To step into Harmondsworth Barn is not just to enter a space so glorious that it was lauded as the ‘cathedral of Middlesex’ by Sir John Betjeman. It is also to experience a remarkably intact medieval interior. Among majestic oak trusses are opportunities to admire medieval technology that has weathered the centuries unaltered. After being […]

Between 1974 and 1981 a remarkable campaign of excavations in Dublin exposed a swathe of the Viking town. From an archaeological perspective the conditions were perfect, with waterlogged layers preserving the vestiges of hundreds of houses and thousands of artefacts. But this was also a race against the clock, with public demonstrations buying more time […]

  First opened in 1886, Chester’s Grosvenor Museum has been telling the story of the historic city for more than a century. Lucia Marchini tours the archaeological collections. The Romans who founded a legionary fortress, Deva Victrix, at Chester in the AD 70s left their mark on the city. More than half of the line […]

What were Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall for, and how did they influence everyday life in their shadow? As questions about modern borders continue to make the headlines, Matthew Symonds investigates Rome’s land frontiers in Britain. Borders are big news at the moment. We all know that a ‘great wall’ is planned along the US […]

One of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects brought with it one of the most extensive archaeological programmes ever undertaken. Lucia Marchini takes a trip through London’s buried past at the Museum of London Docklands’ exhibition of highlights from the Crossrail excavations. Tens of thousands of artefacts were unearthed at 40 construction sites dotted across London between […]

This month CA turns 50 and we are taking the opportunity to celebrate. Alongside the usual array of fascinating archaeological discoveries, we have sprinkled a selection of offerings with an anniversary theme. Our special wraparound cover pays homage to the very first issue, giving a modern and CA 1-style treatment to the excavations at the […]

How should we study ancient stone monuments? In the past, great ingenuity has been expended on cataloguing them according to ever more intricate typologies. Now a survey of Neolithic monuments in Pembrokeshire is applying simpler classifications and focusing on what these edifices meant to the communities that raised them. The results raise questions about how efforts to clear the first farming land […]

A fine example of a Roman villa with well-preserved mosaics has been discovered in Dorset and excavated by a group of amateur archaeologists. Lilian Ladle described the preliminary results to Andrew Selkirk. Is it possible to do an ‘amateur’ dig these days? At Druce Farm in Dorset, Lilian Ladle has been excavating a rather splendid […]

Our cover feature takes us inside a well-appointed Roman villa in Dorset. There we find many of the sumptuous, if occasionally garish, decorative touches favoured by the elites in Roman Britain. Alongside the mosaics, painted wall plaster, and showy roofing are more intimate details. One mosaic had to be patched after it was worn down, […]

Archaeology is alive with uncertainties. Time and again new sites or technologies upend longstanding theories. All this month’s featured sites show the sometimes fractious relationship between fresh research and what we think we know. Early digging at a newly discovered Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Great Ryburgh unearthed a rare coffin created from a hollowed-out tree. The […]