies were on board when the London’s powder store was accidentally ignited, sending the ship – […]

We are used to seeing the Celts through the filter of Greek and Roman propaganda. Ancient writers poke fun at the luxuriant moustaches sported by Celtic warriors, and cast them as the barbaric foils to Classical civilisation. Celtic art, though, tells a different story. Hidden among its graceful curves and elegant motifs are elusive abstract […]

Cliffs End Farm; Welsh Slate; Excavating Barrow Clump; England’s Vanishing Heritage; Butser Ancient Farm; plus much more.

Chedworth Roman Villa is undergoing a major transformation. Despite being one of England’s largest and best-preserved Roman villas, it was poorly understood. Past site reports had been lost, and previously excavated portions had been reburied. The National Trust has therefore launched a major project to re-explore the site. The results, as our cover picture reveals, […]

Eight hundred years ago, a band of revolting barons famously forced Bad King John to seal Magna Carta at Runnymede. But while historians have pored over the documents, what about the archaeology? Why Runnymede, and what remains on the ground? Architectural historian and archaeologist Tim Tatton-Brown enlightens us. Tim then takes us to two must-see […]

What was life like in Londinium when the first Romans arrived? In the shadows of St Paul’s Cathedral, at the site of 10 Gresham Street, archaeologists have revealed London’s largest-known cluster of indigenous round-houses. They date from the Roman city’s very earliest years. Read our feature to discover how this dynamic site is shedding new […]