A double concentric circle consisting of sarsenmegaliths, Fir Clump stone circle was oval-shaped. The outer ring measured 107 metres (351 ft) by 86.5 metres (284 ft) in diameter; the inner ring was 86.5 metres (284 ft) by 73.7 metres (242 ft). It was one of at least seven stone circles that are known to have been erected in the area south of Swindon in northern Wiltshire. Around the 1860s, the megaliths of Fir Clump stone circle were levelled. In the 1890s, the antiquarian A. D. Passmore observed that the circle was no longer visible. Some of the fallen megaliths were rediscovered in 1965 by the archaeologist Richard Reiss, who described and measured the monument. In 1969, these stones were removed during construction of the M4 motorway. (Full article...)
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Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis). They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47 (probably male), and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus (sensu stricto) morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm (5 ft 5 in).
The Caune de l'Arago opens on a cliffside 80 m (260 ft) above a river, overlooking the Tautavel plain, with a plateau above, and mountainous terrain to the sides. During and after human occupation, the area swung from temperate and humid forestland, to cold and dry steppeland. Stratigraphically, humans are present from beds Q–C. Bed G, dating to roughly 455,000 years old during a forested event, has yielded the most remains. They seem to have hunted a variety of animals, including red deer, fallow deer, argali, tahr, horse, reindeer, beaver, and more. They made Acheuleanstone tools, but mainly produced smaller retouched tools such as scrapers, rather than more iconic macro-tools such as bifaces (hand axes). In beds G and F, they may have been practicing ritual cannibalism. Evidence of fire is absent until bed C (400,000 years ago). (Full article...)
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Egyptian temples were built for the official worship of the gods and in commemoration of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and regions under Egyptian control. Temples were seen as houses for the gods or kings to whom they were dedicated. Within them, the Egyptians performed a variety of rituals, the central functions of Egyptian religion: giving offerings to the gods, reenacting their mythological interactions through festivals, and warding off the forces of chaos. These rituals were seen as necessary for the gods to continue to uphold maat, the divine order of the universe. Housing and caring for the gods were the obligations of pharaohs, who therefore dedicated prodigious resources to temple construction and maintenance. Out of necessity, pharaohs delegated most of their ritual duties to a host of priests, but most of the populace was excluded from direct participation in ceremonies and forbidden to enter a temple's most sacred areas. Nevertheless, a temple was an important religious site for all classes of Egyptians, who went there to pray, give offerings, and seek oracular guidance from the god dwelling within.
The most important part of the temple was the sanctuary, which typically contained a cult image, a statue of its god. The rooms outside the sanctuary grew larger and more elaborate over time, so that temples evolved from small shrines in late Prehistoric Egypt (late fourth millennium BC) to large stone edifices in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) and later. These edifices are among the largest and most enduring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture, with their elements arranged and decorated according to complex patterns of religious symbolism. Their typical layout consisted of a series of enclosed halls, open courts, and entrance pylons aligned along the path used for festival processions. Beyond the temple proper was an outer wall enclosing a wide variety of secondary buildings.
A large temple also owned sizable tracts of land and employed thousands of laymen to supply its needs. Temples were therefore key economic as well as religious centers. The priests who managed these powerful institutions wielded considerable influence, and despite their ostensible subordination to the king, they may have posed significant challenges to his authority.
Temple-building in Egypt continued despite the nation's decline and ultimate loss of independence to the Roman Empire in 30 BC. With the coming of Christianity, traditional Egyptian religion faced increasing persecution, and temple cults died out during the fourth through sixth centuries AD. The buildings they left behind suffered centuries of destruction and neglect. At the start of the nineteenth century, a wave of interest in ancient Egypt swept Europe, giving rise to the discipline of Egyptology and drawing increasing numbers of visitors to the civilization's remains. Dozens of temples survive today, and some have become world-famous tourist attractions that contribute significantly to the modern Egyptian economy. Egyptologists continue to study the surviving temples and the remains of destroyed ones as invaluable sources of information about ancient Egyptian society. (Full article...)
The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings. The Babylonian king Nabonidus, who was defeated and deposed by Cyrus, is denounced as an impious oppressor of the people of Babylonia and his low-born origins are implicitly contrasted to Cyrus' kingly heritage. The victorious Cyrus is portrayed as having been chosen by the chief Babylonian god Marduk to restore peace and order to the Babylonians. The text states that Cyrus was welcomed by the people of Babylon as their new ruler and entered the city in peace. It appeals to Marduk to protect and help Cyrus and his son Cambyses. It extols Cyrus as a benefactor of the citizens of Babylonia who improved their lives, repatriated displaced people and restored temples and cult sanctuaries across Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the region. It concludes with a description of how Cyrus repaired the city wall of Babylon and found a similar inscription placed there by an earlier king.
The Cylinder's text has traditionally been seen by biblical scholars as corroborative evidence of Cyrus' policy of the repatriation of the Jewish people following their Babylonian captivity (an act that the Book of Ezra attributes to Cyrus), as the text refers to the restoration of cult sanctuaries and repatriation of deported peoples. This interpretation has been disputed, as the text identifies only Mesopotamian sanctuaries, and makes no mention of Jews, Jerusalem, or Judea. Nonetheless, it has been seen as a sign of Cyrus's relatively enlightened approach towards cultural and religious diversity. The former Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, said that the cylinder was "the first attempt we know about running a society, a state with different nationalities and faiths – a new kind of statecraft".
The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type siteHarappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861. There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. The early Harappan cultures were populated from Neolithic cultures, the earliest and best-known of which is named after Mehrgarh, in Balochistan, Pakistan. Harappan civilisation is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures.
The cities of the ancient Indus were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and techniques of handicraft and metallurgy. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilisation may have contained between one and five million individuals during its florescence. A gradual drying of the region during the 3rd millennium BCE may have been the initial stimulus for its urbanisation. Eventually it also reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise and to disperse its population to the east.
Although over a thousand Mature Harappan sites have been reported and nearly a hundred excavated, there are five major urban centres: Mohenjo-daro in the lower Indus Valley (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 as "Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro"), Harappa in the western Punjab region, Ganeriwala in the Cholistan Desert, Dholavira in western Gujarat (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 as "Dholavira: A Harappan City"), and Rakhigarhi in Haryana. The Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliations are uncertain, as the Indus script has remained undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars. (Full article...)
Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565, when it was abandoned. It was a fortified city. Chronicles left by Persian and European travellers, particularly the Portuguese, say that Hampi was a prosperous, wealthy and grand city near the Tungabhadra River, with numerous temples, farms and trading markets. By 1500 CE, Hampi-Vijayanagara was the world's second-largest city, after Beijing, and probably India's richest at that time, attracting traders from Persia and Portugal. The Vijayanagara Empire was defeated by a coalition of Muslim sultanates; its capital was conquered, pillaged and destroyed by Sultanate armies in 1565, after which Hampi remained in ruins.
Located in Karnataka near the small modern town of Hampi with the city of Hosapete 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) away, Hampi's ruins are spread over 4,100 hectares (16 sq mi) and it has been described by UNESCO as an "austere, grandiose site" of more than 1,600 surviving remains of the last great Hindu kingdom in South India that includes "forts, riverside features, royal and sacred complexes, temples, shrines, pillared halls, mandapas, memorial structures, water structures and others". (Full article...)
The remains of an individual who would have stood about 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) in height were discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua cave. Partial skeletons of at least nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as "LB1".
This hominin was at first considered remarkable for its survival until relatively recent times, initially thought to be only 12,000 years ago. However, more extensive stratigraphic and chronological work has pushed the dating of the most recent evidence of its existence back to 50,000 years ago. The Homo floresiensis skeletal material is now dated from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago; stone tools recovered alongside the skeletal remains were from archaeological horizons ranging from 50,000 to 190,000 years ago. (Full article...)
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Poland in antiquity was characterized by peoples from various archeological cultures living in and migrating through various parts of what is now Poland, from about 400 BC to 450–500 AD. These people are identified as Slavs, Celts, Germanic peoples, Balts, Thracians, Avars, and Scythians. Other groups, difficult to identify, were most likely also present, as the ethnic composition of archeological cultures is often poorly recognized. While lacking any written language to speak of, many of them developed a relatively advanced material culture and social organization, as evidenced by the archeological record; for example, richly furnished, "princely" dynasticgraves.
Characteristic of the period was a high rate of migration of large groups of people, even equivalents of modern nations. This article covers the continuation of the Iron Age (see Bronze and Iron Age Poland), the La Tène and Roman influence, and Migration periods. The La Tène era is divided into:
La Tène A, 450–400 BC
La Tène B, 400–250 BC
La Tène C, 250–150 BC
La Tène D, 150–0 BC
400–200 BC is also considered the early pre-Roman period, and 200–0 BC the younger pre-Roman period (A). These eras were followed by the period of Roman influence:
Beginning in the early 4th century BC, Celts established a number of settlement centers. Most of these were in what is now southern Poland, which was at the outer edge of their expansion. Through their highly developed economy and crafts, they exerted lasting cultural influence disproportional to their small numbers in the region.
Expanding and moving out of their homeland in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, Germanic peoples lived in Poland for several centuries, during which period many of their tribes also migrated outward to the south and east (see Wielbark culture). With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes came under Roman cultural influence. Some written remarks by Roman authors that are relevant to the developments on Polish lands have been preserved; they give additional insight when compared with the archeological record. In the end, as the Roman Empire was nearing its collapse and the nomadic peoples invading from the east destroyed, damaged, or destabilized the various extant Germanic cultures and societies, the Germanic tribes left Central and EasternEurope for the safer and wealthier western and southern parts of the European continent.
The northeast corner of today's Poland was and remained populated by Baltic tribes. They were at the outer limits of the significant cultural influence of the Roman Empire. (Full article...)
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Charles Green (1901–1972) was an English archaeologist noted for his excavations in East Anglia, and his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial. His "signal achievements" were his East Anglian excavations, including four years spent by Caister-on-Sea and Burgh Castle, and several weeks in 1961 as Director of excavations at Walsingham Priory. Green additionally brought his "long experience of boat-handling" to bear in writing his 1963 book, Sutton Hoo: The Excavation of a Royal Ship-Burial, a major work that combined a popular account of the Anglo-Saxon burial with Green's contributions about ship-construction and seafaring.
Archaeologists have established that long barrows were built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Representing an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Chestnuts Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional style of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway. The long barrows built in this area are now known as the Medway Megaliths. Chestnuts Long Barrow lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Coldrum Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as the destroyed Smythe's Megalith and possible survivals as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are on the eastern side of the Medway.
The long barrow was built on land previously inhabited in the Mesolithic period. It consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus, estimated to have been 15 metres (50 feet) in length, with a chamber built from sarsenmegaliths on its eastern end. Both inhumed and cremated human remains were placed within this chamber during the Neolithic period, representing at least nine or ten individuals. These remains were found alongside pottery sherds, stone arrow heads, and a clay pendant. In the 4th centuryAD, a Romano-British hut was erected next to the long barrow. In the 12th or 13th century, the chamber was dug into and heavily damaged, either by treasure hunters or iconoclastic Christians. The mound gradually eroded and was completely gone by the twentieth century, leaving only the ruined stone chamber. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 18th and 19th centuries, while archaeological excavation took place in 1957, followed by limited reconstruction. The site is on privately owned land. (Full article...)
Constructed of gray andesite-like stone, the temple consists of nine stacked platforms, six square and three circular, topped by a central dome. It is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and originally 504 Buddha statues. The central dome is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues, each seated inside a perforated stupa. The monument guides pilgrims through an extensive system of stairways and corridors with 1,460 narrative relief panels on the walls and the balustrades. Borobudur has one of the world's most extensive collections of Buddhist reliefs.
Built during the reign of the Sailendra Dynasty, the temple design follows JavaneseBuddhist architecture, which blends the Indonesian indigenous tradition of ancestor worship and the Buddhist concept of attaining nirvāṇa. The monument is a shrine to the Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. Evidence suggests that Borobudur was constructed in the 8th century and subsequently abandoned following the 14th-century decline of Hindu kingdoms in Java and the Javanese conversion to Islam. Worldwide knowledge of its existence was sparked in 1814 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, then the British ruler of Java, who was advised of its location by native Indonesians. Borobudur has since been preserved through several restorations. The largest restoration project was completed at 1983 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO, followed by the monument's listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Herbert James MaryonOBEFSAFIIC (9 March 1874 – 14 July 1965) was an English sculptor, conservator, goldsmith, archaeologist and authority on ancient metalwork. Maryon practiced and taught sculpture until retiring in 1939, then worked as a conservator with the British Museum from 1944 to 1961. He is best known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial, which led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
By the time of his mid-twenties Maryon attended three art schools, apprenticed in silversmithing with C. R. Ashbee, and worked in Henry Wilson's workshop. From 1900 to 1904 he served as the director of the Keswick School of Industrial Art, where he designed numerous Arts and Crafts works. After moving to the University of Reading and then Durham University, he taught sculpture, metalwork, modelling, casting, and anatomy until 1939. He also designed the University of Reading War Memorial, among other commissions. Maryon published two books while teaching, including Metalwork and Enamelling, and many articles. He frequently led archaeological digs, and in 1935 discovered one of the oldest gold ornaments known in Britain while excavating the Kirkhaugh cairns.
In 1944 Maryon was brought out of retirement to work in the Sutton Hoo finds. His responsibilities included restoring the shield, the drinking horns, and the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet, which proved academically and culturally influential. Maryon's work, much of which was revised in the 1970s, created credible renderings upon which subsequent research relied; likewise, one of his papers coined the term pattern welding to describe a method employed on the Sutton Hoo sword to decorate and strengthen iron and steel. The initial work ended in 1950, and Maryon turned to other matters. He proposed a widely publicised theory in 1953 on the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, influencing Salvador Dalí and others, and restored the Roman Emesa helmet in 1955. He left the museum in 1961, a year after his official retirement, and began an around-the-world trip lecturing and researching Chinese magic mirrors. (Full article...)
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The Qian Mausoleum (Chinese: 乾陵; pinyin: Qiánlíng) is a Tang dynasty (618–907) tomb site located in Qian County, Shaanxi province, China, and is 85 km (53 mi) northwest from Xi'an. Built in 684 (with additional construction until 706), the tombs of the mausoleum complex house the remains of various members of the House of Li, the imperial family of the Tang dynasty. This includes Emperor Gaozong (r. 649–83), as well as his wife, Wu Zetian, who assumed the Tang throne and became China's only reigning female emperor from 690 to 705. The mausoleum is renowned for its many Tang dynasty stone statues located above ground and the mural paintings adorning the subterranean walls of the tombs. Besides the main tumulus mound and underground tomb of Emperor Gaozong and Wu Zetian, there are 17 smaller attendant tombs, or peizang mu. Presently, only five of these attendant tombs have been excavated by archaeologists, three belonging to members of the imperial family, one to a chancellor, and the other to a general of the left guard. The Shaanxi Administration of Cultural Heritage declared in 2012 that no further excavations would take place for at least 50 years. (Full article...)
Rundkvist has studied and excavated various sites in Sweden, particularly in the country's south. In 2003 and 2004, he published a three-volume work which doubled as his PhD dissertation, cataloguing the finds from Barshalder [sv; de], the largest prehistoric cemetery on the Swedish island of Gotland. A subsequent book identified nine possible regional power centres in Östergötland, and attempted to determine where the "Beowulfian mead halls" of the day once stood. Excavating years later at one of these sites, Aska [sv], Rundkvist uncovered the foundations of a large mead hall, and 30 ornate gold figures that might have represented gods or royals. In other works, Rundkvist has excavated a Vikingboat grave, and analysed both the placement of deposited artefacts in the landscape and the lifestyles of the Scandinavian élite during the Middle Ages.
The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרהḤaqra(h)), with the meaning of "stronghold" (see under "Etymology"), was a place in Jerusalem thought to have had a fortified compound built by Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, following his sack of the city in 168 BCE. The name Acra was also used at a later time for a city quarter probably associated with the by-then destroyed fortress, known in his time to Josephus (1st century CE) as both Acra and "the lower city". The fortress played a significant role in the events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt, which resulted in the formation of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The "upper city" was captured by Judas Maccabeus, with the Seleucid garrison taking refuge in the "Acra" below, and the task of destroying this last enemy stronghold inside Jerusalem fell to Simon Maccabeus surnamed Thassi. Our knowledge about the Acra is based almost exclusively on the writings of Josephus, which are of a later date, and on the First and Second Books of Maccabees, which were written not long after the described events.
The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used the name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly doesn't help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near the Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location").
The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. (Full article...)
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Danebury is an Iron Agehillfort in Hampshire, England, about 19 kilometres (12 mi) north-west of Winchester (grid referenceSU323376). The site, covering 5 hectares (12 acres), was excavated by Barry Cunliffe in the 1970s. Danebury is considered a type-site for hill forts, and was important in developing the understanding of hillforts, as very few others have been so intensively excavated.
Built in the 6th century BC, the fort was used for almost 500 years, during a period when the number of hill forts in Wessex greatly increased. Danebury was remodelled several times, making it more complex and resulting in it becoming a "developed" hill fort. It is a Scheduled Monument and a Local Nature Reserve called Danebury Hillfort. The Scheduled Monument is surrounded by a Site of Special Scientific Interest, designated as Danebury Hill. (Full article...)
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Coffin birth, also known as postmortem fetal extrusion, is the expulsion of a nonviablefetus through the vaginal opening of the decomposing body of a deceased pregnant woman due to increasing pressure from intra-abdominal gases. This kind of postmortem delivery occurs very rarely during the decomposition of a body. The practice of chemical preservation, whereby chemical preservatives and disinfectant solutions are pumped into a body to replace natural body fluids (and the bacteria that reside therein), have made the occurrence of "coffin birth" so rare that the topic is rarely mentioned in international medical discourse.
Typically during the decomposition of a human body, naturally occurring bacteria in the organs of the abdominal cavity (such as the stomach and intestines) generate gases as by-products of metabolism, which causes the body to swell. In some cases, the confined pressure of the gases can squeeze the uterus (the womb), even forcing it downward, and it may turn inside-out and be forced out of the body through the vaginal opening (a process called prolapse). If a fetus is contained within the uterus, it could therefore be expelled from the mother's body through the vaginal opening when the uterus turns inside-out, in a process that, to outward appearances, mimics childbirth. The main differences lie in the state of the mother and fetus and the mechanism of delivery: in the event of natural, live childbirth, the mother's contractions thin and widen the cervix to expel the infant from the womb; in a case of coffin birth, built-up gas pressure within the putrefied body of a pregnant woman pushes the dead fetus from the body of the mother.
Cases have been recorded by medical authorities since the 16th century, though some archaeological cases provide evidence for its occurrence in many periods of human history. While cases of postmortem fetal expulsion have always been rare, the phenomenon has been recorded under disparate circumstances and is occasionally seen in a modern forensic context when the body of a pregnant woman lies undisturbed and undiscovered for some time following death. There are also cases whereby a fetus may become separated from the body of the pregnant woman about the time of death or during decomposition, though because those cases are not consistent with the processes described here, they are not considered true cases of postmortem fetal extrusion. (Full article...)
Stane Street is the modern name of the 91 km-long (57 mi) Roman road in southern England that linked Londinium (London) to Noviomagus Reginorum (Chichester). The exact date of construction is uncertain; however, on the basis of archaeological artefacts discovered along the route, it was in use by 70 AD and may have been built in the first decade of the Roman occupation of Britain (as early as 43–53 AD).
Stane Street shows clearly the engineering principles that the Romans used when building roads. A straight-line alignment from London Bridge to Chichester would have required steep crossings of the North Downs, Greensand Ridge and South Downs. The road was therefore designed to exploit a natural gap in the North Downs cut by the River Mole and to pass to the east of the high ground of Leith Hill, before following flatter land in the River Arun valley to Pulborough. The direct survey line was followed only for the northernmost 20 km (12 mi) from London to Ewell. At no point does the road lie more than 10 km (6 mi) from the direct line from London Bridge to Chichester.
Today the Roman road is easily traceable on modern maps. Much of the route is followed by the A3, A24, A29 and A285, although most of the course through the modern county of Surrey has either been completely abandoned or is followed only by bridlepaths. Earthworks associated with the road are visible in many places where the course is not overlain by modern roads. Several parts of Stane Street are listed as scheduled monuments, including the well-preserved section from Mickleham Downs to Thirty Acres Barn, Ashtead. (Full article...)
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Cro-Magnons or European early modern humans (EEMH) were the first early modern humans (Homo sapiens) to settle in Europe, migrating from western Asia, continuously occupying the continent possibly from as early as 56,800 years ago. They interacted and interbred with the indigenous Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) of Europe and Western Asia, who went extinct 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. The first wave of modern humans in Europe (Initial Upper Paleolithic) left no genetic legacy to modern Europeans; however, from 37,000 years ago a second wave succeeded in forming a single founder population, from which all subsequent Cro-Magnons descended and which contributes ancestry to present-day Europeans. Cro-Magnons produced Upper Palaeolithic cultures, the first major one being the Aurignacian, which was succeeded by the Gravettian by 30,000 years ago. The Gravettian split into the Epi-Gravettian in the east and Solutrean in the west, due to major climatic degradation during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), peaking 21,000 years ago. As Europe warmed, the Solutrean evolved into the Magdalenian by 20,000 years ago, and these peoples recolonised Europe. The Magdalenian and Epi-Gravettian gave way to Mesolithic cultures as big game animals were dying out and the Last Glacial Period drew to a close.
Cro-Magnons were anatomically similar to present-day Europeans, West Asians, and North Africans; but were more robust, having larger brains, broader faces, more prominent brow ridges, and bigger teeth, compared to the present-day average. The earliest Cro-Magnon specimens also exhibit some features that are reminiscent of those found in Neanderthals. The first Cro-Magnons would have had darker skin tones than most modern Europeans; natural selection for lighter skin would not begin until 30,000 years ago. Before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), Cro-Magnons had overall low population density, tall stature similar to post-industrial humans, and expansive trade routes stretching as long as 900 km (560 mi), and hunted big game animals. Cro-Magnons had much higher populations than the Neanderthals, possibly due to higher fertility rates; life expectancy for both species was typically under 40 years. Following the LGM, population density increased as communities travelled less frequently (though for longer distances), and the need to feed so many more people in tandem with the increasing scarcity of big game caused them to rely more heavily on small or aquatic game, and more frequently participate in game drive systems and slaughter whole herds at a time. The Cro-Magnon arsenal included spears, spear-throwers, harpoons, and possibly throwing sticks and Palaeolithic dogs. Cro-Magnons likely commonly constructed temporary huts while moving around, and Gravettian peoples notably made large huts on the East European Plain out of mammoth bones.
Cro-Magnons are well renowned for creating a diverse array of artistic works, including cave paintings, Venus figurines, perforated batons, animal figurines, and geometric patterns. They also wore decorative beads, and plant-fibre clothes dyed with various plant-based dyes. For music, they produced bone flutes and whistles, and possibly also bullroarers, rasps, drums, idiophones, and other instruments. They buried their dead, though possibly only people who had achieved or were born into high status.
The name "Cro-Magnon" comes from the five skeletons discovered by French palaeontologist Louis Lartet in 1868 at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter, Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France, after the area was accidentally discovered while a road was constructed for a railway station. Remains of Palaeolithic cultures have been known for centuries, but they were initially interpreted in a creationist model, wherein they represented antediluvian peoples which were wiped out by the Great Flood. Following the conception and popularisation of evolution in the mid-to-late 19th century, Cro-Magnons became the subject of much scientific racism, with early race theories allying with Nordicism and Pan-Germanism. Such historical race concepts were overturned by the mid-20th century. During the first wave feminism movement, the Venus figurines were notably interpreted as evidence of some matriarchal religion, though such claims had mostly died down in academia by the 1970s. (Full article...)
In 2007, the Tussauds Group was purchased by the Blackstone Group, which merged it with Merlin Entertainments. Warwick Castle was then sold to Nick Leslau's investment firm, Prestbury Group, under a sale and leaseback agreement. Merlin continues to operate the site under a renewable 35-year lease. (Full article...)
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Nigel Reuben Rook Williams (15 July 1944 – 21 April 1992) was an English conservator and expert on the restoration of ceramics and glass. From 1961 until his death he worked at the British Museum, where he became the Chief Conservator of Ceramics and Glass in 1983. There his work included the successful restorations of the Sutton Hoo helmet and the Portland Vase.
Joining as an assistant at age 16, Williams spent his entire career, and most of his life, at the British Museum. He was one of the first people to study conservation, not yet recognised as a profession, and from an early age was given responsibility over high-profile objects. In the 1960s he assisted with the re-excavation of the Sutton Hooship-burial, and in his early- to mid-twenties he conserved many of the objects found therein: most notably the Sutton Hoo helmet, which occupied a year of his time. He likewise reconstructed other objects from the find, including the shield, drinking horns, and maplewood bottles.
The "abiding passion of his life" was ceramics, and the 1970s and 1980s gave Williams ample opportunities in that field. After nearly 31,000 fragments of shattered Greek vases were found in 1974 amidst the wreck of HMS Colossus, Williams set to work piecing them together. The process was televised, and turned him into a television personality. A decade later, in 1988 and 1989, Williams's crowning achievement came when he took to pieces the Portland Vase, one of the most famous glass objects in the world, and put it back together. The reconstruction was again televised for a BBC programme, and as with the Sutton Hoo helmet, took nearly a year to complete.
Williams died at age 47 of a heart attack while in Aqaba, Jordan, where he was working on a British Museum excavation. The Ceramics & Glass group of the Institute of Conservation awards a biennial prize in his honour, recognising his significant contributions in the field of conservation. (Full article...)
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The Shumen Fortress (Bulgarian: Шуменска крепост, Shumenska krepost) is an archaeological site overlooking the city of Shumen in north-eastern Bulgaria.
It is an ancient fortress with historical links to a village nearby traced to early Iron Age and later owned by the Thracians in the 5th century BC. Then, from 2nd to 4th centuries AD, it was controlled by the Romans who built towers and walls, and it was refurbished by the Byzantines as their garrison town. Shumen thrived in the Middle Ages as an important stronghold of the Bulgarian Empire. In 1444 the fort was destroyed by the Ottomans after their victory in the Battle of Varna over a Christian army under Władysław III of Poland. The fortress remained deserted ever since.
Restoration works on the fortress commenced in 2012 under the project titled “Bulgaria Begins Here”, and was completed partially in 2015 with financial assistance provided under the European Economic Area (EEA) and Norway Grants to the Shumen Municipality and the Shumen Regional Museum of History. (Full article...)
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The sarcophagus ofEshmunazar II is a 6th-century BC sarcophagus unearthed in 1855 in the grounds of an ancient necropolis southeast of the city of Sidon, in modern-day Lebanon, that contained the body of Eshmunazar II (Phoenician: 𐤀𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤏𐤆𐤓ʾšmnʿzr, r. c. 539 – c. 525 BC), PhoenicianKing of Sidon. One of only three Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi found outside Egypt, with the other two belonging to Eshmunazar's father King Tabnit and to a woman, possibly Eshmunazar's mother Queen Amoashtart, it was likely carved in Egypt from local amphibolite, and captured as booty by the Sidonians during their participation in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC. The sarcophagus has two sets of Phoenician inscriptions, one on its lid and a partial copy of it on the sarcophagus trough, around the curvature of the head. The lid inscription was of great significance upon its discovery as it was the first Phoenician language inscription to be discovered in Phoenicia proper and the most detailed Phoenician text ever found anywhere up to that point, and is today the second longest extant Phoenician inscription, after the Karatepe bilingual.
The sarcophagus was discovered by Alphonse Durighello, a diplomatic agent in Sidon engaged by Aimé Péretié, the chancellor of the French consulate in Beirut. The sarcophagus was sold to Honoré de Luynes, a wealthy French nobleman and scholar, and was subsequently removed to the Louvre after the resolution of a legal dispute over its ownership.
More than a dozen scholars across Europe and the United States rushed to translate the sarcophagus inscriptions after its discovery, many noting the similarities between the Phoenician language and Hebrew. The translation allowed scholars to identify the king buried inside, his lineage, and his construction feats. The inscriptions warn against disturbing Eshmunazar II's place of repose; it also recounts that the "Lord of Kings", the Achaemenid king, granted Eshmunazar II the territories of Dor, Joppa, and Dagon in recognition for his services.
The discovery led to great enthusiasm for archaeological research in the region and was the primary reason for Renan's 1860–1861 Mission de Phénicie, the first major archaeological mission to Lebanon and Syria. Today, it remains one of the highlights of the Louvre's Phoenician collection. (Full article...)
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Sonia Chadwick HawkesFSA (5 November 1933 – 30 May 1999) was a British archaeologist specialising in early Anglo-Saxon archaeology. She led excavations on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Finglesham in Kent and Worthy Park in Hampshire. She was described by fellow medieval archaeologist Paul Ashbee as a "discerning systematiser of the great array of Anglo-Saxon grave furnishings". (Full article...)
Caral–Supe (also known as Caral and Norte Chico) was a complex Pre-Columbian era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru. The civilization flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. From 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent, which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC. Since the early 21st century, it has been recognized as the oldest-known civilization in the Americas, and as one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world.
This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The alternative name, Caral–Supe, is derived from the city of Caral in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral–Supe site.
In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lackedceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthworkplatform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.
Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area, revealed Caral–Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest. (Full article...)
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Egyptian temples were built for the official worship of the gods and in commemoration of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and regions under Egyptian control. Temples were seen as houses for the gods or kings to whom they were dedicated. Within them, the Egyptians performed a variety of rituals, the central functions of Egyptian religion: giving offerings to the gods, reenacting their mythological interactions through festivals, and warding off the forces of chaos. These rituals were seen as necessary for the gods to continue to uphold maat, the divine order of the universe. Housing and caring for the gods were the obligations of pharaohs, who therefore dedicated prodigious resources to temple construction and maintenance. Out of necessity, pharaohs delegated most of their ritual duties to a host of priests, but most of the populace was excluded from direct participation in ceremonies and forbidden to enter a temple's most sacred areas. Nevertheless, a temple was an important religious site for all classes of Egyptians, who went there to pray, give offerings, and seek oracular guidance from the god dwelling within.
The most important part of the temple was the sanctuary, which typically contained a cult image, a statue of its god. The rooms outside the sanctuary grew larger and more elaborate over time, so that temples evolved from small shrines in late Prehistoric Egypt (late fourth millennium BC) to large stone edifices in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) and later. These edifices are among the largest and most enduring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture, with their elements arranged and decorated according to complex patterns of religious symbolism. Their typical layout consisted of a series of enclosed halls, open courts, and entrance pylons aligned along the path used for festival processions. Beyond the temple proper was an outer wall enclosing a wide variety of secondary buildings.
A large temple also owned sizable tracts of land and employed thousands of laymen to supply its needs. Temples were therefore key economic as well as religious centers. The priests who managed these powerful institutions wielded considerable influence, and despite their ostensible subordination to the king, they may have posed significant challenges to his authority.
Temple-building in Egypt continued despite the nation's decline and ultimate loss of independence to the Roman Empire in 30 BC. With the coming of Christianity, traditional Egyptian religion faced increasing persecution, and temple cults died out during the fourth through sixth centuries AD. The buildings they left behind suffered centuries of destruction and neglect. At the start of the nineteenth century, a wave of interest in ancient Egypt swept Europe, giving rise to the discipline of Egyptology and drawing increasing numbers of visitors to the civilization's remains. Dozens of temples survive today, and some have become world-famous tourist attractions that contribute significantly to the modern Egyptian economy. Egyptologists continue to study the surviving temples and the remains of destroyed ones as invaluable sources of information about ancient Egyptian society. (Full article...)
Constructed of gray andesite-like stone, the temple consists of nine stacked platforms, six square and three circular, topped by a central dome. It is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and originally 504 Buddha statues. The central dome is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues, each seated inside a perforated stupa. The monument guides pilgrims through an extensive system of stairways and corridors with 1,460 narrative relief panels on the walls and the balustrades. Borobudur has one of the world's most extensive collections of Buddhist reliefs.
Built during the reign of the Sailendra Dynasty, the temple design follows JavaneseBuddhist architecture, which blends the Indonesian indigenous tradition of ancestor worship and the Buddhist concept of attaining nirvāṇa. The monument is a shrine to the Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. Evidence suggests that Borobudur was constructed in the 8th century and subsequently abandoned following the 14th-century decline of Hindu kingdoms in Java and the Javanese conversion to Islam. Worldwide knowledge of its existence was sparked in 1814 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, then the British ruler of Java, who was advised of its location by native Indonesians. Borobudur has since been preserved through several restorations. The largest restoration project was completed at 1983 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO, followed by the monument's listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Two views of the Venus of Hohle Fels figurine, which may have been worn as an amulet, and is the earliest known, undisputed example of a depiction of a human being
The figure is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being. In terms of figurative art only the lion-headed, zoomorphicLöwenmensch figurine is older. The Venus is housed at the Prehistoric Museum of Blaubeuren (Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren). (Full article...)
Goell travelled to the Middle East in the 1930s, working with archaeologists in Jerusalem and Gerasa, before returning to New York. She returned to the Middle East after the Second World War, and in 1947 visited Nemrud Dagh for the first time; excavations there would become her life's work. Goell was involved in excavations at a number of other Middle Eastern sites over the course of her career, including at Tarsus and Samosata. Goell's work in Turkey "nearly single-handedly opened up ancient Commagene to the world". (Full article...)
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Desert kites (Arabic: مصائد صحراوية, romanized: maṣāʾid ṣaḥrāwiyya, lit. 'desert traps') are dry stone wall structures found in Southwest Asia (Middle East, but also North Africa, Central Asia and Arabia), which were first discovered from the air during the 1920s. There are over 6,000 known desert kites, with sizes ranging from less than a hundred metres to several kilometres. They typically have a kite shape formed by two convergent "antennae" that run towards an enclosure, all formed by walls of dry stone less than one metre high, but variations exist.
Little is known about their ages, but the few dated examples appear to span the entire Holocene. The majority view on their purpose is that they were used as traps for hunting game animals such as gazelles, which were driven into the kites and hunted there. (Full article...)
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Guandimiao is a Chinese archaeological site 18 km (11 miles) south of the Yellow River in Xingyang, Henan. It is the site of a small Shang dynasty village that was inhabited from roughly 1250 to 1100 BCE during the Late Shang period. Located 200 km (120 miles) from the Shang capital at Yinxu, the site was first studied as a part of excavations undertaken between 2006 and 2008 in preparation for the nearby South–North Water Transfer Project. Excavation and study at Guandimiao has significantly broadened scholars' understanding of rural Shang economies and rituals, as well as the layout of rural villages, which have received comparatively little attention from Shang archaeologists compared to urban centers like Yinxu and Huanbei.
Calculations derived from the number of graves and pit-houses at Guandimiao suggest a maximum population of around 100 individuals at the site's peak during the early 12th century BCE. The presence of 23 kilns at the site suggests significant regional exports of ceramics from the village. Residents used bone tools, including many that were locally produced, as well as sophisticated arrowheads and hair-pins likely imported from Yinxu, where facilities had produced them en masse. Local ritual practice is evinced by the presence of locally produced oracle bones used in pyromancy, as well as large sacrificial pits where mainly cattle had been buried, alongside a smaller number of pigs and humans. Over 200 graves were found at the site; they generally resemble the shaft tombs attested elsewhere, save the almost complete absence of grave goods beyond occasional cowries and sacrificed dogs. (Full article...)
Alan John Bayard WaceFBAFSA (13 July 1879 – 9 November 1957) was an English archaeologist, who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly, Laconia and Egypt and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery.
In 1914, Wace returned to the BSA as its director, though his archaeological work was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he worked for the British intelligence services and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou. This project generated Wace and Blegen's theory of the long-term continuity of mainland Greek ("Helladic") culture, which contradicted the established scholarly view that Minoan Crete had been the dominant culture of the Aegean Bronze Age, and became known as the "Helladic Heresy". Wace excavated at Mycenae in the early 1920s, and established a chronological schema for the site's tholos tombs which largely proved the "Helladic Heresy" correct.
Wace lost his position at the BSA in 1923, and spent ten years as a curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge as the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and resumed his covert work during the Second World War, serving as a section head for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Athens, Alexandria and Cairo. He retired from Cambridge in 1944 and was appointed to a post at Alexandria's Farouk I University. During his tenure there, he continued to excavate at Mycenae and unsuccessfully attempted to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great. He was sacked after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, but continued to excavate, publish and study until his death in 1957. His daughter, Lisa French, accompanied him on several campaigns at Mycenae and later directed excavations there. (Full article...)
Probably constructed in the 4th millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, it was discovered in 1822, at which point it was dismantled. Built out of earth and at least five local sarsenmegaliths, the long barrow consisted of a roughly rectangular earthen tumulus with a stone chamber in its eastern end. Human remains were deposited into this chamber.
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building widespread across Neolithic Europe, Smythe's Megalith belonged to a localised regional variant produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths.
The site may have been ransacked during the Middle Ages, as other Medway Megaliths were. By the early 19th century it was buried beneath soil, largely due to millennia of hillwash coming down from the adjacent Blue Bell Hill. In 1822, it was discovered by farm labourers ploughing the land; the local antiquarians Clement Smythe and Thomas Charles were called in to examine it. Shortly after, the labourers pulled away the stones and dispersed most of the human remains, destroying the monument. Smythe and Charles produced, but did not publish, reports on their findings, and these have been discussed by archaeologists since the mid-20th century. (Full article...)
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The Diolkos (Δίολκος, from the Greekdiaδιά, "across", and holkosὁλκός, "portage machine") was a paved trackway near Corinth in Ancient Greece which enabled boats to be moved overland across the Isthmus of Corinth. The shortcut allowed ancient vessels to avoid the long and dangerous circumnavigation of the Peloponnese peninsula. The phrase "as fast as a Corinthian", penned by the comic playwright Aristophanes, indicates that the trackway was common knowledge and had acquired a reputation for swiftness.
The main function of the Diolkos was the transfer of goods, although in times of war it also became a preferred means of speeding up naval campaigns. The 6-to-8.5-kilometre-long (3+3⁄4 to 5+1⁄4 mi) roadway was a rudimentary form of railway, and operated from c. 600 BC until the middle of the first century AD. The Diolkos combined the two principles of the railway and the overland transport of ships, on a scale that remained unique in antiquity. (Full article...)
Siran Upendra Deraniyagala (1 March 1942 – 5 October 2021) was a Sri Lankan archaeologist and historian, who served as the Director-General of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology of Sri Lanka from 1992 to 2001. He also served as the President of the Sri Lanka Council of Archaeologists. (Full article...)
Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology and is surrounded by a moat more than 5 km (3.1 mi). Enclosed within an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west with scholars divided as to the significance of this.
The temple complex fell into disuse before being restored in the 20th century with various international agencies involved in the project. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs and devatas adorning its walls. The Angkor area was designated as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1992. It is regarded as one of the best examples of Khmer architecture and a symbol of Cambodia, depicted as a part of the Cambodian national flag. The Angkor Wat is a major tourist attraction and attracts more than 2.5 million visitors every year. (Full article...)
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The Vindolanda tablets were, at the time of their discovery, the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain (they have since been antedated by the Bloomberg tablets). They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin, postcard-sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD (roughly contemporary with Hadrian's Wall). Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley, his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell, discovered some at the site of Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England.
The documents record official military matters as well as personal messages to and from members of the garrison of Vindolanda, their families, and their slaves. Highlights of the tablets include an invitation to a birthday party held in about 100, which is perhaps the oldest surviving document written in Latin by a woman.
The excavated tablets are nearly all held at the British Museum, but arrangements have been made for some to be displayed at Vindolanda. The texts of 752 tablets had been transcribed, translated and published as of 2010. Tablets continue to be found at Vindolanda. (Full article...)
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Withypool Stone Circle, also known as Withypool Hill Stone Circle, is a stone circle located on the Exmoormoorland, near the village of Withypool in the southwestern English county of Somerset. The ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
Many monuments were built in Exmoor during the Bronze Age, but only two stone circles survive in this area: the other is Porlock Stone Circle. The Withypool ring is located on the south-western slope of Withypool Hill, on an area of heathland. It is about 36.4 metres (119 feet 5 inches) in diameter. Around thirty small gritstones remain, although there may originally have been around 100; there are conspicuous gaps on the northern and western sides of the monument. The site was rediscovered in 1898 and surveyed by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray in 1905. (Full article...)
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Porlock Stone Circle is a stone circle located on Exmoor, near the village of Porlock in the south-westernEnglish county of Somerset. The Porlock ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circles' builders.
Although Exmoor witnessed the construction of many monuments during the Bronze Age, only two stone circles survive in this area, the other being Withypool Stone Circle. The Porlock circle is about 24 metres (79 feet) in diameter and contains thirteen green micaceous sandstone rocks; there may originally have been more. Directly to the north-east of the circle is a cairn connected to a linear stone row. No evidence has been found that allows for absolute dating of the monument's construction, although archaeologists have suggested that the cairn dates from the Early Bronze Age, the circle being a Middle Bronze Age addition.
A small lead wheel found inside Porlock Stone Circle suggests that the site was visited during the Romano-British period. The site was rediscovered in the 1920s and since then a variety of stones have been added to it; its current appearance is a composite of prehistoric and modern elements. In 1928 the site was surveyed and excavated by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray. A second excavation took place under the leadership of Mark Gillings in 2013. (Full article...)
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Ursula Martius FranklinCCOOntFRSC (16 September 1921 – 22 July 2016) was a Canadian metallurgist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto campus, have been named in her honor.
For Franklin, technology was much more than machines, gadgets or electronic transmitters. It was a comprehensive system that includes methods, procedures, organization, "and most of all, a mindset". She distinguished between holistic technologies used by craft workers or artisans and prescriptive ones associated with a division of labour in large-scale production. Holistic technologies allow artisans to control their own work from start to finish. Prescriptive technologies organize work as a sequence of steps requiring supervision by bosses or managers. Franklin argued that the dominance of prescriptive technologies in modern society discourages critical thinking and promotes "a culture of compliance".
For some, Franklin belongs in the intellectual tradition of Harold Innis and Jacques Ellul who warn about technology's tendency to suppress freedom and endanger civilization. Franklin herself acknowledged her debt to Ellul as well as to several other thinkers including Lewis Mumford, C. B. Macpherson, E. F. Schumacher, and Vandana Shiva. She recognized that this list had few women. In addition to the philosophy of technology, she believed that science was "severely impoverished because women are discouraged from taking part in the exploration of knowledge". (Full article...)
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The Clonmacnoise Crozier is a late-11th-century Insular crozier that would have been used as a ceremonial staff for bishops and mitred abbots. Its origins and medieval provenance are unknown. It was likely discovered in the late 18th or early 19th century in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly, Ireland. The crozier has two main parts: a long shaft and a curved crook. Its style reflects elements of Viking art, especially the snake-like animals in figure-of-eight patterns running on the sides of the body of the crook, and the ribbon of dog-like animals in openwork (ornamentation with openings or holes) that form the crest at its top. Apart from a shortening to the staff length and the loss of some inserted gems, it is largely intact and is one of the best-preserved surviving pieces of Insular metalwork.
The crozier may have been associated with Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise (died c. 549 CE), and was perhaps commissioned by Tigernach Ua Braín (died 1088), Abbot of Clonmacnoise, but little is known of its origin or rediscovery. It was built in two phases: the original 11th-century structure received an addition sometime around the early 15th century. The staff is made from a wooden core wrapped in copper-alloy (bronze) tubes, fixed in place by binding strips, and three barrel-shaped knops (protruding decorative metal fittings). The hook was concurrently but separately constructed before it was placed on top of the staff. The crozier's decorative attachments include the crest and terminal (or "drop") on the crook, and the knops and ferrule on the staff; these components are made from silver, niello, glass and enamel. The hook is further embellished with round blue glass studs and white and red millefiori (glassware) insets.
Engineer Cantonment is an archaeological site in Washington County, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Located in the floodplain of the Missouri River near present-day Omaha, Nebraska, it was the temporary winter camp of the scientific party of the Yellowstone Expedition. From October 1819 to June 1820, the party studied the geology and biology of the vicinity, and met with the local indigenous peoples. Their eight-month study of the biota has been described as "the first biodiversity inventory undertaken in the United States".
The site was not used again after the departure of the expedition, and its location was forgotten. In 2003, it was rediscovered, and investigated during the 2003–05 archaeological seasons. In 2015, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. (Full article...)
The cross is thought to date from the 10th century, and exhibits distinctive Hiberno-Scottish mission influences, in common with several other monuments in the area. Tradition and folk etymology suggest that the cross marked the burial site of Camus, leader of the Norse army purportedly defeated by King Malcolm II at the apocryphal Battle of Barry. The name of the stone is likely to derive from the extinct village of Camuston, which has a Celtic toponymy. (Full article...)
Constructed of gray andesite-like stone, the temple consists of nine stacked platforms, six square and three circular, topped by a central dome. It is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and originally 504 Buddha statues. The central dome is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues, each seated inside a perforated stupa. The monument guides pilgrims through an extensive system of stairways and corridors with 1,460 narrative relief panels on the walls and the balustrades. Borobudur has one of the world's most extensive collections of Buddhist reliefs.
Built during the reign of the Sailendra Dynasty, the temple design follows JavaneseBuddhist architecture, which blends the Indonesian indigenous tradition of ancestor worship and the Buddhist concept of attaining nirvāṇa. The monument is a shrine to the Buddha and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage. Evidence suggests that Borobudur was constructed in the 8th century and subsequently abandoned following the 14th-century decline of Hindu kingdoms in Java and the Javanese conversion to Islam. Worldwide knowledge of its existence was sparked in 1814 by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, then the British ruler of Java, who was advised of its location by native Indonesians. Borobudur has since been preserved through several restorations. The largest restoration project was completed at 1983 by the Indonesian government and UNESCO, followed by the monument's listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The sanctuary's originated in the sixth century BC with the establishment of rural agricultural centers near the growing city of Tyre. Initially, a temple was likely constructed from perishable materials. Only fragments of stone cultic statues survive from this phase. Around three centuries later during the Hellenistic period, a new, larger building, which was fronted by a paved courtyard and consisted of a square hall leading to a smaller rectangular room., replaced the original structure. The interior was embellished with stucco, a central mosaic flooring and gem-like, glass-paste wall decorations. The exterior had a cavetto cornice, a lintel with a sun disk and two uraei—representations of a sacred snake used as a symbol of sovereignty and divinity in Ancient Egypt—and the entrance was flanked by two standing Egyptian-style, male-figure statues. The architecture followed pre-Classical Phoenician temple design, which is characterized by features such as a "bent-entry" and an east-west orientation.
The sanctuary yielded a collection of artifacts, including thousands of terracotta figurines and miniature vessels, and inscriptions, which provide evidence of the religious practices of the local, rural, Phoenician population. The terracotta figurines from the Iron Age II and Persian periods depicted subjects including pregnant women, male figures, and deities. During the Hellenistic period, new molding techniques introduced Greek themes, and images of deities such as Aphrodite and Hermes. The religious practices observed at the sanctuary remained faithful to local Phoenician traditions, and were part of a wider cultic system that was practiced in the Tyre hinterland, involving similar rituals in other sanctuaries in the region. The deity to whom the sanctuary was dedicated remains unidentified because the unearthed inscriptions lack specific god names. Child figurines that were excavated from the site suggest the sanctuary served as a small, rural, religious site that focused on healing and salvation deities, and rituals associated with childbearing and childhood. The discovery of around 8,000 terracotta figurines indicates intensive religious activity spanning centuries that ended in the first century BC. (Full article...)
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Caral–Supe (also known as Caral and Norte Chico) was a complex Pre-Columbian era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru. The civilization flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. From 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent, which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC. Since the early 21st century, it has been recognized as the oldest-known civilization in the Americas, and as one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world.
This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The alternative name, Caral–Supe, is derived from the city of Caral in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral–Supe site.
In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lackedceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthworkplatform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.
Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area, revealed Caral–Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest. (Full article...)
Gleaston Castle is a medieval building in a valley about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north-east of the village of Gleaston. The village lies between the towns of Ulverston and Barrow-in-Furness in the Furness peninsula, Cumbria, England. Gleaston Castle has a quadrilateral plan, with a tower at each corner. The largest of these, the north-west tower, probably housed a hall.
The castle was most likely built for John Harington, 1st Baron Harington in the 14th century, replacing nearby Aldingham Motte. Gleaston Castle descended through the Harrington family until 1458 when it passed to William Bonville through marriage and was subsequently abandoned. The castle passed to the Grey family until Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk was executed for treason in 1554. As a result, Gleaston Castle became royal property before it was bought by the Preston family in the 17th century, and then passed to the Cavendish family.
As the castle was disused from the mid-15th century it fell into dilapidation, and antiquarian depictions from the 18th century show Gleaston in a state of ruin. Though it is not open to the public, it has been the subject of historical and archaeological investigation in the 20th and 21st centuries. (Full article...)
Tikal was the capital of a conquest state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Though monumental architecture at the site dates back as far as the 4th century BC, Tikal reached its apogee during the Classic Period, c. 200 to 900. During this time, the city dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metropolis of Teotihuacan in the distant Valley of Mexico. There is evidence that Tikal was conquered by Teotihuacan in the 4th century AD. Following the end of the Late Classic Period, no new major monuments were built at Tikal and there is evidence that elite palaces were burned. These events were coupled with a gradual population decline, culminating with the site's abandonment by the end of the 10th century.
Tikal is the best understood of any of the large lowland Maya cities, with a long dynastic ruler list, the discovery of the tombs of many of the rulers on this list and the investigation of their monuments, temples and palaces. (Full article...)
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King of the Universe (Sumerian: lugal ki-sár-ra or lugal kiš-ki, Akkadian: šarru kiššat māti, šar-kiššati or šar kiššatim), also interpreted as King of Everything, King of the Totality, King of All or King of the World, was a title of great prestige claiming world domination used by powerful monarchs in ancient Mesopotamia. The title is sometimes applied to God in the Abrahamic tradition.
The etymology of the title derives from the ancient Sumerian city of Kish (Sumerian: kiš, Akkadian: kiššatu), the original meaning being King of Kish. Although the equation of šar kiššatim as literally meaning "King of the Universe" was made during the Akkadian period, the title of "King of Kish" is older and was already seen as particularly prestigious, as the city of Kish was seen as having primacy over all other Mesopotamian cities. In Sumerian legend, Kish was the location where the kingship was lowered to from heaven after the legendary Flood.
The first ruler to use the title of King of the Universe was the Akkadian Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2284 BC) and it was used in a succession of later empires claiming symbolical descent from Sargon's Akkadian Empire. The title saw its final usage under the Seleucids, Antiochus I (reigned 281–261 BC) being the last known ruler to be referred to as "King of the Universe".
It is possible, at least among Assyrian rulers, that the title of King of the Universe was not inherited through normal means. As the title is not attested for all Neo-Assyrian kings and for some only attested several years into their reign it might have had to be earned by each king individually, possibly through completing seven successful military campaigns. The similar title of šar kibrāt erbetti ("King of the Four Corners of the World") may have required successful military campaigns in all four points of the compass. Some scholars believe that the titles of King of the Universe and King of the Four Corners of the World, with near identical meanings, differed in that King of the Universe referred to rule over the cosmological realm whereas King of the Four Corners of the World referred to dominion over the terrestrial. The verbatim translation of "King of the Universe" as a name exists in many languages; for example, in Hindi the translation would be NikhilShah and in Urdu, Shah Jahan. (Full article...)
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The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight.
The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.
The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies, and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. The remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since the mid-1980s while undergoing restoration. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the Mary Rose Museum, built to display the remains of the ship and its artefacts.
Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war, and she was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. She was substantially rebuilt in 1536 and was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding, and modern experiments. The precise cause of her sinking is subject to conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive evidence. (Full article...)
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The Alepotrypa Cave is an archaeological site in the Mani region of the Peloponnese peninsula. In addition to being inhabited by early farmers, this site was used for burial and cult purposes. Archaeological evidence has revealed that this is one of the largest Neolithic burial sites ever found in Europe. Two adult human skeletons were found at the site from a burial dating to the 4th millennium BC, as well as remains from at least 170 separate persons. Archaeologists are uncertain about the significance of a Mycenaen ossuary, which has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and appears to have been reburied at Alepotrypa. While there is no direct evidence, it is possible that the ossuary may link Alepotrypa to Tainaron, which was regarded as the entrance to Hades in classical mythology. (Full article...)
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The Roman Baths are well-preserved thermae in the city of Bath, Somerset, England. A temple was constructed on the site between 60 and 70 AD in the first few decades of Roman Britain. Its presence led to the development of the small Roman urban settlement known as Aquae Sulis around the site. The Roman baths—designed for public bathing—were used until the end of Roman rule in Britain in the 5th century AD. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the original Roman baths were in ruins a century later. The area around the natural springs was redeveloped several times during the Early and Late Middle Ages.
The Roman Baths are preserved in four main features: the Sacred Spring, the Roman Temple, the Roman Bath House, and a museum which holds artefacts from Aquae Sulis. However, all buildings at street level date from the 19th century. It is a major tourist attraction in the UK, and together with the Grand Pump Room, receives more than 1.3 million visitors annually. Visitors can tour the baths and museum but cannot enter the water. (Full article...)
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Athanasios Sergiou Rhousopoulos (Greek: Αθανάσιος Σεργίου Ρουσόπουλος) (1823 – 13 December [O.S. 1 December] 1898) was a Greek archaeologist, antiquities dealer and university professor. He has been described as "the most important Greek collector and dealer between the 1860s and 1890s", and as "a key figure in the early days of archaeology in Greece."
Born in 1823 in a region of northern Greece under the Ottoman Empire, Rhousopoulos was educated in Constantinople and Athens before receiving financial support from the antiquarian and philanthropist Konstantinos Bellios to pursue formal archaeological training in Germany. In 1853, he returned to Greece to work as a teacher, before being appointed to a post at the University of Athens in 1855. He wrote and translated numerous educational works concerning Greek history, culture and archaeology.
Rhousopoulos was renowned for his collection of ancient artefacts, particularly coins, which was considered among the most impressive private collections in Greece. He was also a prominent dealer of antiquities, trading regularly with collectors, museums and society figures from around the world, and heavily involved in the illegal excavation and trafficking of ancient artefacts. From 1865, his activities came to increasing public and official attention, particularly that of the Ephor General, Panagiotis Efstratiadis; Rhousopoulos was fined after his illegal sale of the Aineta aryballos to the British Museum, and expelled from the Archaeological Society.
Dismissed from his academic post in 1884 for reasons that remain unclear, Rhousopoulos died in 1898. He made significant contributions to Greek epigraphy, and was a major source of artefacts for several of the world's largest museums. In the twenty-first century, study of his extensive correspondence, particularly with the British scholars George Rolleston and Arthur Evans, has provided important evidence for the practice of archaeology and antiquities trading in nineteenth-century Greece. (Full article...)
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Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and (in jest) as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that he was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period. At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and may have been of high social status as his body shows little evidence of having done heavy or rough physical labour during his lifetime. There has been debate over the reason for his death; his death was violent and perhaps ritualistic.
Scotland during the Roman Empire refers to the protohistorical period during which the Roman Empire interacted within the area of modern Scotland. Despite sporadic attempts at conquest and government between the first and fourth centuries AD, most of modern Scotland, inhabited by the Caledonians and the Maeatae, was not incorporated into the Roman Empire with Roman control over the area fluctuating.
In the Roman imperial period, the area of Caledonia lay north of the River Forth, while the area now called England was known as Britannia, the name also given to the Roman province roughly consisting of modern England and Wales and which replaced the earlier Ancient Greek designation as Albion. Roman legions arrived in the territory of modern Scotland around AD 71, having conquered the Celtic Britons of southern Britannia over the preceding three decades. Aiming to complete the Roman conquest of Britannia, the Roman armies under Quintus Petillius Cerialis and Gnaeus Julius Agricola campaigned against the Caledonians in the 70s and 80s. The Agricola, a biography of the Roman governor of Britannia by his son-in-law Tacitus mentions a Roman victory at "Mons Graupius" which became the namesake of the Grampian Mountains but whose identity has been questioned by modern scholarship. In 2023 a lost Roman road built by Julius Agricola was rediscovered in Drip close to Stirling: it has been described as "the most important road in Scottish history."
Agricola then seems to have repeated an earlier Greek circumnavigation of the island by Pytheas and received submission from local tribes, establishing the Roman limes of actual control first along the Gask Ridge, and then withdrawing south of a line from the Solway Firth to the River Tyne, i.e. along the Stanegate. This border was later fortified as Hadrian's Wall. Several Roman commanders attempted to fully conquer lands north of this line, including a second-century expansion that was fortified as the Antonine Wall.
The history of the period is complex and not well-documented. The province of Valentia, for instance, may have been the lands between the two Roman walls, or the territory around and south of Hadrian's Wall, or Roman Wales. Romans held most of their Caledonian territory only a little over 40 years; they probably only held Scottish land for about 80 years. Some Scottish historians such as Alistair Moffat maintain Roman influence was inconsequential. Despite grandiose claims made by an eighteenth-century forged manuscript, it is now believed that the Romans at no point controlled even half of present-day Scotland and that Roman legions ceased to affect the area after around 211.
"Scots" and "Scotland" proper would not emerge as unified ideas until the eighth century. In fact, the Roman Empire influenced every part of Scotland during the period: by the time of the End of Roman rule in Britannia around 410, the various Iron Age tribes native to the area had united as, or fallen under the control of, the Picts, while the southern half of the country was overrun by tribes of Romanized Britons. The Scoti (GaelicIrish raiders who would give Scotland its Anglicised name) had begun to settle along the west coast. All three groups may have been involved in the Great Conspiracy that overran Roman Britannia in 367. The era saw the emergence of the earliest historical accounts of the natives. The most enduring legacies of Rome, however, were Christianity and literacy, both of which arrived indirectly via Irish missionaries. (Full article...)
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Poland in antiquity was characterized by peoples from various archeological cultures living in and migrating through various parts of what is now Poland, from about 400 BC to 450–500 AD. These people are identified as Slavs, Celts, Germanic peoples, Balts, Thracians, Avars, and Scythians. Other groups, difficult to identify, were most likely also present, as the ethnic composition of archeological cultures is often poorly recognized. While lacking any written language to speak of, many of them developed a relatively advanced material culture and social organization, as evidenced by the archeological record; for example, richly furnished, "princely" dynasticgraves.
Characteristic of the period was a high rate of migration of large groups of people, even equivalents of modern nations. This article covers the continuation of the Iron Age (see Bronze and Iron Age Poland), the La Tène and Roman influence, and Migration periods. The La Tène era is divided into:
La Tène A, 450–400 BC
La Tène B, 400–250 BC
La Tène C, 250–150 BC
La Tène D, 150–0 BC
400–200 BC is also considered the early pre-Roman period, and 200–0 BC the younger pre-Roman period (A). These eras were followed by the period of Roman influence:
Beginning in the early 4th century BC, Celts established a number of settlement centers. Most of these were in what is now southern Poland, which was at the outer edge of their expansion. Through their highly developed economy and crafts, they exerted lasting cultural influence disproportional to their small numbers in the region.
Expanding and moving out of their homeland in Scandinavia and Northern Germany, Germanic peoples lived in Poland for several centuries, during which period many of their tribes also migrated outward to the south and east (see Wielbark culture). With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes came under Roman cultural influence. Some written remarks by Roman authors that are relevant to the developments on Polish lands have been preserved; they give additional insight when compared with the archeological record. In the end, as the Roman Empire was nearing its collapse and the nomadic peoples invading from the east destroyed, damaged, or destabilized the various extant Germanic cultures and societies, the Germanic tribes left Central and EasternEurope for the safer and wealthier western and southern parts of the European continent.
The northeast corner of today's Poland was and remained populated by Baltic tribes. They were at the outer limits of the significant cultural influence of the Roman Empire. (Full article...)
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The Pioneer Helmet (also known as the Wollaston Helmet or Northamptonshire Helmet) is an Anglo-Saxonboar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior.
The sparsely decorated nature of the helmet, a utilitarian iron fighting piece, belies its rarity. It is one of just six Anglo-Saxon helmets yet discovered, joined by finds from Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009); its basic form is nearly identical to that of the richer Coppergate helmet found in York. Like these, the Pioneer Helmet is an example of the "crested helmets" that flourished in England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries.
The distinctive feature of the helmet is the boar mounted atop its crest. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Pioneer Helmet is one of three—together with the Benty Grange helmet and the detached Guilden Morden boar—known to have survived. These boar crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, speaks of a funeral pyre "heaped with boar-shaped helmets forged in gold," forging a link between the warrior hero of legend and the Pioneer Helmet of reality.
The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found[update]. It consists of almost 4,600 items and metal fragments, amounting to a total of 5.1 kg (11 lb) of gold, 1.4 kg (3 lb) of silver and some 3,500 pieces of garnetcloisonné jewellery. It is described by the historian Cat Jarman as "possibly the finest collection of early medieval artefacts ever discovered".
The hoard was most likely deposited between 650 and 675 CE, and contains artefacts probably manufactured during the 6th and 7th centuries. It was discovered in 2009 in a field near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, England. The location was in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia at the time of the hoard's deposition.
The hoard is of "radical" importance in Anglo-Saxon archaeology. The artefacts are nearly all martial in character and contain no objects specific to use by women. The average quality of the workmanship is extremely high and especially remarkable in view of the large number of individual objects, such as swords and a helmet, from which many of the fragments in the hoard came.
During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801) which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.
Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy, helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community.
In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young, who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered. In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he traveled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied, and brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again, he was given a professorship in Egyptology, but only lectured a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching. He died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously.
During his life as well as long after his death, intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists. Some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, and others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. But subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results gradually led to the general acceptance of his work. Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted and has been the basis for all further developments in the field. Consequently, he is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology". (Full article...)
The work is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by Thutmose because it was found in his workshop in Tell-el Amarna, Egypt. It is one of the most-copied works of ancient Egypt. Nefertiti has become one of the most famous women of the ancient world and an icon of feminine beauty.
A German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust in 1912 in Thutmose's workshop. Despite provisions that prohibited any items of great archaeological value from leaving Egypt, Borchardt concealed the nature of the bust by covering it in a layer of clay and smuggled it out of the country in 1913. It has been kept at various locations in Germany since its discovery, including the cellar of a bank, a salt-mine in Merkers-Kieselbach, the Dahlem museum, the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg and the Altes Museum. It is displayed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, where it was originally displayed before World War II.
The Nefertiti bust has become not only a defining emblem of ancient Egypt, but also a symbol of the impact that European colonialism has had on Egypt's history and culture. It has been the subject of an argument between Egypt and Germany over Egyptian demands for its repatriation, which began in 1924, once the bust was first displayed to the public, and more generally it fuelled discussions over the role museums play in undoing colonialism. Today, Egypt continues to demand the repatriation of the bust, whereas German officials and the Berlin Museum assert their ownership by citing an official protocol, signed by the German excavators and the French-led Egyptian Antiquities Service of the time. (Full article...)
Budge excavated all the bodies from the same grave site. Two were identified as male and one as female, with the others being of undetermined sex. The bodies were given to the British Museum in 1900. Some grave-goods were documented at the time of excavation as "pots and flints", however they were not passed on to the British Museum and their whereabouts remain unknown. Three of the bodies were found with coverings of different types (reed matting, palm fibre and an animal skin), which still remain with the bodies. The bodies were found in fetal positions lying on their left sides.
Since 1901, the first body excavated (EA 32751) has remained on display in the British Museum. This body was originally nicknamed Ginger due to his red hair; this nickname is no longer officially used as part of recent ethical policies for human remains. (Full article...)
He was a founding and prominent member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, a learned society greatly involved in the practice and publication of Greek archaeology throughout the 19th century. From 1851 until 1858, a period of financial trouble for the society, he was one of its few remaining members. He worked alongside Pittakis on the society's excavations of the so-called 'Psoma House' in Athens from 1852, and on its excavations of the Theatre of Dionysus near the Acropolis of Athens between 1861 and 1867. During his tenure as Ephor General, he oversaw the construction of what became the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Efstratiadis is remembered for his efforts to protect Greece's archaeological heritage, particularly on the Acropolis of Athens, though his determined efforts to prevent the illegal excavation and export of antiquities were often undercut by the Greek state's limited financial and legal resources to do so. He is also significant for his expansion of the Archaeological Service and his patronage of Panagiotis Stamatakis, who succeeded him as Ephor General and whom he appointed to oversee the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. (Full article...)
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Coffin birth, also known as postmortem fetal extrusion, is the expulsion of a nonviablefetus through the vaginal opening of the decomposing body of a deceased pregnant woman due to increasing pressure from intra-abdominal gases. This kind of postmortem delivery occurs very rarely during the decomposition of a body. The practice of chemical preservation, whereby chemical preservatives and disinfectant solutions are pumped into a body to replace natural body fluids (and the bacteria that reside therein), have made the occurrence of "coffin birth" so rare that the topic is rarely mentioned in international medical discourse.
Typically during the decomposition of a human body, naturally occurring bacteria in the organs of the abdominal cavity (such as the stomach and intestines) generate gases as by-products of metabolism, which causes the body to swell. In some cases, the confined pressure of the gases can squeeze the uterus (the womb), even forcing it downward, and it may turn inside-out and be forced out of the body through the vaginal opening (a process called prolapse). If a fetus is contained within the uterus, it could therefore be expelled from the mother's body through the vaginal opening when the uterus turns inside-out, in a process that, to outward appearances, mimics childbirth. The main differences lie in the state of the mother and fetus and the mechanism of delivery: in the event of natural, live childbirth, the mother's contractions thin and widen the cervix to expel the infant from the womb; in a case of coffin birth, built-up gas pressure within the putrefied body of a pregnant woman pushes the dead fetus from the body of the mother.
Cases have been recorded by medical authorities since the 16th century, though some archaeological cases provide evidence for its occurrence in many periods of human history. While cases of postmortem fetal expulsion have always been rare, the phenomenon has been recorded under disparate circumstances and is occasionally seen in a modern forensic context when the body of a pregnant woman lies undisturbed and undiscovered for some time following death. There are also cases whereby a fetus may become separated from the body of the pregnant woman about the time of death or during decomposition, though because those cases are not consistent with the processes described here, they are not considered true cases of postmortem fetal extrusion. (Full article...)
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Al-Rahba (/ALA-LC: al-Raḥba, sometimes spelled Raḥabah), also known as Qal'at al-Rahba, which translates as the "Citadel of al-Rahba", is a medieval Arab fortress on the west bank of the Euphrates River, adjacent to the city of Mayadin in Syria. Situated atop a mound with an elevation of 244 meters (801 ft), al-Rahba oversees the Syrian Desert steppe. It has been described as "a fortress within a fortress"; it consists of an inner keep measuring 60 by 30 meters (197 ft × 98 ft), protected by an enclosure measuring 270 by 95 meters (886 ft × 312 ft). Al-Rahba is largely in ruins today as a result of wind erosion.
The original site, which was known as "Rahbat Malik ibn Tawk" after its Abbasid namesake and founder, was located along the Euphrates. It was viewed by Muslim armies, caravans and travelers as the key to Syria from Iraq and sometimes vice versa. Bedouin tribes often took control of it and used it as a launching point for invasions of northern Syria. Because of its strategic location, al-Rahba was frequently fought over by Muslim powers, including local lords, the Hamdanids, the Uqaylids, the Mirdasids and the Seljuks, among others. Rahbat Malik ibn Tawk was destroyed in an earthquake in 1157.
A few years later, the current fortress was built close to the desert edge by the Zengid–Ayyubid lord Shirkuh. The latter's descendants held al-Rahba as a hereditary fief granted by Saladin until 1264. One of them, Shirkuh II, oversaw a third major reconstruction in 1207. Through the early Mamluk era (late 13th–14th centuries), the fortress was continuously restored and strengthened as a result of frequent sieges by the Ilkhanid Mongols of Iraq. Al-Rahba was the most important Mamluk fortress along the Euphrates, an administrative center and the terminal stop on the sultanate's postal route. It fell into disuse during Ottoman rule (1517–1918) and from then until the early 20th century, the fortress primarily served as a shelter for local shepherds and their flocks. Excavations were carried out at the site between 1976 and 1981. (Full article...)
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Mari (Cuneiform: 𒈠𒌷𒆠, ma-riki, modern Tell Hariri; Arabic: تل حريري) was an ancient Semiticcity-state in modern-day Syria. Its remains form a tell 11 kilometers north-west of Abu Kamal on the Euphrates River western bank, some 120 kilometers southeast of Deir ez-Zor. It flourished as a trade center and hegemonic state between 2900 BC and 1759 BC. The city was built in the middle of the Euphrates trade routes between Sumer in the south and the Eblaite kingdom and the Levant in the west.
Mari was first abandoned in the middle of the 26th century BC but was rebuilt and became the capital of a hegemonic East Semitic state before 2500 BC. This second Mari engaged in a long war with its rival Ebla and is known for its strong affinity with Sumerian culture. It was destroyed in the 23rd century BC by the Akkadians, who allowed the city to be rebuilt and appointed a military governor (Shakkanakku). The governors became independent with the disintegration of the Akkadian Empire, and rebuilt the city as a regional center of the Euphrates valley. The Shakkanakkus ruled Mari until the second half of the 19th century BC, when the dynasty collapsed for unknown reasons. A short time later, Mari became the capital of the Amorite Lim dynasty. The Amorite Mari lasted only a short time before it was destroyed by Babylonia in c. 1761 BC, but it survived as a small settlement under the rule of the Babylonians and the Assyrians before being abandoned and forgotten during the Hellenistic period.
The Mariotes worshiped both Semitic and Sumerian deities and established their city as a major trading center. Although the pre-Amorite periods were characterized by heavy Sumerian cultural influence, Mari was not a city of Sumerian immigrants but a Semitic-speaking nation with a dialect similar to Eblaite. The Amorites were West Semites who began to settle the area before the 21st century BC; by the Lim dynasty (c. 1830 BC), they became the dominant population in the Fertile Crescent.
Mari's discovery in 1933 provided an important insight into the geopolitical map of ancient Mesopotamia and Syria, due to the discovery of more than 25,000 tablets explicating the state administration in the 2nd millennium BC and the nature of diplomatic relations among the political powers of the region. They also revealed the wide trading networks of the 18th century BC, which connected areas as far as Afghanistan in Southern Asia and Crete in the Mediterranean. (Full article...)
The site contains a number of temple-pyramids with talud-tablero style architecture and double stairways. The pyramids and governmental palaces are grouped around a series of large public plazas. The site also holds a court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. The site was originally fortified with walls.
One skull fossil, given the name Apidima 1, shows a mixture of modern human and primitive features and has been dated to be more than 210,000 years old, older than a Neanderthal skull ("Apidima 2") found at the cave, which per some interpretations makes Apidima 1 the oldest proof of Homo sapiens living outside Africa, the second oldest being the maxilla from Misliya cave, Mount Carmel, Israel, with a maximum age of about 190,000 years ago. Apidima 1 is more than 150,000 years older than previous H. sapiens finds in Europe. (Full article...)
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Antiphellus or Antiphellos (Turkish: Antifellos, Ancient Greek: Ἀντίφελλος), known originally as Habesos, was an ancient coastal city in Lycia. The earliest occurrence of its Greek name is on a 4th-century-BCE inscription. Initially settled by the Lycians, the city was occupied by the Persians during the 6th centuryBCE. It rose in importance under the Greeks, when it served as the port of the nearby inland city of Phellus, but once Phellus started to decline in importance, Antiphellus became the region's largest city, with the ability to mint its own coins. During the Roman period, Antiphellus received funds from the civic benefactor Opramoas of Rhodiapolis that may have been used to help rebuild the city following the earthquake that devastated the region in 141.
The Irish naval officer Sir Francis Beaufort discovered the site of the city in the 1820s, when it was deserted. During a visit in April 1840, the English archaeologist and explorer Charles Fellows noted the existence of over 100 stone tombs. Much of the city's archaeological remains has since been destroyed due to the growth of Kaş (formerly Andifili) during the modern period; most of the sarcophagi being destroyed when the local population used the flat-sided stones for building materials.
Surviving inscriptions written in the now extinct Lycian language date from the 4th centuryBCE. The restored Hellenistic amphitheatre at Antiphellus, originally built to seat 4000 spectators, and still largely complete, never possessed a permanent stone stage. Surviving ruins visible on the ground include the 4th centuryBCE Doric Tomb, which has a 1.9 metres (6 ft 3 in) high entrance and a chamber decorated with a relief of dancing girls; the King's Tomb, located in the centre of the modern town, which has a uniquely written and as yet untranslated Lycian inscription; a small 1st centuryBCE temple; rock tombs set in cliffs above the modern town; and parts of the city's ancient sea wall. (Full article...)
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Ebla (Sumerian: 𒌈𒆷eb₂-la, Arabic: إبلا, modern: تل مرديخ, Tell Mardikh) was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was an important center throughout the 3rd millennium BC and in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Its discovery proved the Levant was a center of ancient, centralized civilization equal to Egypt and Mesopotamia and ruled out the view that the latter two were the only important centers in the Near East during the Early Bronze Age. The first Eblaite kingdom has been described as the first recorded world power.
Starting as a small settlement in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3500BC), Ebla developed into a trading empire and later into an expansionist power that imposed its hegemony over much of northern and eastern Syria. Ebla was destroyed during the 23rd century BC. It was then rebuilt and was mentioned in the records of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The second Ebla was a continuation of the first, ruled by a new royal dynasty. It was destroyed at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, which paved the way for the Amorite tribes to settle in the city, forming the third Ebla. The third kingdom also flourished as a trade center; it became a subject and an ally of Yamhad (modern-day Aleppo) until its final destruction by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1600BC.
Ebla maintained its prosperity through a vast trading network. Artifacts from Sumer, Cyprus, Egypt and as far as Afghanistan were recovered from the city's palaces. The kingdom had its own language, Eblaite, and the political organization of Ebla had features different from the Sumerian model. Women enjoyed a special status, and the queen had major influence in the state and religious affairs. The pantheon of gods was mainly north Semitic and included deities exclusive to Ebla. The city was excavated from 1964 and became famous for the Ebla tablets, an archive of about 20,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated to around 2350 BC. Written in both Sumerian and Eblaite and using the cuneiform, the archive has allowed a better understanding of the Sumerian language and provided important information over the political organization and social customs of the mid-3rd millennium BC's Levant. (Full article...)
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King of the Four Corners of the World (Sumerian: lugal-an-ub-da-limmu-ba, Akkadian: šarru kibrat arbaim, šar kibrāti arbaʾi, or šar kibrāt erbetti), alternatively translated as King of the Four Quarters of the World, King of the Heaven's Four Corners or King of the Four Corners of the Universe and often shortened to simply King of the Four Corners, was a title of great prestige claimed by powerful monarchs in ancient Mesopotamia. Though the term "four corners of the world" does refer to specific geographical places within and near Mesopotamia itself, these places were (at the time the title was first used) thought to represent locations near the actual edges of the world and as such, the title should be interpreted as something equivalent to "King of all the known world", a claim to universal rule over the entire world and everything within it.
The title was first used by Naram-Sin of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC and was later used by the rulers of the Neo-Sumerian Empire, after which it fell into disuse. It was revived as a title by a number of Assyrian rulers, becoming especially prominent during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The final ruler to claim the title was the first Persian Achaemenid king, Cyrus the Great, after his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC.
It is possible, at least among Assyrian rulers, that the title of King of the Four Corners was not inherited through normal means. As the title is not attested for all Neo-Assyrian kings and for some only attested several years into their reign it is possible that it might have had to be earned by each king individually, possibly through completing successful military campaigns in all four points of the compass. The similar title of šar kiššatim ("King of Everything" or "King of the Universe"), also with Akkadian origins and attested for some of the Neo-Assyrian kings, may have required seven successful military campaigns. The difference between the exact meaning of the two titles may have been that "King of the Universe" laid claim to the cosmological realm whereas "King of the Four Corners of the World" laid claim to the terrestrial. (Full article...)
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The Pike-Pawnee Village Site, or Hill Farm Site, designated 25WT1 by archaeologists, is a site near the village of Guide Rock in Webster County, in the south central portion of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It was the location of a village of the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee people, in a region of the Republican River valley that they occupied intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s.
In 1806, the village was visited by a Spanish expedition led by Lieutenant Facundo Melgares and, soon after, by an American expedition led by Lieutenant Zebulon Pike. At the village, Pike persuaded the Pawnee leaders to haul down a Spanish flag that they had received from Melgares, and to raise the flag of the United States in its stead.
The location of the village visited by Pike was not known for many years. In the early 20th century, two sites were proposed: this one in Nebraska, and one in Republic County in northern Kansas. A dispute between the historical societies of the two states ensued, titled "The War Between Nebraska and Kansas". The dispute was eventually resolved in favor of the Nebraska site.
The Nine Stones is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread through much of Great Britain, Ireland, and Brittany between 3,300 and 900 BCE, during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The stone circle tradition was accompanied by the construction of timber circles and earthen henges, reflecting a growing emphasis on circular monuments. The purpose of such rings is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. At least nine of these stone circles are known to have been constructed near modern Dorset. They are smaller than those found elsewhere in Great Britain and are typically built from sarsen stone.
Located in the bottom of a narrow valley, the Nine Stones circle has a diameter of 9.1 by 7.8 metres (29 feet 10 inches by 25 feet 7 inches). It consists of nine irregularly spaced sarsen megaliths, with a small opening on its northern side. Two of the stones on the northwestern side of the monument are considerably larger than the other seven. This architectural feature has parallels with various stone circles in southwestern Scotland, and was potentially a deliberate choice of the circle's builders, to whom it may have had symbolic meaning.
Antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley first took an interest in the site during the eighteenth century. It later received archaeological attention, although it has not been excavated. Local folklore has grown up around the circle, associating it with the Devil and with children petrified into rock. The Nine Stones are regarded as a sacred site by local Druids, who perform religious ceremonies there. The circle is adjacent to the A35 road and encircled by trees. The site is owned by English Heritage and is open without charge to visitors. (Full article...)
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The Old Exe Bridge is a ruined medieval arch bridge in Exeter in south-western England. Construction of the bridge began in 1190, and was completed by 1214. The bridge is the oldest surviving bridge of its size in England and the oldest bridge in Britain with a chapel still on it. It replaced several rudimentary crossings which had been in use sporadically since Roman times. The project was the idea of Nicholas and Walter Gervase, father and son and influential local merchants, who travelled the country to raise funds. No known records survive of the bridge's builders. The result was a bridge at least 590 feet (180 metres) long, which probably had 17 or 18 arches, carrying the road diagonally from the west gate of the city wall across the River Exe and its wide, marshy flood plain.
St Edmund's Church, the bridge chapel, was built into the bridge at the time of its construction, and St Thomas's Church was built on the riverbank at about the same time. The Exe Bridge is unusual among British medieval bridges for having had secular buildings on it as well as the chapel. Timber-framed shops, with houses above, were in place from at least the early 14th century, and later in the bridge's life, all but the most central section carried buildings. As the river silted up, land was reclaimed, allowing a wall to be built from the side of St Edmund's which protected a row of houses and shops which became known as Frog Street. Walter Gervase also commissioned a chantry chapel, built opposite the church, which came into use after 1257 and continued until the Reformation in the mid-16th century.
The medieval bridge collapsed and had to be partially rebuilt several times throughout its life; the first recorded rebuilding was in 1286. By 1447 the bridge was severely dilapidated, and the mayor of Exeter appealed for funds to repair it. By the 16th century, it was again in need of repairs. Nonetheless, the bridge was in use for almost 600 years, until a replacement was built in 1778 and the arches across the river were demolished. That bridge was itself replaced in 1905, and again in 1969 by a pair of bridges. During construction of the twin bridges, eight and a half arches of the medieval bridge were uncovered and restored, some of which had been buried for nearly 200 years, and the surrounds were landscaped into a public park. Several more arches are buried under modern buildings. The bridge's remains are a scheduled monument and grade II listed building. (Full article...)
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Caral–Supe (also known as Caral and Norte Chico) was a complex Pre-Columbian era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru. The civilization flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. From 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent, which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC. Since the early 21st century, it has been recognized as the oldest-known civilization in the Americas, and as one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world.
This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The alternative name, Caral–Supe, is derived from the city of Caral in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral–Supe site.
In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lackedceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthworkplatform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.
Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area, revealed Caral–Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest. (Full article...)
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Wressle Castle is a ruined palace-fortress in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, built for Thomas Percy in the 1390s. It is privately owned and it is usually open to the public for a few days each year. Wressle Castle originally consisted of four ranges built around a central courtyard; there was a tower at each corner, and the structure was entered through a gatehouse in the east wall, facing the village.
After Thomas Percy was executed for rebelling against Henry IV, Wressle Castle was confiscated by the Crown. With occasional periods when it was granted to other people, the castle was mostly under royal control until 1471 when it was returned to the Percy family. Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, refurbished the castle and gardens, bringing them to the standard of royal properties.
The castle was embedded within an ornamental landscape, with two gardens laid out at the same time as the castle was founded and a third created later. Wressle was intended as a high-status residence rather than a fortress and was never besieged. However, it was held by Parliament during the English Civil War and partly demolished in 1646–50, leaving the south range still standing. Nearly 150 years later, it was further damaged by a fire that struck the house. In the 21st century, Historic England, Natural England and the Country Houses Foundation funded repairs to the castle ruins. (Full article...)
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Deva Victrix, or simply Deva, was a legionary fortress and town in the Roman province of Britannia on the site of the modern city of Chester. The fortress was built by the Legio II Adiutrix in the 70s AD as the Roman army advanced north against the Brigantes, and rebuilt completely over the next few decades by the Legio XX Valeria Victrix. In the early 3rd century the fortress was again rebuilt. The legion probably remained at the fortress until the late 4th or early 5th century, upon which it fell into disuse.
A civilian settlement, or canaba, grew around the fortress. Chester's Roman Amphitheatre, south-east of the fortress, is the largest-known military amphitheatre in Britain. The civilian settlement remained after the Romans departed, eventually becoming the present-day city of Chester. There were peripheral settlements around Roman Deva, including Boughton, the source of the garrison's water supply, and Handbridge, the site of a sandstone quarry and Minerva's Shrine. The shrine is the only in situ, rock-cut Roman shrine in Great Britain.
The fortress contained barracks, granaries, headquarters, military baths, and an unusual elliptical building which had it been finished may have been intended to act as the governor of Britain's headquarters. (Full article...)
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The Emesa helmet (also known as the Homs helmet) is a Roman cavalry helmet from the early first century AD. It consists of an iron head piece and face mask, the latter of which is covered in a sheet of silver and presents the individualised portrait of a face, likely its owner. Decorations, some of which are gilded, adorn the head piece. Confiscated by Syrian police soon after looters discovered it amidst a complex of tombs in the modern-day city of Homs in 1936, eventually the helmet was restored thoroughly at the British Museum, and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. It has been exhibited internationally, although as of 2017, due to the Syrian civil war, the more valuable items owned by the National Museum are hidden in underground storage.
Ornately designed yet highly functional, the helmet was probably intended for both parades and battle. Its delicate covering is too fragile to have been put to use during cavalry tournaments, but the thick iron core would have defended against blows and arrows. Narrow slits for the eyes, with three small holes underneath to allow downward sight, sacrificed vision for protection; roughly cut notches below each eye suggest a hastily made modification of necessity.
The helmet was found in a tomb near a monument to a former ruler of Emesa and, considering the lavishness of the silver and gold design, likely belonged to a member of the elite. As it is modelled after those helmets used in Roman tournaments, even if unlikely to have ever been worn in one, it may have been given by a Roman official to a Syrian general or, more likely, manufactured in Syria after the Roman style. The acanthusscroll ornamentation seen on the neck guard recalls that used on Syrian temples, suggesting that the helmet may have been made in the luxury workshops of Antioch. (Full article...)
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Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's original name is unknown. During the second half of the third millennium BC, the city was known as Nagar and later on, Nawar.
Starting as a small settlement in the seventh millennium BC, Tell Brak evolved during the fourth millennium BC into one of the biggest cities in Upper Mesopotamia, and interacted with the cultures of southern Mesopotamia. The city shrank in size at the beginning of the third millennium BC with the end of Uruk period, before expanding again around c. 2600 BC, when it became known as Nagar, and was the capital of a regional kingdom that controlled the Khabur river valley. Nagar was destroyed around c. 2300 BC, and came under the rule of the Akkadian Empire, followed by a period of independence as a Hurrian city-state, before contracting at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Nagar prospered again by the 19th century BC, and came under the rule of different regional powers. In c. 1500 BC, Tell Brak was a center of Mitanni before being destroyed by Assyria c. 1300 BC. The city never regained its former importance, remaining as a small settlement, and abandoned at some points of its history, until disappearing from records during the early Abbasid era.
Different peoples inhabited the city, including the Halafians, Semites and the Hurrians. Tell Brak was a religious center from its earliest periods; its famous Eye Temple is unique in the Fertile Crescent, and its main deity, Belet Nagar, was revered in the entire Khabur region, making the city a pilgrimage site. The culture of Tell Brak was defined by the different civilizations that inhabited it, and it was famous for its glyptic style, equids and glass. When independent, the city was ruled by a local assembly or by a monarch. Tell Brak was a trade center due to its location between Anatolia, the Levant and southern Mesopotamia. It was excavated by Max Mallowan in 1937, then regularly by different teams between 1979 and 2011, when the work stopped due to the Syrian Civil War. (Full article...)
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Solo Man (Homo erectus soloensis) is a subspecies of H. erectus that lived along the Solo River in Java, Indonesia, about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene. This population is the last known record of the species. It is known from 14 skullcaps, two tibiae, and a piece of the pelvis excavated near the village of Ngandong, and possibly three skulls from Sambungmacan and a skull from Ngawi depending on classification. The Ngandong site was first excavated from 1931 to 1933 under the direction of Willem Frederik Florus Oppenoorth, Carel ter Haar, and Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, but further study was set back by the Great Depression, World War II and the Indonesian War of Independence. In accordance with historical race concepts, Indonesian H. erectus subspecies were originally classified as the direct ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, but Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants because the remains far predate modern human immigration into the area, which began roughly 55,000 to 50,000 years ago.
The Solo Man skull is oval-shaped in top view, with heavy brows, inflated cheekbones, and a prominent bar of bone wrapping around the back. The brain volume was quite large, ranging from 1,013 to 1,251 cubic centimetres (61.8 to 76.3 cu in), compared to an average of 1,270 cm3 (78 cu in) for present-day modern males and 1,130 cm3 (69 cu in) for present-day modern females. One potentially female specimen may have been 158 cm (5 ft 2 in) tall and weighed 51 kg (112 lb); males were probably much bigger than females. Solo Man was in many ways similar to the Java Man (H. e. erectus) that had earlier inhabited Java, but was far less archaic.
Solo Man likely inhabited an open woodland environment much cooler than present-day Java, along with elephants, tigers, wild cattle, water buffalo, tapirs, and hippopotamuses, among other megafauna. They manufactured simple flakes and choppers (hand-held stone tools), and possibly spears or harpoons from bones, daggers from stingray stingers, as well as bolas or hammerstones from andesite. They may have descended from or were at least closely related to Java Man. The Ngandong specimens likely died during a volcanic eruption. The species probably went extinct with the takeover of tropical rainforest and loss of preferred habitat, beginning by 125,000 years ago. The skulls sustained damage, but it is unclear if it resulted from an assault, cannibalism, the volcanic eruption, or the fossilisation process. (Full article...)
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DonaTeresa Cristina (14 March 1822 – 28 December 1889), nicknamed "the Mother of the Brazilians", was Empress of Brazil as the consort of Emperor Dom Pedro II from their marriage on 30 May 1843 until 15 November 1889, when the monarchy was abolished. Born a princess of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in present-day southern Italy, Teresa Cristina was the daughter of King Don Francesco I (Francis I) of the Italian branch of the House of Bourbon and his wife Maria Isabel (Maria Isabella). It was long believed by historians that the Princess was raised in an ultra-conservative, intolerant atmosphere which resulted in a timid and unassertive character in public and an ability to be contented with very little materially or emotionally. Recent studies revealed a more complex character, who despite having respected the social norms of the era, was able to assert a limited independence due to her strongly opinionated personality as well as her interest in learning, sciences and culture.
The Princess was married by proxy to Pedro II in 1843. Her spouse's expectations had been raised when a portrait was presented that depicted Teresa Cristina as an idealized beauty, but he was displeased by his bride's appearance upon their first meeting later that year. Despite a cold beginning on the part of Pedro, the couple's relationship improved as time passed, due primarily to Teresa Cristina's patience, kindness and generosity. These traits also helped her win the hearts of the Brazilian people, and her distance from political controversies shielded her from criticism. She also sponsored archaeological studies in Italy and Italian immigration to Brazil.
The marriage between Teresa Cristina and Pedro II never became passionately romantic, although a bond based upon family, mutual respect and fondness did develop. The Empress was a dutiful spouse and unfailingly supported the Emperor's positions and never interposed with her own views in public. She remained silent on the topic of his suspected extra-marital relationships—including a liaison with her daughters' governess. In turn, she was treated with unfailing respect and her position at court and home was always secure. Of the imperial couple's four children, two boys died in infancy and a daughter died of typhoid fever at the age of 24.
The imperial family was sent into exile after a coup d'état staged by a clique of army officers in 1889. Being cast from her beloved adopted land had a devastating effect on Teresa Cristina's spirit and health. Grieving and ill, she died of respiratory failure leading to cardiac arrest a month after the monarchy's collapse. She was greatly loved by her subjects, both during her lifetime and afterwards. She was even respected by the republicans who overthrew the Empire. Despite having had no direct impact on Brazil's political history, Teresa Cristina is well regarded by historians not only for her character and irreproachable behavior, but also for her sponsorship of Brazilian culture. (Full article...)
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The Western Mexico shaft tomb tradition refers to a set of interlocked cultural traits found in the western Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and, to a lesser extent, Colima to its south, roughly dating to the period between 300 BCE and 400 CE, although there is not wide agreement on this end date. Nearly all of the artifacts associated with this shaft tomb tradition have been discovered by looters and are without provenance, making dating problematic.
The first major undisturbed shaft tomb associated with the tradition was not discovered until 1993 at Huitzilapa, Jalisco.
Originally regarded as of Purépecha origin, contemporary with the Aztecs, it became apparent in the middle of the 20th century, as a result of further research, that the artifacts and tombs were instead over a thousand years older. Until recently, the looted artifacts were all that was known of the people and culture or cultures that created the shaft tombs. So little was known, in fact, that a major 1998 exhibition highlighting these artifacts was subtitled: "Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past".
It is now thought that, although shaft tombs are widely diffused across the area, the region was not a unified cultural area. Archaeologists, however, still struggle with identifying and naming the ancient western Mexico cultures of this period. (Full article...)
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Montevideo Maru (Japanese: もんてびでお丸) was a merchant ship of the Empire of Japan. Launched in 1926, it was pressed into service as a military transport during World War II. It was sunk by the American submarineUSS Sturgeon on 1 July 1942, drowning 1,054 people, mostly Australian prisoners of war and civilians who were being transported from Rabaul, the former Australian territory of New Guinea, to Hainan. The sinking is considered the worst maritime disaster in Australia's history. The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was discovered on 18 April 2023. (Full article...)
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by a pastoralist community shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long-barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Jacket's Field Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Stour. Of these, it lies on the western side of the river, while Julliberrie's Grave and Shrub's Wood Long Barrow are found on the eastern side. The site was discovered in 1970, at which point it was concealed in dense woodland, although has yet to undergo thorough archaeological investigation. (Full article...)
Born in Kent to an upper-middle-class family, Clark developed an early interest in archaeology through his collection of prehistoric flint tools. After an education at Marlborough College, he proceeded to Peterhouse in the University of Cambridge, there attaining both his undergraduate and then doctoral degree. For the latter, he produced a thesis and published monograph focusing on Mesolithic Britain. In 1932, he co-founded the Fenland Research Committee, through which he excavated several prehistoric sites in the East Anglian Fens. He was also a senior member of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia and played an instrumental role in transforming it into The Prehistoric Society in 1935. He served as the editor of its academic journal, the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, from 1933 until 1970.
During the Second World War, Clark was drafted into the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He remained in Britain, working on aerial reconnaissance, and wrote further archaeological research articles in his spare time. After the war he returned to Cambridge University, where he was employed as a full-time lecturer. Over the course of 1949, 1950, and 1951, he excavated the important Mesolithic settlement site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire. Other excavations carried out under his directorship included that of an Iron Age settlement on Micklemoor Hill, Norfolk, and the Neolithic site of Hurst Fen, Suffolk. In 1951 he was made a Fellow of the British Academy, in 1952 appointed to Cambridge's Disney Chair, and in 1959 elected President of the Prehistoric Society. In later life he travelled the globe more extensively, often as a visiting professor. In these years, he also wrote more prolifically, although these books typically received a less enthusiastic reception than his earlier work.
Clark was not a popular figure among the British archaeological community, being regarded as a competitive and remote individual who craved recognition. He was nevertheless regarded as one of the most important prehistorians of his generation. He was particularly noted for his emphasis on exploring the economies and environmental conditions of prehistoric Europe. His career was recognised by a number of accolades, including the Dutch Erasmus Prize and a British knighthood, and he was the subject of a posthumous biography by Brian Fagan. (Full article...)
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The Amnya complex (Russian: городище Амня, romanized: gorodishche Amnya) is an archaeological site near the Amnya River in the lower Ob basin of western Siberia, dating to the early Neolithic and Chalcolithic. It comprises two sections, Amnya I and Amnya II, each a series of ten pit-houses of varying sizes about 50 meters apart. They are built atop a steep escarpment formerly overlooking a river, now adjacent to a series of peat bogs. Unlike Amnya II, Amnya I has significant defensive earthworks in the form of banks and ditches.
Although the region had been occupied since the Mesolithic, the first fortifications were built at Amnya I some time after 6100 BCE, preceding a main settlement phase for both sites for much of the 6th millennium. The houses were frequently destroyed by fire, linked to endemic violent conflicts in the region. Both settlements were abandoned before a period of reoccupation during the 4th millennium BCE.
Amnya I is one of the oldest known fortified settlements, as well as the northernmost Stone Age fort. Built by a hunter-gatherer population, Amnya I significantly predates the arrival of agriculture in the region. The sites were first excavated in 1987, with later excavations taking place in 1993, 2000, and 2019. A related Neolithic site, Kirip-Vis-Yurgan-2, has been linked to the Amnya culture due to similarities in recovered artifacts. (Full article...)
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The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved is an archaeological study of the bog bodies of Northern Europe written by the Danish archaeologist P.V. Glob. First published in 1965 by Gyldendal under the Danish title of Mosefolket: Jernalderens Mennesker bevaret i 2000 År, it was translated into English by the English archaeologist Rupert Bruce-Mitford and published by Faber and Faber in 1969. In 1966 it was translated into German by Thyra Dohrenburg and published by Winkler Verlag Munich under the title Die Schläfer im Moor (English: The Sleepers in the Bog).
The Bog People is divided into six chapters. The first is devoted to Tollund Man, and the second to Grauballe Man, two of the best known Iron Age bog bodies to have been discovered in Jutland, Denmark. The third and fourth chapters are devoted to the wider context of bog bodies first in Denmark and then in other parts of Europe. The final two chapters are devoted to a wider exposition of life and death in Iron Age Denmark.
Glob's book received positive reviews from both Barry Cunliffe in Nature and Ralph M. Rowlett in American Anthropologist. They praised Glob's arguments as well as his writing style and use of illustrations, alongside Bruce-Mitford's translation. In subsequent decades, it has received both praise and criticism from specialists in the field, who have lauded the publicity which it brought to the subject, but rejected many of Glob's conclusions as being based on insufficient evidence. (Full article...)
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Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore the history of SETI as a field; archaeological comparisons for human-alien communication, such as the difficulties of translating ancient languages; the inferential gap between humans and aliens, and the consequences this would have for communication and trade; and the potential nature of alien intelligences.
Originally scheduled for publication in June 2014, a PDF of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication was accidentally released a month before the intended date and reviewed by Gizmodo. The positive response to the review inspired NASA to bring forward its release as an e-book, making it available on their website from May of that year.
The book gained widespread media coverage upon release. As well as receiving generally positive reviews, it was at the center of controversy regarding misinterpretation of one of its essays. A quote about ancient terrestrial stone carvings, rhetorically stating that they "might have been made by aliens" for all that they were understood by modern anthropologists, was misreported by publications such as TheBlaze, The Huffington Post, and Artnet. (Full article...)
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Mixco Viejo (/ˈmiskoˈβieχo/) ("Old Mixco"), occasionally spelt Mixcu Viejo, is an archaeological site in the north east of the Chimaltenango department of Guatemala, some 50 kilometres (31 mi) to the north of Guatemala City and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from the junction of the rivers Pixcaya and Motagua. It is a moderate sized ruined city of the PostclassicMaya civilization.
The archaeological site and tourist attraction of Mixco Viejo was named after being erroneously associated with the Postclassic Poqomam capital referred to in colonial records by that name. The archaeological site has now been identified as Jilotepeque Viejo, the capital of the ChajomaKaqchikel kingdom. To distinguish between the two, the ruins of the Chajoma capital are now referred to as Mixco Viejo (Jilotepeque Viejo) while the former Poqomam capital is referred to as Mixco Viejo (Chinautla Viejo).
This confusion in the identification of the site has hindered study. The Chajoma capital has been investigated archaeologically, under the assumption that it was the Poqomam capital. Although the Chajoma ruins of Jilotepeque Viejo have been well described archaeologically, the archaeological data has been associated with the history of a different site entirely. Doubts about the identification of the archaeological site were first raised by Robert M. Carmack, who realised that the supposed Poqomam capital was not located within the Poqomam linguistic area but rather within the linguistic area of the Kaqchikels. The Poqomam who were settled in the new colonial settlement of Mixco by the Spanish had a long history of fine polychrome ceramic production, but no evidence of such production had been recovered during archaeological investigations, and the ruins were considered too distant from colonial Mixco.
Chinautla Viejo was attacked by the invading Spanish in 1525; the first two attacks against the heavily fortified city were unsuccessful. The besieged city received Poqomam reinforcements that were comprehensively defeated on an open field of battle, with the Spanish cavalry being decisive. The capture of Poqomam prisoners allowed the Spanish to discover the location of a cave providing a secret entrance to the city. A third assault broke the month-long siege, allowing the Spanish to take the city. The surviving inhabitants were moved to another settlement and Pedro de Alvarado ordered the city to be burned.
Jilotepeque Viejo was settled by the Chajoma in order to provide a capital that was safer from attack from the hostile Iximche Kaqchikel kingdom than their previous capital. In spite of this, the city fell under the domination of Iximche and the city's architecture, spread in a number of fortified groups along a ridge surrounded by deep ravines, shows a mixture of Chajoma and Kaqchikel styles. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Chajoma of Jilotepeque Viejo may have initially allied themselves with the Spanish together with Iximche and have joined in the general Kaqchikel uprising against the Spanish in 1524. The site was abandoned after the conquest and never reoccupied. (Full article...)
A trapezoidalcairn of rubble – the upper part of the cromlech and its earth covering now removed – about 72 feet (22 m) long by 43 feet (13 m) (at its widest), is revetted by a low dry-stone wall. A bell-shaped, south-facing forecourt, formed by the wall, leads to a central passageway lined with limestone slabs set on end. Human remains had been placed in the two pairs of stone chambers that lead from the passageway. Corpses may have been placed in nearby caves until they decomposed, when the bones were moved to the tomb.
The cromlech was discovered in 1869 by workmen digging for road stone. An excavation later that year revealed human bones (now known to have belonged to at least 40 people), animal remains, and Neolithic pottery. Samples from the site show the tomb to have been in use for between 300 and 800 years. North-West European lifestyles changed around 6000 BP, from the nomadic lives of the hunter-gatherer, to a settled life of agricultural farming: the Neolithic Revolution. However, analysis of the human remains found at Parc Cwm long cairn show the people interred in the cromlech continued to be either hunter-gatherers or herders, rather than agricultural farmers.
Parc Cwm long cairn lies in a former medieval deer park, established in the 1220s CE by the Marcher Lord of Gower as Parc le Breos – an enclosed area of about 2,000 acres (810 ha), now mainly farmland. The cromlech is on the floor of a dry narrow limestone gorge containing about 500 acres (2.0 km2) of woodland. Free pedestrian access is via an asphalt track leading from the park's entrance, which has free parking for 12–15 cars about 250 yards (230 m) from the site. Parc Cwm long cairn is maintained by Cadw, the Welsh Government's historic environment division. (Full article...)
The tetrastyleprostyle building has two doors that connect the pronaos to a square cella. To the back of the temple lie the remains of the adyton where images of the deity once stood. The ancient temple functioned as an aedes, the dwelling place of the deity. The temple of Bziza was converted into a church and underwent architectural modification during two phases of Christianization; in the Early Byzantine period and later in the Middle Ages. The church, colloquially known until modern times as the Lady of the Pillars, fell into disrepair. Despite the church's condition, Christian devotion was still maintained in the nineteenth century in one of the temple's niches. The temple of Bziza is featured on multiple stamps issued by the Lebanese state. (Full article...)
Calakmul was a major Maya power within the northern Petén Basin region of the Yucatán Peninsula of southern Mexico. Calakmul administered a large domain marked by the extensive distribution of their emblem glyph of the snake head sign, to be read "Kaan". Calakmul was the seat of what has been dubbed the Kingdom of the Snake or Snake Kingdom. This Snake Kingdom reigned during most of the Classic period. Calakmul itself is estimated to have had a population of 50,000 people and had governance, at times, over places as far away as 150 kilometers (93 mi). There are 6,750 ancient structures identified at Calakmul, the largest of which is the great pyramid at the site. Structure 2 is over 45 metres (148 ft) high, making it one of the tallest of the Maya pyramids.
Four tombs have been located within the pyramid. Like many temples or pyramids within Mesoamerica the pyramid at Calakmul increased in size by building upon the existing temple to reach its current size. The size of the central monumental architecture is approximately 2 square kilometres (0.77 sq mi) and the whole of the site, mostly covered with dense residential structures, is about 20 square kilometres (7.7 sq mi).
Throughout the Classic Period, Calakmul maintained an intense rivalry with the major city of Tikal to the south, and the political maneuverings of these two cities have been likened to a struggle between two Maya superpowers.
Panagiotis Kavvadias or Cawadias (Greek: Παναγιώτης Καββαδίας; 14 May [O.S. 2 May] 1850 – 20 July 1928) was a Greek archaeologist. He was responsible for the excavation of ancient sites in Greece, including Epidaurus in Argolis and the Acropolis of Athens, as well as archaeological discoveries on his native island of Kephallonia. As Ephor General (the head of the Greek Archaeological Service) from 1885 until 1909, Kavvadias oversaw the expansion of the Archaeological Service and the introduction of Law 2646 of 1899, which increased the state's powers to address the illegal excavation and smuggling of antiquities.
Kavvadias's work had a particular impact on the Acropolis of Athens, and has been credited with completing its "transformation[...] from castle to monument". Between 1885 and 1890, he removed almost all of the Acropolis's remaining medieval and modern structures, uncovering many ancient monuments in the process. He also played a role in the extensive reconstruction of the site by the architect and engineer Nikolaos Balanos. Though praised initially, the work caused considerable damage to several monuments and was almost completely deconstructed and rebuilt during the later 20th and early 21st centuries. Kavvadias oversaw the opening of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, organised its first collections, and wrote some of its first catalogues.
As an administrator, Kavvadias was regarded as energetic, centralising and autocratic. His career saw significant modernisation in the practice of archaeology in Greece, and he reformed and professionalised the Archaeological Service. His patronage of Athens's foreign archaeological schools was credited with promoting the development of Greek archaeology, but was also criticised by native Greek archaeologists. He created further discontent among the Archaeological Society of Athens by reducing its role in favour of the governmental Archaeological Service. After the Goudi coup of 1909, dissatisfaction in the Greek press and among his subordinates in the Archaeological Service led to his removal from office, from the Archaeological Society and from his professorship at the University of Athens, though he was able to return to public and academic life from 1912, and remained active in Greek archaeology until his death in 1928. (Full article...)
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Nigel Reuben Rook Williams (15 July 1944 – 21 April 1992) was an English conservator and expert on the restoration of ceramics and glass. From 1961 until his death he worked at the British Museum, where he became the Chief Conservator of Ceramics and Glass in 1983. There his work included the successful restorations of the Sutton Hoo helmet and the Portland Vase.
Joining as an assistant at age 16, Williams spent his entire career, and most of his life, at the British Museum. He was one of the first people to study conservation, not yet recognised as a profession, and from an early age was given responsibility over high-profile objects. In the 1960s he assisted with the re-excavation of the Sutton Hooship-burial, and in his early- to mid-twenties he conserved many of the objects found therein: most notably the Sutton Hoo helmet, which occupied a year of his time. He likewise reconstructed other objects from the find, including the shield, drinking horns, and maplewood bottles.
The "abiding passion of his life" was ceramics, and the 1970s and 1980s gave Williams ample opportunities in that field. After nearly 31,000 fragments of shattered Greek vases were found in 1974 amidst the wreck of HMS Colossus, Williams set to work piecing them together. The process was televised, and turned him into a television personality. A decade later, in 1988 and 1989, Williams's crowning achievement came when he took to pieces the Portland Vase, one of the most famous glass objects in the world, and put it back together. The reconstruction was again televised for a BBC programme, and as with the Sutton Hoo helmet, took nearly a year to complete.
Williams died at age 47 of a heart attack while in Aqaba, Jordan, where he was working on a British Museum excavation. The Ceramics & Glass group of the Institute of Conservation awards a biennial prize in his honour, recognising his significant contributions in the field of conservation. (Full article...)
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The African humid period (AHP; also known by other names) is a climate period in Africa during the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic epochs, when northern Africa was wetter than today. The covering of much of the Sahara desert by grasses, trees and lakes was caused by changes in the Earth's axial tilt; changes in vegetation and dust in the Sahara which strengthened the African monsoon; and increased greenhouse gases. During the preceding Last Glacial Maximum, the Sahara contained extensive dune fields and was mostly uninhabited. It was much larger than today, and its lakes and rivers such as Lake Victoria and the White Nile were either dry or at low levels. The humid period began about 14,600–14,500 years ago at the end of Heinrich event 1, simultaneously to the Bølling–Allerød warming. Rivers and lakes such as Lake Chad formed or expanded, glaciers grew on Mount Kilimanjaro and the Sahara retreated. Two major dry fluctuations occurred; during the Younger Dryas and the short 8.2 kiloyear event. The African humid period ended 6,000–5,000 years ago during the Piora Oscillation cold period. While some evidence points to an end 5,500 years ago, in the Sahel, Arabia and East Africa, the end of the period appears to have taken place in several steps, such as the 4.2-kiloyear event.
The AHP led to a widespread settlement of the Sahara and the Arabian Deserts, and had a profound effect on African cultures, such as the birth of the Ancient Egyptian civilization. People in the Sahara lived as hunter-gatherers and domesticated cattle, goats and sheep. They left archaeological sites and artifacts such as one of the oldest ships in the world, and rock paintings such as those in the Cave of Swimmers and in the Acacus Mountains. Earlier humid periods in Africa were postulated after the discovery of these rock paintings in now-inhospitable parts of the Sahara. When the period ended, humans gradually abandoned the desert in favour of regions with more secure water supplies, such as the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, where they gave rise to early complex societies. (Full article...)
Goell travelled to the Middle East in the 1930s, working with archaeologists in Jerusalem and Gerasa, before returning to New York. She returned to the Middle East after the Second World War, and in 1947 visited Nemrud Dagh for the first time; excavations there would become her life's work. Goell was involved in excavations at a number of other Middle Eastern sites over the course of her career, including at Tarsus and Samosata. Goell's work in Turkey "nearly single-handedly opened up ancient Commagene to the world". (Full article...)
Solo Man (Homo erectus soloensis) is a subspecies of H. erectus that lived along the Solo River in Java, Indonesia, about 117,000 to 108,000 years ago in the Late Pleistocene. This population is the last known record of the species. It is known from 14 skullcaps, two tibiae, and a piece of the pelvis excavated near the village of Ngandong, and possibly three skulls from Sambungmacan and a skull from Ngawi depending on classification. The Ngandong site was first excavated from 1931 to 1933 under the direction of Willem Frederik Florus Oppenoorth, Carel ter Haar, and Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, but further study was set back by the Great Depression, World War II and the Indonesian War of Independence. In accordance with historical race concepts, Indonesian H. erectus subspecies were originally classified as the direct ancestors of Aboriginal Australians, but Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants because the remains far predate modern human immigration into the area, which began roughly 55,000 to 50,000 years ago.
The Solo Man skull is oval-shaped in top view, with heavy brows, inflated cheekbones, and a prominent bar of bone wrapping around the back. The brain volume was quite large, ranging from 1,013 to 1,251 cubic centimetres (61.8 to 76.3 cu in), compared to an average of 1,270 cm3 (78 cu in) for present-day modern males and 1,130 cm3 (69 cu in) for present-day modern females. One potentially female specimen may have been 158 cm (5 ft 2 in) tall and weighed 51 kg (112 lb); males were probably much bigger than females. Solo Man was in many ways similar to the Java Man (H. e. erectus) that had earlier inhabited Java, but was far less archaic.
Solo Man likely inhabited an open woodland environment much cooler than present-day Java, along with elephants, tigers, wild cattle, water buffalo, tapirs, and hippopotamuses, among other megafauna. They manufactured simple flakes and choppers (hand-held stone tools), and possibly spears or harpoons from bones, daggers from stingray stingers, as well as bolas or hammerstones from andesite. They may have descended from or were at least closely related to Java Man. The Ngandong specimens likely died during a volcanic eruption. The species probably went extinct with the takeover of tropical rainforest and loss of preferred habitat, beginning by 125,000 years ago. The skulls sustained damage, but it is unclear if it resulted from an assault, cannibalism, the volcanic eruption, or the fossilisation process. (Full article...)
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Volubilis (Latin pronunciation:[wɔˈɫuːbɪlɪs]; Arabic: وليلي, romanized: walīlī; Berber languages: ⵡⵍⵉⵍⵉ, romanized: wlili) is a partly-excavated Berber-Roman city in Morocco situated near the city of Meknes that may have been the capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania, at least from the time of King Juba II. Before Volubilis, the capital of the kingdom may have been at Gilda.
Built in a fertile agricultural area, it developed from the 3rd century BC onward as a Berber, then proto-Carthaginian, settlement before being the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania. It grew rapidly under Roman rule from the 1st century AD onward and expanded to cover about 42 hectares (100 acres) with a 2.6 km (1.6 mi) circuit of walls. The city gained a number of major public buildings in the 2nd century, including a basilica, temple and triumphal arch. Its prosperity, which was derived principally from olive growing, prompted the construction of many fine town-houses with large mosaic floors.
The city fell to local tribes around 285 and was never retaken by Rome because of its remoteness and indefensibility on the south-western border of the Roman Empire. It continued to be inhabited for at least another 700 years, first as a Latinised Christian community, then as an early Islamic settlement. In the late 8th century it became the seat of Idris ibn Abdallah, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty of Morocco. By the 11th century Volubilis had been abandoned after the seat of power was relocated to Fes. Much of the local population was transferred to the new town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, about 5 km (3.1 mi) from Volubilis.
The ruins remained substantially intact until they were devastated by an earthquake in the mid-18th century and subsequently looted by Moroccan rulers seeking stone for building Meknes. It was not until the latter part of the 19th century that the site was definitively identified as that of the ancient city of Volubilis. During and after the period of French rule over Morocco, about half of the site was excavated, revealing many fine mosaics, and some of the more prominent public buildings and high-status houses were restored or reconstructed. Today it is a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site, listed for being "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire". (Full article...)
The grave was discovered by members of a metal detecting club in May 2004, and excavated by archaeologists that November. Ploughing had destroyed much of the surrounding Anglo-Saxon cemetery, leaving this as the only individually identifiable grave. The helmet had fragmented into around 400 pieces, perhaps in part because of subsoiling, and was originally identified as a "fragmentary iron vessel". Only after it was acquired by the British Museum and reconstructed was it identified as a helmet. It remains in the museum's collection, but as of 2019 is not on display.
Exhibiting hardly any decoration other than a speculative exterior leather covering, the Shorwell helmet was a utilitarian fighting helmet. It was simply and sturdily designed out of eight pieces of riveted iron; its only decorative elements were paired with functional uses. The helmet's plainness belies its significance, for helmets were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, and appear to have been limited to the higher classes. The recovery of only six Anglo-Saxon helmets despite the excavation of thousands of graves suggests that their owners had some status. (Full article...)
Takalik Abaj is representative of the first blossoming of Maya culture that had occurred by about 400 BC. The site includes a Maya royal tomb and examples of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions that are among the earliest from the Maya region. Excavation is continuing at the site; the monumental architecture and persistent tradition of sculpture in a variety of styles suggest the site was of some importance.
Finds from the site indicate contact with the distant metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico and imply that Takalik Abaj was conquered by it or its allies. Takalik Abaj was linked to long-distance Maya trade routes that shifted over time but allowed the city to participate in a trade network that included the Guatemalan highlands and the Pacific coastal plain from Mexico to El Salvador.
Takalik Abaj was a sizeable city with the principal architecture clustered into four main groups spread across nine terraces. While some of these were natural features, others were artificial constructions requiring an enormous investment in labor and materials. The site featured a sophisticated water drainage system and a wealth of sculptured monuments. (Full article...)
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The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight.
The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.
The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies, and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. The remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since the mid-1980s while undergoing restoration. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the Mary Rose Museum, built to display the remains of the ship and its artefacts.
Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war, and she was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. She was substantially rebuilt in 1536 and was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding, and modern experiments. The precise cause of her sinking is subject to conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive evidence. (Full article...)
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Peter Charles van GeersdaeleOBE (3 July 1933 – 20 July 2018) was an English conservator best known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial. Among other work he oversaw the creation of a plaster cast of the ship impression, from which a fibreglass replica of the ship was formed. He later helped mould an impression of the Graveney boat, in addition to other excavation and restoration work.
Van Geersdaele studied at Hammersmith Technical College from 1946 to 1949, after which he engaged in moulding and casting at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 1951. From 1954 to around 1976 he was a conservator at the British Museum, rising to the position of senior conservation officer in the British and Medieval department. Following that he became an assistant chief of archaeology in the conservation division of the National Historic Sites of Canada for Parks Canada, and then the deputy head of the conservation department at the National Maritime Museum in London. He retired in 1993, and during that year's Birthday Honours was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, in recognition of his services to museums. (Full article...)
Archaeologists have established that long barrows were built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Representing an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Chestnuts Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional style of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway. The long barrows built in this area are now known as the Medway Megaliths. Chestnuts Long Barrow lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Coldrum Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as the destroyed Smythe's Megalith and possible survivals as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are on the eastern side of the Medway.
The long barrow was built on land previously inhabited in the Mesolithic period. It consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus, estimated to have been 15 metres (50 feet) in length, with a chamber built from sarsenmegaliths on its eastern end. Both inhumed and cremated human remains were placed within this chamber during the Neolithic period, representing at least nine or ten individuals. These remains were found alongside pottery sherds, stone arrow heads, and a clay pendant. In the 4th centuryAD, a Romano-British hut was erected next to the long barrow. In the 12th or 13th century, the chamber was dug into and heavily damaged, either by treasure hunters or iconoclastic Christians. The mound gradually eroded and was completely gone by the twentieth century, leaving only the ruined stone chamber. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 18th and 19th centuries, while archaeological excavation took place in 1957, followed by limited reconstruction. The site is on privately owned land. (Full article...)
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The Clonmacnoise Crozier is a late-11th-century Insular crozier that would have been used as a ceremonial staff for bishops and mitred abbots. Its origins and medieval provenance are unknown. It was likely discovered in the late 18th or early 19th century in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in County Offaly, Ireland. The crozier has two main parts: a long shaft and a curved crook. Its style reflects elements of Viking art, especially the snake-like animals in figure-of-eight patterns running on the sides of the body of the crook, and the ribbon of dog-like animals in openwork (ornamentation with openings or holes) that form the crest at its top. Apart from a shortening to the staff length and the loss of some inserted gems, it is largely intact and is one of the best-preserved surviving pieces of Insular metalwork.
The crozier may have been associated with Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise (died c. 549 CE), and was perhaps commissioned by Tigernach Ua Braín (died 1088), Abbot of Clonmacnoise, but little is known of its origin or rediscovery. It was built in two phases: the original 11th-century structure received an addition sometime around the early 15th century. The staff is made from a wooden core wrapped in copper-alloy (bronze) tubes, fixed in place by binding strips, and three barrel-shaped knops (protruding decorative metal fittings). The hook was concurrently but separately constructed before it was placed on top of the staff. The crozier's decorative attachments include the crest and terminal (or "drop") on the crook, and the knops and ferrule on the staff; these components are made from silver, niello, glass and enamel. The hook is further embellished with round blue glass studs and white and red millefiori (glassware) insets.
As a representative of the Bavarocracy – the dominance by northern Europeans, especially Bavarians, of Greek government and institutions under the Bavarian King Otto of Greece – Ross attracted the enmity of the native Greek archaeological establishment. He was forced to resign as Ephor General over his delivery of the Athenian "Naval Records", a series of inscriptions first unearthed in 1834, to the German August Böckh for publication. He was subsequently appointed as the first professor of archaeology at the University of Athens, but lost his post as a result of the 3 September 1843 Revolution, which removed most non-Greeks from public service in the country. He spent his final years as a professor in Halle, where he argued unsuccessfully against the reconstruction of the Indo-European language family, believing the Latin language to be a direct descendant of Ancient Greek.
Ross has been called "one of the most important figures in the cultural revival of Greece." He is credited with creating the foundations for the science of archaeology in independent Greece, and for establishing a systematic approach to excavation and conservation in the earliest days of the country's formal archaeological practice. His publications, particularly in epigraphy, were widely used by contemporary scholars. At Athens, he educated the first generation of natively trained Greek archaeologists, including Panagiotis Efstratiadis, one of the foremost Greek epigraphers of the 19th century and a successor of Ross as Ephor General. (Full article...)
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The Pioneer Helmet (also known as the Wollaston Helmet or Northamptonshire Helmet) is an Anglo-Saxonboar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior.
The sparsely decorated nature of the helmet, a utilitarian iron fighting piece, belies its rarity. It is one of just six Anglo-Saxon helmets yet discovered, joined by finds from Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009); its basic form is nearly identical to that of the richer Coppergate helmet found in York. Like these, the Pioneer Helmet is an example of the "crested helmets" that flourished in England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries.
The distinctive feature of the helmet is the boar mounted atop its crest. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Pioneer Helmet is one of three—together with the Benty Grange helmet and the detached Guilden Morden boar—known to have survived. These boar crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, speaks of a funeral pyre "heaped with boar-shaped helmets forged in gold," forging a link between the warrior hero of legend and the Pioneer Helmet of reality.
Panagiotis Kavvadias or Cawadias (Greek: Παναγιώτης Καββαδίας; 14 May [O.S. 2 May] 1850 – 20 July 1928) was a Greek archaeologist. He was responsible for the excavation of ancient sites in Greece, including Epidaurus in Argolis and the Acropolis of Athens, as well as archaeological discoveries on his native island of Kephallonia. As Ephor General (the head of the Greek Archaeological Service) from 1885 until 1909, Kavvadias oversaw the expansion of the Archaeological Service and the introduction of Law 2646 of 1899, which increased the state's powers to address the illegal excavation and smuggling of antiquities.
Kavvadias's work had a particular impact on the Acropolis of Athens, and has been credited with completing its "transformation[...] from castle to monument". Between 1885 and 1890, he removed almost all of the Acropolis's remaining medieval and modern structures, uncovering many ancient monuments in the process. He also played a role in the extensive reconstruction of the site by the architect and engineer Nikolaos Balanos. Though praised initially, the work caused considerable damage to several monuments and was almost completely deconstructed and rebuilt during the later 20th and early 21st centuries. Kavvadias oversaw the opening of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, organised its first collections, and wrote some of its first catalogues.
As an administrator, Kavvadias was regarded as energetic, centralising and autocratic. His career saw significant modernisation in the practice of archaeology in Greece, and he reformed and professionalised the Archaeological Service. His patronage of Athens's foreign archaeological schools was credited with promoting the development of Greek archaeology, but was also criticised by native Greek archaeologists. He created further discontent among the Archaeological Society of Athens by reducing its role in favour of the governmental Archaeological Service. After the Goudi coup of 1909, dissatisfaction in the Greek press and among his subordinates in the Archaeological Service led to his removal from office, from the Archaeological Society and from his professorship at the University of Athens, though he was able to return to public and academic life from 1912, and remained active in Greek archaeology until his death in 1928. (Full article...)
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The Benty Grange hanging bowl is a fragmentary Anglo-Saxonartifact from the seventh century AD. All that remains are parts of two escutcheons: bronze frames that are usually circular and elaborately decorated, and that sit along the outside of the rim or at the interior base of a hanging bowl. A third one disintegrated soon after excavation, and it no longer survives. The escutcheons were found in 1848 by the antiquaryThomas Bateman, while excavating a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in western Derbyshire. They were presumably buried as part of an entire hanging bowl. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, including the hanging bowl and the boar-crestedBenty Grange helmet.
The surviving escutcheons are made of enameled bronze and are 40 mm (1.6 in) in diameter. They show three dolphin-like creatures arranged in a circle, each biting the tail of the one ahead of it. Their bodies and the background are made of enamel, likely all yellow; the creatures' outlines and eyes are tinned or silvered, as are the borders of the escutcheons. Although three escutcheons from a hanging bowl at Faversham also contain dolphin-like creatures, the Benty Grange design is most closely paralleled by Insular manuscripts, particularly figures in the Durham Gospel Fragment and the Book of Durrow. Surviving illustrations of the third escutcheon show that it was of a different size and style, exhibiting a scroll-like pattern. It parallels the basal disc of a hanging bowl from Winchester and may have been originally placed at the bottom of the Benty Grange bowl.
The Olmec colossal heads are stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders. They range in height from 1.17 to 3.4 metres (3.8 to 11.2 ft). The heads date from at least 900 BC and are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz. The backs of the monuments often are flat. The boulders were brought from the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz. Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported over large distances (over 150 kilometres (93 mi)), requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers. Each of the known examples has a distinctive headdress. The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method and logistics used to transport the stone to these sites remain unclear. They all display distinctive headgear and one theory is that these were worn as protective helmets, maybe worn for war or to take part in a ceremonial Mesoamerican ballgame. The discovery of the first colossal head at Tres Zapotes in 1862 by José María Melgar y Serrano was not well documented nor reported outside of Mexico. The excavation of the same colossal head by Matthew Stirling in 1938 spurred the first archaeological investigations of Olmec culture. Seventeen confirmed examples are known from four sites within the Olmec heartland on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Most colossal heads were sculpted from spherical boulders but two from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán were re-carved from massive stone thrones. An additional monument, at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala, is a throne that may have been carved from a colossal head. This is the only known example from outside the Olmec heartland.
Dating the monuments remains difficult because of the movement of many from their original contexts prior to archaeological investigation. Most have been dated to the Early Preclassic period (1500–1000 BC) with some to the Middle Preclassic (1000–400 BC) period. The smallest weigh 6 tons, while the largest is variously estimated to weigh 40 to 50 tons, although it was abandoned and left uncompleted close to the source of its stone. (Full article...)
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Combe Hill is a causewayed enclosure, near Eastbourne in East Sussex, on the northern edge of the South Downs. It consists of an inner circuit of ditches and banks, incomplete where it meets a steep slope on its north side, and the remains of an outer circuit. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until at least 3500 BC; they are characterized by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is not known; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites. The historian Hadrian Allcroft included the site in his 1908 book Earthwork of England, and in 1930 E. Cecil Curwen listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a paper which attempted to provide the first list of all the causewayed enclosures in England.
The enclosure has been excavated twice: in 1949, by Reginald Musson, and in 1962, by Veronica Seton-Williams, who used it as a training opportunity for volunteers. Charcoal fragments from Musson's dig were later dated to between 3500 and 3300 BC. Musson also found a large quantity of Ebbsfleet ware pottery in one of the ditches. Seton-Williams found three polished stone axes deposited in another ditch, perhaps not long after it had been dug. The site is only 800 m (870 yd) from Butts Brow, another Neolithic enclosure, and the two locations are visible from each other; both sites may have seen Neolithic activity at the same time. (Full article...)
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Herbert James MaryonOBEFSAFIIC (9 March 1874 – 14 July 1965) was an English sculptor, conservator, goldsmith, archaeologist and authority on ancient metalwork. Maryon practiced and taught sculpture until retiring in 1939, then worked as a conservator with the British Museum from 1944 to 1961. He is best known for his work on the Sutton Hooship-burial, which led to his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.
By the time of his mid-twenties Maryon attended three art schools, apprenticed in silversmithing with C. R. Ashbee, and worked in Henry Wilson's workshop. From 1900 to 1904 he served as the director of the Keswick School of Industrial Art, where he designed numerous Arts and Crafts works. After moving to the University of Reading and then Durham University, he taught sculpture, metalwork, modelling, casting, and anatomy until 1939. He also designed the University of Reading War Memorial, among other commissions. Maryon published two books while teaching, including Metalwork and Enamelling, and many articles. He frequently led archaeological digs, and in 1935 discovered one of the oldest gold ornaments known in Britain while excavating the Kirkhaugh cairns.
In 1944 Maryon was brought out of retirement to work in the Sutton Hoo finds. His responsibilities included restoring the shield, the drinking horns, and the iconic Sutton Hoo helmet, which proved academically and culturally influential. Maryon's work, much of which was revised in the 1970s, created credible renderings upon which subsequent research relied; likewise, one of his papers coined the term pattern welding to describe a method employed on the Sutton Hoo sword to decorate and strengthen iron and steel. The initial work ended in 1950, and Maryon turned to other matters. He proposed a widely publicised theory in 1953 on the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes, influencing Salvador Dalí and others, and restored the Roman Emesa helmet in 1955. He left the museum in 1961, a year after his official retirement, and began an around-the-world trip lecturing and researching Chinese magic mirrors. (Full article...)
The priory was established as an Augustinian foundation in the 12th century, and was raised to the status of an abbey in 1391. The abbey was closed in 1536, as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. Nine years later the surviving structures, together with the manor of Norton, were purchased by Sir Richard Brooke, who built a Tudor house on the site, incorporating part of the abbey. This was replaced in the 18th century by a Georgian house. The Brooke family left the house in 1921, and it was partially demolished in 1928. In 1966 the site was given in trust for the use of the general public.
Excavation of the site began in 1971, and became the largest to be carried out by modern methods on any European monastic site. It revealed the foundations and lower parts of the walls of the monastery buildings and the abbey church. Important finds included: a Norman doorway; a finely carved arcade; a floor of mosaic tiles, the largest floor area of this type to be found in any modern excavation; the remains of the kiln where the tiles were fired; a bell casting pit used for casting the bell; and a large medieval statue of Saint Christopher.
The priory was opened to the public as a visitor attraction in the 1970s. The 42-acre site, run by an independent charitable trust, includes a museum, the excavated ruins, and the surrounding garden and woodland. In 1984 the separate walled garden was redesigned and opened to the public. Norton Priory offers a programme of events, exhibitions, educational courses, and outreach projects. In August 2016, a larger and much extended museum opened. (Full article...)
Probably constructed in the 4th millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, it was discovered in 1822, at which point it was dismantled. Built out of earth and at least five local sarsenmegaliths, the long barrow consisted of a roughly rectangular earthen tumulus with a stone chamber in its eastern end. Human remains were deposited into this chamber.
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building widespread across Neolithic Europe, Smythe's Megalith belonged to a localised regional variant produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths.
The site may have been ransacked during the Middle Ages, as other Medway Megaliths were. By the early 19th century it was buried beneath soil, largely due to millennia of hillwash coming down from the adjacent Blue Bell Hill. In 1822, it was discovered by farm labourers ploughing the land; the local antiquarians Clement Smythe and Thomas Charles were called in to examine it. Shortly after, the labourers pulled away the stones and dispersed most of the human remains, destroying the monument. Smythe and Charles produced, but did not publish, reports on their findings, and these have been discussed by archaeologists since the mid-20th century. (Full article...)
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The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרהḤaqra(h)), with the meaning of "stronghold" (see under "Etymology"), was a place in Jerusalem thought to have had a fortified compound built by Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid Empire, following his sack of the city in 168 BCE. The name Acra was also used at a later time for a city quarter probably associated with the by-then destroyed fortress, known in his time to Josephus (1st century CE) as both Acra and "the lower city". The fortress played a significant role in the events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt, which resulted in the formation of the Hasmonean Kingdom. The "upper city" was captured by Judas Maccabeus, with the Seleucid garrison taking refuge in the "Acra" below, and the task of destroying this last enemy stronghold inside Jerusalem fell to Simon Maccabeus surnamed Thassi. Our knowledge about the Acra is based almost exclusively on the writings of Josephus, which are of a later date, and on the First and Second Books of Maccabees, which were written not long after the described events.
The exact location of Acra within Jerusalem, and even the meaning of the term—fortress, fortified compound inside the city, or compound with an associated fortress—is critical to understanding Hellenistic Jerusalem, but it remains a matter of ongoing discussion. The fact that Josephus has used the name interchangeably with 'the lower city' certainly doesn't help. Historians and archaeologists have proposed various sites around Jerusalem, relying initially mainly on conclusions drawn from literary evidence. This approach began to change in the light of excavations which commenced in the late 1960s. New discoveries have prompted reassessments of the ancient literary sources, Jerusalem's geography, and previously discovered artifacts. The more recent theories combine archaeological and textual evidence and favour locations near the Temple Mount and south of it, but there are alternative theories as well (see "Location").
The ancient Greek term acra was used to describe other fortified structures during the Hellenistic period. The Acra is often called the Seleucid Acra to distinguish it from references to the Ptolemaic Baris as an acra and from the later city quarter of Jerusalem which inherited the name Acra. (Full article...)
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The Emesa helmet (also known as the Homs helmet) is a Roman cavalry helmet from the early first century AD. It consists of an iron head piece and face mask, the latter of which is covered in a sheet of silver and presents the individualised portrait of a face, likely its owner. Decorations, some of which are gilded, adorn the head piece. Confiscated by Syrian police soon after looters discovered it amidst a complex of tombs in the modern-day city of Homs in 1936, eventually the helmet was restored thoroughly at the British Museum, and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. It has been exhibited internationally, although as of 2017, due to the Syrian civil war, the more valuable items owned by the National Museum are hidden in underground storage.
Ornately designed yet highly functional, the helmet was probably intended for both parades and battle. Its delicate covering is too fragile to have been put to use during cavalry tournaments, but the thick iron core would have defended against blows and arrows. Narrow slits for the eyes, with three small holes underneath to allow downward sight, sacrificed vision for protection; roughly cut notches below each eye suggest a hastily made modification of necessity.
The helmet was found in a tomb near a monument to a former ruler of Emesa and, considering the lavishness of the silver and gold design, likely belonged to a member of the elite. As it is modelled after those helmets used in Roman tournaments, even if unlikely to have ever been worn in one, it may have been given by a Roman official to a Syrian general or, more likely, manufactured in Syria after the Roman style. The acanthusscroll ornamentation seen on the neck guard recalls that used on Syrian temples, suggesting that the helmet may have been made in the luxury workshops of Antioch. (Full article...)
Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL.
In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Agehill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects.
Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...)
The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the site consists of a Neolithiccausewayed enclosure and bank barrow. In about 1800 BC, during the Bronze Age, the site was used for growing crops before being abandoned. Maiden Castle itself was built in about 600 BC; the early phase was a simple and unremarkable site, similar to many other hill forts in Britain and covering 6.4 ha (16 acres).
Around 450 BC it was greatly expanded and the enclosed area nearly tripled in size to 19 ha (47 acres), making it the largest hill fort in Britain and, by some definitions, the largest in Europe. At the same time, Maiden Castle's defences were made more complex with the addition of further ramparts and ditches. Around 100 BC, habitation at the hill fort went into decline and became concentrated at the eastern end of the site. It was occupied until at least the Roman period, by which time it was in the territory of the Durotriges, a Celtic tribe.
After the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD, Maiden Castle appears to have been abandoned, although the Romans may have had a military presence on the site. In the late 4th century AD, a temple and ancillary buildings were constructed. In the 6th century AD the hill top was entirely abandoned and was used only for agriculture during the medieval period. Maiden Castle has provided inspiration for composer John Ireland and authors Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys. The study of hill forts was popularised in the 19th century by archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers. In the 1930s, archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler and Tessa Verney Wheeler undertook the first archaeological excavations at Maiden Castle, raising its profile among the public. Further excavations were carried out under Niall Sharples, which added to an understanding of the site and repaired damage caused in part by the large number of visitors. Today the site is protected as a Scheduled Monument and is maintained by English Heritage. (Full article...)
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Netley Abbey is a ruined late medievalmonastery in the village of Netley near Southampton in Hampshire, England. The abbey was founded in 1239 as a house for monks of the austere Cistercian order. Despite royal patronage, Netley was never rich, produced no influential scholars nor churchmen, and its nearly 300-year history was quiet. The monks were best known to their neighbours for the generous hospitality they offered to travellers on land and sea.
In 1536, Netley Abbey was seized by Henry VIII of England during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the buildings granted to William Paulet, a wealthy Tudor politician, who converted them into a mansion. The abbey was used as a country house until the beginning of the eighteenth century, after which it was abandoned and partially demolished for building materials. Subsequently the ruins became a tourist attraction, and provided inspiration to poets and artists of the Romantic movement. In the early twentieth century the site was given to the nation, and it is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, cared for by English Heritage. The extensive remains consist of the church, cloister buildings, abbot's house, and fragments of the post-Dissolution mansion. Netley Abbey is one of the best preserved medieval Cistercian monasteries in southern England. (Full article...)
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The Hoxne Hoard (/ˈhɒksən/HOK-sən) is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £4.5 million in 2023).
The hoard was buried in an oak box or small chest filled with items in precious metal, sorted mostly by type, with some in smaller wooden boxes and others in bags or wrapped in fabric. Remnants of the chest and fittings, such as hinges and locks, were recovered in the excavation. The coins of the hoard date it after AD 407, which coincides with the end of Britain as a Roman province. The owners and reasons for burial of the hoard are unknown, but it was carefully packed and the contents appear consistent with what a single very wealthy family might have owned. It is likely that the hoard represents only a part of the wealth of its owner, given the lack of large silver serving vessels and of some of the most common types of jewellery.
The Hoxne Hoard contains several rare and important objects, such as a gold body-chain and silver-gilt pepper-pots (piperatoria), including the Empress pepper pot. The hoard is also of particular archaeological significance because it was excavated by professional archaeologists with the items largely undisturbed and intact. The find helped to improve the relationship between metal detectorists and archaeologists, and influenced a change in English law regarding finds of treasure. (Full article...)
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Ursula Martius FranklinCCOOntFRSC (16 September 1921 – 22 July 2016) was a Canadian metallurgist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto campus, have been named in her honor.
For Franklin, technology was much more than machines, gadgets or electronic transmitters. It was a comprehensive system that includes methods, procedures, organization, "and most of all, a mindset". She distinguished between holistic technologies used by craft workers or artisans and prescriptive ones associated with a division of labour in large-scale production. Holistic technologies allow artisans to control their own work from start to finish. Prescriptive technologies organize work as a sequence of steps requiring supervision by bosses or managers. Franklin argued that the dominance of prescriptive technologies in modern society discourages critical thinking and promotes "a culture of compliance".
For some, Franklin belongs in the intellectual tradition of Harold Innis and Jacques Ellul who warn about technology's tendency to suppress freedom and endanger civilization. Franklin herself acknowledged her debt to Ellul as well as to several other thinkers including Lewis Mumford, C. B. Macpherson, E. F. Schumacher, and Vandana Shiva. She recognized that this list had few women. In addition to the philosophy of technology, she believed that science was "severely impoverished because women are discouraged from taking part in the exploration of knowledge". (Full article...)
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The sarcophagus ofEshmunazar II is a 6th-century BC sarcophagus unearthed in 1855 in the grounds of an ancient necropolis southeast of the city of Sidon, in modern-day Lebanon, that contained the body of Eshmunazar II (Phoenician: 𐤀𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤏𐤆𐤓ʾšmnʿzr, r. c. 539 – c. 525 BC), PhoenicianKing of Sidon. One of only three Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi found outside Egypt, with the other two belonging to Eshmunazar's father King Tabnit and to a woman, possibly Eshmunazar's mother Queen Amoashtart, it was likely carved in Egypt from local amphibolite, and captured as booty by the Sidonians during their participation in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC. The sarcophagus has two sets of Phoenician inscriptions, one on its lid and a partial copy of it on the sarcophagus trough, around the curvature of the head. The lid inscription was of great significance upon its discovery as it was the first Phoenician language inscription to be discovered in Phoenicia proper and the most detailed Phoenician text ever found anywhere up to that point, and is today the second longest extant Phoenician inscription, after the Karatepe bilingual.
The sarcophagus was discovered by Alphonse Durighello, a diplomatic agent in Sidon engaged by Aimé Péretié, the chancellor of the French consulate in Beirut. The sarcophagus was sold to Honoré de Luynes, a wealthy French nobleman and scholar, and was subsequently removed to the Louvre after the resolution of a legal dispute over its ownership.
More than a dozen scholars across Europe and the United States rushed to translate the sarcophagus inscriptions after its discovery, many noting the similarities between the Phoenician language and Hebrew. The translation allowed scholars to identify the king buried inside, his lineage, and his construction feats. The inscriptions warn against disturbing Eshmunazar II's place of repose; it also recounts that the "Lord of Kings", the Achaemenid king, granted Eshmunazar II the territories of Dor, Joppa, and Dagon in recognition for his services.
The discovery led to great enthusiasm for archaeological research in the region and was the primary reason for Renan's 1860–1861 Mission de Phénicie, the first major archaeological mission to Lebanon and Syria. Today, it remains one of the highlights of the Louvre's Phoenician collection. (Full article...)
