News Round Up

A cemetery excavated on the site of New Covent Garden Market in Nine Elms, near Battersea, is illuminating the lives of some of 19th-century London’s poorest inhabitants. The investigation, which uncovered nearly 100 burials, was carried out by…

Two decorated Roman lead coffins have been uncovered during recent work at a quarry in Surrey. Only a few hundred burials involving such caskets are known from the whole of Britain, with these latest examples discovered by Wessex Archaeology during…

A figurine thought to be Britain’s only known example depicting the Celtic god Cernunnos has been found during the excavation of a late Iron Age/early Roman settlement in Cambridgeshire. The post Cernunnos in Cambridgeshire appeared first on Current…

When a strikingly well-preserved example of a Recumbent Stone Circle was identified in Aberdeenshire farmland (shown above), archaeologists were intrigued by its unusual design. After further investigation, however, the reason behind the Leochel-…

Several previous ‘Science Notes’ have featured osteological analysis tangentially (see CA 337, 338, 342, and 344), but we have not explored it in depth – until now. This month’s column considers the effects of vitamin D deficiency, how it can be…

Some 65 years after it concluded, the results of Brian Hope- Taylor’s excavation of the Mote of Urr – a motte-and-bailey castle near Dalbeattie in Dumfries and Galloway (shown above) – have finally been published. The post Revisiting the Mote of Urr…

This month finds us making our final preparations for our annual conference on 8-9 March – I look forward to meeting many of you there, and if you haven’t yet bought your ticket it’s not too late. For the latest details of CA Live! 2019, including…

The University of the Highlands and Islands MSc Archaeological Practice is a world leading archaeology course which equips you with the tools for work in the real world. Key practical skills are emphasised using the rich archaeological resource of…

We would like to invite anyone attending Current Archaeology Live! 2019 to join us at a special Editor-in-Chief’s dinner after the conference on Friday 8th March.  The meal will take place directly after the evening reception, at the Goodge Street…

The Museum’s current major exhibition explores the life of Assyria’s last great king, Ashurbanipal. Hugely powerful, Ashurbanipal ruled what was at the time the largest empire on earth but, within a few decades of his death, his empire had collapsed…

The British Museum Membercast is a monthly podcast made available to ‘all studious and curious persons’. Comedian, podcaster and super-fan Iszi Lawrence (The Z List Dead List) presents snippets from exclusive Members’ lectures at the Museum,…

Over the last decade, archaeological 3D data has become more accessible to the public. There are online archives, similar to the ADS, where users can access this data for additional knowledge in specific artifacts and archaeological sites which have…

What is Manga? Manga are Japanese comic books or graphic novels with a twist, serialised in newspapers and magazines. Originating in Japan, manga now has fans across the globe. Manga is immersive storytelling through pictures, where images rule…

The golden burial of a Scythian king In 2001, more than 5,000 gold objects were discovered in an untouched Scythian burial in Tuva, Central Asia. But where exactly is Tuva? We first look at an earlier excavation that pushed back the date of the…

When excavations at Akrotiri commenced in 1967, they revealed a prehistoric town with buildings still standing two or even three storeys high. More than 50 years later, the story of the life and death of an extraordinary settlement is still being…

It is a building like no other at Akrotiri. Now known as the ‘House of the Benches’, it is tucked away on the edge of the famous Bronze Age town. Inside, there is no sign of the domestic set-up suggested by its modern name. Instead, archaeologists…

The River Thames must be one of the longest archaeological sites in Britain, both in terms of distance and duration. People have been collecting artefacts from the muddy foreshore or dredged from the river since the 19th century. More systematic…

Recent railway improvements entailed large-scale excavations in the outskirts of Alchester, a Claudian fortress evolving into Oxfordshire’s largest Roman town. Published at impressive speed, this splendid fieldwork monograph presents important new…

This volume offers the reader a radical view of what prehistoric pits did and the various social layers that made them more than just part of a domestic or ritual structure. Using modern architectural ethics and construction concepts, Bailey goes…

This is a well-rounded and readable account of research undertaken at Blick Mead, and one that undeniably establishes the site’s importance in adding to our understanding of the British Mesolithic, and of the wider Stonehenge landscape.…