Rosal was a township in Strathnaver, Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands that was deserted after its residents were evicted during the Highland Clearances of the early 19th Century. ( Full article...)

Eilat Mazar ( Hebrew: אילת מזר; 10 September 1956 – 25 May 2021) was an Israeli archaeologist. She specialized in Jerusalem and Phoenician archaeology. She was also a key person in Biblical archaeology noted for her discovery of the Large Stone Structure, which she surmised to be the palace of King David. ( Full article...)

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 UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed for being "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire". ( Full article...)

Updown early medieval cemetery in Eastry, Kent, United Kingdom, was used as a burial place in the 7th century. Eastry was an important administrative centre in the Kingdom of Kent. Updown was one of four cemeteries in and around Eastry. The cemetery measures roughly 150 by 80 m (490 by 260 ft) and may have encompassed around 300 graves.

The site was rediscovered in 1973 in the grounds of Updown House, from which the cemetery took its name. Part of it was protected as a scheduled monument two years later. Excavations followed in 1976 by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and 1989 by Brian Philp, both times ahead of development plans in the area: first a pipeline and then a bypass. A total of 78 graves were investigated.

Ancient DNA from five of the burials was tested in the 2020s. This led to the discovery that one of the individuals in the cemetery, dubbed Updown Girl, had mixed European and West African ancestry. ( Full article...)

The Theatre of Nero ( Latin: Theatrum Neronis) was the private theatre erected in Rome by Nero, the Roman emperor between AD 53 and AD 68.

It was known only from literary sources until its remains were discovered in 2020. The remains were excavated through 2023. ( Full article...)

The North Acropolis of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in Guatemala is an architectural complex that served as a royal necropolis and was a centre for funerary activity for over 1300 years. The acropolis is located near the centre of the city and is one of the most studied of Maya architectural complexes. Excavations were carried out from 1957 to 1969 by the University of Pennsylvania, directed by Edwin M. Shook and William Coe.

The first traces of human activity at the site date to approximately 800 BCE, with the first structures being built about 350 BCE. Around 250 CE the complex underwent a major redevelopment with the construction of a massive basal platform that supported a cluster of temples; this was followed around 450 CE by the addition of a row of four pyramids on a terrace to the south of the main platform.

A number of royal tombs have been excavated that have been identified with named kings, including the tombs of Yax Nuun Ayiin I (ruled 379 CE – c. 404), Siyaj Chan K'awiil II (ruled 411–456), Wak Chan K'awiil (ruled 537–562) and " Animal Skull" (ruled c. 593–638). An early tomb in the North Acropolis has been tentatively identified as that of the dynastic founder Yax Ehb' Xook (ruled c. 90).

A large number of stone monuments were placed in the North Acropolis. By the 9th century CE these included 43 stelae and 30 altars; 18 of these monuments were sculpted with hieroglyphic texts and royal portraits. A number of these monuments show the influence of the great city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico. ( Full article...)

Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur ( Indonesian: Candi Borobudur, Javanese: ꦕꦤ꧀ꦝꦶꦧꦫꦧꦸꦝꦸꦂ, romanized: Candhi Barabudhur) is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, near the city of Magelang and the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indonesia.

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 Javanese Buddhist 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.

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world, and ranks with Bagan in Myanmar and Angkor Wat in Cambodia as one of the great archeological sites of Southeast Asia. Borobudur remains popular for pilgrimage, with Buddhists in Indonesia celebrating Vesak Day at the monument. Among Indonesia's tourist attractions, Borobudur is the most-visited monument. ( Full article...)

Porlock Stone Circle is a stone circle located on Exmoor, near the village of Porlock in the south-western English 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...)

King of Sumer and Akkad ( Sumerian: 𒈗𒆠𒂗𒄀𒆠𒌵 lugal-ki-en-gi-ki-uri, Akkadian: šar māt Šumeri u Akkadi) was a royal title in Ancient Mesopotamia combining the titles of " King of Akkad", the ruling title held by the monarchs of the Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC) with the title of " King of Sumer". The title simultaneously laid a claim on the legacy and glory of the ancient empire that had been founded by Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334–2279 BC) and expressed a claim to rule the entirety of lower Mesopotamia (composed of the regions of Sumer in the south and Akkad in the north). Despite both of the titles "King of Sumer" and "King of Akkad" having been used by the Akkadian kings, the title was not introduced in its combined form until the reign of the Neo-Sumerian king Ur-Nammu ( c. 2112–2095 BC), who created it in an effort to unify the southern and northern parts of lower Mesopotamia under his rule. The older Akkadian kings themselves might have been against linking Sumer and Akkad in such a way.

In later centuries of Mesopotamian history, when the major kingdoms were Assyria and Babylon, the title was mostly used by monarchs of Babylon since they ruled lower Mesopotamia. For Assyrian kings, the title became a formal assertion of authority over the city of Babylon and its surroundings; only those Assyrian rulers who actually controlled Babylon used the title and when Assyria permanently lost control of Babylon to the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the rulers of that empire began using it instead. The final king to claim to be the King of Sumer and Akkad was Cyrus the Great (r. c. 559–530 BC) of the Achaemenid Empire, who assumed several traditional Mesopotamian titles after his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. ( Full article...)

Malcolm Todd FSA (27 November 1939 – 6 June 2013) was an English archaeologist. Born in Durham, England, the son of a miner, Todd was educated in classics and classical archaeology at St David's College, Lampeter and Brasenose College, Oxford. He subsequently served as a reader and professor at the University of Nottingham and the University of Exeter respectively. During this time, Todd conducted notable excavations at sites of Roman Britain. He was later principal at Trevelyan College, Durham. Todd retired from Durham in 2000, and subsequently dedicated himself to research and writing. He was the author and editor of several works on the archaeology of Roman Britain and the Germanic peoples in the Migration Period. ( Full article...)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates World Heritage Sites of outstanding universal value to cultural or natural heritage which have been nominated by countries which are signatories to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, established in 1972. Cultural heritage consists of monuments (such as architectural works, monumental sculptures, or inscriptions), groups of buildings, and sites (including archaeological sites). Natural features (consisting of physical and biological formations), geological and physiographical formations (including habitats of threatened species of animals and plants), and natural sites which are important from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty, are defined as natural heritage. Serbia succeeded the convention on 11 September 2001, following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

, there are five sites in Serbia on the list and eleven on the tentative list. The first site in Serbia to be added to the list was Stari Ras and Sopoćani, inscribed at the 3rd UNESCO session in 1979. Further sites were added to the list in 1986, 2004, 2007, and 2017. All are listed as cultural sites, as determined by the organization's selection criteria. Four out of five sites date to the medieval period while the fifth, the Gamzigrad complex, dates to late antiquity. The Medieval Monuments in Kosovo site, first added to the list in 2004 and expanded two years later, has been on UNESCO's list of endangered sites since 2006 due to difficulties in its management and conservation stemming from the region's political instability. The Stećci Medieval Tombstones Graveyards site is a transnational entry, shared with three neighboring countries. ( Full article...)

Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson FSA (born Hilda Roderick Ellis; 1 October 1914 – 12 January 2006) was an English folklorist. She was a scholar at the University of Cambridge and The Folklore Society, and specialized in the study of Celtic and Germanic religion and folklore.

A graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, Davidson was a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, throughout much of her career. She specialized in the interdisciplinary study of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse religion and folklore, on which she was the author of numerous influential works. Davidson was a prominent member of The Folklore Society, and played an active role in the growth of folklore studies as a scientific discipline. Throughout her career, Davidson tutored a significant number of aspiring scholars in her fields of study, and was particularly interested in encouraging gifted women to pursue scholarly careers. ( Full article...)

The Luttra Woman is a skeletonised bog body from the Early Neolithic period ( radiocarbon-dated 3928–3651 BC) that was discovered near Luttra, Sweden, on 20 May 1943. The skull had been preserved well, but some bones of the skeleton, in particular many of those between the skull and the pelvis, were missing. The skeleton was assessed as that of a young female. She was deemed short for a Neolithic woman of the region, with an estimated height of 145 cm (4 ft 9 in). Because her stomach contents showed that raspberries had been her last meal and she was estimated to have been in her early to mid-twenties at her death, she was nicknamed Hallonflickan (Swedish: [ˈhalɔnflɪkːˌan] ^ⓘ; lit. 'Raspberry Girl'). , she was the earliest-known Neolithic person from Western Sweden.

No trace of injuries or fatal diseases was found on her remains. She appeared to have been tied up and placed in shallow water at her death or soon afterwards. Axel Bagge, an archaeologist who assisted at the initial investigation of her remains, suspected that she had been deliberately drowned as either a human sacrifice or the victim of a witch execution. Her skeleton has been part of a permanent exhibition titled Forntid på Falbygden (Prehistory in Falbygden) at the Falbygden Museum [ sv] in Falköping, Sweden, beginning in 1994. The exhibition was later supplemented by a  bust of her reconstructed using forensic methods. ( Full article...)

Khentkaus III, often called Khentakawess III by news media, was an ancient Egyptian queen who lived during the Fifth Dynasty, around 2450 BC.

Khentkaus was very likely a daughter of king Neferirkare Kakai and queen Khentkaus II, while her husband was equally likely pharaoh Neferefre, and her son the future pharaoh Menkauhor Kaiu. ( Full article...)

Warwick Castle is a medieval castle developed from a wooden fort, originally built by William the Conqueror during 1068. Warwick is the county town of Warwickshire, England, situated on a meander of the River Avon. The original wooden motte-and-bailey castle was rebuilt in stone during the 12th century. During the Hundred Years War, the facade opposite the town was refortified, resulting in one of the most recognisable examples of 14th-century military architecture. It was used as a stronghold until the early 17th century, when it was granted to Sir Fulke Greville by James I in 1604. Greville converted it to a country house, and it was owned by the Greville family (who became Earls of Warwick in 1759) until 1978, when it was bought by the Tussauds Group.

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...)

George Emmanuel Mylonas ( Greek: Γεώργιος Μυλωνάς, romanized: Georgios Mylonas; December 21 [ O.S. December 9] 1898, – April 15, 1988) was a Greek archaeologist of ancient Greece and Aegean prehistory. He is known for his numerous excavations, particularly at Olynthus, Eleusis and at Mycenae, where he made the first archaeological study and publication of Grave Circle B, the earliest known monumentalized burials at the site.

Mylonas was born in Smyrna, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and received an elite education. He enrolled in 1919 at the University of Athens to study classics, and joined the Greek Army, where he fought in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922. He witnessed the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922, and was subsequently taken prisoner; he was recaptured after a brief escape, but eventually secured money from American contacts to bribe his way to release in 1923.

In 1924, Mylonas began working for the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, with which he retained a lifelong association. He became its first bursar the following year, and took part in excavations at Corinth, Nemea and Olynthus under its auspices. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Athens in 1927, he moved to Johns Hopkins University to study under David Moore Robinson, his excavation director from Olynthus. Mylonas received a second Ph.D. the following year, then held a teaching post at the University of Chicago until 1930. After a brief return to Greece, during which he taught at a gymnasium and made his first excavations at Eleusis, he was hired by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1931, before moving to Washington University in St. Louis in 1933. He remained there for most of his career, becoming a full professor in 1938, serving as department chair between 1939 and 1964, and being promoted to distinguished professor in 1965.

Mylonas excavated and published widely, working at sites including Pylos, Artemision, Mekyberna, Polystylos and Aspropotamos. His approach to fundraising for his projects, involving intense engagement with the wealthier citizens of St. Louis and cultivation of the local press, has been characterized as both pioneering and highly successful. Along with John Papadimitriou [ el], he was given responsibility for the excavation of Mycenae's Grave Circle B in the early 1950s, and from 1957 until 1985 excavated on the citadel of the site. His excavations helped to establish the chronological relationships between Mycenae's structures, which had been excavated piecemeal over the preceding century, and to determine the function of the site's Cult Center, to which he gave its name. He returned to Greece in 1969, where he was prominent in the Archaeological Society of Athens and in efforts to conserve the monuments of the Acropolis of Athens.

Mylonas received numerous honours and awards, including the Order of George I, the Royal Order of the Phoenix and the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America, of which he was the first foreign-born president. His work at Mycenae has been credited with bringing coherence to the previously scattered and sporadically-published record of excavation at the site. At the same time, his practice of arguing for correspondence between the archaeological record and ancient mythical traditions, particularly concerning the Trojan War and the Eleusinian Mysteries, was controversial in his day and has generally been discredited since. ( Full article...)

Chestnuts Long Barrow, also known as Stony Warren or Long Warren, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Addington in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fifth millennium BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a ruined state.

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 sarsen megaliths 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 century AD, 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...)

The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to: ( Full article...)

YBC 7289 is a Babylonian clay tablet notable for containing an accurate sexagesimal approximation to the square root of 2, the length of the diagonal of a unit square. This number is given to the equivalent of six decimal digits, "the greatest known computational accuracy ... in the ancient world". The tablet is believed to be the work of a student in southern Mesopotamia from some time between 1800 and 1600 BC. ( Full article...)

Motul de San José is an ancient Maya site (known anciently as Ik'a', 'Windy Water') located just north of Lake Petén Itzá in the Petén Basin region of the southern Maya lowlands. It is a few kilometres from the modern village of San José, in Guatemala's northern department of Petén. A medium-sized civic-ceremonial centre, it was an important political and economic centre during the Late Classic period (AD 650–950).

The site was first settled between 600 and 300 BC, in the latter portion of the Middle Preclassic period, when it most likely was a fairly small site. This Maya city then had a long and continuous occupational history until the Early Postclassic, up to around AD 1250, with peaks in the Late Preclassic and Late Classic periods. Motul de San José had begun to refer to Tikal as its overlord in the late 4th century AD; by the 7th century it had switched its allegiance to Calakmul, Tikal's great rival, before returning its allegiance to Tikal in the early 8th century. In the late 8th century Motul de San José appears to have been conquered by Dos Pilas, capital of the Petexbatún kingdom.

Most natural resources were easily available in the immediate vicinity of the city. The nearby port at La Trinidad de Nosotros was an important hub for the import of exotic goods and export of local products such as chert and ceramics. Other goods not immediately available were likely to have been provided by the city's satellite sites. The local area provided a number of different soils suitable for varied agricultural use, and the port at La Trinidad de Nosotros provided the city with freshwater products such as turtles, crocodiles and freshwater molluscs. Deer were hunted locally and provided an important source of protein for the upper class, while freshwater snails were the main source of protein for commoners.

Motul de San José has been identified as the source of Ik-style polychrome ceramics bearing painted scenes of the Late Classic Maya aristocracy involved in a variety of courtly activities. The Ik-style was characterised by hieroglyphs painted in a pink or pale red colour, scenes with dancers wearing masks, and the realistic representation of subjects as they appeared in life. The city was the capital of a polity that included various satellite sites of varying importance, including a port on the shore of Lake Petén Itzá. ( Full article...)

John Greenfield Hawthorne (6 June 1915 – 8 March 1977) was an English and American archaeologist and academic. He was known for his works on Greek literature, and translations, and in 1963 published, with Cyril Stanley Smith, a translation of the works on metallurgy by Theophilus. ( Full article...)

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE ( née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the " Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. Following the breakdown of her marriage and the death of her mother in 1926 she made international headlines by going missing for eleven days. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons that featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of this profession in her fiction.

According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the top-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and by 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was temporarily closed in 2020 because of COVID-19 lockdowns in London before it reopened in 2021.

In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Many of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than 30 feature films are based on her work. ( Full article...)

The Witcham Gravel helmet is a Roman auxiliary cavalry helmet from the first century AD. Only the decorative copper alloy casing remains; an iron core originally fit under the casing, but has now corroded away. The cap, neck guard, and cheek guards were originally tinned, giving the appearance of a silver helmet encircled by a gold band. The helmet's distinctive feature is the presence of three hollow bosses, out of an original six, that decorate the exterior. No other Roman helmet is known to have such a feature. They may be a decorative embellishment influenced by Etruscan helmets from the sixth century BC, which had similar, lead-filled bosses, that would have deflected blades.

The helmet was discovered during peat digging in the parish of Witcham Gravel, Cambridgeshire, perhaps during the 1870s. It was said to have been found "at a depth of about four feet", although the exact findspot within Witcham Gravel is unknown; at the time, the parish comprised about 389 acres. The helmet was first published in 1877, when, owned by Thomas Maylin Vipan, it was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries of London. When Vipan died in 1891, the British Museum purchased it from his estate. It remains in the museum's collection, and as of 2021 is on view in Room 49. ( Full article...)

The Corleck Head is an Irish three-faced stone idol usually dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD. It is 33 cm (13 in) high and carved from a single block of limestone. Each face has a similarly enigmatic expression, closely set eyes, a broad and flat nose and a simply drawn mouth. Although its origin cannot be known for certain, its dating to the early Iron Age is based on similar iconography from contemporary northern European Celtic artifacts; similar three-faced stone carvings are known from Romano-British and Gallo-Roman culture. Archaeologists believe it represents a Celtic god and was part of a larger shrine associated with either a Celtic head-cult or the Lughnasadh pagan harvest festival.

The sculpture was found c. 1855 in the nearby townland of Drumeague during the excavation of a large passage tomb, dated to c. 2500 BC. The archaeological evidence indicates the head was used for ceremonial purposes at Corleck hill; a significant cult center during the late Iron-Age, that for millennia after was a major site of celebration during the Lughnasadh. As with any stone artifact, its dating and cultural significance are difficult to establish. The three faces may represent an all-knowing, all-seeing god representing the unity of the past, present and future or ancestral mother-figures representing strength and fertility. The head was found with at least one other stone idol; the Corraghy head consisted was a two-headed sculpture with a ram's head at one side and a human head with hair and a beard on the other. Today only the human head survives. The idols are collectively known as the "Corleck Gods". Historians assume that they were hidden during the Early Middle Ages due to their paganism and association with human sacrifice; traditions the early Christian church actively suppressed.

It came to national attention in 1937 after its prehistoric dating was realised by the historian Thomas J. Barron; when found it was a local curiosity placed on top of a farm gatepost. Today it is on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. It is listed as number 11 in the 2011 Irish Times anthology A History of Ireland in 100 Objects. ( Full article...)

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300  BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type site Harappa, 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...)

Prehistoric Orkney refers only to the prehistory of the Orkney archipelago of Scotland that begins with human occupation. (The islands’ history before human occupation is part of the geology of Scotland.) Although some records referring to Orkney survive that were written during the Roman invasions of Scotland, “prehistory” in northern Scotland is defined as lasting until the start of Scotland's Early Historic Period (around AD 600).

There are numerous important prehistoric remains in Orkney, especially from the Neolithic period. Four of these remains today constitute a World Heritage Site. There are diverse reasons for the abundance of the archaeological record. The sandstone bedrock provides easily workable stone materials and the wind-blown sands have helped preserve several sites. The relative lack of industrialisation and the low incidence of ploughing have also helped to preserve these ancient monuments. In addition, local tradition hints at both fear and veneration of these ancient structures (perhaps inherited from the Norse period of occupation), and these attitudes may have helped prevent human interference with their structural integrity.

Prehistory is conventionally divided into a number of shorter periods, but differentiating these various eras of human history is a complex task – their boundaries are uncertain, and the changes between them are gradual. A number of the sites span long periods of time, and, in particular, the distinctions between the Neolithic and the later periods are not clear cut. However, in general, the Paleolithic lasted until the retreat of the ice, the Mesolithic until the adoption of farming and the Neolithic until metalworking commenced The Neolithic period's extraordinary wealth of structures is not matched by the remains from earlier periods, in which the evidence of human occupation is sparse or non-existent - nor is it matched by remains from the later Bronze Age, which provides a relative dearth of evidence. However, the subsequent Iron Age supported a return to monumental building projects, especially brochs.

Formal excavations were first recorded in the late 18th century. Over time, investigators’ understanding of the structures they uncovered progressed—from little more than folklore in the beginning, to modern archaeological science today.

The sites discussed in this article are found on the Orkney Mainland unless otherwise stated. ( Full article...)

The Horncastle boar's head is an early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon ornament depicting a boar that probably was once part of the crest of a helmet. It was discovered in 2002 by a metal detectorist searching in the town of Horncastle, Lincolnshire. It was reported as found treasure and acquired for £15,000 by the Lincoln City and County Museum, where it is on permanent display.

The fragment is 40 mm (1.6 in) long and made of silver. Its elongated head is semi-naturalistic, depicting a crouching quadruped on either side of the skull, divided by a mane along the centre. The boar's eyes are formed from garnet, and its eyebrows, skull, mouth, tusks, and snout are gilded. Its head is hollow; in the space underneath, which was filled with soil and plant matter when found, are three rivets that would have attached it to a larger object, probably a helmet. The fragment would probably have formed the crest terminal of one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe during the sixth through eleventh centuries.

The boar's head terminal is one of several representations of the animal on contemporaneous helmets. Boars surmount the Benty Grange and Wollaston helmets, and form the ends of the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo and perhaps York helmets. These evidence a thousand-years-long tradition in Germanic paganism associating boars with the deities, and protection. The Roman historian Tacitus suggested that the Baltic Aesti wore boar symbols in battle to invoke the protection of a mother goddess, and in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the poet writes that boar symbols on helmets kept watch over the warriors wearing them. ( Full article...)

The Camus Cross, otherwise known as the Camuston or Camustane Cross, is an Early Medieval Scottish standing stone on the Panmure Estate near Carnoustie in Angus, Scotland. First recorded in the 15th century in a legal document describing the boundaries between Camuston and the barony of Downie, and described in the 17th century by Robert Maule, it is a freestanding cross, rare in Eastern Scotland.

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...)

Khaled Mohamad al-Asaad ( Arabic: خالد الأسعد, Arabic pronunciation: [ɐlʔæsʕæd], January 1932 – 18 August 2015) was a Syrian archaeologist and the head of antiquities at the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He held this position for over forty years. Al-Asaad was publicly beheaded by the Islamic State on 18 August 2015, at the age of 83. ( Full article...)

The remains of Richard III, the last English king killed in battle and last king of the House of York, were discovered within the site of the former Grey Friars Priory in Leicester, England, in September 2012. Following extensive anthropological and genetic testing, the remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.

Richard III, the final ruler of the Plantagenet dynasty, was killed on 22 August 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field, the last significant battle of the Wars of the Roses. His body was taken to Greyfriars, Leicester, where it was buried in a crude grave in the friary church. Following the friary's dissolution in 1538 and subsequent demolition, Richard's tomb was lost. An erroneous account arose that Richard's bones had been thrown into the River Soar at the nearby Bow Bridge.

A search for Richard's body began in August 2012, initiated by Philippa Langley and the Looking for Richard project with the support of the Richard III Society. The archaeological excavation was led by University of Leicester Archaeological Services, working in partnership with Leicester City Council. On the first day a human skeleton belonging to a man in his thirties was uncovered showing signs of severe injuries. The skeleton, which had several unusual physical features, most notably scoliosis, a severe curvature of the back, was exhumed to allow scientific analysis. Examination showed that the man had probably been killed either by a blow from a large bladed weapon, probably a halberd, which cut off the back of his skull and exposed the brain, or by a sword thrust that penetrated all the way through the brain. Other wounds on the skeleton had probably occurred after death as "humiliation injuries", inflicted as a form of posthumous revenge.

The age of the bones at death matched that of Richard when he was killed; they were dated to about the period of his death and were mostly consistent with physical descriptions of the king. Preliminary DNA analysis showed that mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones matched that of two matrilineal descendants, one 17th-generation and the other 19th-generation, of Richard's sister Anne of York. Taking these findings into account along with other historical, scientific and archaeological evidence, the University of Leicester announced on 4 February 2013 that it had concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the skeleton was that of Richard III.

As a condition of being allowed to disinter the skeleton, the archaeologists agreed that, if Richard were found, his remains would be reburied in Leicester Cathedral. A controversy arose as to whether an alternative reburial site, York Minster or Westminster Abbey, would be more suitable. A legal challenge confirmed there were no public law grounds for the courts to be involved in that decision. Reinterment took place in Leicester on 26 March 2015, during a televised memorial service held in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior members of other Christian denominations. ( Full article...)

The relics of Sariputta and Moggallana refers to the cremated remains of the Buddhist disciples Sariputta ( Sanskrit: Śāriputra; Pali: Sāriputta; Sinhala:Seriyuth සැරියුත්); and Moggallana (Sanskrit: Maudgalyāyana; Pali: Moggallāna;Sinhala: Mugalan මුගලන්). Sariputta and Moggallana (also called Maha Moggallana) were the two chief disciples of the Buddha, often stylized as the right hand and left hand disciples of the Buddha respectively. The two disciples were childhood friends who ordained under the Buddha together and are said to have become enlightened as arahants. The Buddha declared them his two chief disciples, after which they assumed leadership roles in the Buddha's ministry. Both of the chief disciples died a few months before the Buddha near the ancient Indian city of Rājagaha in what is now Bihar, and were cremated. According to Buddhist texts, the cremated remains of the disciples were then enshrined in stupas at notable monasteries of the time, with Sariputta's remains being enshrined at Jetavana monastery and Moggallana's remains being enshrined at Veḷuvana monastery. However, as of 1999 no modern archaeological reports have confirmed this, although in 1851 discoveries were made at other sites.

In 1851, British archaeologists Major Alexander Cunningham and Lieutenant Frederick Charles Maisey discovered relics attributed to the chief disciples during excavations of stupas in the Indian cities of Sanchi and Satdhara. Scholars have theorized that the relics were enshrined in stupas near Rajagaha after the disciples' deaths but were redistributed by later Indian kings such as King Asoka. Following the discovery, the Satdhara relics were sent to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1866, while the Sanchi relics are said to have been lost when a ship carrying the remains sank. Following a Buddhist revival movement in South Asia in the late 19th century, Buddhist organizations including the Maha Bodhi Society began pressuring the British government to return the relics to Asia so they can be properly venerated, with the British government eventually conceding. The relics were sent to Sri Lanka in 1947, where they were on display at the Colombo Museum for nearly two years, and then were put on tour around parts of Asia starting in 1949. The relics were then divided up and permanently relocated in 1952, with portions being enshrined at the Kaba Aye Pagoda in Yangon, Burma, the Maha Bodhi Society temple in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the Chethiyagiri Vihara in Sanchi, India. ( Full article...)

Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford CBE FBA FSA (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as the archaeological officer of the Ordnance Survey (OS) and also wrote a range of books on archaeological subjects.

Born in Bombay, British India, to a wealthy middle-class Scottish family, Crawford moved to England as an infant and was raised by his aunts in London and Hampshire. He studied geography at Keble College, Oxford, and worked briefly in that field before devoting himself professionally to archaeology. Employed by the philanthropist Henry Wellcome, Crawford oversaw the excavation of Abu Geili in Sudan before returning to England shortly before the First World War. During the conflict he served in both the London Scottish Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps, where he was involved in ground and aerial reconnaissance along the Western Front. After an injury forced a period of convalescence in England, he returned to the Western Front, where he was captured by the German Army in 1918 and held as a prisoner of war until the end of the conflict.

In 1920, Crawford was employed by the Ordnance Survey, touring Britain to plot the location of archaeological sites, and in the process identified several that were previously unknown. Increasingly interested in aerial archaeology, he used Royal Air Force photographs to identify the extent of the Stonehenge Avenue, excavating it in 1923. With the archaeologist Alexander Keiller, he conducted an aerial survey of many counties in southern England and raised the finances to secure the land around Stonehenge for The National Trust. In 1927, he established the scholarly journal Antiquity, which contained contributions from many of Britain's most prominent archaeologists, and in 1939 he served as president of The Prehistoric Society. An internationalist and socialist, he came under the influence of Marxism and for a time became a Soviet sympathiser. During the Second World War he worked with the National Buildings Record, photographically documenting Southampton. After retiring in 1946, he refocused his attention on Sudanese archaeology and wrote several further books prior to his death.

Friends and colleagues remembered Crawford as a cantankerous and irritable individual. His contributions to British archaeology, including in Antiquity and aerial archaeology, have been widely acclaimed; some have referred to him as one of the great pioneering figures in the field. His photographic archive remained of use to archaeologists into the 21st century. A biography of Crawford by Kitty Hauser was published in 2008. ( Full article...)

Buckton Castle was a medieval enclosure castle near Carrbrook in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, England. It was surrounded by a 2.8-metre-wide (9 ft) stone curtain wall and a ditch 10 metres (33 ft) wide by 6 metres (20 ft) deep. Buckton is one of the earliest stone castles in North West England and only survives as buried remains overgrown with heather and peat. It was most likely built and demolished in the 12th century. The earliest surviving record of the site dates from 1360, by which time it was lying derelict. The few finds retrieved during archaeological investigations indicate that Buckton Castle may not have been completed.

In the 16th century, the site may have been used as a beacon for the Pilgrimage of Grace. During the 18th century, the castle was of interest to treasure hunters following rumours that gold and silver had been discovered at Buckton. The site was used as an anti-aircraft decoy site during the Second World War. Between 1996 and 2010, Buckton Castle was investigated by archaeologists as part of the Tameside Archaeology Survey, first by the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit then the University of Salford's Centre for Applied Archaeology. The project involved community archaeology, and more than 60 volunteers took part. The castle, close to the Buckton Vale Quarry, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. ( Full article...)

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeast Africa. It was concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100  BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer). The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by periods of relative instability known as “Intermediate Periods.” The various kingdoms fall into one of three categories: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age, or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

Ancient Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Levant. After this period, it entered an era of slow decline. During the course of its history, Ancient Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. Egypt remained under Roman control until the 640s AD, when it was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate.

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs. ^[1]
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians has led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy. ( Full article...)

Tikal ( /tiˈkɑːl/; Tik'al in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in the department of El Petén, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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...)

Iximcheʼ (/iʃimˈtʃeʔ/) (or Iximché using Spanish orthography) is a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican archaeological site in the western highlands of Guatemala. Iximche was the capital of the Late Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524. The architecture of the site included a number of pyramid-temples, palaces and two Mesoamerican ballcourts. Excavators uncovered the poorly preserved remains of painted murals on some of the buildings and ample evidence of human sacrifice. The ruins of Iximche were declared a Guatemalan National Monument in the 1960s. The site has a small museum displaying a number of pieces found there, including sculptures and ceramics. It is open daily.

For many years the Kaqchikel served as loyal allies of the Kʼicheʼ Maya. The growing power of the Kaqchikel within the alliance eventually caused such friction that the Kaqchikel were forced to flee the Kʼicheʼ capital and founded the city of Iximche. The Kaqchikel established their new capital upon an easily defensible ridge almost surrounded by deep ravines. Iximche developed quickly as a city and within 50 years of its foundation it had reached its maximum extent. The rulers of Iximche were four principal lords drawn from the four main clans of the Kaqchikel, although it was the lords of the Sotzʼil and Xahil clans who held the real power.

After the initial establishment of Iximche, the Kʼicheʼ left the Kaqchikel in peace for a number of years. The peace did not last and the Kaqchikel soundly defeated their former overlords around 1491. This was followed by infighting among the Kaqchikel clans with the rebel clans finally being overcome in 1493. Wars against the Kʼicheʼ continued throughout the early 16th century. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, the Aztec emperor sent messengers to warn the Kaqchikel. After the surrender of the Aztecs to Hernán Cortés, Iximche sent its own messengers to offer a Kaqchikel alliance with the Spanish. Smallpox decimated the population of Iximche before the physical arrival of the Europeans. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, Iximche was the second most important city in the Guatemalan Highlands, after the Kʼicheʼ capital at Qʼumarkaj. Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado was initially well received in the city in 1524 and the Kaqchikel kings provided the Spanish with native allies to assist in the conquest of the other highland Maya kingdoms. Iximche was declared the first capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala in the same year. Due to excessive Spanish demands for tribute, the Kaqchikel soon broke the alliance and deserted their capital, which was burned 2 years later by Spanish deserters. The Europeans founded a new town nearby but abandoned it in 1527 due to the continued hostility of the Kaqchikel, who finally surrendered in 1530.

The ruins of Iximche were first described by a Guatemalan historian in the late 17th century. They were visited various times by scholars during the 19th century, who published plans and descriptions. Serious investigations of the site started in the 1940s and continued sporadically until the early 1970s. In 1980, during the Guatemalan Civil War, a meeting took place at the ruins between guerillas and Maya leaders that resulted in the guerillas stating that they would defend indigenous rights. A ritual was carried out at the site in 1989 in order to reestablish the ruins as a sacred place for Maya ceremonies. United States President George W. Bush visited the site in 2007, and in the same year Iximche was the venue for the III Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala. ( Full article...)

Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson FSA (born Hilda Roderick Ellis; 1 October 1914 – 12 January 2006) was an English folklorist. She was a scholar at the University of Cambridge and The Folklore Society, and specialized in the study of Celtic and Germanic religion and folklore.

A graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, Davidson was a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, throughout much of her career. She specialized in the interdisciplinary study of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse religion and folklore, on which she was the author of numerous influential works. Davidson was a prominent member of The Folklore Society, and played an active role in the growth of folklore studies as a scientific discipline. Throughout her career, Davidson tutored a significant number of aspiring scholars in her fields of study, and was particularly interested in encouraging gifted women to pursue scholarly careers. ( Full article...)

The Acts of Peter and the Twelve or the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles is a Christian text from about the 4th century. It is the first treatise in Codex VI of the Nag Hammadi library texts, taking up pages 1–12 of the codex's 78 pages. The writing extends the Parable of the Pearl from Matthew 13:45–46. In the text, Peter the Apostle meets a pearl merchant named Lithargoel, who is later revealed to be Jesus. Jesus commands the apostles to care for the poor. ( Full article...)

The Erbil Citadel, locally called Qelat ( Kurdish: قەڵای ھەولێر , قەراتی هەولێرێ, Qelay Hewlêr) is a tell or occupied mound, and the historical city centre of Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The citadel has been included in the World Heritage List since 21 June 2014.

The earliest evidence for occupation of the citadel mound dates to the 5th millennium BC, and possibly earlier. It appears for the first time in historical sources in the Ebla tablets around 4000 BC, and gained particular importance during the Neo-Assyrian period. During the Sassanian period and the Abbasid Caliphate, Erbil was an important centre for Christianity. After the Mongols captured the citadel in 1258, the importance of Erbil declined. During the 20th century, the urban structure was significantly modified, as a result of which a number of houses and public buildings were destroyed. In 2007, the High Commission for Erbil Citadel Revitalization (HCECR) was established to oversee the restoration of the citadel. In the same year, all inhabitants, except one family, were evicted from the citadel as part of a large restoration project. Since then, archaeological research and restoration works have been carried out at and around the tell by various international teams and in cooperation with local specialists. The government plans to have 50 families live in the citadel once it is renovated.

The buildings on top of the tell stretch over a roughly oval area of 430 by 340 metres (1,410 ft × 1,120 ft) occupying 102,000 square metres (1,100,000 sq ft). The only religious structure that currently survives is the Mulla Afandi Mosque. The mound rises between 25 and 32 metres (82 and 105 ft) from the surrounding plain. When it was fully occupied, the citadel was divided in three districts or mahallas: from east to west the Serai, the Takya and the Topkhana. The Serai was occupied by notable families; the Takya district was named after the homes of dervishes, which are called takyas; and the Topkhana district housed craftsmen and farmers. ( Full article...)

Roman roads in Judaea refers to an extensive network of roads built in the Roman period in what was then Judaea (later Syria Palaestina). Remains of some still exist to this day. Many of these roads, including the graded paths, were built by the Jewish population of Judaea, used for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Romans used the existing infrastructure for the empire's transportation needs in the province.

The purpose of constructing these roads in ancient Rome was to establish an extensive network of thoroughfares, similar to those found throughout the Roman Empire. These roads primarily served the movement of Roman military units and also facilitated public transportation, including mail delivery and travel for central government officials. Additionally, the roads played an economic role in transporting goods and people.

Some of the roads in the Judaea were paved following the First Jewish–Roman War (66-73), some during the time of Roman emperor Hadrian, and some during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The prominent characteristic of these roads was their use of the most convenient route possible from one point to another: a route that avoided natural obstacles, remained passable throughout the year, and had a gentle slope – suitable for pedestrian travel, riding, and vehicle passage. Along the roads, milestones were erected to mark the distance and direction, and there were forts and watchtowers where soldiers guarded the roads.

There are modern roads in Israel that utilize the routes of the ancient Roman roads. The most prominent example is the Ashkelon– Kiryat Gat– Hebron road (today Highway 35), which ascends to Hebron along a winding route with minimal incline. However, most of the ancient Roman roads in modern Israel were destroyed by the British, who paved roads over them.

From the headquarters of the Legio VI Ferrata, which camped at Legio, a strategic location on the Caesarea–Beit She'an road in the southern foothills of the Jezreel Valley near the modern Megiddo junction, oads were constructed in the year 120 CE to the provincial capital Caesarea, to Beit She'an, to Sepphoris, and to Acre. ( Full article...)

The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England, built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. 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. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.

A chapel dedicated to St Roche was built on the hill around the end of the 14th century; it was in ruins by 1570. A windmill and a beacon were subsequently built on the hill. The site was occasionally used as a meeting place in the post-medieval period.

The hillfort is still a substantial earthwork, but the Neolithic site was unknown until 1925 when archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford obtained an aerial photograph of the Trundle, clearly showing additional structures inside the ramparts of the hillfort. Causewayed enclosures were new to archaeology at the time, with only five known by 1930, and the photograph persuaded archaeologist E. Cecil Curwen to excavate the site in 1928 and 1930. These early digs established a construction date of about 500 BC to 100 BC for the hillfort and proved the existence of the Neolithic site.

In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates from almost forty British causewayed enclosures, including some from the Trundle. The conclusion was that the Neolithic part of the site was probably constructed no earlier than the mid-fourth millennium BC. A review of the site in 1995 by Alastair Oswald noted the presence of fifteen possible Iron Age house platforms within the hillfort's ramparts. ( Full article...)

Tak'alik Ab'aj ( /tɑːkəˈliːk əˈbɑː/; Mayan pronunciation: [takʼaˈlik aˀ'ɓaχ] ^ⓘ; Spanish: [takaˈlik aˈβax]) is a pre-Columbian archaeological site in Guatemala. It was formerly known as Abaj Takalik; its ancient name may have been Kooja. It is one of several Mesoamerican sites with both Olmec and Maya features. The site flourished in the Preclassic and Classic periods, from the 9th century BC through to at least the 10th century AD, and was an important centre of commerce, trading with Kaminaljuyu and Chocolá. Investigations have revealed that it is one of the largest sites with sculptured monuments on the Pacific coastal plain. Olmec-style sculptures include a possible colossal head, petroglyphs and others. The site has one of the greatest concentrations of Olmec-style sculpture outside of the Gulf of Mexico, and was made a World Heritage Site in 2023 because of its long history of occupation.

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...)

Malcolm Todd FSA (27 November 1939 – 6 June 2013) was an English archaeologist. Born in Durham, England, the son of a miner, Todd was educated in classics and classical archaeology at St David's College, Lampeter and Brasenose College, Oxford. He subsequently served as a reader and professor at the University of Nottingham and the University of Exeter respectively. During this time, Todd conducted notable excavations at sites of Roman Britain. He was later principal at Trevelyan College, Durham. Todd retired from Durham in 2000, and subsequently dedicated himself to research and writing. He was the author and editor of several works on the archaeology of Roman Britain and the Germanic peoples in the Migration Period. ( Full article...)

Lothal (IPA: [loˑt̪ʰəl]) was one of the southernmost sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation, located in the Bhal region of the Indian state of Gujarat. Construction of the city is believed to have begun around 2200 BCE.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the official Indian government agency for the preservation of ancient monuments, discovered Lothal in 1954. Excavation work in Lothal commenced on 13 February 1955 and continued till 19 May 1960. According to the ASI, arguably Lothal had the world's earliest known dock, which connected the city to an ancient course of the Sabarmati river on the trade route. This trade route stretched between Harappan cities in Sindh ( Pakistan) and the peninsula of Saurashtra where the surrounding Kutch desert of today was a part of the Arabian Sea. However, this interpretation has been challenged by other archaeologists, who argue Khufu's Red Sea harbour at Wadi al-Jarf ( Egypt) is older, dating its construction to between 2580 to 2550 BCE and that Lothal was a comparatively small town, and that the "dock" was primarily an irrigation tank.

The National Institute of Oceanography in Goa discovered foraminifera (marine microfossils) and salt, gypsum crystals in the rectangular structure clearly indicating that sea water once filled the structure and it was definitely a dockyard.

Lothal was a vital and thriving trade centre in ancient times, with its trade of beads, gems and valuable ornaments reaching the far corners of West Asia and Africa. The techniques and tools they pioneered for bead-making and in metallurgy have stood the test of time for over 4000 years.

Lothal is situated near the village of Saragwala in the Dholka Taluka of Ahmedabad district. It is six kilometres south-east of the Lothal- Bhurkhi railway station on the Ahmedabad- Bhavnagar railway line. It is also connected by all-weather roads to the cities of Ahmedabad (85 km/53 mi), Bhavnagar, Rajkot and Dholka. The nearest cities are Dholka and Bagodara. Resuming excavation in 1961, archaeologists unearthed trenches sunk on the northern, eastern and western flanks of the mound, bringing to light the inlet channels and nullah ("ravine", or "gully") connecting the dock with the river. The findings consist of a mound, a township, a marketplace, and the 'dock'. Adjacent to the excavated areas stands the Archaeological Museum, where some of the most prominent collections of Harappa-era antiquities in India are displayed.

The Lothal site was nominated, in April 2014, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its application is pending on the tentative list of UNESCO. ( Full article...)

Homo floresiensis ( /flɔːrˈɛziːˌɛn.sɪs/ also known as "Flores Man") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.

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...)

This timeline of prehistoric Scotland is a chronologically ordered list of important archaeological sites in Scotland and of major events affecting Scotland's human inhabitants and culture during the prehistoric period. The period of prehistory prior to occupation by the genus Homo is part of the geology of Scotland. Prehistory in Scotland ends with the arrival of the Romans in southern Scotland in the 1st century AD and the beginning of written records. The archaeological sites and events listed are the earliest examples or among the most notable of their type.

No traces have yet been found of either a Neanderthal presence or of Homo sapiens during the Pleistocene interglacials, the first indications of humans in Scotland occurring only after the ice retreated in the 11th millennium BC. Since that time, the landscape of Scotland has been altered dramatically by both human and natural forces. Initially, sea levels were lower than at present due to the large volume of ice that remained. This meant that the Orkney archipelago and many of the Inner Hebridean islands were attached to the mainland, as was the present-day island of Great Britain to Continental Europe. Much of the present-day North Sea was also dry land until after 4000 BC. Dogger Bank, for example was part of a large peninsula connected to the European continent. This would have made travel to western and northern Scotland relatively easy for early human settlers. The subsequent isostatic rise of land makes estimating post-glacial coastlines a complex task and there are numerous raised beaches around Scotland's coastline.

Many of the sites are located in the Highlands and Islands. This may be because of the relatively sparse modern populations and consequent lack of disturbance. Much of the area also has a thick covering of peat that preserves stone fragments, although the associated acidic conditions tend to dissolve organic materials. There are also numerous important remains in the Orkney archipelago, where sand and arable land predominate. Local tradition hints at both a fear and veneration of these ancient structures that may have helped to preserve their integrity.

Differentiating the various periods of human history involved is a complex task. The Paleolithic lasted until the retreat of the ice, the Mesolithic until the adoption of farming and the Neolithic until metalworking commenced. These events may have begun at different times in different parts of the country. A number of the sites span very long periods of time and in particular, the distinctions between the Neolithic and the later periods are not clear cut. ( Full article...)

Eurasiatic is a hypothetical and controversial language macrofamily proposal that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia.

The idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily dates back more than 100 years. Joseph Greenberg's proposal, dating to the 1990s, is the most widely discussed version. In 2013, Mark Pagel and three colleagues published what they believe to be statistical evidence for a Eurasiatic language family.

The branches of Eurasiatic vary between proposals, but typically include the widely rejected Altaic macrofamily (comprised in part of Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic), Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Eskimo–Aleut, Indo-European, and Uralic—although Greenberg uses the controversial Uralic-Yukaghir classification instead. Other branches sometimes included are the Kartvelian and Dravidian families, as proposed by Pagel et al., in addition to the language isolates Nivkh, Etruscan and Greenberg's "Korean–Japanese–Ainu". Some proposals group Eurasiatic with even larger macrofamilies, such as Nostratic; again, many other professional linguists regard the methods used as invalid.

The hypothesis has fallen out of favour and has limited degrees of acceptance, predominantly among a minority of Russian linguists. Linguists worldwide reject Eurasiatic and many other macrofamily hypotheses such as Nostratic, with the exception of Dené–Yeniseian languages, which has been met with some degree of acceptance. ( Full article...)

Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918) against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.

He was born out of wedlock in August 1888 to Sarah Junner (1861–1959), a governess, and Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet (1846–1919), an Anglo-Irish aristocrat. Chapman left his wife and family in Ireland to cohabit with Junner. Chapman and Junner called themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence, using the surname of Sarah's likely father; her mother had been employed as a servant for a Lawrence family when she became pregnant with Sarah. In 1896, the Lawrences moved to Oxford, where Thomas attended the High School and then studied history at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1907 to 1910. Between 1910 and 1914 he worked as an archaeologist for the British Museum, chiefly at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria.

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1914 he volunteered for the British Army and was stationed at the Arab Bureau (established in 1916) intelligence unit in Egypt. In 1916, he travelled to Mesopotamia and to Arabia on intelligence missions and became involved with the Arab Revolt as a liaison to the Arab forces, along with other British officers, supporting the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz's independence war against its former overlord, the Ottoman Empire. He worked closely with Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt, and he participated, sometimes as leader, in military actions against the Ottoman armed forces, culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918.

After the First World War, Lawrence joined the British Foreign Office, working with the British government and with Faisal. In 1922, he retreated from public life and spent the years until 1935 serving as an enlisted man, mostly in the Royal Air Force (RAF), with a brief period in the Army. During this time, he published his best-known work Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), an autobiographical account of his participation in the Arab Revolt. He also translated books into English, and wrote The Mint, which detailed his time in the Royal Air Force working as an ordinary aircraftman. He corresponded extensively and was friendly with well-known artists, writers, and politicians. For the RAF, he participated in the development of rescue motorboats.

Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reporting of the Arab revolt by American journalist Lowell Thomas, as well as from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On 19 May 1935, six days after being injured in a motorcycle accident in Dorset, Lawrence died at the age of 46. ( Full article...)

Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hillfort 1.6 mi (2.6 km) southwest of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age.

The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the site consists of a Neolithic causewayed 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...)

The Gozo Phoenician shipwreck is a seventh-century-BC shipwreck of a Phoenician trade ship lying at a depth of 110 meters (360 ft). The wreck was discovered in 2007 during a sonar survey off the coast of Malta's Gozo island. Since 2014 it has been the object of a multidisciplinary project led by University of Malta along with many other national and international entities. The Gozo shipwreck archaeological excavation is the first maritime archaeological survey to explore shipwrecks with divers beyond a depth of 100 meters (330 ft). ( Full article...)

The Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night relief) is a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Isin-Larsa period or Old- Babylonian period, depicting a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions.
The relief is displayed in the British Museum in London, which has dated it between 1800 and 1750 BCE. It originates from southern Mesopotamia, but the exact find-site is unknown. Apart from its distinctive iconography, the piece is noted for its high relief and relatively large size making it a very rare survival from the period. The authenticity of the object has been questioned from its first appearance in the 1930s, but opinion has generally moved in its favour over the subsequent decades. ( Full article...)

The Temple of Eshmun ( Arabic: معبد أشمون) is an ancient place of worship dedicated to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. It is located near the Awali river, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) northeast of Sidon in southwestern Lebanon. The site was occupied from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD, suggesting an integrated relationship with the nearby city of Sidon. Although originally constructed by Sidonian king Eshmunazar II in the Achaemenid era ( c. 529–333 BC) to celebrate the city's recovered wealth and stature, the temple complex was greatly expanded by Bodashtart, Yatonmilk and later monarchs. Because the continued expansion spanned many centuries of alternating independence and foreign hegemony, the sanctuary features a wealth of different architectural and decorative styles and influences.

The sanctuary consists of an esplanade and a grand court limited by a huge limestone terrace wall that supports a monumental podium which was once topped by Eshmun's Greco-Persian style marble temple. The sanctuary features a series of ritual ablution basins fed by canals channeling water from the Asclepius river (modern Awali) and from the sacred "YDLL" spring; these installations were used for therapeutic and purificatory purposes that characterize the cult of Eshmun. The sanctuary site has yielded many artifacts of value, especially those inscribed with Phoenician texts, such as the Bodashtart inscriptions and the Eshmun inscription, providing valuable insight into the site's history and that of ancient Sidon.

The Eshmun Temple was improved during the early Roman Empire with a colonnade street, but declined after earthquakes and fell into oblivion as Christianity replaced polytheism and its large limestone blocks were used to build later structures. The temple site was rediscovered in 1900 by local treasure hunters who stirred the curiosity of international scholars. Maurice Dunand, a French archaeologist, thoroughly excavated the site from 1963 until the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. After the end of the hostilities and the retreat of Israel from Southern Lebanon, the site was rehabilitated and inscribed to the World Heritage Site tentative list. ( Full article...)

The Trundle is an Iron Age hillfort on St Roche's Hill about 4 miles (6 km) north of Chichester, West Sussex, England, built on the site of a causewayed enclosure, a form of early Neolithic earthwork found in northwestern Europe. 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. Hillforts were built as early as 1000 BC, in the Late Bronze Age, and continued to be built through the Iron Age until shortly before the Roman occupation.

A chapel dedicated to St Roche was built on the hill around the end of the 14th century; it was in ruins by 1570. A windmill and a beacon were subsequently built on the hill. The site was occasionally used as a meeting place in the post-medieval period.

The hillfort is still a substantial earthwork, but the Neolithic site was unknown until 1925 when archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford obtained an aerial photograph of the Trundle, clearly showing additional structures inside the ramparts of the hillfort. Causewayed enclosures were new to archaeology at the time, with only five known by 1930, and the photograph persuaded archaeologist E. Cecil Curwen to excavate the site in 1928 and 1930. These early digs established a construction date of about 500 BC to 100 BC for the hillfort and proved the existence of the Neolithic site.

In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates from almost forty British causewayed enclosures, including some from the Trundle. The conclusion was that the Neolithic part of the site was probably constructed no earlier than the mid-fourth millennium BC. A review of the site in 1995 by Alastair Oswald noted the presence of fifteen possible Iron Age house platforms within the hillfort's ramparts. ( Full article...)

The Horncastle boar's head is an early seventh-century Anglo-Saxon ornament depicting a boar that probably was once part of the crest of a helmet. It was discovered in 2002 by a metal detectorist searching in the town of Horncastle, Lincolnshire. It was reported as found treasure and acquired for £15,000 by the Lincoln City and County Museum, where it is on permanent display.

The fragment is 40 mm (1.6 in) long and made of silver. Its elongated head is semi-naturalistic, depicting a crouching quadruped on either side of the skull, divided by a mane along the centre. The boar's eyes are formed from garnet, and its eyebrows, skull, mouth, tusks, and snout are gilded. Its head is hollow; in the space underneath, which was filled with soil and plant matter when found, are three rivets that would have attached it to a larger object, probably a helmet. The fragment would probably have formed the crest terminal of one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe during the sixth through eleventh centuries.

The boar's head terminal is one of several representations of the animal on contemporaneous helmets. Boars surmount the Benty Grange and Wollaston helmets, and form the ends of the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo and perhaps York helmets. These evidence a thousand-years-long tradition in Germanic paganism associating boars with the deities, and protection. The Roman historian Tacitus suggested that the Baltic Aesti wore boar symbols in battle to invoke the protection of a mother goddess, and in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the poet writes that boar symbols on helmets kept watch over the warriors wearing them. ( Full article...)

Twyfelfontein ( Afrikaans: uncertain spring), officially known as ǀUi-ǁAis ( Damara/Nama: jumping waterhole), is a site of ancient rock engravings in the Kunene Region of north-western Namibia. It consists of a spring in a valley flanked by the slopes of a sandstone table mountain that receives very little rainfall and has a wide range of diurnal temperatures.

The site has been inhabited for 6,000 years, first by hunter-gatherers and later by Khoikhoi herders. Both ethnic groups used it as a place of worship and a site to conduct shamanist rituals. In the process of these rituals at least 2,500 items of rock carvings have been created, as well as a few rock paintings. Displaying one of the largest concentrations of rock petroglyphs in Africa, UNESCO approved Twyfelfontein as Namibia's first World Heritage Site in 2007. ( Full article...)

Iximcheʼ (/iʃimˈtʃeʔ/) (or Iximché using Spanish orthography) is a Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican archaeological site in the western highlands of Guatemala. Iximche was the capital of the Late Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya kingdom from 1470 until its abandonment in 1524. The architecture of the site included a number of pyramid-temples, palaces and two Mesoamerican ballcourts. Excavators uncovered the poorly preserved remains of painted murals on some of the buildings and ample evidence of human sacrifice. The ruins of Iximche were declared a Guatemalan National Monument in the 1960s. The site has a small museum displaying a number of pieces found there, including sculptures and ceramics. It is open daily.

For many years the Kaqchikel served as loyal allies of the Kʼicheʼ Maya. The growing power of the Kaqchikel within the alliance eventually caused such friction that the Kaqchikel were forced to flee the Kʼicheʼ capital and founded the city of Iximche. The Kaqchikel established their new capital upon an easily defensible ridge almost surrounded by deep ravines. Iximche developed quickly as a city and within 50 years of its foundation it had reached its maximum extent. The rulers of Iximche were four principal lords drawn from the four main clans of the Kaqchikel, although it was the lords of the Sotzʼil and Xahil clans who held the real power.

After the initial establishment of Iximche, the Kʼicheʼ left the Kaqchikel in peace for a number of years. The peace did not last and the Kaqchikel soundly defeated their former overlords around 1491. This was followed by infighting among the Kaqchikel clans with the rebel clans finally being overcome in 1493. Wars against the Kʼicheʼ continued throughout the early 16th century. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, the Aztec emperor sent messengers to warn the Kaqchikel. After the surrender of the Aztecs to Hernán Cortés, Iximche sent its own messengers to offer a Kaqchikel alliance with the Spanish. Smallpox decimated the population of Iximche before the physical arrival of the Europeans. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, Iximche was the second most important city in the Guatemalan Highlands, after the Kʼicheʼ capital at Qʼumarkaj. Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado was initially well received in the city in 1524 and the Kaqchikel kings provided the Spanish with native allies to assist in the conquest of the other highland Maya kingdoms. Iximche was declared the first capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala in the same year. Due to excessive Spanish demands for tribute, the Kaqchikel soon broke the alliance and deserted their capital, which was burned 2 years later by Spanish deserters. The Europeans founded a new town nearby but abandoned it in 1527 due to the continued hostility of the Kaqchikel, who finally surrendered in 1530.

The ruins of Iximche were first described by a Guatemalan historian in the late 17th century. They were visited various times by scholars during the 19th century, who published plans and descriptions. Serious investigations of the site started in the 1940s and continued sporadically until the early 1970s. In 1980, during the Guatemalan Civil War, a meeting took place at the ruins between guerillas and Maya leaders that resulted in the guerillas stating that they would defend indigenous rights. A ritual was carried out at the site in 1989 in order to reestablish the ruins as a sacred place for Maya ceremonies. United States President George W. Bush visited the site in 2007, and in the same year Iximche was the venue for the III Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala. ( Full article...)

Beatrice Eileen de Cardi, OBE, FSA, FBA (5 June 1914 – 5 July 2016) was a British archaeologist, specializing in the study of the Persian Gulf and the Baluchistan region of Pakistan. She was president of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia, and she was Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology from 1949 to 1973. At the end of her career, she was the world's oldest practising archaeologist. ( Full article...)

Letocetum is the ancient remains of a Roman settlement. It was an important military staging post and posting station near the junction of Watling Street, the Roman military road to north Wales, and Icknield (or Ryknild) Street (now the A38). The site is now within the parish of Wall, Staffordshire, England. It is owned and run by the National Trust, under the name Letocetum Roman Baths Site & Museum. The site is in the guardianship of English Heritage as Wall Roman Site.

The Romans came to Letocetum in 50  CE to establish a fortress during the early years of the invasion of Britain. The land could not support large numbers of soldiers and Letocetum, at an important cross-roads, became a large scale posting station. The settlement developed with successive bath houses and mansiones built to serve the official travellers as well as the growing civilian population. It is known mainly from detailed excavations in 1912–13, which concentrated on the sites of the mansio and bath-house.

The remains visible today are those of the stone bath house and mansio, built in approximately 130 CE after Letocetum ceased to have a military function and became a civilian settlement. The settlement reached its peak during the 2nd and 3rd centuries and at this time occupied 8.1–12 hectares (20–30 acres). At the end of the 3rd century, the town relocated within high defensive walls astride Watling Street. After the Romans left early in the 5th century the settlement went into decline. The modern village of Wall emerged in the land once occupied by Letocetum. ( Full article...)

Golondrina points (formerly Plainview Golondrina) are lanceolate spear or dart projectile points, of medium size, dated to the transitional Paleo-Indian Period, between 9000–7000 BP. Golondrina points were attached on split-stem hafts and may have served to bring down medium-sized animals such as deer, as well as functioning as butchering knives. Distribution is widespread throughout most of Texas, and points have also been discovered in Arkansas and Mexico. The concentration of Golondrina specimens is highest across the South Texas Plains, where the point is the most prevalent of Paleo-Indian types and defines a distinctive cultural pattern for the region. The Golondrina point is so named for its flared basal corners ("ears"), which resemble a swallow's (golondrina in Spanish) split tail. Classification of Golondrina can be difficult because of its similarity to other types, particularly the Plainview point, to which it was originally thought to be related. ( Full article...)

The Exaltation of the Flower (L'Exaltation de la Fleur) is the modern title given to an early Classical Greek marble fragment of a funerary stele from the 5th century BCE. It was discovered in 1861 by Léon Heuzey and Honoré Daumet at a church in Farsala, Thessaly, Greece. Carved in bas-relief in the severe style, the extant upper fragment of the marble relief stele depicts two women holding what appear to be flowers or other objects. The work is held by the Louvre museum in the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (inv. Ma 701). ( Full article...)

The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.

The fragment is an ornate piece, but nothing else remains of the helmet; it might be the single remnant of a disintegrated helmet, or it might have been lost or discarded. It is one of two Scandinavian eyepieces discovered alone, giving rise to the suggestion that it was intentionally deposited in an invocation of the one-eyed god Odin. It would have been part of a decorated "crested helmet", the type of headgear that was common to England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries AD. These are particularly known from the examples found at Vendel, Valsgärde, and Sutton Hoo; the Tjele helmet fragment is the only other Danish example known.

Gevninge is three kilometres (1.9 mi) upriver from Lejre, a one-time centre of power believed to be the setting for Heorot, the fabled mead hall to which the poetical hero Beowulf journeys in search of the monster Grendel. The settlement's location suggests that it functioned as an outpost through which anyone would have to pass when sailing to the capital, and in which trusted and loyal guardians would serve. This mirrors Beowulf's experience on his way to Heorot, for upon disembarking he is met with a mounted lookout whose job it is "to watch the waves for raiders, and danger to the Danish shore." Upon answering his challenge, Beowulf is escorted down the road to Heorot, much as an Iron Age visitor to Lejre might have been led along the road from Gevninge. The Gevninge helmet fragment, a military piece from a riverside outpost, therefore sheds light on the relationship between historical fact and legend. ( Full article...)

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 ( Gaelic Irish 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...)

Chestnuts Long Barrow, also known as Stony Warren or Long Warren, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Addington in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fifth millennium BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a ruined state.

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 sarsen megaliths 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 century AD, 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...)

Lothal (IPA: [loˑt̪ʰəl]) was one of the southernmost sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation, located in the Bhal region of the Indian state of Gujarat. Construction of the city is believed to have begun around 2200 BCE.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the official Indian government agency for the preservation of ancient monuments, discovered Lothal in 1954. Excavation work in Lothal commenced on 13 February 1955 and continued till 19 May 1960. According to the ASI, arguably Lothal had the world's earliest known dock, which connected the city to an ancient course of the Sabarmati river on the trade route. This trade route stretched between Harappan cities in Sindh ( Pakistan) and the peninsula of Saurashtra where the surrounding Kutch desert of today was a part of the Arabian Sea. However, this interpretation has been challenged by other archaeologists, who argue Khufu's Red Sea harbour at Wadi al-Jarf ( Egypt) is older, dating its construction to between 2580 to 2550 BCE and that Lothal was a comparatively small town, and that the "dock" was primarily an irrigation tank.

The National Institute of Oceanography in Goa discovered foraminifera (marine microfossils) and salt, gypsum crystals in the rectangular structure clearly indicating that sea water once filled the structure and it was definitely a dockyard.

Lothal was a vital and thriving trade centre in ancient times, with its trade of beads, gems and valuable ornaments reaching the far corners of West Asia and Africa. The techniques and tools they pioneered for bead-making and in metallurgy have stood the test of time for over 4000 years.

Lothal is situated near the village of Saragwala in the Dholka Taluka of Ahmedabad district. It is six kilometres south-east of the Lothal- Bhurkhi railway station on the Ahmedabad- Bhavnagar railway line. It is also connected by all-weather roads to the cities of Ahmedabad (85 km/53 mi), Bhavnagar, Rajkot and Dholka. The nearest cities are Dholka and Bagodara. Resuming excavation in 1961, archaeologists unearthed trenches sunk on the northern, eastern and western flanks of the mound, bringing to light the inlet channels and nullah ("ravine", or "gully") connecting the dock with the river. The findings consist of a mound, a township, a marketplace, and the 'dock'. Adjacent to the excavated areas stands the Archaeological Museum, where some of the most prominent collections of Harappa-era antiquities in India are displayed.

The Lothal site was nominated, in April 2014, as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its application is pending on the tentative list of UNESCO. ( Full article...)

Barkhale Camp is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site on Bignor Hill, on the South Downs in West Sussex, England. 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 Barkhale Camp enclosure was first identified in 1929, by John Ryle, and was surveyed the following year by E. Cecil Curwen, who listed it as a possible Neolithic site in a 1930 paper which was the first attempt to list all the causewayed enclosures in England.

A small trench was dug in 1930 by Ryle, and a more extensive excavation was undertaken by Veronica Seton-Williams between 1958 and 1961, which confirmed Curwen's survey and found a characteristically Neolithic assemblage of flints. Peter Leach conducted another excavation before the southern part of the site was cleared of trees in 1978, examining several mounds within the enclosure, and attempting to determine the line of the ditch and bank along the southern boundary. No material suitable for radiocarbon dating was recovered, which meant that dating the site was not possible with any precision, but Leach suggested that the site had been constructed in the earlier Neolithic, between 4000 BC and 3300 BC.

The site is owned by the National Trust. It has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1967. ( Full article...)

Alicia Dussán de Reichel (16 October 1920 – 17 May 2023) was a Colombian educator, who was one of the first students of ethnology in the country. For two decades, she was the only woman conducting archaeological and anthropological studies in the country. Her research focused on Colombia and the Caribbean and along with her husband, she founded the University of the Andes' Department of Anthropology. She occupied Chair 15 of the Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences until 2008 and was the only anthropologist to be a member during her tenure. In 2010, she was honored by the French Government with the designation of officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. ( Full article...)

Dame Rosemary Jean Cramp, DBE, FSA, FBA (6 May 1929 – 27 April 2023) was a British archaeologist and academic specialising in the Anglo-Saxons. She was the first female professor appointed at Durham University and was Professor of Archaeology from 1971 to 1990. She served as president of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2001 to 2004. ( Full article...)

James Francis Cameron CC (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a major figure in the post- New Hollywood era. He often uses novel technologies with a classical filmmaking style. He first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), as well as Avatar (2009) and its sequels. He directed, wrote, co-produced, and co-edited Titanic (1997), winning three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. He is a recipient of various other industry accolades, and three of his films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Cameron co-founded the production companies Lightstorm Entertainment, Digital Domain, and Earthship Productions. In addition to filmmaking, he is a National Geographic sea tourist and has produced many documentaries on the subject, including Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005). Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies and helped create the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. In 2012, Cameron became the first person to do a solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth's ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.

Cameron's films have grossed over $8 billion worldwide, making him the second-highest-grossing film director of all time. Three of Cameron's films are amongst the top four highest-grossing films of all time; Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Titanic (1997) are the highest, third-highest and fourth-highest-grossing films of all time, respectively. Cameron directed the first film to gross over $1 billion, the first two films to gross over $2 billion, and is the only director to have had three films gross over $2 billion. In 2010, Time named Cameron one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Cameron is also an environmentalist and runs several sustainability businesses. ( Full article...)

Bodiam Castle ( /ˈboʊdiəm/) is a 14th-century moated castle near Robertsbridge in East Sussex, England. It was built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a former knight of Edward III, with the permission of Richard II, ostensibly to defend the area against French invasion during the Hundred Years' War. Of quadrangular plan, Bodiam Castle has no keep, having its various chambers built around the outer defensive walls and inner courts. Its corners and entrance are marked by towers, and topped by crenellations. Its structure, details and situation in an artificial watery landscape indicate that display was an important aspect of the castle's design as well as defence. It was the home of the Dalyngrigge family and the centre of the manor of Bodiam.

Possession of Bodiam Castle passed through several generations of Dalyngrigges, until their line became extinct, when the castle passed by marriage to the Lewknor family. During the Wars of the Roses, Sir Thomas Lewknor supported the House of Lancaster, and when Richard III of the House of York became king in 1483, a force was despatched to besiege Bodiam Castle. It is unrecorded whether the siege went ahead, but it is thought that Bodiam was surrendered without much resistance. The castle was confiscated, but returned to the Lewknors when Henry VII of the House of Lancaster became king in 1485. Descendants of the Lewknors owned the castle until at least the 16th century.

By the start of the English Civil War in 1641, Bodiam Castle was in the possession of Lord Thanet. He supported the Royalist cause, and sold the castle to help pay fines levied against him by Parliament. The castle was subsequently dismantled, and was left as a picturesque ruin until its purchase by John Fuller in 1829. Under his auspices, the castle was partially restored before being sold to George Cubitt, 1st Baron Ashcombe, and later to Lord Curzon, both of whom undertook further restoration work. The castle is protected as a Grade I listed building and Scheduled Monument. It has been owned by The National Trust since 1925, donated by Lord Curzon on his death, and is open to the public. ( Full article...)

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...)

Netley Abbey is a ruined late medieval monastery 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...)

The Gozo Phoenician shipwreck is a seventh-century-BC shipwreck of a Phoenician trade ship lying at a depth of 110 meters (360 ft). The wreck was discovered in 2007 during a sonar survey off the coast of Malta's Gozo island. Since 2014 it has been the object of a multidisciplinary project led by University of Malta along with many other national and international entities. The Gozo shipwreck archaeological excavation is the first maritime archaeological survey to explore shipwrecks with divers beyond a depth of 100 meters (330 ft). ( Full article...)

The Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the seventh century AD. It was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in Monyash in western Derbyshire. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained other high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, such as the fragmentary remains of a hanging bowl. The helmet is displayed at Sheffield's Weston Park Museum, which purchased it from Bateman's estate in 1893.

The helmet was constructed by covering the outside of an iron framework with plates of horn and the inside with cloth or leather; the organic material has since decayed. It would have provided some protection against weapons, but was also ornate and may have been intended for ceremonial use. It was the first Anglo-Saxon helmet to be discovered, with five others found since: Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009). The helmet features a unique combination of structural and technical attributes, but contemporaneous parallels exist for its individual characteristics. It is classified as one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe from the 6th to 11th centuries AD.

The most striking feature of the helmet is the boar at its apex; this pagan symbol faces towards a Christian cross on the nasal in a display of syncretism. This is representative of 7th-century England when Christian missionaries were slowly converting Anglo-Saxons away from traditional Germanic paganism. The helmet seems to exhibit a stronger preference toward paganism, with a large boar and a small cross. The cross may have been added for talismanic effect, the help of any god being welcome on the battlefield. The boar atop the crest was likewise associated with protection and suggests a time when boar-crested helmets may have been common, as do the helmet from Wollaston and the Guilden Morden boar. The contemporary epic Beowulf mentions such helmets five times and speaks of the strength of men "when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet". ( Full article...)

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 acanthus scroll 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...)

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.

Complex society in the Caral–Supe arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmecs by nearly two millennia.

In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform 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...)

Spyridon Marinatos ( Greek: Σπυρίδων Μαρινάτος; 17 November [ O.S. 4 November] 1901 – 1 October 1974) was a Greek archaeologist who specialised in the Bronze Age Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. He is best known for the excavation of the Minoan site of Akrotiri on Santorini, which he conducted between 1967 and 1974. A recipient of several honours in Greece and abroad, he was considered one of the most important Greek archaeologists of his day.

A native of Kephallonia, Marinatos was educated at the University of Athens, at the Humboldt University of Berlin and at the University of Halle. His early teachers included noted archaeologists such as Panagiotis Kavvadias, Christos Tsountas and Georg Karo. He joined the Greek Archaeological Service in 1919, and spent much of his early career on the island of Crete, where he excavated several Minoan sites, served as director of the Heraklion Museum, and formulated his theory that the collapse of Neopalatial Minoan society had been the result of the eruption of the volcanic island of Santorini around 1600 BCE.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Marinatos surveyed and excavated widely in the region of Messenia in southwest Greece, collaborating with Carl Blegen, who was engaged in the simultaneous excavation of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. He also discovered and excavated the battlefield of Thermopylae and the Mycenaean cemeteries at Tsepi and Vranas [ el] near Marathon in Attica.

Marinatos served three times as head of the Greek Archaeological Service, firstly between 1937 and 1939, secondly between 1955 and 1958, and finally under the military junta which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974. In the late 1930s, he was close to the quasi-fascist dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas, under whom he initiated legislation to restrict the roles of women in Greek archaeology, and he was later an enthusiastic supporter of the junta. His leadership of the Archaeological Service has been criticised for its cronyism and for promoting the pursuit of grand discoveries at the expense of good scholarship. Marinatos died while excavating at Akrotiri in 1974, and is buried at the site. ( Full article...)

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (¹⁴
C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting ¹⁴
C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire ¹⁴
C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of ¹⁴
C it contains begins to decrease as the ¹⁴
C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of ¹⁴
C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less ¹⁴
C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of ¹⁴
C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the ¹⁴
C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.

Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of ¹⁴
C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of ¹⁴
C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its ¹⁴
C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no ¹⁴
C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.

Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying ¹⁴
C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the ¹⁴
C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. ( Full article...)

The Camus Cross, otherwise known as the Camuston or Camustane Cross, is an Early Medieval Scottish standing stone on the Panmure Estate near Carnoustie in Angus, Scotland. First recorded in the 15th century in a legal document describing the boundaries between Camuston and the barony of Downie, and described in the 17th century by Robert Maule, it is a freestanding cross, rare in Eastern Scotland.

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...)

Julliberrie's Grave, also known as The Giant's Grave or The Grave, is an unchambered long barrow located near to the village of Chilham in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a state of ruin.

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 that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, Julliberrie's Grave belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Stour. Of these, it lies on the eastern side of the river, alongside the Shrub's Wood Long Barrow, while the third known example in this barrow group, Jacket's Field Long Barrow, is located on the western side.

Julliberrie's Grave is 44 metres (144 ft) long, 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) high, and 15 metres (49 ft) at its widest. It was originally larger, with the northern end having been destroyed. Unlike many other long barrows, no evidence for any Early Neolithic human remains have been found at the site; it is possible that its builders never placed human remains within it, or that such burials were included in the barrow's (since lost) northern end. A broken polished stone axe was included in the centre of the monument, which archaeologists believe was likely placed there as part of a ritual act of deposition. A rectangular pit was dug into the western side of the barrow shortly after its completion, likely containing a ritual deposit of organic material, before being refilled.

In the Iron Age, a hearth was established in the ditch circling the barrow; in the Romano-British period, human remains and a coin hoard were buried around its perimeter. Ensuing millennia witnessed local folklore grow up around the site, associating it with the burial of either a giant or an army and their horses. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 17th century, although was heavily damaged by chalk quarrying around the 18th. During the 18th and 19th century, antiquarians dug into the barrow at least twice, while cautious archaeological excavation took place in the 1930s. A Scheduled Ancient Monument, it is accessible to visitors all year around. ( Full article...)

The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic is an archaeological study of the material evidence for ritual and magical practices in Europe, containing a particular emphasis on London and South East England. It was written by the English archaeologist Ralph Merrifield, the former deputy director of the Museum of London, and first published by B.T. Batsford in 1987.

Merrifield opens The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic by discussing how archaeologists have understood magic and ritual practices in past societies, opining that on the whole it had been a neglected area of study. Looking at the archaeological evidence for ritual activity in the pre-Roman Iron Age and the Roman Iron Age of Britain, he discusses animal and human sacrifice, as well as the offering of votive deposits in rivers and other bodies of water. He moves on to explore the rituals surrounding death and burial, suggesting areas where this ritual activity is visible in the burial record of multiple societies. Merrifield goes on to discuss the archaeological evidence for ritual practices in Christian Europe, highlighting areas of ritual continuance from earlier pagan periods, in particular the deposition of metal goods in water. Looking at the evidence for foundation deposits in European buildings that likely had magico-religious purposes, he then looks at several examples of written charms and spells which have survived in the archaeological record.

Upon publication, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic received predominantly positive reviews in academic peer-reviewed journals such as Folklore and The Antiquaries Journal. In the ensuing years, the book has been widely cited by scholars as an influential and pioneering text in the study of the archaeology of ritual and magic. ( Full article...)

The Lokrume helmet fragment is a decorated eyebrow piece from a Viking Age helmet. It is made of iron, the surface of which is covered with silver and features an interlace pattern in niello or wire. Discovered in Lokrume, a small settlement on the Swedish island of Gotland, the fragment was first described in print in 1907 and is in the collection of the Gotland Museum.

The fragment is dated to around the tenth century AD, on the basis of its interlace pattern; similar designs appear on tenth-century swords. It is all that remains of one of five Viking helmets to survive in any condition; the others are the Gjermundbu helmet from Norway, the Yarm helmet from England, the Tjele helmet fragment from Denmark, and a fragment from Kyiv, Ukraine. These are all examples of the "crested helmets" that entered use in Europe around the sixth century, and derive from the earlier Anglo-Saxon and Vendel Period helmets. ( Full article...)

Peter Charles van Geersdaele OBE (3 July 1933 – 20 July 2018) was an English conservator best known for his work on the Sutton Hoo ship-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...)

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...)

Smythe's Megalith, also known as the Warren Farm Chamber, was a chambered long barrow east of Blue Bell Hill, north of Maidstone, in the south-eastern English county of Kent, close to Aylesford village and the hamlet of Sandling.

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 sarsen megaliths, 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.

Several of the Medway Megaliths still survive: Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow are on the river's western side, while Kit's Coty House, the Little Kit's Coty House, and the Coffin Stone are on the eastern side nearer to Smythe's Megalith. Close to the site of the lost monument is the White Horse Stone, a standing stone that may have once been part of another chambered long barrow.

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...)

Jacket's Field Long Barrow is an unchambered long barrow located near to the village of Boughton Aluph in the south-eastern English county of Kent. It was probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period. Built out of earth, the long barrow consists of a sub-trapezoidal tumulus flanked by side ditches.

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...)

The Roman temple of Bziza is a well-preserved first century AD building dedicated to Azizos, a personification of the morning star in ancient Arab polytheism. This Roman temple lends the modern Lebanese town of Bziza its current name, as Bziza is a corruption of Beth Azizo meaning the house or temple of Azizos. Azizos was identified as Ares by Emperor Julian.

The tetrastyle prostyle 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...)

Ángela Margarita Jeria Gómez (22 August 1926 – 2 July 2020) was a Chilean archaeologist. Mother of the former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, she was the wife of the Chilean Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet, who died after being tortured during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Jeria served informally in the role of first lady during the first Bachelet government, accompanying her daughter to several official functions. Her official protocolary role was "Director of the Sociocultural Area of the Presidency". ( Full article...)

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300  BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus civilisation after its type site Harappa, 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...)

Quiriguá (Spanish pronunciation: [kiɾiˈɣwa]) is an ancient Maya archaeological site in the department of Izabal in south-eastern Guatemala. It is a medium-sized site covering approximately 3 square kilometres (1.2 sq mi) along the lower Motagua River, with the ceremonial center about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the north bank. During the Maya Classic Period (AD 200–900), Quiriguá was situated at the juncture of several important trade routes. The site was occupied by 200, construction on the acropolis had begun by about 550, and an explosion of grander construction started in the 8th century. All construction had halted by about 850, except for a brief period of reoccupation in the Early Postclassic (c. 900 – c. 1200). Quiriguá shares its architectural and sculptural styles with the nearby Classic Period city of Copán, with whose history it is closely entwined.

Quiriguá's rapid expansion in the 8th century was tied to king K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat's military victory over Copán in 738. When the greatest king of Copán, Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil or "18-Rabbit", was defeated, he was captured and then sacrificed in the Great Plaza at Quiriguá. Before this, Quiriguá had been a vassal state of Copán, but it maintained its independence afterwards. The ceremonial architecture at Quiriguá is quite modest, but the site's importance lies in its wealth of sculpture, including the tallest stone monumental sculpture ever erected in the New World. Because of its historical importance, the site of Quiriguá was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. ( Full article...)

Smythe's Megalith, also known as the Warren Farm Chamber, was a chambered long barrow east of Blue Bell Hill, north of Maidstone, in the south-eastern English county of Kent, close to Aylesford village and the hamlet of Sandling.

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 sarsen megaliths, 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.

Several of the Medway Megaliths still survive: Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow are on the river's western side, while Kit's Coty House, the Little Kit's Coty House, and the Coffin Stone are on the eastern side nearer to Smythe's Megalith. Close to the site of the lost monument is the White Horse Stone, a standing stone that may have once been part of another chambered long barrow.

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...)

Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 1892 – 19 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and then the Institute of Archaeology, London. He wrote twenty-six books during his career. Initially an early proponent of culture-historical archaeology, he later became the first exponent of Marxist archaeology in the Western world.

Born in Sydney to a middle-class English migrant family, Childe studied classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to study classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. There, he embraced the socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War, viewing it as a conflict waged by competing imperialists to the detriment of Europe's working class. Returning to Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his socialist activism. Instead, he worked for the Labor Party as the private secretary of the politician John Storey. Growing critical of Labor, he wrote an analysis of their policies and joined the radical labour organisation Industrial Workers of the World. Emigrating to London in 1921, he became librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute and journeyed across Europe to pursue his research into the continent's prehistory, publishing his findings in academic papers and books. In doing so, he introduced the continental European concept of an archaeological culture—the idea that a recurring assemblage of artefacts demarcates a distinct cultural group—to the British archaeological community.

From 1927 to 1946 he worked as the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, and then from 1947 to 1957 as the director of the Institute of Archaeology, London. During this period he oversaw the excavation of archaeological sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland, focusing on the society of Neolithic Orkney by excavating the settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tombs of Maeshowe and Quoyness. In these decades he published prolifically, producing excavation reports, journal articles, and books. With Stuart Piggott and Grahame Clark he co-founded The Prehistoric Society in 1934, becoming its first president. Remaining a committed socialist, he embraced Marxism, and—rejecting culture-historical approaches—used Marxist ideas such as historical materialism as an interpretative framework for archaeological data. He became a sympathiser with the Soviet Union and visited the country on several occasions, although he grew sceptical of Soviet foreign policy following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His beliefs resulted in him being legally barred from entering the United States, despite receiving repeated invitations to lecture there. Upon retirement, he returned to Australia's Blue Mountains, where he committed suicide.

One of the best-known and most widely cited archaeologists of the twentieth century, Childe became known as the "great synthesizer" for his work integrating regional research with a broader picture of Near Eastern and European prehistory. He was also renowned for his emphasis on the role of revolutionary technological and economic developments in human society, such as the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution, reflecting the influence of Marxist ideas concerning societal development. Although many of his interpretations have since been discredited, he remains widely respected among archaeologists. ( Full article...)

Bath and North East Somerset (commonly referred to as BANES or B&NES) is a unitary authority created on 1 April 1996, following the abolition of the County of Avon, which had existed since 1974. Part of the ceremonial county of Somerset, Bath and North East Somerset occupies an area of 220 square miles (570 km²), two-thirds of which is green belt. It stretches from the outskirts of Bristol, south into the Mendip Hills and east to the southern Cotswold Hills and Wiltshire border. The city of Bath is the principal settlement in the district, but BANES also covers Keynsham, Midsomer Norton, Radstock and the Chew Valley. The area has a population of 170,000, about half of whom live in Bath, making it 12 times more densely populated than the rest of the area.

A scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or monument which is given legal protection by being placed on a list (or "schedule") by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; Historic England takes the leading role in identifying such sites. The legislation governing this is the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The term "monument" can apply to the whole range of archaeological sites, and they are not always visible above ground. Such sites have to have been deliberately constructed by human activity. They range from prehistoric standing stones and burial sites, through Roman remains and medieval structures such as castles and monasteries, to later structures such as industrial sites and buildings constructed for the World Wars or the Cold War.

There are 58 scheduled monuments in Bath and North East Somerset. Some of the oldest are Neolithic, including the Stanton Drew stone circles and several tumuli. The Great Circle at Stanton Drew is one of the largest Neolithic monuments ever built, and the second largest stone circle in Britain (after Avebury). The date of construction is not known but is thought to be between 3000 and 2000 BCE, which places it in the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. There are also several Iron Age hillforts such as Maes Knoll, which was later incorporated into the medieval Wansdyke defensive earthwork, several sections of which are included in this list. The Romano-British period is represented with several sites, most notably the Roman Baths and city walls in Bath. More recent sites include several bridges which date from the Middle Ages to the 18th-century Palladian bridge in Prior Park Landscape Garden. Dundas Aqueduct, built in 1805 to carry the Kennet and Avon Canal, is the most recent site in the list. The monuments are listed below using the names given in the English Heritage data sheets. ( 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.

Complex society in the Caral–Supe arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmecs by nearly two millennia.

In archaeological nomenclature, Caral–Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and no evidence of visual art has survived. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform 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...)

Parc Cwm long cairn ( Welsh: carn hir Parc Cwm), also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber (siambr gladdu Parc le Breos), is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5850  years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.

A trapezoidal cairn 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...)

Marguerite Augusta Gautier-van Berchem (born Marguerite Augusta Berthout van Berchem; 11 April 1892 – 23 January 1984) was a Swiss archaeologist and art historian from a patrician family, who specialised both in early Christian art and early Islamic art. She was also an active member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and was one of the first women to hold a senior position there. ( Full article...)

Ebla ( Sumerian: 𒌈𒆷 eb₂-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. 3500 BC), 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. 1600 BC.

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...)

Jarlshof ( /ˈjɑːrlzhɒf/ YARLZ-hof) is the best-known prehistoric archaeological site in Shetland, Scotland. It lies in Sumburgh, Mainland, Shetland and has been described as "one of the most remarkable archaeological sites ever excavated in the British Isles". It contains remains dating from 2500 BC up to the 17th century AD.

The Bronze Age settlers left evidence of several small oval houses with thick stone walls and various artefacts including a decorated bone object. The Iron Age ruins include several different types of structures, including a broch and a defensive wall around the site. The Pictish period provides various works of art including a painted pebble and a symbol stone. The Viking Age ruins make up the largest such site visible anywhere in Britain and include a longhouse; excavations provided numerous tools and a detailed insight into life in Shetland at this time. The most visible structures on the site are the walls of the Scottish period fortified manor house, which inspired the name "Jarlshof" that first appears in an 1821 novel by Walter Scott.

The site is in the care of Historic Scotland and is open from April to September. In 2010 " The Crucible of Iron Age Shetland" including Mousa, Old Scatness and Jarlshof was added to those seeking to be on the "tentative list" of World Heritage Sites. ( Full article...)

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 ( Gaelic Irish 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...)

Margaret Alice Murray FSA Scot FRAI (13 July 1863 – 13 November 1963) was an Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career.

Born to a wealthy middle-class English family in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her junior lecturer in 1898. In 1902–03, she took part in Petrie's excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both of which established her reputation in Egyptology. Supplementing her UCL wage by giving public classes and lectures at the British Museum and Manchester Museum, it was at the latter in 1908 that she led the unwrapping of Khnum-nakht, one of the mummies recovered from the Tomb of two Brothers – the first time that a woman had publicly unwrapped a mummy. Recognising that British Egyptomania reflected the existence of a widespread public interest in Ancient Egypt, Murray wrote several books on Egyptology targeted at a general audience.

Murray also became closely involved in the first-wave feminist movement, joining the Women's Social and Political Union and devoting much time to improving women's status at UCL. Unable to return to Egypt due to the First World War, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. Although later academically discredited, the theory gained widespread attention and proved a significant influence on the emerging new religious movement of Wicca. From 1921 to 1931, she undertook excavations of prehistoric sites on Malta and Menorca and developed her interest in folkloristics. Awarded an honorary doctorate in 1927, she was appointed assistant professor in 1928 and retired from UCL in 1935. That year she visited Palestine to aid Petrie's excavation of Tall al-Ajjul and in 1937 she led a small excavation at Petra in Jordan. Taking on the presidency of the Folklore Society in later life, she lectured at such institutions as the University of Cambridge and City Literary Institute, and continued to publish in an independent capacity until her death.

Murray's work in Egyptology and archaeology was widely acclaimed and earned her the nickname of "The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology", although after her death many of her contributions to the field were overshadowed by those of Petrie. Conversely, Murray's work in folkloristics and the history of witchcraft has been academically discredited and her methods in these areas heavily criticised. The influence of her witch-cult theory in both religion and literature has been examined by various scholars, and she herself has been dubbed the "Grandmother of Wicca". ( Full article...)

Caludon Castle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and Grade I listed building in Coventry, in the West Midlands of England. A second moated site 190 metres (620 ft) to the south is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in its own right. The castle is now a ruin, and all that remains is a large fragment of sandstone wall. What remains of the estate is now an urban park, owned and run by Coventry City Council, but much of it was sold and developed into housing estates in the early 20th century.

The site has been occupied since at least the 11th century CE. The original building, pre-dating the Norman conquest of England, was a large house, which became the property of the Earl of Chester after the conquest. The house was given to the Segrave family in the 13th century, and was first described as a manor in 1239. A licence for crenellation was granted in 1305, at which point the house is thought to have been re-styled as a castle. Another licence was received in 1354, and the property was again rebuilt. In the 14th century, it came into the possession of Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, who was banished in 1398, after which the castle fell into disrepair. Mowbray's son, John, inherited the building, and it remained in the Mowbray family until 1481, when it passed to William de Berkeley, 1st Marquess of Berkeley. It was rebuilt again circa 1580, this time as a mansion, having lain derelict since Mowbray's banishment. The castle was all but destroyed in 1662, and remained in ruins until 1800, when the remains were used in the construction of a farmhouse on the site.

The estate was divided up and much of it sold in 1815, and remained in the hands of multiple private owners until most of the land was purchased by the Coventry Corporation after the First World War and used for housing developments. ( 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...)

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...)

Fort Dobbs was an 18th-century fort in the Yadkin–Pee Dee River Basin region of the Province of North Carolina, near what is now Statesville in Iredell County. Used for frontier defense during and after the French and Indian War, the fort was built to protect the American settlers of the western frontier of North Carolina, and served as a vital outpost for soldiers. Fort Dobbs' primary structure was a blockhouse with log walls, surrounded by a shallow ditch, and by 1759, a palisade. It was intended to provide protection from French-allied Native Americans such as the Shawnee raids into western North Carolina.

The fort's name honored Arthur Dobbs, the Royal Governor of North Carolina from 1755 to 1765, who played a role in designing the fort and authorized its construction. Between 1756 and 1761, the fort was garrisoned by a variable number of soldiers, many of whom were sent to fight in Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley during the French and Indian War. On February 27, 1760, the fort was the site of an engagement between Cherokee warriors and Provincial soldiers that ended in a victory for the Provincials.

Fort Dobbs was abandoned in March, 1761, and disappeared from the landscape. Archaeology and historical research led to the discovery of the fort's exact location and probable appearance. The site on which the fort sat is now operated by North Carolina's Division of State Historic Sites and Properties as Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. The reconstruction of the fort was completed on September 21, 2019. ( Full article...)

The Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the seventh century AD. It was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in Monyash in western Derbyshire. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained other high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, such as the fragmentary remains of a hanging bowl. The helmet is displayed at Sheffield's Weston Park Museum, which purchased it from Bateman's estate in 1893.

The helmet was constructed by covering the outside of an iron framework with plates of horn and the inside with cloth or leather; the organic material has since decayed. It would have provided some protection against weapons, but was also ornate and may have been intended for ceremonial use. It was the first Anglo-Saxon helmet to be discovered, with five others found since: Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009). The helmet features a unique combination of structural and technical attributes, but contemporaneous parallels exist for its individual characteristics. It is classified as one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe from the 6th to 11th centuries AD.

The most striking feature of the helmet is the boar at its apex; this pagan symbol faces towards a Christian cross on the nasal in a display of syncretism. This is representative of 7th-century England when Christian missionaries were slowly converting Anglo-Saxons away from traditional Germanic paganism. The helmet seems to exhibit a stronger preference toward paganism, with a large boar and a small cross. The cross may have been added for talismanic effect, the help of any god being welcome on the battlefield. The boar atop the crest was likewise associated with protection and suggests a time when boar-crested helmets may have been common, as do the helmet from Wollaston and the Guilden Morden boar. The contemporary epic Beowulf mentions such helmets five times and speaks of the strength of men "when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet". ( Full article...)

A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars usually consider a castle to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for pleasance and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.

European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures: they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offered protection from enemies. Although their military origins are often emphasised in castle studies, the structures also served as centres of administration and symbols of power. Urban castles were used to control the local populace and important travel routes, and rural castles were often situated near features that were integral to life in the community, such as mills, fertile land, or a water source.

Many northern European castles were originally built from earth and timber but had their defences replaced later by stone. Early castles often exploited natural defences, lacking features such as towers and arrowslits and relying on a central keep. In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a scientific approach to castle defence emerged. This led to the proliferation of towers, with an emphasis on flanking fire. Many new castles were polygonal or relied on concentric defence – several stages of defence within each other that could all function at the same time to maximise the castle's firepower. These changes in defence have been attributed to a mixture of castle technology from the Crusades, such as concentric fortification, and inspiration from earlier defences, such as Roman forts. Not all the elements of castle architecture were military in nature, so that devices such as moats evolved from their original purpose of defence into symbols of power. Some grand castles had long winding approaches intended to impress and dominate their landscape.

Although gunpowder was introduced to Europe in the 14th century, it did not significantly affect castle building until the 15th century, when artillery became powerful enough to break through stone walls. While castles continued to be built well into the 16th century, new techniques to deal with improved cannon fire made them uncomfortable and undesirable places to live. As a result, true castles went into decline and were replaced by artillery forts with no role in civil administration, and country houses that were indefensible. From the 18th century onwards, there was a renewed interest in castles with the construction of mock castles, part of a Romantic revival of Gothic architecture, but they had no military purpose. ( Full article...)

The Acra (also spelled Akra, from Ancient Greek: Ἄκρα, Hebrew: חקרא ,חקרה Ḥaqra(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...)

The Nine Stones, also known as the Devil's Nine Stones, the Nine Ladies, or Lady Williams and her Dog, is a stone circle located near to the village of Winterbourne Abbas in the southwestern English county of Dorset. Archaeologists believe that it was likely erected during the Bronze Age.

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...)

Brougham Castle (pronounced /ˈbruːm/) is a medieval building about 2 miles (3.2 km) south-east of Penrith, Cumbria, England. The castle was founded by Robert I de Vieuxpont in the early 13th century. The site, near the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther, had been chosen by the Romans for a Roman fort called Brocavum. The castle, along with the fort, is a scheduled monument: "Brougham Roman fort and Brougham Castle".

In its earliest form, the castle consisted of a stone keep, with an enclosure protected by an earthen bank and a wooden palisade. When the castle was built, Robert de Vieuxpont was one of the only lords in the region who were loyal to King John. The Vieuxponts were a powerful land-owning family in North West England, who also owned the castles of Appleby and Brough. In 1264, Robert de Vieuxpont's grandson, also named Robert, was declared a traitor, and his property was confiscated by Henry III. Brougham Castle and the other estates were eventually returned to the Vieuxpont family, and stayed in their possession until 1269, when the estates passed to the Clifford family through marriage.

With the outbreak of the Wars of Scottish Independence, in 1296, Brougham became an important military base for Robert Clifford, 1st Baron de Clifford. He began refortifying the castle: the wooden outer defences were replaced with stronger, more impressive stone walls, and a large stone gatehouse was added. The importance of Brougham and Robert Clifford was such that, in 1300, he hosted King Edward I of England at the castle. Robert's son, Roger Clifford, was executed as a traitor, in 1322, and the family estates passed into the possession of King Edward II of England, although they were returned once his son Edward III became king. The region was often at risk from the Scots, and in 1388, the castle was captured and sacked.

Following this, the Cliffords began spending more time at their other castles, particularly Skipton Castle in Yorkshire. Brougham descended through several generations of Cliffords, intermittently serving as a residence. However, by 1592, it was in a state of disrepair, as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland was spending more time in southern England due to his role as Queen's Champion. The castle was briefly restored in the early 17th century, to such an extent, that King James I of England was entertained there in 1617. In 1643, Lady Anne Clifford inherited the estates, including the castles of Brougham, Appleby, and Brough, and set about restoring them. Brougham Castle was kept in good condition for a short time, after Lady Anne's death in 1676; however, Thomas Tufton, 6th Earl of Thanet, who had inherited the Clifford estates, sold the furnishings in 1714. The empty shell was left to decay, as it was too costly to maintain. As a ruin, Brougham Castle inspired a painting by J. M. W. Turner, and was mentioned at the start of William Wordsworth's poem The Prelude, as well as becoming the subject of Wordsworth's Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors. The castle was left to the Ministry of Works, in the 1930s, and is today maintained by its successor, English Heritage. ( Full article...)

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...)

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (¹⁴
C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting ¹⁴
C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire ¹⁴
C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of ¹⁴
C it contains begins to decrease as the ¹⁴
C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of ¹⁴
C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less ¹⁴
C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of ¹⁴
C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the ¹⁴
C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.

Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of ¹⁴
C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of ¹⁴
C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its ¹⁴
C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no ¹⁴
C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.

Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying ¹⁴
C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the ¹⁴
C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. ( Full article...)

Quiriguá (Spanish pronunciation: [kiɾiˈɣwa]) is an ancient Maya archaeological site in the department of Izabal in south-eastern Guatemala. It is a medium-sized site covering approximately 3 square kilometres (1.2 sq mi) along the lower Motagua River, with the ceremonial center about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the north bank. During the Maya Classic Period (AD 200–900), Quiriguá was situated at the juncture of several important trade routes. The site was occupied by 200, construction on the acropolis had begun by about 550, and an explosion of grander construction started in the 8th century. All construction had halted by about 850, except for a brief period of reoccupation in the Early Postclassic (c. 900 – c. 1200). Quiriguá shares its architectural and sculptural styles with the nearby Classic Period city of Copán, with whose history it is closely entwined.

Quiriguá's rapid expansion in the 8th century was tied to king K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat's military victory over Copán in 738. When the greatest king of Copán, Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil or "18-Rabbit", was defeated, he was captured and then sacrificed in the Great Plaza at Quiriguá. Before this, Quiriguá had been a vassal state of Copán, but it maintained its independence afterwards. The ceremonial architecture at Quiriguá is quite modest, but the site's importance lies in its wealth of sculpture, including the tallest stone monumental sculpture ever erected in the New World. Because of its historical importance, the site of Quiriguá was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. ( Full article...)

Fir Clump Stone Circle was a stone circle in Burderop Wood near Wroughton, Wiltshire, in South West England. The ring was 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 some archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.

A double concentric circle consisting of sarsen megaliths, 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...)

Ludwig Ross (22 July 1806 – 6 August 1859) was a German classical archaeologist. He is chiefly remembered for the rediscovery and reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Nike in 1835–1836, and for his other excavation and conservation work on the Acropolis of Athens. He was also an important figure in the early years of archaeology in the independent Kingdom of Greece, serving as Ephor General of Antiquities between 1834 and 1836.

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...)

Ai-Khanoum ( /aɪ ˈhɑːnjuːm/, meaning Lady Moon; Uzbek Latin: Oyxonim) is the archaeological site of a Hellenistic city in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. The city, whose original name is unknown, was likely founded by an early ruler of the Seleucid Empire and served as a military and economic centre for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by a French team of archaeologists until the outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

The city was probably founded between 300 and 285 BC by an official acting on the orders of Seleucus I Nicator or his son Antiochus I Soter, the first two rulers of the Seleucid dynasty. There is a possibility that the site was known to the earlier Achaemenid Empire, who established a small fort nearby. Ai-Khanoum was originally thought to have been a foundation of Alexander the Great, perhaps as Alexandria Oxiana, but this theory is now considered unlikely. Located at the confluence of the Amu Darya ( a.k.a. Oxus) and Kokcha rivers, surrounded by well-irrigated farmland, the city itself was divided between a lower town and a 60-metre-high (200 ft) acropolis. Although not situated on a major trade route, Ai-Khanoum controlled access to both mining in the Hindu Kush and strategically important choke points. Extensive fortifications, which were continually maintained and improved, surrounded the city.

Ai-Khanoum, which may have initially grown in population because of royal patronage and the presence of a mint in the city, lost some importance through the secession of the Greco-Bactrians under Diodotus I ( c. 250 BC). Seleucid construction programmes were halted and the city probably became primarily military in function; it may have been a conflict zone during the invasion of Antiochus III ( c. 209 – c. 205 BC). Ai-Khanoum began to grow once more under Euthydemus I and his successor Demetrius I, who began to assert control over the northwest Indian subcontinent. Many of the present ruins date from the time of Eucratides I, who substantially redeveloped the city and who may have renamed it Eucratideia, after himself. Soon after his death c. 145 BC, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom collapsed—Ai-Khanoum was captured by Saka invaders and was generally abandoned, although parts of the city were sporadically occupied until the 2nd century AD. Hellenistic culture in the region would persist longer only in the Indo-Greek kingdoms.

While on a hunting trip in 1961, the King of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, rediscovered the city. An archaeological delegation, led by Paul Bernard, unearthed the remains of a huge palace in the lower town, along with a large gymnasium, a theatre capable of holding 6,000 spectators, an arsenal, and two sanctuaries. Several inscriptions were found, along with coins, artefacts, and ceramics. The onset of the Soviet-Afghan War in the late 1970s halted scholarly progress and during the following conflicts in Afghanistan, the site was extensively looted. ( Full article...)

The Sweet Track is an ancient trackway, or causeway, in the Somerset Levels, England, named after its finder, Ray Sweet. It was built in 3807 BC (determined using dendrochronology) and is the second-oldest timber trackway discovered in the British Isles, dating to the Neolithic. The Sweet Track was predominantly built along the course of an earlier structure, the Post Track.

The track extended across the now largely drained marsh between what was then an island at Westhay and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, a distance close to 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) or around 1.1 mi. The track is one of a network that once crossed the Somerset Levels. Various artifacts and prehistoric finds, including a jadeitite ceremonial axe head, have been found in the peat bogs along its length.

Construction was of crossed wooden poles, driven into the waterlogged soil to support a walkway that consisted mainly of planks of oak, laid end-to-end. The track was used for a period of only around ten years and was then abandoned, probably due to rising water levels. Following its discovery in 1970, most of the track has been left in its original location, with active conservation measures taken, including a water pumping and distribution system to maintain the wood in its damp condition. Some of the track is stored at the British Museum and at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton. A reconstruction has been made on which visitors can walk, on the same line as the original, in Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve. ( Full article...)

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.

The antiquarian and collector Henry Charles Sirr, Lord Mayor of Dublin, held the crozier until his collection was acquired by the Royal Irish Academy on his death in 1841. It was transferred to the archaeology branch of the National Museum of Ireland on Kildare Street on the branch's foundation in 1890. The archaeologist and art historian Griffin Murray has described the crozier as "one of [the] finest examples of early medieval metalwork from Ireland". ( Full article...)

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 Hoo ship-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...)

The Temple of Eshmun ( Arabic: معبد أشمون) is an ancient place of worship dedicated to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. It is located near the Awali river, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) northeast of Sidon in southwestern Lebanon. The site was occupied from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD, suggesting an integrated relationship with the nearby city of Sidon. Although originally constructed by Sidonian king Eshmunazar II in the Achaemenid era ( c. 529–333 BC) to celebrate the city's recovered wealth and stature, the temple complex was greatly expanded by Bodashtart, Yatonmilk and later monarchs. Because the continued expansion spanned many centuries of alternating independence and foreign hegemony, the sanctuary features a wealth of different architectural and decorative styles and influences.

The sanctuary consists of an esplanade and a grand court limited by a huge limestone terrace wall that supports a monumental podium which was once topped by Eshmun's Greco-Persian style marble temple. The sanctuary features a series of ritual ablution basins fed by canals channeling water from the Asclepius river (modern Awali) and from the sacred "YDLL" spring; these installations were used for therapeutic and purificatory purposes that characterize the cult of Eshmun. The sanctuary site has yielded many artifacts of value, especially those inscribed with Phoenician texts, such as the Bodashtart inscriptions and the Eshmun inscription, providing valuable insight into the site's history and that of ancient Sidon.

The Eshmun Temple was improved during the early Roman Empire with a colonnade street, but declined after earthquakes and fell into oblivion as Christianity replaced polytheism and its large limestone blocks were used to build later structures. The temple site was rediscovered in 1900 by local treasure hunters who stirred the curiosity of international scholars. Maurice Dunand, a French archaeologist, thoroughly excavated the site from 1963 until the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. After the end of the hostilities and the retreat of Israel from Southern Lebanon, the site was rehabilitated and inscribed to the World Heritage Site tentative list. ( Full article...)

Borobudur, also transcribed Barabudur ( Indonesian: Candi Borobudur, Javanese: ꦕꦤ꧀ꦝꦶꦧꦫꦧꦸꦝꦸꦂ, romanized: Candhi Barabudhur) is a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in Magelang Regency, near the city of Magelang and the town of Muntilan, in Central Java, Indonesia.

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 Javanese Buddhist 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.

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world, and ranks with Bagan in Myanmar and Angkor Wat in Cambodia as one of the great archeological sites of Southeast Asia. Borobudur remains popular for pilgrimage, with Buddhists in Indonesia celebrating Vesak Day at the monument. Among Indonesia's tourist attractions, Borobudur is the most-visited monument. ( Full article...)

The Song dynasty ( /sʊŋ/) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China following attacks by the Jin dynasty, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song ( Chinese: 北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song ( Chinese: 南宋; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng, Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.

Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first surviving records of the chemical formula for gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses. The Northern Song census recorded 20 million households, double of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90 million people, and 200 million by the time of the Ming dynasty. This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.

The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and emergence of a national economy led to the gradual withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a larger role in local administration and affairs. Social life during the Song was vibrant. Citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the rapid expansion of woodblock printing and the 11th-century invention of movable type printing. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that established the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. Although civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, they became much more prominent in the Song period. Officials gaining power through imperial examination led to a shift from a military-aristocratic elite to a scholar-bureaucratic elite. ( Full article...)

The sarcophagus of Eshmunazar 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: 𐤀𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤏𐤆𐤓 ʾšmnʿzr, r.  c. 539 –  c. 525 BC), Phoenician King 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...)

Smythe's Megalith, also known as the Warren Farm Chamber, was a chambered long barrow east of Blue Bell Hill, north of Maidstone, in the south-eastern English county of Kent, close to Aylesford village and the hamlet of Sandling.

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 sarsen megaliths, 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.

Several of the Medway Megaliths still survive: Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow are on the river's western side, while Kit's Coty House, the Little Kit's Coty House, and the Coffin Stone are on the eastern side nearer to Smythe's Megalith. Close to the site of the lost monument is the White Horse Stone, a standing stone that may have once been part of another chambered long barrow.

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...)

Norton Priory is a historic site in Norton, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, comprising the remains of an abbey complex dating from the 12th to 16th centuries, and an 18th-century country house; it is now a museum. The remains are a scheduled ancient monument and are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. They are considered to be the most important monastic remains in Cheshire.

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...)

Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hillfort 1.6 mi (2.6 km) southwest of Dorchester, in the English county of Dorset. Hill forts were fortified hill-top settlements constructed across Britain during the Iron Age.

The earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the site consists of a Neolithic causewayed 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...)

Herbert James Maryon OBE FSA FIIC (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 Hoo ship-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 Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the seventh century AD. It was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in Monyash in western Derbyshire. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained other high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, such as the fragmentary remains of a hanging bowl. The helmet is displayed at Sheffield's Weston Park Museum, which purchased it from Bateman's estate in 1893.

The helmet was constructed by covering the outside of an iron framework with plates of horn and the inside with cloth or leather; the organic material has since decayed. It would have provided some protection against weapons, but was also ornate and may have been intended for ceremonial use. It was the first Anglo-Saxon helmet to be discovered, with five others found since: Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009). The helmet features a unique combination of structural and technical attributes, but contemporaneous parallels exist for its individual characteristics. It is classified as one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe from the 6th to 11th centuries AD.

The most striking feature of the helmet is the boar at its apex; this pagan symbol faces towards a Christian cross on the nasal in a display of syncretism. This is representative of 7th-century England when Christian missionaries were slowly converting Anglo-Saxons away from traditional Germanic paganism. The helmet seems to exhibit a stronger preference toward paganism, with a large boar and a small cross. The cross may have been added for talismanic effect, the help of any god being welcome on the battlefield. The boar atop the crest was likewise associated with protection and suggests a time when boar-crested helmets may have been common, as do the helmet from Wollaston and the Guilden Morden boar. The contemporary epic Beowulf mentions such helmets five times and speaks of the strength of men "when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet". ( Full article...)

The Shorwell helmet is an Anglo-Saxon helmet from the early to mid-sixth century AD found near Shorwell on the Isle of Wight in southern England. It was one of the grave goods of a high-status Anglo-Saxon warrior, and was found with other objects such as a pattern-welded sword and hanging bowl. One of only six known Anglo-Saxon helmets, alongside those found at Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), and Staffordshire (2009), it is the sole example to derive from the continental Frankish style rather than the contemporaneous Northern "crested helmets" used in England and Scandinavia.

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...)

The Corp Naomh ( [kɔɾˠpˠ n̪ˠiːvˠ], KORP NEEV, English: Holy or Sacred Body) is an Irish bell shrine made in the 9th or 10th century to enclose a now-lost hand-bell, which probably dated to c. 600 to 900 AD and belonged to an early Irish saint. The shrine was rediscovered sometime before 1682 at Tristernagh Abbey, near Templecross, County Westmeath. The shrine is 23 cm (9.1 in) high and 12 cm (4.7 in) wide. It was heavily refurbished and added to during a second phase of embellishment in the 15th century, and now consists of cast and sheet bronze plates mounted on a wooden core decorated with silver, niello and rock crystal. It is severely damaged with extensive losses and wear across almost all of its parts, and when discovered a block of wood had been substituted for the bell itself. The remaining elements are considered of high historical and artistic value by archeologists and art historians.

Sections from its original, early Medieval phase include the cross on the reverse and the ornate semi-circular cap, which shows a bearded cleric holding a book. He is surrounded by horsemen above whom are large birds seemingly about to take flight. It was extensively refurbished in the 15th (and possibly 16th) centuries when the central bronze crucifix, the griffin and lion panel, the stamped border panels and the backing plate were added. The badly damaged crucifix and large enamel stud on the front date from at least the 15th century.

The shrine's medieval provenance is incomplete. It was probably held by hereditary keepers after the dissolution of Tristernagh Abbey in 1536 until it passed into the possession of the Anglo-Irish owners of the site. The Corp Naomh was first exhibited in 1853 by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and was transferred to the National Museum of Ireland in 1887. ( Full article...)

Fort Dobbs was an 18th-century fort in the Yadkin–Pee Dee River Basin region of the Province of North Carolina, near what is now Statesville in Iredell County. Used for frontier defense during and after the French and Indian War, the fort was built to protect the American settlers of the western frontier of North Carolina, and served as a vital outpost for soldiers. Fort Dobbs' primary structure was a blockhouse with log walls, surrounded by a shallow ditch, and by 1759, a palisade. It was intended to provide protection from French-allied Native Americans such as the Shawnee raids into western North Carolina.

The fort's name honored Arthur Dobbs, the Royal Governor of North Carolina from 1755 to 1765, who played a role in designing the fort and authorized its construction. Between 1756 and 1761, the fort was garrisoned by a variable number of soldiers, many of whom were sent to fight in Pennsylvania and the Ohio River Valley during the French and Indian War. On February 27, 1760, the fort was the site of an engagement between Cherokee warriors and Provincial soldiers that ended in a victory for the Provincials.

Fort Dobbs was abandoned in March, 1761, and disappeared from the landscape. Archaeology and historical research led to the discovery of the fort's exact location and probable appearance. The site on which the fort sat is now operated by North Carolina's Division of State Historic Sites and Properties as Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. The reconstruction of the fort was completed on September 21, 2019. ( Full article...)

The sarcophagus of Eshmunazar 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: 𐤀𐤔𐤌𐤍𐤏𐤆𐤓 ʾšmnʿzr, r.  c. 539 –  c. 525 BC), Phoenician King 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...)

Fir Clump Stone Circle was a stone circle in Burderop Wood near Wroughton, Wiltshire, in South West England. The ring was 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 some archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.

A double concentric circle consisting of sarsen megaliths, 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...)

Shen Kuo ( Chinese: 沈括; 1031–1095) or Shen Gua, courtesy name Cunzhong (存中) and pseudonym Mengqi (now usually given as Mengxi) Weng (夢溪翁), was a Chinese polymath, scientist, and statesman of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Shen was a master in many fields of study including mathematics, optics, and horology. In his career as a civil servant, he became a finance minister, governmental state inspector, head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality, and also served as an academic chancellor. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (1021–1085).

In his Dream Pool Essays or Dream Torrent Essays (夢溪筆談; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the pole star and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancers' compasses in regard to declination).

Alongside his colleague Wei Pu, Shen planned to map the orbital paths of the Moon and the planets in an intensive five-year project involving daily observations, yet this was thwarted by political opponents at court. To aid his work in astronomy, Shen Kuo made improved designs of the armillary sphere, gnomon, sighting tube, and invented a new type of inflow water clock. Shen Kuo devised a geological hypothesis for land formation ( geomorphology), based upon findings of inland marine fossils, knowledge of soil erosion, and the deposition of silt. He also proposed a hypothesis of gradual climate change, after observing ancient petrified bamboos that were preserved underground in a dry northern habitat that would not support bamboo growth in his time. He was the first literary figure in China to mention the use of the drydock to repair boats suspended out of water, and also wrote of the effectiveness of the relatively new invention of the canal pound lock. Although not the first to invent camera obscura, Shen noted the relation of the focal point of a concave mirror and that of the pinhole. Shen wrote extensively about movable type printing invented by Bi Sheng (990–1051), and because of his written works the legacy of Bi Sheng and the modern understanding of the earliest movable type has been handed down to later generations. Following an old tradition in China, Shen created a raised-relief map while inspecting borderlands. His description of an ancient crossbow mechanism he unearthed as an amateur archaeologist proved to be a Jacob's staff, a surveying tool which wasn't known in Europe until described by Levi ben Gerson in 1321.

Shen Kuo wrote several other books besides the Dream Pool Essays, yet much of the writing in his other books has not survived. Some of Shen's poetry was preserved in posthumous written works. Although much of his focus was on technical and scientific issues, he had an interest in divination and the supernatural, the latter including his vivid description of unidentified flying objects from eyewitness testimony. He also wrote commentary on ancient Daoist and Confucian texts. ( Full article...)

Kyriakos S. Pittakis (also Pittakys; Greek: Κυριακός Σ. Πιττάκης; 1798 – 4 November [ O.S. 23 October] 1863) was a Greek archaeologist. He was the first Greek to serve as Ephor General of Antiquities, the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, in which capacity he carried out the conservation and restoration of several monuments on the Acropolis of Athens. He has been described as a "dominant figure in Greek archaeology for 27 years", and as "one of the most important epigraphers of the nineteenth century".

Pittakis was largely self-taught as an archaeologist, and one of the few native Greeks active in the field during the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Kingdom of Greece. He played an influential role in the early years of the Greek Archaeological Service and was a founding member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, a private body which undertook the excavation, conservation and publication of archaeological finds. He was responsible for much of the early excavation and restoration of the Acropolis, including efforts to restore the Erechtheion, the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia. As ephor of the Central Public Museum for Antiquities from 1836, and later as Ephor General, he was largely responsible for the conservation and protection of many of the monuments and artefacts then known from Ancient Greece.

Pittakis has been described as the last representative of the "heroic period" of Greek archaeologists. He was prolific both as an excavator and as an archaeological writer, publishing by his own estimation more than 4,000 inscriptions. He has been praised for his extensive efforts to uncover and protect Greece's classical heritage, particularly in Athens and the adjacent islands, but criticised for his unsystematic and incautious approach. His reconstructions of ancient monuments often prioritised aesthetics over fidelity to the original, and were largely reverted after his death. He has also been accused of allowing his strong nationalist beliefs to influence his reconstruction of ancient monuments, and of distorting the archaeological record to suit his own beliefs. ( Full article...)

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeast Africa. It was concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100  BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer). The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by periods of relative instability known as “Intermediate Periods.” The various kingdoms fall into one of three categories: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age, or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

Ancient Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Levant. After this period, it entered an era of slow decline. During the course of its history, Ancient Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. Egypt remained under Roman control until the 640s AD, when it was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate.

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs. ^[1]
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems, and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities were carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians has led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy. ( Full article...)

Chestnuts Long Barrow, also known as Stony Warren or Long Warren, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Addington in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fifth millennium BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a ruined state.

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 sarsen megaliths 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 century AD, 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...)

The Roman temple of Bziza is a well-preserved first century AD building dedicated to Azizos, a personification of the morning star in ancient Arab polytheism. This Roman temple lends the modern Lebanese town of Bziza its current name, as Bziza is a corruption of Beth Azizo meaning the house or temple of Azizos. Azizos was identified as Ares by Emperor Julian.

The tetrastyle prostyle 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...)

The Song dynasty ( /sʊŋ/) was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China following attacks by the Jin dynasty, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty.

The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song ( Chinese: 北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song ( Chinese: 南宋; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng, Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty.

Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished during the Song era. The Song dynasty was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty saw the first surviving records of the chemical formula for gunpowder, the invention of gunpowder weapons such as fire arrows, bombs, and the fire lance. It also saw the first discernment of true north using a compass, first recorded description of the pound lock, and improved designs of astronomical clocks. Economically, the Song dynasty was unparalleled with a gross domestic product three times larger than that of Europe during the 12th century. China's population doubled in size between the 10th and 11th centuries. This growth was made possible by expanded rice cultivation, use of early-ripening rice from Southeast and South Asia, and production of widespread food surpluses. The Northern Song census recorded 20 million households, double of the Han and Tang dynasties. It is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of 90 million people, and 200 million by the time of the Ming dynasty. This dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China.

The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and emergence of a national economy led to the gradual withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a larger role in local administration and affairs. Social life during the Song was vibrant. Citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the rapid expansion of woodblock printing and the 11th-century invention of movable type printing. Philosophers such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi reinvigorated Confucianism with new commentary, infused with Buddhist ideals, and emphasized a new organization of classic texts that established the doctrine of Neo-Confucianism. Although civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, they became much more prominent in the Song period. Officials gaining power through imperial examination led to a shift from a military-aristocratic elite to a scholar-bureaucratic elite. ( Full article...)

Tak'alik Ab'aj ( /tɑːkəˈliːk əˈbɑː/; Mayan pronunciation: [takʼaˈlik aˀ'ɓaχ] ^ⓘ; Spanish: [takaˈlik aˈβax]) is a pre-Columbian archaeological site in Guatemala. It was formerly known as Abaj Takalik; its ancient name may have been Kooja. It is one of several Mesoamerican sites with both Olmec and Maya features. The site flourished in the Preclassic and Classic periods, from the 9th century BC through to at least the 10th century AD, and was an important centre of commerce, trading with Kaminaljuyu and Chocolá. Investigations have revealed that it is one of the largest sites with sculptured monuments on the Pacific coastal plain. Olmec-style sculptures include a possible colossal head, petroglyphs and others. The site has one of the greatest concentrations of Olmec-style sculpture outside of the Gulf of Mexico, and was made a World Heritage Site in 2023 because of its long history of occupation.

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...)

Chat Moss is a large area of peat bog that makes up part of the City of Salford, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and Trafford in Greater Manchester, England. It also makes up part of Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in Merseyside and Warrington in Cheshire. North of the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey, 5 miles (8 km) to the west of Manchester, it occupies an area of about 10.6 square miles (27.5 km²).

As it might be recognised today, Chat Moss is thought to be about 7,000 years old, but peat development seems to have begun there with the ending of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The depth of peat ranges from 24 to 30 feet (7 to 9 m). A great deal of reclamation work has been carried out, particularly during the 19th century, but a large-scale network of drainage channels is still required to keep the land from reverting to bog. In 1958 workers extracting peat discovered the severed head of what is believed to be a Romano-British Celt, possibly a sacrificial victim, in the eastern part of the bog near Worsley.

Much of Chat Moss is now prime agricultural land, although farming in the area is in decline. A 228-acre (92 ha) area of Chat Moss, notified as Astley and Bedford Mosses, was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1989. Along with nearby Risley Moss and Holcroft Moss, Astley and Bedford Mosses has also been designated as a European Union Special Area of Conservation, known as Manchester Mosses.

Chat Moss threatened the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, until George Stephenson, with advice from East Anglian marshland specialist Robert Stannard, succeeded in constructing a railway line through it in 1829; his solution was to "float" the line on a bed of bound heather and branches topped with tar and covered with rubble stone. The M62 motorway, completed in 1976, crosses the bog, to the north of Irlam. Also the A580 crosses the bog, forming Leigh, Lowton and Astley's ( Wigan MBC)'s boundary with Warrington, Culcheth and Glazebury, Croft, and Kenyon. ( Full article...)

Margaret Alice Murray FSA Scot FRAI (13 July 1863 – 13 November 1963) was an Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as president of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career.

Born to a wealthy middle-class English family in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her junior lecturer in 1898. In 1902–03, she took part in Petrie's excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both of which established her reputation in Egyptology. Supplementing her UCL wage by giving public classes and lectures at the British Museum and Manchester Museum, it was at the latter in 1908 that she led the unwrapping of Khnum-nakht, one of the mummies recovered from the Tomb of two Brothers – the first time that a woman had publicly unwrapped a mummy. Recognising that British Egyptomania reflected the existence of a widespread public interest in Ancient Egypt, Murray wrote several books on Egyptology targeted at a general audience.

Murray also became closely involved in the first-wave feminist movement, joining the Women's Social and Political Union and devoting much time to improving women's status at UCL. Unable to return to Egypt due to the First World War, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. Although later academically discredited, the theory gained widespread attention and proved a significant influence on the emerging new religious movement of Wicca. From 1921 to 1931, she undertook excavations of prehistoric sites on Malta and Menorca and developed her interest in folkloristics. Awarded an honorary doctorate in 1927, she was appointed assistant professor in 1928 and retired from UCL in 1935. That year she visited Palestine to aid Petrie's excavation of Tall al-Ajjul and in 1937 she led a small excavation at Petra in Jordan. Taking on the presidency of the Folklore Society in later life, she lectured at such institutions as the University of Cambridge and City Literary Institute, and continued to publish in an independent capacity until her death.

Murray's work in Egyptology and archaeology was widely acclaimed and earned her the nickname of "The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology", although after her death many of her contributions to the field were overshadowed by those of Petrie. Conversely, Murray's work in folkloristics and the history of witchcraft has been academically discredited and her methods in these areas heavily criticised. The influence of her witch-cult theory in both religion and literature has been examined by various scholars, and she herself has been dubbed the "Grandmother of Wicca". ( Full article...)

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by excavators led by the Egyptologist Howard Carter, more than 3,300 years after Tutankhamun's death and burial. Whereas the tombs of most pharaohs were plundered by graverobbers in ancient times, Tutankhamun's tomb was hidden by debris for most of its existence and therefore not extensively robbed. It thus became the first known largely intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.

The tomb was opened beginning on 4 November 1922 during an excavation by Carter and his patron, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. The burial consisted of more than five thousand objects, many of which were in a highly fragile state, so conserving the burial goods for removal from the tomb required an unprecedented effort. The opulence of the burial goods inspired a media frenzy and popularised ancient Egyptian-inspired designs with the Western public. To the Egyptians, who had recently become partially independent of British rule, the tomb became a symbol of national pride, strengthening Pharaonism, a nationalist ideology that emphasised modern Egypt's ties to the ancient civilisation, and creating friction between Egyptians and the British-led excavation team. The publicity surrounding the excavation intensified when Carnarvon died of an infection, giving rise to speculation that his death and other misfortunes connected with the tomb were the result of an ancient curse.

After Lord Carnarvon's death, tensions arose between Carter and the Egyptian government over who should control access to the tomb. In early 1924, Carter stopped work in protest, beginning a dispute that lasted until the end of the year. Under the agreement that resolved the dispute, the artefacts from the tomb would not be divided between the government and the dig's sponsors, as was standard practice in previous Egyptological digs, and most of the tomb's contents went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In later seasons media attention waned, apart from coverage of the removal of Tutankhamun's mummy from its coffin in 1925. The last two chambers of the tomb were cleared from 1926 to 1930, and the last of the burial goods were conserved and shipped to Cairo in 1932.

The tomb's discovery did not reveal as much about the history of Tutankhamun's time as Egyptologists had initially hoped, but it did establish the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, the era of radical innovation that preceded his reign. It was more informative about the material culture of Tutankhamun's time, demonstrating what a complete royal burial was like and providing evidence about the lifestyles of wealthy Egyptians and the behaviour of ancient tomb robbers. The interest generated by the find stimulated efforts to train Egyptians in Egyptology. Since the discovery, the Egyptian government has capitalised on its enduring fame by using exhibitions of the burial goods for purposes of fundraising and diplomacy, and Tutankhamun has become a symbol of ancient Egypt itself. ( Full article...)

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

The method was developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (¹⁴
C) is constantly being created in the Earth's atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting ¹⁴
C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire ¹⁴
C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of ¹⁴
C it contains begins to decrease as the ¹⁴
C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the proportion of ¹⁴
C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less ¹⁴
C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of ¹⁴
C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to approximately 50,000 years ago (in this interval about 99.8% of the ¹⁴
C will have decayed), although special preparation methods occasionally make an accurate analysis of older samples possible. In 1960, Libby received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work.

Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine what the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere has been over the past 50,000 years. The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of ¹⁴
C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the varying levels of ¹⁴
C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Because the time it takes to convert biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than the time it takes for its ¹⁴
C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain almost no ¹⁴
C. As a result, beginning in the late 19th century, there was a noticeable drop in the proportion of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels began to accumulate. Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of ¹⁴
C in the atmosphere, which reached a maximum in about 1965 of almost double the amount present in the atmosphere prior to nuclear testing.

Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done with beta-counting devices, which counted the amount of beta radiation emitted by decaying ¹⁴
C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts all the ¹⁴
C atoms in the sample and not just the few that happen to decay during the measurements; it can therefore be used with much smaller samples (as small as individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly. The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the Neolithic and Bronze Age in different regions. ( Full article...)

Nico Ditch is a six-mile (9.7 km) long linear earthwork between Ashton-under-Lyne and Stretford in Greater Manchester, England. It was dug as a defensive fortification, or possibly a boundary marker, between the 5th and 11th century.

The ditch is still visible in short sections, such as a 330-yard (300 m) stretch in Denton Golf Course. For the parts which survived, the ditch is 4–5 yards (3.7–4.6 m) wide and up to 5 feet (1.5 m) deep. Part of the earthwork is protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. ( Full article...)

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 UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed for being "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire". ( Full article...)

Smythe's Megalith, also known as the Warren Farm Chamber, was a chambered long barrow east of Blue Bell Hill, north of Maidstone, in the south-eastern English county of Kent, close to Aylesford village and the hamlet of Sandling.

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 sarsen megaliths, 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.

Several of the Medway Megaliths still survive: Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow are on the river's western side, while Kit's Coty House, the Little Kit's Coty House, and the Coffin Stone are on the eastern side nearer to Smythe's Megalith. Close to the site of the lost monument is the White Horse Stone, a standing stone that may have once been part of another chambered long barrow.

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...)

The Nine Stones, also known as the Devil's Nine Stones, the Nine Ladies, or Lady Williams and her Dog, is a stone circle located near to the village of Winterbourne Abbas in the southwestern English county of Dorset. Archaeologists believe that it was likely erected during the Bronze Age.

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...)

The Coffin Stone, also known as the Coffin and the Table Stone, is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Now lying horizontally, the stone probably once stood upright nearby. Various archaeologists have argued that the stone was part of a now-destroyed chambered long barrow constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.

If a chambered long barrow did indeed previously exist on the site, it would have been built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe. It consisted of various localized regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths. The Coffin Stone lies on the eastern side of the river, not far from the chambered long barrows of Little Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, and the (now destroyed) Smythe's Megalith. Three other examples, the Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow, remain on the western side of the river.

The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity. ( Full article...)

Quiriguá (Spanish pronunciation: [kiɾiˈɣwa]) is an ancient Maya archaeological site in the department of Izabal in south-eastern Guatemala. It is a medium-sized site covering approximately 3 square kilometres (1.2 sq mi) along the lower Motagua River, with the ceremonial center about 1 km (0.6 mi) from the north bank. During the Maya Classic Period (AD 200–900), Quiriguá was situated at the juncture of several important trade routes. The site was occupied by 200, construction on the acropolis had begun by about 550, and an explosion of grander construction started in the 8th century. All construction had halted by about 850, except for a brief period of reoccupation in the Early Postclassic (c. 900 – c. 1200). Quiriguá shares its architectural and sculptural styles with the nearby Classic Period city of Copán, with whose history it is closely entwined.

Quiriguá's rapid expansion in the 8th century was tied to king K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat's military victory over Copán in 738. When the greatest king of Copán, Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil or "18-Rabbit", was defeated, he was captured and then sacrificed in the Great Plaza at Quiriguá. Before this, Quiriguá had been a vassal state of Copán, but it maintained its independence afterwards. The ceremonial architecture at Quiriguá is quite modest, but the site's importance lies in its wealth of sculpture, including the tallest stone monumental sculpture ever erected in the New World. Because of its historical importance, the site of Quiriguá was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. ( Full article...)

Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford CBE FBA FSA (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as the archaeological officer of the Ordnance Survey (OS) and also wrote a range of books on archaeological subjects.

Born in Bombay, British India, to a wealthy middle-class Scottish family, Crawford moved to England as an infant and was raised by his aunts in London and Hampshire. He studied geography at Keble College, Oxford, and worked briefly in that field before devoting himself professionally to archaeology. Employed by the philanthropist Henry Wellcome, Crawford oversaw the excavation of Abu Geili in Sudan before returning to England shortly before the First World War. During the conflict he served in both the London Scottish Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps, where he was involved in ground and aerial reconnaissance along the Western Front. After an injury forced a period of convalescence in England, he returned to the Western Front, where he was captured by the German Army in 1918 and held as a prisoner of war until the end of the conflict.

In 1920, Crawford was employed by the Ordnance Survey, touring Britain to plot the location of archaeological sites, and in the process identified several that were previously unknown. Increasingly interested in aerial archaeology, he used Royal Air Force photographs to identify the extent of the Stonehenge Avenue, excavating it in 1923. With the archaeologist Alexander Keiller, he conducted an aerial survey of many counties in southern England and raised the finances to secure the land around Stonehenge for The National Trust. In 1927, he established the scholarly journal Antiquity, which contained contributions from many of Britain's most prominent archaeologists, and in 1939 he served as president of The Prehistoric Society. An internationalist and socialist, he came under the influence of Marxism and for a time became a Soviet sympathiser. During the Second World War he worked with the National Buildings Record, photographically documenting Southampton. After retiring in 1946, he refocused his attention on Sudanese archaeology and wrote several further books prior to his death.

Friends and colleagues remembered Crawford as a cantankerous and irritable individual. His contributions to British archaeology, including in Antiquity and aerial archaeology, have been widely acclaimed; some have referred to him as one of the great pioneering figures in the field. His photographic archive remained of use to archaeologists into the 21st century. A biography of Crawford by Kitty Hauser was published in 2008. ( Full article...)

The Coldrum Long Barrow, also known as the Coldrum Stones and the Adscombe Stones, is a chambered long barrow located near the village of Trottiscliffe in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a state of ruin.

Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the Coldrum Stones belong to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths. Of these, it is in the best surviving condition. It lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Chestnuts 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 possible survivals such as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are located on the Medway's eastern side.

Built out of earth and around fifty local sarsen-stone megaliths, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. Within the eastern end of the tumulus was a stone chamber, into which human remains were deposited on at least two separate occasions during the Early Neolithic. Osteoarchaeological analysis of these remains has shown them to be those of at least seventeen individuals, a mixture of men, women, and children. At least one of the bodies had been dismembered before burial, potentially reflecting a funerary tradition of excarnation and secondary burial. As with other barrows, Coldrum has been interpreted as a tomb to house the remains of the dead, perhaps as part of a belief system involving ancestor veneration, although archaeologists have suggested that it may also have had further religious, ritual, and cultural connotations and uses.

After the Early Neolithic, the long barrow fell into a state of ruined dilapidation, perhaps experiencing deliberate destruction in the Late Medieval period, either by Christian iconoclasts or treasure hunters. In local folklore, the site became associated with the burial of a prince and the countless stones motif. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 19th century, while archaeological excavation took place in the early 20th. In 1926, ownership was transferred to heritage charity the National Trust. Open without charge to visitors all year around, the stones are the site of a rag tree, a May Day morris dance, and various modern Pagan rituals. ( Full article...)

Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms a strategic transport hub for east–west and north–south routes. The city itself has a metropolitan public transport system managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of a contracted bus system including the O-Bahn Busway, 6 commuter rail lines (diesel and electric), and a small tram network operating between inner suburb Hindmarsh, the city centre, and seaside Glenelg. Tramways were largely dismantled in the 1950s, but saw a revival in the 2010s with upgrades and extensions.

Road transport in Adelaide has historically been easier than many of the other Australian cities, with a well-defined city layout and wide multiple-lane roads from the beginning of its development. Adelaide was known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters having been able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. However, such arterial roads often experience traffic congestion as the city grows.

The Adelaide metropolitan area has one freeway and four expressways. In order of construction, they are:

• The South Eastern Freeway (M1), connects the south-east corner of the Adelaide Plain to the Adelaide Hills and beyond to Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend, where it then continues as National Highway 1 south-east to Melbourne.
• The Southern Expressway (M2), connecting the outer southern suburbs with the inner southern suburbs and the city centre. It duplicates the route of South Road.
• The North-South Motorway (M2), is an ongoing major project that will become the major north–south corridor, replacing most of what is now South Road, connecting the Southern Expressway and the Northern Expressway via a motorway with no traffic lights. As of 2020 the motorway's northern half is complete (save for a small link under construction at Croydon Park), connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west is awaiting funding.
• The Port River Expressway (A9), connects Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor to Port Wakefield Road at the northern "entrance" to the metropolitan area.
• The Northern Expressway (Max Fatchen Expressway) (M2), is the northern suburbs bypass route connecting the Sturt Highway (National Highway 20) via the Gawler Bypass to Port Wakefield Road at a point a few kilometres north of the Port River Expressway connection.
• The Northern Connector, completed in 2020, links the North South Motorway to the Northern Expressway.

( Full article...)

Perth is served by Perth Airport in the city's east for regional, domestic and international flights and Jandakot Airport in the city's southern suburbs for general aviation and charter flights.

Perth has a road network with three freeways— Mitchell, Kwinana and Graham Farmer—and nine metropolitan highways. The Northbridge Tunnel, part of the Graham Farmer Freeway, is the only significant road tunnel in Perth.

Perth metropolitan public transport is known as Transperth, and includes trains, buses and ferries, which are provided by the Public Transport Authority. Links to rural areas provided by Transwa. There are 74 railway stations and 14 bus-only stations on the Transperth network.

Perth provides zero-fare bus and train trips around the city centre (the "Free Transit Zone"), including four high-frequency CAT bus routes.

The Indian Pacific passenger rail service connects Perth with Adelaide and Sydney once per week in each direction. The Prospector passenger rail service connects Perth with Kalgoorlie via several Wheatbelt towns, while the Australind connects to Bunbury, the MerredinLink connects to Merredin and the AvonLink connects to Northam.

Rail freight terminates at the Kewdale Rail Terminal, 15 km (9 mi) south-east of the city centre.

Perth's main container and passenger port is at Fremantle, 19 km (12 mi) south west at the mouth of the Swan River. The Fremantle Outer Harbour at Cockburn Sound is one of Australia's major bulk cargo ports. ( Full article...)

Obtaining sufficient fresh water was difficult during early colonial times. A catchment called the Tank Stream sourced water from what is now the CBD but was little more than an open sewer by the end of the 1700s. The Botany Swamps Scheme was one of several ventures during the mid-1800s that saw the construction of wells, tunnels, steam pumping stations, and small dams to service Sydney's growing population.

The Upper Nepean Scheme came into operation in 1886. It transports water 100 km (62 mi) from the Nepean, Cataract, and Cordeaux rivers and continues to service about 15% of Sydney's water needs. Dams were built on these three rivers between 1907 and 1935. In 1977 the Shoalhaven Scheme brought several more dams into service.

The state-owned corporation WaterNSW now manages eleven major dams: Warragamba, one of the largest domestic water supply dams in the world, Woronora, Cataract, Cordeaux, Nepean, Avon, Wingecarribee Reservoir, Fitzroy Falls Reservoir, Tallowa, the Blue Mountains Dams, and Prospect Reservoir. Water is collected from five catchment areas covering 16,000 km² (6,178 sq mi) and total storage amounts to 2.6 TL (0.6 cu mi). The Sydney Desalination Plant came into operation in 2010. WaterNSW supplies bulk water to Sydney Water, a state-owned corporation that operates water distribution, sewerage and storm water management services.

Sydney's electricity infrastructure is maintained by Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy. Their combined networks include over 815,000 poles and 83,000 km (52,000 mi) of cables. Submarine communications cable systems in Sydney include the Australia–Japan Cable, Telstra Endeavour and the Southern Cross Cable, which link Australia and countries in the Pacific. ( Full article...)

Obtaining sufficient fresh water was difficult during early colonial times. A catchment called the Tank Stream sourced water from what is now the CBD but was little more than an open sewer by the end of the 1700s. The Botany Swamps Scheme was one of several ventures during the mid-1800s that saw the construction of wells, tunnels, steam pumping stations, and small dams to service Sydney's growing population.

The Upper Nepean Scheme came into operation in 1886. It transports water 100 km (62 mi) from the Nepean, Cataract, and Cordeaux rivers and continues to service about 15% of Sydney's water needs. Dams were built on these three rivers between 1907 and 1935. In 1977 the Shoalhaven Scheme brought several more dams into service.

The state-owned corporation WaterNSW now manages eleven major dams: Warragamba, one of the largest domestic water supply dams in the world, Woronora, Cataract, Cordeaux, Nepean, Avon, Wingecarribee Reservoir, Fitzroy Falls Reservoir, Tallowa, the Blue Mountains Dams, and Prospect Reservoir. Water is collected from five catchment areas covering 16,000 km² (6,178 sq mi) and total storage amounts to 2.6 TL (0.6 cu mi). The Sydney Desalination Plant came into operation in 2010. WaterNSW supplies bulk water to Sydney Water, a state-owned corporation that operates water distribution, sewerage and storm water management services.

Sydney's electricity infrastructure is maintained by Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy. Their combined networks include over 815,000 poles and 83,000 km (52,000 mi) of cables. Submarine communications cable systems in Sydney include the Australia–Japan Cable, Telstra Endeavour and the Southern Cross Cable, which link Australia and countries in the Pacific. ( Full article...)

Being centrally located on the Australian mainland, Adelaide forms a strategic transport hub for east–west and north–south routes. The city itself has a metropolitan public transport system managed by and known as the Adelaide Metro. The Adelaide Metro consists of a contracted bus system including the O-Bahn Busway, 6 commuter rail lines (diesel and electric), and a small tram network operating between inner suburb Hindmarsh, the city centre, and seaside Glenelg. Tramways were largely dismantled in the 1950s, but saw a revival in the 2010s with upgrades and extensions.

Road transport in Adelaide has historically been easier than many of the other Australian cities, with a well-defined city layout and wide multiple-lane roads from the beginning of its development. Adelaide was known as a "twenty-minute city", with commuters having been able to travel from metropolitan outskirts to the city proper in roughly twenty minutes. However, such arterial roads often experience traffic congestion as the city grows.

The Adelaide metropolitan area has one freeway and four expressways. In order of construction, they are:

• The South Eastern Freeway (M1), connects the south-east corner of the Adelaide Plain to the Adelaide Hills and beyond to Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend, where it then continues as National Highway 1 south-east to Melbourne.
• The Southern Expressway (M2), connecting the outer southern suburbs with the inner southern suburbs and the city centre. It duplicates the route of South Road.
• The North-South Motorway (M2), is an ongoing major project that will become the major north–south corridor, replacing most of what is now South Road, connecting the Southern Expressway and the Northern Expressway via a motorway with no traffic lights. As of 2020 the motorway's northern half is complete (save for a small link under construction at Croydon Park), connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west is awaiting funding.
• The Port River Expressway (A9), connects Port Adelaide and Outer Harbor to Port Wakefield Road at the northern "entrance" to the metropolitan area.
• The Northern Expressway (Max Fatchen Expressway) (M2), is the northern suburbs bypass route connecting the Sturt Highway (National Highway 20) via the Gawler Bypass to Port Wakefield Road at a point a few kilometres north of the Port River Expressway connection.
• The Northern Connector, completed in 2020, links the North South Motorway to the Northern Expressway.

( Full article...)

Perth is served by Perth Airport in the city's east for regional, domestic and international flights and Jandakot Airport in the city's southern suburbs for general aviation and charter flights.

Perth has a road network with three freeways— Mitchell, Kwinana and Graham Farmer—and nine metropolitan highways. The Northbridge Tunnel, part of the Graham Farmer Freeway, is the only significant road tunnel in Perth.

Perth metropolitan public transport is known as Transperth, and includes trains, buses and ferries, which are provided by the Public Transport Authority. Links to rural areas provided by Transwa. There are 74 railway stations and 14 bus-only stations on the Transperth network.

Perth provides zero-fare bus and train trips around the city centre (the "Free Transit Zone"), including four high-frequency CAT bus routes.

The Indian Pacific passenger rail service connects Perth with Adelaide and Sydney once per week in each direction. The Prospector passenger rail service connects Perth with Kalgoorlie via several Wheatbelt towns, while the Australind connects to Bunbury, the MerredinLink connects to Merredin and the AvonLink connects to Northam.

Rail freight terminates at the Kewdale Rail Terminal, 15 km (9 mi) south-east of the city centre.

Perth's main container and passenger port is at Fremantle, 19 km (12 mi) south west at the mouth of the Swan River. The Fremantle Outer Harbour at Cockburn Sound is one of Australia's major bulk cargo ports. ( Full article...)