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The Benty Grange hanging bowl is a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon artefact from the seventh century AD. All that remains are parts of two escutcheons: bronze frames that are usually circular and elaborately decorated, and that sit along the outside of the rim or at the interior base of a hanging bowl. A third one disintegrated soon after excavation, and it no longer survives. The escutcheons were found in 1848 by the antiquary Thomas Bateman, while excavating a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in western Derbyshire. They were presumably buried as part of an entire hanging bowl. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, including the hanging bowl and the boar-crested Benty Grange helmet. The surviving escutcheons are made of enamelled bronze and are 40 mm (1.6 in) in diameter. They show three dolphin-like creatures arranged in a circle, each biting the tail of the one ahead of it. Their bodies and the background are made of enamel, likely all yellow; the creatures' outlines and eyes are tinned or silvered, as are the borders of the escutcheons. Although three escutcheons from a hanging bowl at Faversham also contain dolphin-like creatures, the Benty Grange design is most closely paralleled by Insular manuscripts, particularly figures in the Durham Gospel Fragment and the Book of Durrow. Surviving illustrations of the third escutcheon show that it was of a different size and style, exhibiting a scroll-like pattern. It parallels the basal disc of a hanging bowl from Winchester and may have been originally placed at the bottom of the Benty Grange bowl. What remains of one escutcheon belongs to Museums Sheffield and as of 2023 was in the collection of the Weston Park Museum. The other is held by the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford; as of 2023, it was not on display. (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...) Ursula Martius Franklin CC OOnt FRSC (16 September 1921 – 22 July 2016) was a Canadian metallurgist, activist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto campus, have been named in her honor. For Franklin, technology was much more than machines, gadgets or electronic transmitters. It was a comprehensive system that includes methods, procedures, organization, "and most of all, a mindset". She distinguished between holistic technologies used by craft workers or artisans and prescriptive ones associated with a division of labour in large-scale production. Holistic technologies allow artisans to control their own work from start to finish. Prescriptive technologies organize work as a sequence of steps requiring supervision by bosses or managers. Franklin argued that the dominance of prescriptive technologies in modern society discourages critical thinking and promotes "a culture of compliance". For some, Franklin belongs in the intellectual tradition of Harold Innis and Jacques Ellul who warn about technology's tendency to suppress freedom and endanger civilization. Franklin herself acknowledged her debt to Ellul as well as to several other thinkers including Lewis Mumford, C. B. Macpherson, E. F. Schumacher, and Vandana Shiva. She recognized that this list had few women. In addition to the philosophy of technology, she believed that science was "severely impoverished because women are discouraged from taking part in the exploration of knowledge". (Full article...) Ocute, later known as Altamaha or La Tama and sometimes known conventionally as the Oconee province, was a Native American paramount chiefdom in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Georgia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Centered in the Oconee River valley, the main chiefdom of Ocute held sway over the nearby chiefdoms of Altamaha, Cofaqui, and possibly others. The Oconee valley area was populated for thousands of years, and the core chiefdoms of Ocute emerged following the rise of the Mississippian culture around 1100. Ocute was invaded by the expedition of the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1539. At that time, Ocute was locked in a longstanding war with the rival paramount chiefdom of Cofitachequi in present-day South Carolina. The chiefdom remained a significant regional power into the 17th century, although Altamaha eclipsed Ocute as the primary center, leading the Spanish to refer to the paramountcy as La Tama. In the 1660s the chiefdom fragmented due to slave raids by the English-allied Westo people, though several of its towns relocated to Spanish Florida and formed part of the Yamasee confederacy. (Full article...) The Street House Anglo-Saxon cemetery is an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, dating to the second half of the 7th century AD, that was discovered at Street House Farm near Loftus, in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, England. Monuments dating back as far as 3300 BC are located in the vicinity of the cemetery, which was discovered after aerial photography revealed the existence of an Iron Age rectangular enclosure. The excavations, carried out between 2005 and 2007, revealed over a hundred graves dating from the 7th century AD and the remains of several buildings. An array of jewellery and other artefacts was found, including the jewels once worn by a young high-status Anglo-Saxon woman who had been buried on a bed and covered by an earth mound. The woman's identity is unknown, but the artefacts and the layout of the cemetery are similar to finds in the east and south-east of England. There are contradictory indications of whether the occupants of the cemetery were Christian or pagan, as signs of both traditions are present. It perhaps represents a fusion of the two traditions during the "Conversion Period" when Christianity was taking hold among the Anglo-Saxons but pagan rituals had not yet been displaced, even among Christians. Archaeologists have suggested that the woman and at least some of the people buried around her may have migrated from the south, where bed burials were more common. They may all have been buried together within the space of a single generation, after which the cemetery was abandoned. The finds were acquired by Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar, in 2009 and have been on display there since 2011. (Full article...) George Emmanuel Mylonas (Greek: Γεώργιος Μυλωνάς, romanized: Georgios Mylonas, Greek pronunciation: [/ʝe'oɾʝios milo'nas/], ye-OR-yios mee-loh-NAS; December 21 [O.S. December 9] 1898 – April 15, 1988) was a Greek archaeologist of ancient Greece and of Aegean prehistory. He excavated widely, particularly at Olynthus, Eleusis and 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, joined the Greek Army, and 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 was released in 1923 after bribing his captors with money sent by his American contacts. 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 in the United States to study under David Moore Robinson, his excavation director from Olynthus. He subsequently taught at the University of Chicago. 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, where he remained until returning permanently to Greece in 1969. There, he was prominent in the Archaeological Society of Athens and in efforts to conserve the monuments of the Acropolis of Athens. Mylonas's excavation work included the sites of Pylos, Artemision, Mekyberna, Polystylos and Aspropotamos. Along with John Papadimitriou, 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 religious function of the site's Cult Center, to which he gave its name. He was awarded 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 belief that ancient Greek mythical traditions, particularly concerning the Trojan War and the Eleusinian Mysteries, could be verified by archaeological excavation was controversial in his day and has generally been discredited since. (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...) The Maya Biosphere Reserve (Spanish: Reserva de la Biosfera Maya) is a nature reserve in Guatemala managed by Guatemala's National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP). The Maya Biosphere Reserve covers an area of 21,602 km2, one-fifth of the country's total land area. The park is home to a large number of species of fauna including Morelet's crocodile and the ocellated turkey. It is also rich in flora including breadnut, mahogany, Swietenia humilis, Bloma prisca, Vitex gaumeri, cedar, Bucida buceras, Haematoxylum campechianum, Rhizophora mangle, and Pimenta dioica. The area ranges from wetlands, to low mountain ranges, and has several bodies of water, including lakes, rivers, streams and cenotes. The Reserve was created in 1990 to protect the largest area of American tropical forest remaining north of the Amazon. The biosphere reserve model, implemented by UNESCO, seeks to promote a balance between human activities and the biosphere by including sustainable economic development in conservation planning. (Full article...) The Crosby Garrett Helmet is a copper alloy Roman cavalry helmet dating from the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD. It was found by an unnamed metal detectorist near Crosby Garrett in Cumbria, England, in May 2010. Later investigations found that a Romano-British farming settlement had occupied the site where the helmet was discovered, which was located a few miles away from a Roman road and a Roman army fort. It is possible that the owner of the helmet was a local inhabitant who had served with the Roman cavalry. The helmet appears to have been deliberately folded up and deposited in an artificial stone structure. It is thought to have been used for ceremonial occasions rather than for combat, and may already have been an antique by the time it was buried. It is of the same type as the Newstead Helmet (found near Melrose in Scotland in 1905). Its facial features are more akin to those of helmets found in southern Europe although its design also has similarities with the Ribchester Helmet (found in 1796) and the Hallaton Helmet (found in North Yorkshire in 2000). Its design may allude to the Trojans, whose exploits the Romans re-enacted in cavalry tournaments. Ralph Jackson, Senior Curator of Romano-British Collections at the British Museum, has described the helmet as "... an immensely interesting and outstandingly important find ... Its face mask is both extremely finely wrought and chillingly striking, but it is as an ensemble that the helmet is so exceptional and, in its specifics, unparalleled. It is a find of the greatest national (and, indeed, international) significance." On 7 October 2010, the helmet was sold at Christie's for £2.3 million (US$3.6 million) to an undisclosed private buyer. Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle sought to purchase the helmet with the support of the British Museum, but was outbid. The helmet has so far been publicly displayed four times, once in a 2012 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, at Tullie House in 2013–14, followed by display at the British Museum in 2014. The helmet returned to Tullie House to be displayed in the Hadrian's Cavalry exhibition in the summer of 2017. (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...) Maya stelae (singular stela) are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall, sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief, although plain monuments are found throughout the Maya region. The sculpting of these monuments spread throughout the Maya area during the Classic Period (250-900 AD), and these pairings of sculpted stelae and circular altars are considered a hallmark of Classic Maya civilization. The earliest dated stela to have been found in situ in the Maya lowlands was recovered from the great city of Tikal in Guatemala. During the Classic Period almost every Maya kingdom in the southern lowlands raised stelae in its ceremonial centre. Stelae became closely associated with the concept of divine kingship and declined at the same time as this institution. The production of stelae by the Maya had its origin around 400 BC and continued through to the end of the Classic Period, around 900, although some monuments were reused in the Postclassic (c. 900–1521). The major city of Calakmul in Mexico raised the greatest number of stelae known from any Maya city, at least 166, although they are very poorly preserved. Hundreds of stelae have been recorded in the Maya region, displaying a wide stylistic variation. Many are upright slabs of limestone sculpted on one or more faces, with available surfaces sculpted with figures carved in relief and with hieroglyphic text. Stelae in a few sites display a much more three-dimensional appearance where locally available stone permits, such as at Copán and Toniná. Plain stelae do not appear to have been painted nor overlaid with stucco decoration, but most Maya stelae were probably brightly painted in red, yellow, black, blue and other colours. Stelae were essentially stone banners raised to glorify the king and record his deeds, although the earliest examples depict mythological scenes. Imagery developed throughout the Classic Period, with Early Classic stelae (c. 250–600) displaying non-Maya characteristics from the 4th century onwards, with the introduction of imagery linked to the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan. This influence receded in the 5th century although some minor Teotihuacan references continued to be used. In the late 5th century, Maya kings began to use stelae to mark the end of calendrical cycles. In the Late Classic (c. 600–900), imagery linked to the Mesoamerican ballgame was introduced, once again displaying influence from central Mexico. By the Terminal Classic, the institution of divine kingship declined, and Maya kings began to be depicted with their subordinate lords. As the Classic Period came to an end, stelae ceased to be erected, with the last known examples being raised in 909–910. (Full article...) The Phoenician sanctuary of Kharayeb (Arabic: معبد الخرايب الفينيقي) is a historic temple in the hinterland of Tyre, Southern Lebanon, that was excavated in three stages. In 1946, Maurice Chehab, head of Lebanon's Directorate General of Antiquities, led the first mission that revealed a Hellenistic period temple and thousands of clay figurines dating from the sixth-to-first centuries BC. Excavations in 1969 by the Lebanese archaeologist Brahim Kaoukabani and in 2009 by the Government of Italy yielded evidence of cultic practices, and produced a detailed reconstruction of the sanctuary's architecture. The sanctuary originated in the sixth century BC with the establishment of rural agricultural centers near the growing city of Tyre. Initially, a temple was likely constructed from perishable materials. Only fragments of stone cultic statues survive from this phase. Around three centuries later during the Hellenistic period, a larger building fronted by a paved courtyard leading into a square hall and a smaller rectangular room., replaced the original structure. The interior was embellished with stucco, a central mosaic flooring and gem-like, glass-paste wall decorations. The exterior had a cavetto cornice, a lintel with a sun disk and two uraei—representations of a sacred snake used as a symbol of sovereignty and divinity in Ancient Egypt—and the entrance was flanked by two standing Egyptian-style, male-figure statues. The architecture followed pre-Classical Phoenician temple design, which is characterized by features such as a "bent-entry" and an east-west orientation. The sanctuary yielded a collection of thousands of terracotta figurines and miniature vessels, and inscriptions that provide evidence of the religious practices of the local Phoenician population. The terracotta figurines from the Iron Age II and Persian periods depicted pregnant women, male figures, and deities. During the Hellenistic period, new molding techniques introduced Greek themes, and images of deities such as Aphrodite and Hermes. The religious practices observed at the sanctuary remained faithful to local Phoenician traditions, and were part of a wider cultic system that was practiced in the Tyre hinterland, involving similar rituals in other sanctuaries in the region. The deity to whom the sanctuary was dedicated remains unidentified because the unearthed inscriptions lack specific god names. Child figurines that were excavated from the site suggest the sanctuary served as a small, rural, religious site that focused on healing and salvation deities, and rituals associated with childbearing and childhood. The discovery of around 8,000 terracotta figurines indicates intensive religious activity spanning centuries that ended in the first century BC. (Full article...) </mapframe> The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span; however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, Homo neanderthalensis, than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) as well as archaic Homo sapiens, sometimes referred to as Homo helmei. Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa. (Full article...) The Late Shang, also known as the Anyang period, is the earliest known literate civilization in China, spanning the reigns of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding in the second half of the 13th century BC and ending with the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou in the mid-11th century BC. The state is known from artifacts recovered from its capital at a site near Anyang now known as Yinxu and other sites across the North China Plain. One of the richest finds was the Tomb of Fu Hao at Yinxu, thought to belong to a consort of Wu Ding mentioned in Shang inscriptions. Most Shang writing takes the form of inscriptions on oracle bones used for divinations on behalf of the king. Shang ritual focused on offerings to ancestors, enabling modern investigators to deduce a king list that largely matches that of the traditional histories of Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals. The inscriptions also give insight into royal concerns such as weather, the harvest, warfare with neighbouring polities, and mobilizing workers for warfare or agricultural work. The Late Shang shared many features of the earlier Erlitou and Erligang cultures, including the rammed earth technique for foundations of rectangular walled compounds. Bronze casting reached new heights of decoration and a volume unmatched elsewhere in the world at that time. Workshops in the capital produced ceramics and carved stone and bone for a variety of ceremonial, decorative or utilitarian purposes. Besides writing, new features of the Late Shang included horse-drawn chariots, massive royal tombs and human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale, both in divination rituals and in royal burials. (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 had 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 on 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...) Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen (Ancient Egyptian: twt-ꜥnḫ-jmn; c. 1341 BC – c. 1323 BC), was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled c. 1332 – 1323 BC during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of ancient Egyptian religion, undoing a previous shift to the religion known as Atenism. Tutankhamun's reign is considered one of the greatest restoration periods in ancient Egyptian history. His endowments and restorations of cults were recorded on what is today known as the Restoration Stela. The cult of the god Amun at Thebes was restored to prominence, and the royal couple changed their names to "Tutankhamun" and "Ankhesenamun", replacing the -aten suffix. He also moved the royal court from Akhenaten's capital, Amarna, back to Memphis almost immediately on his accession to the kingship. He reestablished diplomatic relations with the Mitanni and carried out military campaigns in Nubia and the Near East. Tutankhamun was one of only a few kings who was worshipped as a deity during his lifetime. The young king likely began construction of a royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings and an accompanying mortuary temple, but both were unfinished at the time of his death. Tutankhamun died unexpectedly aged about 18; his health and the cause of his death have been the subject of much debate. In 2012 it was suggested he died from a combination of malaria and a leg fracture. Since his royal tomb was incomplete, he was instead buried in a small non-royal tomb adapted for the purpose. He was succeeded by his vizier Ay, who was probably an old man when he became king, and had a short reign. Ay was succeeded by Horemheb, who had been the commander-in-chief of Tutankhamun's armed forces. Under Horemheb, the restoration of the traditional ancient Egyptian religion was completed; Ay and Tutankhamun's constructions were usurped and earlier Amarna Period rulers were erased. In modern times, Tutankhamun became famous as a result of the 1922 discovery of his tomb (KV62) by a team led by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter and sponsored by the British aristocrat George Herbert. Although it had clearly been raided and robbed in ancient times, it retained much of its original contents, including the king's undisturbed mummy. The discovery received worldwide press coverage; with over 5,000 artifacts, it gave rise to renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's mask, now preserved at the Egyptian Museum, remains a popular symbol. Some of his treasure has traveled worldwide, with unprecedented response; the Egyptian government allowed tours of the tomb beginning in 1961. The deaths of some individuals who were involved in the excavation have been popularly attributed to the "curse of the pharaohs" due to the similarity of their circumstances. Since the discovery of his tomb, he has been referred to colloquially as "King Tut". (Full article...) Tell es-Sakan (Arabic: تل السكن, lit. 'Hill of Ash') is a tell (a mound created by the accumulation of the remains of consecutive settlements) about 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of Gaza City in Palestine. It was the site of two separate Early Bronze Age urban settlements. Ancient Egypt expanded its territory into southwestern Palestine in the latter half of the 4th millennium BCE and during this time Tell es-Sakan was founded as an administrative centre for the Egyptian colonies in the region. It was inhabited from about 3300 BCE to 3000 BCE. After a period of abandonment a Canaanite city was established around 2600 BCE and inhabited until about 2250 BCE, after which Tell es-Sakan was permanently abandoned. Tell es-Sakan functioned as a trading post and was positioned along what was probably a dried-up channel of the Wadi Ghazzeh – a watercourse that is dry most of the year but in the Bronze Age would have been navigable. The settlement may have been a successor to Taur Ikhbeineh, a nearby site inhabited in the 34th century BCE. At its discovery in 1998, Tell es-Sakan was the oldest known Egyptian fortification and the only known Egyptian fortified settlement beyond the Nile Valley. A fortification of a potentially similar age was found at the Egyptian settlement of Tel Erani in 2013. After the Canaanite city of Tell es-Sakan was abandoned in the 23rd century BCE Tell el-Ajjul was established 500 metres (1,600 ft) to the south, likely as a replacement. The tell was discovered during a building project and subsequently investigated as part of an international collaboration between Palestine's Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Though there were plans for further archaeological research, fieldwork halted after the 2000 season due to the start of the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation . Finds from Tell es-Sakan have been exhibited in France and Switzerland. The site covered around 8–9 hectares (20–22 acres), of which 0.14 hectares (0.35 acres) has undergone archaeological excavation; a much larger area has been destroyed as a result of construction and conflict. In 2017, the Hamas government's Land Authority began bulldozing part of the site to clear the way for a building project, but halted following opposition from various groups, including the government's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the Islamic University of Gaza. The site was further damaged as a result of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2023–25. (Full article...) Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, 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, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument. Knap Hill is notable as the first causewayed enclosure to be excavated and identified. In 1908 and 1909, Benjamin and Maud Cunnington spent two summers investigating the site, and Maud published two reports of their work, noting that there were several gaps in the ditch and bank surrounding the enclosure. In the late 1920s, after the excavation of Windmill Hill and other sites, it became apparent that causewayed enclosures were a characteristic monument of the Neolithic period. About a thousand causewayed enclosures have now been found in Europe, including around seventy in Britain. This site was excavated again in 1961 by Graham Connah, who kept thorough stratigraphic documentation. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates which included several new dates from Connah's finds. It concluded that there was a 91% chance that the Knap Hill enclosure was constructed between 3530 and 3375 BC. Two barrows lay within the Neolithic enclosure, and at least one more outside it. The hilltop also contains the remains of a Romano-British settlement on an adjoining smaller area called the plateau enclosure, along with some evidence of occupation in the 17th century. An Anglo-Saxon sword was found in the smaller enclosure, and there is evidence of an intense fire in the same area, which implies a violent end to the Romano-British occupation of the hilltop. (Full article...) MRG can mean Millennium Research Group Minorities Research Group Minority Rights Group International Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche, later Left Radical Party, France Red Hat Messaging/Realtime/Grid Mad River Glen, ski area in Fayston, Vermont The IATA code for Mareeba Airfield in Queensland, Australia A government-provided Minimum Revenue Guarantee, offsetting volume risk in a public–private partnership (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 Melsonby Hoard is a hoard of Iron Age items found buried in a field near the village of Melsonby in North Yorkshire, England, by Peter Heads, an amateur metal-detectorist, in December 2021. Archaeologists from Durham University excavated the site in 2022 with funding from Historic England. The artefacts are from the time of the Roman Empire, and show pottery, weaponry, use of the wheel, metallurgy and status symbolism. The find was publicised in March 2025, coinciding with the temporary display of a number of the items at the Yorkshire Museum in York. (Full article...) Leslie Valentine Grinsell OBE FSA (14 February 1907 – 28 February 1995) was an English archaeologist and museum curator. Publishing over twenty books on archaeology during his lifetime, he was renowned as a specialist on the prehistoric barrows of southern England. Born in London and raised largely in Brighton, Grinsell developed an early interest in archaeology through visits to Brighton Museum. Later working as a bank clerk in London, he embarked on archaeological research in an amateur capacity, visiting prehistoric barrows during his weekends and holidays to record their shape, dimensions, and location. On the basis of his research, he published a range of academic articles and books on barrows during the 1930s, gaining recognition as Britain's foremost expert on the subject. In 1933, he carried out his only archaeological excavation, at the Devil's Humps in Sussex. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force and served in Egypt, where he acquainted himself with the archaeological remains of Ancient Egyptian society; after the war he published a book on the Egyptian pyramids. On his return to Britain, Grinsell became the treasurer of the Prehistoric Society, a position that he held from 1947 till 1970. Moving to Devizes, in 1949 he entered the archaeological profession as an assistant to Christopher Hawkes and Stuart Piggott at the Victoria County History project. From 1952 to 1972, Grinsell worked as Keeper of Anthropology and Archaeology at Bristol City Museum, during which time he continued his examination of barrows, focusing on those in south-west England. On retirement, he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire and a festschrift was published in his honour. Over the course of his lifetime, Grinsell examined and catalogued around 10,000 barrows and advanced the archaeological understanding of such monuments. His use of non-excavatory fieldwork influenced much British archaeology in the latter part of his 20th century, while his willingness to pay attention to other sources of information, such as folklore and place-names, has been deemed ahead of its time. (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...) Rempstone Stone Circle (grid reference SY994820) is a stone circle near to Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purbeck in the south-western English county of Dorset. Archaeologists believe that it was likely erected during the Bronze Age. The Rempstone 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 3,300 and 900 BC. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that they were likely religious sites, with the stones perhaps having supernatural associations for those who built the circles. Local folklore holds that the stones arrived in their position after being thrown at Corfe Castle by the Devil. A number of these circles were built in the area around modern Dorset, typically being smaller than those found elsewhere. Most of these Dorset circles are made of sarsen stone, although the Rempstone circle is unique in being made from local sandstone. The southern half of the circle has been destroyed, with five upright and three recumbent stones remaining extant. Having been damaged by eighteenth century clay workings, the monument is at present situated within dense woodland. In 1957, a possible avenue of stones leading to the circle was discovered by ploughing but subsequently removed. (Full article...) Jean-François Champollion (French: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa ʃɑ̃pɔljɔ̃]), also known as Champollion le jeune ('the Younger'; 23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. Partially raised by his brother, the scholar Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, Champollion was a child prodigy in philology, giving his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in his late teens. As a young man he was renowned in scientific circles, and read Coptic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801), which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of the hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was used only for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians. Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France, which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy, helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community. In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of the decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young, who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered. In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he travelled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied and brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again, he was given a professorship in Egyptology but lectured only a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching. He died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously under the supervision of his brother. During his life as well as long after his death, intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists. Some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, and others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. However, subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results gradually led to the general acceptance of his work. Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted and has been the basis for all further developments in the field. Consequently, he is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology". (Full article...)

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Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883 – September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist and epigrapher who studied the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. Morley led extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza on behalf of the Carnegie Institution and published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing. He also wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience. To his contemporaries, "Vay" Morley was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day. Although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications, particularly on calendric inscriptions, are still cited. In his role as director of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution, he oversaw and encouraged many others who later established notable careers in their own right. His commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies helped inspire the necessary sponsorship for projects that would ultimately reveal much about ancient Maya civilization. Morley also conducted espionage in Mexico on behalf of the United States during World War I, but the scope of those activities only came to light well after his death. His archaeological field work in Mexico and Central America provided suitable cover for his work with the United States' Office of Naval Intelligence investigating German activities and anti-American activity. (Full article...) Winifred Lamb (3 November 1894 – 16 September 1963) was a British archaeologist, art historian, and museum curator who specialised in Greek, Roman, and Anatolian cultures and artefacts. The bulk of her career was spent as the honorary keeper (curator) of Greek antiquities at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum from 1920 to 1958, and the Fitzwilliam Museum states that she was a "generous benefactor ... raising the profile of the collections through groundbreaking research, acquisitions and publications." She directed archaeological excavations in Greece and Turkey; was a founding member of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara; and was the author of numerous books on Greek and Roman antiquities, including the 1929 publication Greek and Roman Bronzes, which was standard reading for studies on the subject. (Full article...) The Nefertiti Bust is a painted stucco-coated limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. It is on display in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. The work is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by Thutmose because it was found in his sculpture workshop in Tell-el Amarna, Egypt. It is one of the most-copied works of ancient Egypt. Nefertiti has become one of the most famous women of the ancient world and an icon of feminine beauty. A German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust in 1912 during an excavation of the sculptor's workshop. It has been kept at various locations in Germany since its discovery, including the cellar of a bank, a salt-mine in Merkers-Kieselbach, the Dahlem museum, the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg and the Altes Museum. It is displayed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, where it was originally displayed before World War II. Egypt has called for the return of the bust, citing provisions that prohibited any items of great archaeological value from leaving Egypt. Egypt accuses Borchardt of "wrapping the bust to conceal its value and smuggling it out of the country". The Nefertiti Bust has become not only a defining emblem of ancient Egypt, but also a symbol of the impact that European colonialism has had on Egypt's history and culture. It has been the subject of an argument between Egypt and Germany over Egyptian demands for its repatriation, which began in 1924, once the bust was first displayed to the public, and more generally it fuelled discussions over the role museums play in undoing colonialism. Today, Egypt continues to demand the repatriation of the bust, whereas German officials and the Berlin Museum assert their ownership by citing an official protocol, signed by the German excavators and the French-led Egyptian Antiquities Service at the time of the excavation. (Full article...) The Corp Naomh (Irish pronunciation: [kɔɾˠpˠ n̪ˠiːvˠ], lit. '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 archaeologists 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...) Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh; also Tell Misrife or Tell Mishrifeh) was an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center through most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period. First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swaths of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s. Qatna was inhabited by different peoples, most importantly the Amorites, who established the kingdom, followed by the Arameans; Hurrians became part of the society in the 15th century BC and influenced Qatna's written language. The city's art is distinctive and shows signs of contact with different surrounding regions. The artifacts of Qatna show high-quality workmanship. The city's religion was complex and based on many cults in which ancestor worship played an important role. Qatna's location in the middle of the Near East trade networks helped it achieve wealth and prosperity; it traded with regions as far away as the Baltic and Afghanistan. The area surrounding Qatna was fertile, with abundant water, which made the lands suitable for grazing and supported a large population that contributed to the prosperity of the city. (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, the Fir Clump stone circle was oval-shaped. The outer ring measured 107 metres (351 ft) by 86.5 metres (284 ft) in diameter, and the inner ring 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...) The Western Mexico shaft tomb tradition refers to a set of interlocked cultural traits found in the western Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and, to a lesser extent, Colima to its south, roughly dating to the period between 300 BCE and 400 CE, although there is not wide agreement on this end date. Nearly all of the artifacts associated with this shaft tomb tradition have been discovered by looters and are without provenance, making dating problematic. The first major undisturbed shaft tomb associated with the tradition was not discovered until 1993 at Huitzilapa, Jalisco. Originally regarded as of Purépecha origin, contemporary with the Aztecs, it became apparent in the middle of the 20th century, as a result of further research, that the artifacts and tombs were instead over a thousand years older. Until recently, the looted artifacts were all that was known of the people and culture or cultures that created the shaft tombs. So little was known, in fact, that a major 1998 exhibition highlighting these artifacts was subtitled: "Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past". It is now thought that, although shaft tombs are widely diffused across the area, the region was not a unified cultural area. Archaeologists, however, still struggle with identifying and naming the ancient western Mexico cultures of this period. (Full article...) The Guilden Morden boar is a sixth- or seventh-century Anglo-Saxon copper alloy figure of a boar that may have once served as the crest of a helmet. It was found around 1864 or 1865 in a grave in Guilden Morden, a village in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire. There the boar attended a skeleton with other objects, including a small earthenware bead with an incised pattern, although the boar is all that now remains. Herbert George Fordham, whose father originally discovered the boar, donated it to the British Museum in 1904; as of 2018 it was on view in room 41. The boar is simply designed, distinguished primarily by a prominent mane; eyes, eyebrows, nostrils and tusks are only faintly present. A pin and socket design formed by the front and hind legs suggests that the boar was mounted on another object, such as a helmet. Such is the case on one of the contemporary Torslunda plates found in Sweden, where boar-crested helmets are depicted similarly. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of deities. The Guilden Morden boar is one of three—together with the helmets from Benty Grange and Wollaston—known to have survived to the present, and it has been exhibited both domestically and internationally. The Guilden Morden boar recalls a time when such decoration may have been common; in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, where boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, Hrothgar speaks of when "our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action." (Full article...) Wressle Castle is a ruined palace-fortress in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, built for Thomas Percy in the 1390s. It is privately owned and it is usually open to the public for a few days each year. Wressle Castle originally consisted of four ranges built around a central courtyard; there was a tower at each corner, and the structure was entered through a gatehouse in the east wall, facing the village. After Thomas Percy was executed for rebelling against Henry IV, Wressle Castle was confiscated by the Crown. With occasional periods when it was granted to other people, the castle was mostly under royal control until 1471 when it was returned to the Percy family. Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland, refurbished the castle and gardens, bringing them to the standard of royal properties. The castle was embedded within an ornamental landscape, with two gardens laid out at the same time as the castle was founded and a third created later. Wressle was intended as a high-status residence rather than a fortress and was never besieged. However, it was held by Parliament during the English Civil War and partly demolished in 1646–50, leaving the south range still standing. Nearly 150 years later, it was further damaged by a fire that struck the house. In the 21st century, Historic England, Natural England and the Country Houses Foundation funded repairs to the castle ruins. (Full article...) Mesa Verde National Park is a national park of the United States and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, and the only World Heritage Site in Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan ancestral sites in the United States. Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres (212 km2) near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for "green table", or more specifically "green table mountain") is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings in North America. Starting c. 7500 BC Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture. The Pueblo people survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash (the "Three Sisters"). They built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they migrated south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including the Rio Chama, the Albuquerque Basin, the Pajarito Plateau, and the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. (Full article...) The Belitung shipwreck (also called the Tang shipwreck or Batu Hitam shipwreck) is the wreck of an Arabian dhow that sank around 830 AD. The ship completed its outward journey from Arabia to China but sank on the return voyage from China, approximately 1.6 kilometres (1 mi) off the coast of Belitung Island, Indonesia. The reason the ship was south of the typical trade route when it sank remains unclear. Belitung lies southeast of the Singapore Strait, approximately 610 kilometres (380 mi) away, a secondary route that was more common for ships traveling between China and the Java Sea, which is south of Belitung Island. The wreck has provided archaeologists with two major discoveries: the largest single collection of Tang dynasty artifacts found outside China, known as the "Tang Treasure," and the Arabian dhow itself, which offers new insights into the trade routes between China and the Middle East during that period. The treasure has been preserved as one collection, and efforts during excavation to maintain the integrity of the site and its cargo have produced detailed archaeological evidence. This evidence has provided new knowledge of the shipbuilding techniques of the time, as well as insights into the nature and style of the traded artifacts, shedding light on the trade between these two regions. Currently, the Tang dynasty treasures recovered from the Belitung shipwreck are on permanent display at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore under the name "Tang Shipwreck." (Full article...) Egyptian temples were built for the official worship of the gods and in commemoration of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt and regions under Egyptian control. Temples were seen as houses for the gods or kings to whom they were dedicated. Within them, the Egyptians performed the central rituals of Egyptian religion: giving offerings to the gods, reenacting their mythology through festivals, and warding off the forces of chaos. These rituals were seen as necessary for the gods to continue to uphold maat, the divine order of the universe. Caring for the gods was the obligations of pharaohs, who dedicated prodigious resources to temple construction and maintenance. Pharaohs delegated most of their ritual duties to priests, but most of the populace was excluded from direct participation in ceremonies and forbidden to enter a temple's most sacred areas. Nevertheless, a temple was an important religious site for all classes of Egyptians, who went there to pray, give offerings, and seek oracular guidance. The most important part of the temple was the sanctuary, which typically contained a cult image of its god. The rooms outside the sanctuary grew larger and more elaborate over time, so that temples evolved from small shrines in late Prehistoric Egypt (late fourth millennium BC) to large stone edifices in the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) and later. These edifices are among the largest and most enduring examples of ancient Egyptian architecture, with their elements arranged and decorated according to complex religious symbolism. Their typical layout comprised a series of enclosed halls, open courts, and entrance pylons aligned along the path used for festival processions. Beyond the temple proper was an outer wall enclosing secondary buildings. A large temple owned sizable tracts of land and employed thousands of laymen to supply its needs. Temples were therefore key economic as well as religious centers. The priests who managed these powerful institutions wielded considerable influence, and despite their ostensible subordination to the king, they may have posed significant challenges to his authority. Temple-building in Egypt continued despite the nation's decline and ultimate loss of independence to the Roman Empire in 30 BC. With the coming of Christianity, traditional Egyptian religion faced increasing persecution, and temple cults died out during the fourth through sixth centuries AD. The buildings suffered centuries of destruction and neglect. At the start of the nineteenth century, a wave of interest in ancient Egypt swept Europe, giving rise to the discipline of Egyptology and drawing increasing numbers of visitors to the civilization's remains. Dozens of temples survive, and some have become world-famous tourist attractions that contribute significantly to the modern Egyptian economy. Egyptologists continue to study the surviving temples and the remains of destroyed ones for information about ancient Egyptian society. (Full article...) Thelnetham Windmill, also known as Button's Mill is a Grade II* listed tower mill constructed of brick. The windmill is located at Thelnetham, Suffolk, England. It was built in the early nineteenth century to grind wheat into flour. Thelnetham windmill worked by wind power until 1924, latterly on two sails, after which it became derelict. In 1979, a group of enthusiasts purchased Thelnetham windmill for restoration. Numerous volunteers helped to restore the mill to full working order over an eight-year period. The mill is open to the public, and flour ground at the mill can be bought at the site. The mill is a small four storey tower mill with Patent sails and winded by a fantail. It drives two pairs of millstones, with a third pair driven by an auxiliary engine. (Full article...) The Olmec colossal heads are stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders. They range in height from 1.17 to 3.4 metres (3.8 to 11.2 ft). The heads date from at least 900 BCE and are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz. The backs of the monuments are often flat. The boulders were brought from the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz. Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported more than 150 kilometres (93 mi), requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers. Each of the known examples has a distinctive headdress. The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method and logistics used to transport the stone to these sites remain unclear. The heads all display distinctive headgear and one theory is that these were worn as protective helmets, maybe worn for war or to take part in a ceremonial Mesoamerican ballgame. The discovery of the first colossal head at Tres Zapotes in 1862 by José María Melgar y Serrano was not well documented nor reported outside Mexico. The excavation of the same colossal head by Matthew Stirling in 1938 spurred the first archaeological investigations of Olmec culture. Seventeen confirmed examples are known from four sites within the Olmec heartland on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Most colossal heads were sculpted from spherical boulders but two from San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán were re-carved from massive stone thrones. An additional monument, at Takalik Abaj in Guatemala, is a throne that may have been carved from a colossal head. This is the only known example from outside the Olmec heartland. Dating the monuments remains difficult because many were removed from their original contexts prior to archaeological investigation. Most have been dated to the Early Preclassic period (1500–1000 BC) with some to the Middle Preclassic (1000–400 BC) period. The smallest weigh 5 tonnes (6 short tons), while the largest is estimated to weigh 36 to 45 t (40 to 50 short tons); it was abandoned and left uncompleted close to the source of its stone. (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 had 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 on 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...) 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...) 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...) Panagiotis Efstratiadis or Eustratiades (Greek: Παναγιώτης Ευστρατιάδης; 1815 – 7 August [O.S. 26 July] 1888) was a Greek archaeologist. He served as Ephor General of Antiquities, the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, between 1864 and 1884, succeeding Kyriakos Pittakis. Efstratiadis was born on the Greek island of Lesbos, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He studied archaeology under the prominent epigrapher Ludwig Ross at the University of Athens, and in Germany at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and the Humboldt University of Berlin. Returning to Greece in 1843, he worked as a teacher alongside his archaeological work for the next twenty years. He was a founding and prominent member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, a learned society greatly involved in the practice and publication of Greek archaeology throughout the 19th century. From 1851 until 1858, a period of financial trouble for the society, he was one of its few remaining members. He worked alongside Pittakis on the society's excavations of the so-called 'Psoma House' in Athens from 1852, and on its excavations of the Theatre of Dionysus near the Acropolis of Athens between 1861 and 1867. During his tenure as Ephor General, he oversaw the construction of what became the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Efstratiadis is remembered for his efforts to protect Greece's archaeological heritage, particularly on the Acropolis of Athens, though his determined efforts to prevent the illegal excavation and export of antiquities were often undercut by the Greek state's limited financial and legal resources to do so. He is also significant for his expansion of the Archaeological Service and his patronage of Panagiotis Stamatakis, who succeeded him as Ephor General and whom he appointed to oversee the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. (Full article...) Anna Apostolaki (Greek: Άννα Αποστολάκη, 1880–1958) was a Greek archaeologist and museum curator. She was the first Greek woman to work as a professional archaeologist and served as curator and later the director of the National Museum of Decorative Arts. One of the first women to graduate with a doctoral degree, she was also the first woman member of the Archaeological Society of Athens and an early member of the Christian Archaeological Society. She was an expert in ancient textiles and saw preservation of ancient patterns and Greek weaving traditions as a means to not only support women's traditional work, but bolster Greek nationalism in the interwar period of Greek history. (Full article...) The worship of heavenly bodies is the veneration of stars (individually or together as the night sky), the planets, or other astronomical objects as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. In anthropological literature these systems of practice may be referred to as astral cults. The most notable instances of this are Sun gods and Moon gods in polytheistic systems worldwide. Also notable are the associations of the planets with deities in Sumerian religion, and hence in Babylonian and Greco-Roman religion, viz. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Gods, goddesses, and demons may also be considered personifications of astronomical phenomena such as lunar eclipses, planetary alignments, and apparent interactions of planetary bodies with stars. The Sabians of Harran, a poorly understood pagan religion that existed in Harran during the early Islamic period (7th–10th century), were known for their astral cult. The related term astrolatry usually implies polytheism. Some Abrahamic religions prohibit astrolatry as idolatrous. Pole star worship was also banned by imperial decree in Heian period Japan. (Full article...) Li Xueqin may refer to: Li Xueqin (historian) Li Xueqin (comedian) Li Xueqin (skier) (Full article...) The Late Shang, also known as the Anyang period, is the earliest known literate civilization in China, spanning the reigns of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding in the second half of the 13th century BC and ending with the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou in the mid-11th century BC. The state is known from artifacts recovered from its capital at a site near Anyang now known as Yinxu and other sites across the North China Plain. One of the richest finds was the Tomb of Fu Hao at Yinxu, thought to belong to a consort of Wu Ding mentioned in Shang inscriptions. Most Shang writing takes the form of inscriptions on oracle bones used for divinations on behalf of the king. Shang ritual focused on offerings to ancestors, enabling modern investigators to deduce a king list that largely matches that of the traditional histories of Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals. The inscriptions also give insight into royal concerns such as weather, the harvest, warfare with neighbouring polities, and mobilizing workers for warfare or agricultural work. The Late Shang shared many features of the earlier Erlitou and Erligang cultures, including the rammed earth technique for foundations of rectangular walled compounds. Bronze casting reached new heights of decoration and a volume unmatched elsewhere in the world at that time. Workshops in the capital produced ceramics and carved stone and bone for a variety of ceremonial, decorative or utilitarian purposes. Besides writing, new features of the Late Shang included horse-drawn chariots, massive royal tombs and human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale, both in divination rituals and in royal burials. (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...) Mendip is a local government district of Somerset in England. The Mendip district covers a largely rural area of 285 square miles (738 km2) ranging from the Mendip Hills through on to the Somerset Levels. It has a population of approximately 110,000. The administrative centre of the district is Shepton Mallet but the largest town (with more than twice the population of Shepton Mallet) is Frome. 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 234 scheduled monuments in Mendip. These include a large number of bowl and round barrows and other neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age tumuli such as the Priddy Circles and Priddy Nine Barrows and Ashen Hill Barrow Cemeteries. There are also several Iron Age hill forts on the hill tops and lake villages on the lowlands such as Meare and Glastonbury Lake Villages. The lake villages were often connected by timber trackways such as the Sweet Track. There are several Roman sites particularly around the Charterhouse Roman Town and lead mining. Some later coal mining sites are also included in the list. Two major religious sites in Mendip at Glastonbury Abbey and Wells Cathedral and their precincts and dispersed residences, tithe barns and The Abbot's Fish House, are included in the list. Prehistoric defensive features such as Ponter's Ball Dyke were supplemented in the medieval period by motte-and-bailey castles such as Farleigh Hungerford, Nunney and Fenny Castle. Commercial and industrial development is represented by the Old Iron Works at Mells and various market crosses. The most recent site on the list is a World War II bombing decoy complex and anti-aircraft obstructions, which were built in 1940, on Black Down, the highest point of the Mendip Hills. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the Historic England data sheets. (Full article...) The Hoxne Hoard (/ˈhɒksən/ HOK-sən) is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million (about £4.5 million in 2023). The hoard was buried in an oak box or small chest filled with items in precious metal, sorted mostly by type, with some in smaller wooden boxes and others in bags or wrapped in fabric. Remnants of the chest and fittings, such as hinges and locks, were recovered in the excavation. The coins of the hoard date it after AD 407, which coincides with the end of Britain as a Roman province. The owners and reasons for burial of the hoard are unknown, but it was carefully packed and the contents appear consistent with what a single very wealthy family might have owned. It is likely that the hoard represents only a part of the wealth of its owner, given the lack of large silver serving vessels and of some of the most common types of jewellery. The Hoxne Hoard contains several rare and important objects, such as a gold body-chain and silver-gilt pepper-pots (piperatoria), including the Empress pepper pot. The hoard is also of particular archaeological significance because it was excavated by professional archaeologists with the items largely undisturbed and intact. The find helped to improve the relationship between metal detectorists and archaeologists, and influenced a change in English law regarding finds of treasure. (Full article...)

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The Church of St John of the Collachium was a medieval church built by the Knights Hospitaller in Rhodes, capital of the island of the same name. It was built in the first half of the fourteenth century and dedicated to the order's patron, John the Baptist. It was the conventual church of the Hospitallers, immediately adjacent to the Palace of the Grand Master, and presided over by the order's most senior religious official. It was used for religious services and processions, meetings of the order's chapter general, and for the elections and funerals of its grand masters. Architecturally, the church was in the Gothic style, 48–50 metres (157–164 ft) in length and 15–18 m (49–59 ft) in breadth. It was expanded in several phases, adding underground areas and a total of eight annexes, including several chapels. At least six Hospitaller grand masters were buried in the church, including Fabrizio del Carretto, whose elaborate funerary slab was placed in its central part. The church became famous for its collection of relics, which included objects associated with John the Baptist, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and various other saints. After the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes in 1522, the church became the town's main mosque. The building was damaged by two earthquakes in the nineteenth century, and destroyed on 6 November 1856 by a lightning strike which ignited gunpowder stored in its cellars, killing at least 200 people. In modern times, only small parts of the northern and eastern foundations remain, and the site has been built over with a school. Archaeological investigations of the site took place in 1932 and 1934 under Pietro Lojacono, in 1988, and under Anna-Maria Kasdagli in 1995. (Full article...) TT1 is the burial place of the ancient Egyptian official Sennedjem and members of his family in Deir el-Medina, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. The funerary complex consists of three pyramid-shaped chapels dedicated to, from south to north, Sennedjem's father or brother, Sennedjem himself, and Sennedjem's son Khonsu. Of the three shafts associated with the chapels, only the shaft in front of Sennedjem's chapel was unrobbed. It leads to a series of underground rooms, including the extensively decorated burial chamber. The undisturbed tomb was discovered in January 1886 in excavations by Gurnawi local Salam Abu Duhi and three others. The single room contained 165 objects, including over 20 burials belonging to family members of Sennedjem. Nine members of Sennedjem's immediate family were placed in coffins while the rest were placed on the floor. Sennedjem and his son Khonsu had the most elaborate burials, both being provided with a sarcophagus or outer rectangular coffin in addition to mummiform coffins, mummy boards and masks; these larger coffins were found disassembled and placed against a wall. For the other 11 people buried there, their exact relation to Sennedjem is unclear due to the lack of inscriptions. The tomb was cleared quickly by Eduardo Toda y Güell and Jan Herman Insinger on behalf of Gaston Maspero, the head of the Antiquities Service. The burial goods included many ushabti, canopic chests and pieces of furniture. The contents of the tomb were transferred to the Boulaq Museum in Cairo. From there, some of the objects, including the coffins and mummies of Iyneferti, Khonsu, and Tamaket, were sold to museum and private collections around the world to fund further excavation work in Egypt. The most important items outside Egypt went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Egyptian Museum of Berlin; the exact locations of other pieces are now largely unknown. (Full article...) Ma Chengyuan (Chinese: 马承源; 3 November 1927 – 25 September 2004) was a Chinese archaeologist, epigrapher, and president of the Shanghai Museum. He was credited with saving priceless artifacts from destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and was instrumental in raising funds and support for the rebuilding of the Shanghai Museum. He was a recipient of the John D. Rockefeller III Award, and was awarded the Legion of Honour by French President Jacques Chirac. Ma was an authority on ancient Chinese bronzes and published more than 80 books and academic papers, including a 16-volume encyclopedia of the bronzes. He was responsible for recovering ancient relics including the Jin Hou Su Bianzhong and Warring States period bamboo strips, which are now considered China's national treasures. (Full article...) Guanche mummies (Canarian Spanish: xaxos, formerly ['ʃaʃos]; mirlados, "embalmed ones"; enzurronados, "leather-bagged ones") are the intentionally desiccated remains of members of the indigenous Guanche people of the Tenerife. The Guanche mummies were made during the eras prior to Spanish settlement of the area in the 15th century. The methods of embalming are similar to those that were used by the Ancient Egyptians, though fewer mummies remain from the Guanche due to looting and desecration. (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...) Transclude linked excerpts as random slideshow/testcases Two views of the Venus of Hohle Fels figurine, which may have been worn as an amulet, and is the earliest known, undisputed example of a depiction of a human being Material Mammoth ivory Size Height: 6 cm Created 41,000 years ago Discovered September 2008 Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany Present location Blaubeuren, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany The Venus of Hohle Fels (also known as the Venus of Schelklingen; in German variously Venus vom Hohlen Fels, vom Hohle Fels; Venus von Schelklingen) is an Upper Paleolithic Venus figurine made of mammoth ivory that was unearthed in 2008 in Hohle Fels, a cave near Schelklingen, Germany, part of the Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is dated to between 42,000 and 40,000 years ago, belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the earliest presence of Cro-Magnons in Europe. The figure is the oldest undisputed example of a depiction of a human being. In terms of figurative art only the lion-headed, zoomorphic Löwenmensch figurine is possibly older. The Venus is housed at the Prehistoric Museum of Blaubeuren (Urgeschichtliches Museum Blaubeuren). (Full article...) The Late Shang, also known as the Anyang period, is the earliest known literate civilization in China, spanning the reigns of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wu Ding in the second half of the 13th century BC and ending with the conquest of the Shang by the Zhou in the mid-11th century BC. The state is known from artifacts recovered from its capital at a site near Anyang now known as Yinxu and other sites across the North China Plain. One of the richest finds was the Tomb of Fu Hao at Yinxu, thought to belong to a consort of Wu Ding mentioned in Shang inscriptions. Most Shang writing takes the form of inscriptions on oracle bones used for divinations on behalf of the king. Shang ritual focused on offerings to ancestors, enabling modern investigators to deduce a king list that largely matches that of the traditional histories of Sima Qian and the Bamboo Annals. The inscriptions also give insight into royal concerns such as weather, the harvest, warfare with neighbouring polities, and mobilizing workers for warfare or agricultural work. The Late Shang shared many features of the earlier Erlitou and Erligang cultures, including the rammed earth technique for foundations of rectangular walled compounds. Bronze casting reached new heights of decoration and a volume unmatched elsewhere in the world at that time. Workshops in the capital produced ceramics and carved stone and bone for a variety of ceremonial, decorative or utilitarian purposes. Besides writing, new features of the Late Shang included horse-drawn chariots, massive royal tombs and human sacrifice on an unprecedented scale, both in divination rituals and in royal burials. (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 Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of the Aegean Bronze Age. He is best known for the excavation of the Minoan site of Akrotiri on Thera, which he conducted between 1967 and 1974. He received many honours in Greece and abroad, and was considered one of the most important Greek archaeologists of his day. A native of Kephallonia, Marinatos was educated at the University of Athens, the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin, and 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 Thera around 1600 BCE. In the 1940s and 1950s, Marinatos surveyed and excavated widely in the region of Messenia in south-west Greece, collaborating with Carl Blegen, who was engaged in the simultaneous excavation of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. He also discovered the battlefield of Thermopylae and excavated the Mycenaean cemeteries at Tsepi and Vranas near Marathon in Attica. Marinatos was head of the Greek Archaeological Service from 1937 to 1939, from 1955 to 1958, and lastly from 1967 to 1974, under the Greek military junta. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the junta; in the late 1930s, he had been close to the quasi-fascist dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas, under whom he initiated legislation to restrict the roles of women in Greek archaeology. 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...) Zaculeu or Saqulew is a pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site in the highlands of western Guatemala, about 3.7 kilometres (2.3 mi) outside the modern city of Huehuetenango. Occupation at the site dates to the Early Classic period (AD 250–600) of Mesoamerican history. Zaculeu was the capital of the Postclassic Mam kingdom, and was conquered by the Kʼicheʼ Kingdom of Qʼumarkaj. It displays a mixture of Mam and Kʼicheʼ style architecture. In AD 1525 the city was attacked by Spanish conquistadors under Gonzalo de Alvarado y Contreras during a siege that lasted several months. Kayb'il B'alam, the city's last ruler, finally surrendered to the Spanish due to starvation. The site contains a number of temple-pyramids with talud-tablero style architecture and double stairways. The pyramids and governmental palaces are grouped around a series of large public plazas. The site also holds a court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. The site was originally fortified with walls. The site was restored by the United Fruit Company in the late 1940s. It is open to tourists and includes a small museum. (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...) Wade's Causeway is a Roman road, or possibly a Neolithic structure, located in the North York Moors national park in North Yorkshire, England. Its origins, age, purpose and extent are subject to research and debate and have not been reliably established. It was excavated in mid-20th century and dated to the Roman period, but 21st century re-interpretations have suggested a possible Neolithic origin. The name may be used to refer specifically to a length of stone course just over 1 mile (1.6 km) long on Wheeldale Moor and protected as a scheduled monument. It may be also be applied more broadly to include an additional postulated extension of this structure, two sections of which are also scheduled monuments, and which extend to the north and south of Wheeldale for up to 25 miles (40 km). The visible course on Wheeldale Moor consists of an embankment of soil, peat, gravel and loose pebbles 2 feet 4 inches (0.7 m) in height and 13 to 23 feet (4 to 7 m) in width. The gently cambered embankment is capped with un-mortared and loosely abutted flagstones. Its original form is uncertain since it has been subjected to weathering and human damage. The structure has been the subject of local folklore for several hundred years and possibly for more than a millennium. Its construction was commonly attributed to a giant known as Wade, a figure from Germanic mythology. In the 1720s, the causeway was mentioned in a published text and as a result became more widely known for the first time. Within a few years, it became of interest to antiquarians, who visited the site and exchanged commentary on its probable historicity. They interpreted the structure as a causeway across marshy ground, attributing its construction to the Roman army, an explanation that remained largely unchallenged throughout the remainder of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The stretch of the causeway on Wheeldale Moor was cleared of vegetation and excavated in the early twentieth century by a local gamekeeper interested in archaeology. The historian Ivan Margary agreed with its identification as a Roman road. In the 1950s and 1960s the causeway was further excavated and studied by the archaeologist Raymond Hayes who concluded that the structure was a Roman road. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, its identification as a Roman road has been questioned by academics, and alternative interpretations suggested for its purpose and date of construction, including its possible origin as a neolithic structure up to 6,000 years old. The monument's co-manager, English Heritage, in 2012, proposed several avenues of research that might be used to settle some of the questions that have arisen regarding its origins and usage. (Full article...) The Behistun Inscription (also Bisotun, Bisitun or Bisutun; Persian: بیستون, Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning "the place of god") is a multilingual Achaemenid royal inscription and large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, established by Darius the Great (r. 522–486 BC). It was important to the decipherment of cuneiform, as it is the longest known trilingual cuneiform inscription, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian (a variety of Akkadian). Authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC, the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius, including his ancestry and lineage. Later in the inscription, Darius provides a lengthy sequence of events following the death of Cambyses II in which he fought nineteen battles in a period of one year (ending in December 521 BC) to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire. The inscription states in detail that the rebellions were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed himself king during the upheaval following Cambyses II's death. Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the "grace of Ahura Mazda". The inscription is approximately 15 m (49 ft) high by 25 m (82 ft) wide and 100 m (330 ft) up a limestone cliff from an ancient road connecting the capitals of Babylonia and Media (Babylon and Ecbatana, respectively). The Old Persian text contains 414 lines in five columns; the Elamite text includes 260 lines in eight columns, and the Babylonian text is in 112 lines. A copy of the text in Aramaic, written during the reign of Darius II, was found in Egypt. The inscription was illustrated by a life-sized bas-relief of Darius I, the Great, holding a bow as a sign of kingship, with his left foot on the chest of a figure lying supine before him. The supine figure is reputed to be the pretender Gaumata. Darius is attended to the left by two servants, and nine one-meter figures stand to the right, with hands tied and rope around their necks, representing conquered peoples. A Faravahar floats above, giving its blessing to the king. One figure appears to have been added after the others were completed, as was Darius's beard, which is a separate block of stone attached with iron pins and lead. (Full article...) Thessaloniki Metro (Greek: Μετρό Θεσσαλονίκης, listen) is an underground rapid-transit system in Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. The system consists of a single line with 13 stations; a further 5 stations are under construction for Line 2. It is fully automated and driverless, the first system of its kind in Greece, and is operated by Thessaloniki Metro Automatic (THEMA), a Franco-Italian consortium. Estimates for the cost of the megaproject are at €3 billion ($3.34 billion today), including €600 million ($670 million) in future interest payments. The project is primarily funded with loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), as well as funds from the Greek government. Construction by a Greco-Italian consortium is overseen by Elliniko Metro, the Greek state-owned company which oversaw the construction of the Athens Metro and Athens Tram. Proposed during the 1910s and first seriously planned in the 1980s, construction of the main line began in 2006 and on the Kalamaria extension in 2013. After years of delays, due to archaeological discoveries and the Greek financial crisis, the 9.6 km (6.0 mi) Line 1 opened on 30 November 2024, with Line 2 expected to add a further 4.8 km (3.0 mi) of tunnels and 5 more stations to the system in February 2026. (Full article...) Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH CIE MC TD FRS FBA FSA (10 September 1890 – 22 July 1976) was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales and London Museum, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, and the founder and Honorary Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London, in addition to writing twenty-four books on archaeological subjects. Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL. In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Age hill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects. Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...) Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis). They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47 (probably male), and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus (sensu stricto) morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm (5 ft 5 in). The Caune de l'Arago opens on a cliffside 80 m (260 ft) above a river, overlooking the Tautavel plain, with a plateau above, and mountainous terrain to the sides. During and after human occupation, the area swung from temperate and humid forestland, to cold and dry steppeland. Stratigraphically, humans are present from beds Q–C. Bed G, dating to roughly 455,000 years old during a forested event, has yielded the most remains. They seem to have hunted a variety of animals, including red deer, fallow deer, argali, tahr, horse, reindeer, beaver, and more. They made Acheulean stone tools, but mainly produced smaller retouched tools such as scrapers, rather than more iconic macro-tools such as bifaces (hand axes). In beds G and F, they may have been practicing ritual cannibalism. Evidence of fire is absent until bed C (400,000 years ago). (Full article...) 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; however, Solo Man is now thought to have no living descendants as 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, measuring from 1,013 to 1,251 cubic centimetres (61.8 to 76.3 cu in), which is within the range of variation for present-day modern humans. 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...) Ninurta (Sumerian: 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒅁: DNIN.URTA, possible meaning "Lord [of] Barley"), also known as Ninĝirsu (Sumerian: 𒀭𒎏𒄈𒋢: DNIN.ĜIR2.SU, meaning "Lord [of] Girsu"), is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with farming, healing, hunting, law, scribes, and war who was first worshipped in early Sumer. In the earliest records, he is a god of agriculture and healing, who cures humans of sicknesses and releases them from the power of demons. In later times, as Mesopotamia grew more militarized, he became a warrior deity, though he retained many of his earlier agricultural attributes. He was regarded as the son of the chief god Enlil and his main cult center in Sumer was the Eshumesha temple in Nippur. Ninĝirsu was honored by King Gudea of Lagash (ruled 2144–2124 BC), who rebuilt Ninĝirsu's temple in Lagash. Later, Ninurta became beloved by the Assyrians as a formidable warrior. The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 BC) built a massive temple for him at Kalhu, which became his most important cult center from then on. In the epic poem Lugal-e, Ninurta slays the demon Asag using his talking mace Sharur and uses stones to build the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to make them useful for irrigation. In a poem sometimes referred to as the "Sumerian Georgica", Ninurta provides agricultural advice to farmers. In an Akkadian myth, he was the champion of the gods against the Anzû bird after it stole the Tablet of Destinies from his father Enlil and, in a myth that is alluded to in many works but never fully preserved, he killed a group of warriors known as the "Slain Heroes". His major symbols were a perched bird and a plow. It has been suggested that Ninurta was the inspiration for the figure of Nimrod, a "mighty hunter" who is mentioned in association with Kalhu in the Book of Genesis, although the view has been disputed. (Full article...) The Bad Dürrenberg burial is a Mesolithic double burial of a woman and baby near the modern town of Bad Dürrenberg, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. The grave was discovered on 4 May 1934 by workmen laying a water pipe in a spa garden beside the Saale river. It was excavated in one day under the direction of Wilhelm Henning, a conservator at the Halle State Museum of Prehistory. No photographs were taken of the burial due to time pressure; the only records are written descriptions and sketches which do not record the exact positions of the bodies and objects. The rectangular grave contained the skeletal remains of an adult woman aged 30–40 years and a 6–8–month–old infant. The woman was buried in a sitting position with bent arms and legs; the baby was probably positioned across her lap. The grave was filled with powdered red ochre and contained many grave goods, including a roe deer antler headdress, 50 pierced teeth from aurochs, deer and wild boar, and stone and bone tools. Radiocarbon dating of human and animal bone yielded a date of 7000–6800 BC, placing the interment in the Mesolithic period. It is displayed in the Halle State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany. The woman had two incompletely formed vertebrae in her neck and associated malformations of the foramen magnum, the hole through which the spinal cord passes, and related blood vessels. This may have caused neuropathological conditions such as abnormal sensations, uncoordinated limb movements (ataxia), rapid eye movement (nystagmus), or double vision. The woman is thought to have been a shaman; she is often referred to as the Bad Dürrenberg shaman. Genetic analysis revealed she likely had a relatively dark complexion with straight, dark hair and blue eyes. The baby boy she was buried with was found to be a fourth or fifth degree genetic relative with a shared mitochondrial haplogroup; she may have been a direct relative, such as his great-great-grandmother, or she may have been an aunt or cousin several generations removed. (Full article...) The Drents Museum (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈdrɛnts myˈzeːjʏm]) is an art and history museum in Assen, Drenthe, the Netherlands. Opened in 1854, it has a collection of prehistoric artifacts, applied art and visual art, as well as temporary exhibitions. In 2023, it had 179,345 visitors. (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...) 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, the Fir Clump stone circle was oval-shaped. The outer ring measured 107 metres (351 ft) by 86.5 metres (284 ft) in diameter, and the inner ring 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...) The Church of St. Polyeuctus (Ancient Greek: Ἅγιος Πολύευκτος, romanized: Hagios Polyeuktos; Turkish: Ayios Polieuktos Kilisesi) was an ancient Byzantine church in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) built by the noblewoman Anicia Juliana and dedicated to Saint Polyeuctus. Intended as an assertion of Juliana's own imperial lineage, it was a lavishly decorated building, and the largest church of the city before the construction of the Hagia Sophia. It introduced the large-scale use of Sassanid Persian decorative elements, and may have inaugurated the new architectural type of domed basilica, perfected in the later Hagia Sophia. Little is known of the church's history after its construction. The building survived until the 11th century, after which it fell into decay, while several architectural elements were removed and reused in Constantinople and other cities. After being built over in the Ottoman period, the site of the church was rediscovered during excavations in the 1960s. The area, directly opposite the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality City Hall, is now a preserved archaeological site open to visitors, although the sculptures have been removed to the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. (Full article...) Mary Alison Frantz (September 27, 1903 – February 1, 1995) was an American archaeological photographer and Byzantine scholar. She was the official photographer of the excavations of the Agora of Athens, and a prolific photographer of ancient Greek sculpture, including the Parthenon frieze and works from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Frantz was born in Minnesota. Following her father's early death, she lived briefly in Scotland, where she first took an interest in photography. She studied classics at Smith College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1924. She first visited Greece in 1925 and held a fellowship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) in 1929–1930. She carried out her doctoral research under Charles Rufus Morey, receiving her PhD from Columbia University in 1937. Frantz began working at the ASCSA's Agora excavations in January 1934. From 1935, she took on an increasing share of the excavation's photography, and was made its official photographer in 1939. She also took the first photographs of the Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean site of Pylos, images used for the first transcription of the tablets and consequently for the decipherment of Linear B. As part of her work in the Agora excavations, she excavated and restored the Church of the Holy Apostles, the site's last surviving Byzantine structure. During the Second World War, Frantz joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). She worked as an assistant to Carl Blegen, another archaeologist turned agent, and gathered intelligence on European exiles in the United States. She served on an Allied commission to observe the Greek elections of 1946, worked for the US Information Service, and was subsequently the cultural attaché of the US embassy in Athens. In this capacity, she established the Fulbright Program in Greece. Frantz left the Agora excavations in 1964. Her later work largely consisted of collaborations with archaeologists such as Gisela Richter, Martin Robertson and Bernard Ashmole. Her publications included some of the earliest archaeological research into Ottoman Greece, as well as photography of archaic kore sculptures, Byzantine architecture and artifacts from the Aegean Bronze Age. Her work on late antiquity and later periods is considered pioneering, and to have contributed to raising the scholarly standing of post-classical archaeology in Greece. She was considered among the foremost photographers of ancient Greek antiquities, and her work has been cited as a major influence on the scholarship and popular reception of classical Greece. (Full article...) 'En Esur, also En Esur (Hebrew: עין אֵסוּר; [ʕen ʔesuʁ] eh-N eh-s-oor) or Ein Asawir (Arabic: عين الأساور, lit. 'Spring of the Bracelets'), is an ancient site located on the northern Sharon Plain, at the entrance of the Wadi Ara pass leading from the Coastal Plain further inland. The site includes an archaeological mound (tell), called Tel Esur or Tell el-Asawir, another unnamed mound, and two springs, one of which gives the site its name. A 7,000-year-old Early Chalcolithic large village already showing signs of incipient urbanisation and with an open space used for cultic activities was discovered at the site below later, Bronze Age remains. During the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BCE, a massive fortified proto-city with an estimated population of 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants existed there. It was the largest city in the region, larger than other significant sites such as Megiddo and Jericho, but smaller than more distant ones in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The city was discovered in 1977, but its massive extent was realized only in 1993. A major excavation between 2017 and 2019 ahead of the construction of a highway interchange exposed the city's houses, streets and public structures, as well as countless artifacts including pottery, figurines and tools. Archaeologists announced its discovery in 2019, calling it the "New York of the Early Bronze Age". (Full article...) Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore the history of SETI as a field; archaeological comparisons for human-alien communication, such as the difficulties of translating ancient languages; the inferential gap between humans and aliens, and the consequences this would have for communication and trade; and the potential nature of alien intelligences. Originally scheduled for publication in June 2014, a PDF of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication was accidentally released a month before the intended date and reviewed by Gizmodo. The positive response to the review inspired NASA to bring forward its release as an e-book, making it available on their website from May of that year. The book gained widespread media coverage upon release. As well as receiving generally positive reviews, it was at the center of controversy regarding misinterpretation of one of its essays. A quote about ancient terrestrial stone carvings, rhetorically stating that they "might have been made by aliens" for all that they were understood by modern anthropologists, was misreported by publications such as TheBlaze, The Huffington Post, and Artnet. (Full article...)

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Deva Victrix, or simply Deva, was a legionary fortress and town in the Roman province of Britannia on the site of the modern city of Chester. The fortress was built by the Legio II Adiutrix in the 70s AD as the Roman army advanced north against the Brigantes, and rebuilt completely over the next few decades by the Legio XX Valeria Victrix. In the early 3rd century the fortress was again rebuilt. The legion probably remained at the fortress until the late 4th or early 5th century, upon which it fell into disuse. A civilian settlement, or canaba, grew around the fortress. Chester's Roman Amphitheatre, south-east of the fortress, is the largest-known military amphitheatre in Britain. The civilian settlement remained after the Romans departed, eventually becoming the present-day city of Chester. There were peripheral settlements around Roman Deva, including Boughton, the source of the garrison's water supply, and Handbridge, the site of a sandstone quarry and Minerva's Shrine. The shrine is the only in situ, rock-cut Roman shrine in Great Britain. The fortress contained barracks, granaries, headquarters, military baths, and an unusual elliptical building which had it been finished may have been intended to act as the governor of Britain's headquarters. (Full article...) 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...) Suoyang City (Chinese: 锁阳城; pinyin: Suǒyáng Chéng), also called Kuyu (苦峪), is a ruined Silk Road city in Guazhou County of Gansu Province in northwestern China. First established as Ming'an County in 111 BC by Emperor Wu of Han, the city was relocated and rebuilt at the current site in 295 AD by Emperor Hui of the Western Jin dynasty. As the capital of Jinchang Commandery (later Guazhou Prefecture), the city prospered during the Tang and Western Xia dynasties. It was an important administrative, economic, and cultural center of the Hexi Corridor for over a millennium, with an estimated peak population of 50,000. It was destroyed and abandoned in the 16th century, after the Ming dynasty came under attack by Mansur Khan of Moghulistan. The city ruins comprise the inner city, the outer city, and several yangmacheng (fortified animal enclosures used as fortresses in wartime). Outside the city walls, the broader archaeological park includes the original site of Ming'an County, more than 2,000 tombs, and the remains of an extensive irrigation system with over 90 kilometres (56 mi) of canals. The archaeological park also encompasses a number of Buddhist sites, including the Ta'er Temple, the Eastern Thousand Buddha Caves, Jianquanzi Caves (碱泉子石窟), and Hanxia Caves (旱峡石窟). Suoyang City is listed as a Major National Historical and Cultural Site of China (No. 4-50). In 2014, it was inscribed on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites as part of Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor. (Full article...) Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 collection of essays edited by Douglas Vakoch and published by NASA. The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore the history of SETI as a field; archaeological comparisons for human-alien communication, such as the difficulties of translating ancient languages; the inferential gap between humans and aliens, and the consequences this would have for communication and trade; and the potential nature of alien intelligences. Originally scheduled for publication in June 2014, a PDF of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication was accidentally released a month before the intended date and reviewed by Gizmodo. The positive response to the review inspired NASA to bring forward its release as an e-book, making it available on their website from May of that year. The book gained widespread media coverage upon release. As well as receiving generally positive reviews, it was at the center of controversy regarding misinterpretation of one of its essays. A quote about ancient terrestrial stone carvings, rhetorically stating that they "might have been made by aliens" for all that they were understood by modern anthropologists, was misreported by publications such as TheBlaze, The Huffington Post, and Artnet. (Full article...) Sedgemoor is a low-lying area of land in Somerset, England. It lies close to sea level south of the Polden Hills, forming a large part of the Somerset Levels and Moors, a wetland area between the Mendips and the Blackdown Hills. The Neolithic people exploited the reed swamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden trackways, including the world's oldest known timber trackway, the Post Track, dating to the 3800s BC. The Levels were the location of the Iron Age Glastonbury Lake Village as well as two lake villages at Meare Lake. Several settlements and hill forts were built on the natural "islands" of slightly raised land, including Brent Knoll and Glastonbury. In the Roman period sea salt was extracted and a string of settlements were set up along the Polden Hills. 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; English Heritage 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 79 scheduled monuments in Sedgemoor. The oldest are Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age including hill forts, bowl barrows and occupied caves including several in Cheddar Gorge. Cannington Camp (which is also known as Cynwit Castle) dates from the Bronze Age, while Brent Knoll Camp between the Somerset Levels and Brean Down is Iron Age (although there are some Bronze Age artefacts) and it was reused in the Roman period. The Romano-British period is represented with several sites. Medieval sites include several motte-and-bailey castles and church or village crosses. Industrial development, particularly in Bridgwater, are represented by brick and tile kilns and a telescopic railway bridge. The most recent monuments are World War II bunkers and bombing decoys on Black Down. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...) George Emmanuel Mylonas (Greek: Γεώργιος Μυλωνάς, romanized: Georgios Mylonas, Greek pronunciation: [/ʝe'oɾʝios milo'nas/], ye-OR-yios mee-loh-NAS; December 21 [O.S. December 9] 1898 – April 15, 1988) was a Greek archaeologist of ancient Greece and of Aegean prehistory. He excavated widely, particularly at Olynthus, Eleusis and 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, joined the Greek Army, and 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 was released in 1923 after bribing his captors with money sent by his American contacts. 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 in the United States to study under David Moore Robinson, his excavation director from Olynthus. He subsequently taught at the University of Chicago. 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, where he remained until returning permanently to Greece in 1969. There, he was prominent in the Archaeological Society of Athens and in efforts to conserve the monuments of the Acropolis of Athens. Mylonas's excavation work included the sites of Pylos, Artemision, Mekyberna, Polystylos and Aspropotamos. Along with John Papadimitriou, 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 religious function of the site's Cult Center, to which he gave its name. He was awarded 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 belief that ancient Greek mythical traditions, particularly concerning the Trojan War and the Eleusinian Mysteries, could be verified by archaeological excavation was controversial in his day and has generally been discredited since. (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...) Robinson's Arch was a monumental staircase carried by an unusually wide stone arch, which once stood at the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount. It was built as part of the expansion of the Second Temple initiated by Herod the Great at the end of the 1st century BCE. Recent findings suggest that it may not have been completed until at least 20 years after his death. The massive stone span was constructed along with the retaining walls of the Temple Mount. It carried traffic up from ancient Jerusalem's Lower Market area and over the Tyropoeon street to the Royal Stoa complex on the esplanade of the Mount. The overpass was destroyed during the First Jewish–Roman War, only a few decades after its completion. The arch is named after Biblical scholar Edward Robinson who identified its remnants in 1838, though it was noticed earlier by Frederick Catherwood. Robinson published his findings in his landmark work Biblical Researches in Palestine, in which he drew the connection with a bridge described in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War, concluding that its existence proves the antiquity of the Walls of Jerusalem. Excavations during the second half of the 20th century revealed both its purpose and the extent of its associated structures. Today the considerable surviving portions of the ancient overpass complex may be viewed by the public within the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. As it is adjacent to Jerusalem's Western Wall worship area, a portion is used by some groups as a place of prayer. (Full article...) The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank off Spithead in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight. The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England. The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies, and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. The remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since the mid-1980s while undergoing restoration. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the Mary Rose Museum, built to display the remains of the ship and her artefacts. Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war, and she was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. She was substantially rebuilt in 1536 and was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding, and modern experiments. The precise cause of her sinking is subject to conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive evidence. (Full article...) The Alepotrypa Cave is an archaeological site in the Mani region of the Peloponnese peninsula. In addition to being inhabited by early farmers, this site was used for burial and cult purposes. Archaeological evidence has revealed that this is one of the largest Neolithic burial sites ever found in Europe. Two adult human skeletons were found at the site from a burial dating to the 4th millennium BC, as well as remains from at least 170 separate persons. Archaeologists are uncertain about the significance of a Mycenaen ossuary, which has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and appears to have been reburied at Alepotrypa. While there is no direct evidence, it is possible that the ossuary may link Alepotrypa to Tainaron, which was regarded as the entrance to Hades in classical mythology. (Full article...) Georg Heinrich Karo (11 January 1872 – 12 November 1963) was a German archaeologist who specialised in Mycenaean and Etruscan civilisation. He was twice director of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens (DAI), in which capacity he excavated the Mycenaean site of Tiryns and the Temple of Artemis on Corfu. A colleague of Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, Karo published the findings from Schliemann's excavations of Grave Circle A at Mycenae. The work was considered Karo's greatest contribution to scholarship. Karo was born in a prosperous merchant family; both of his parents were non-practising Jews, who raised him as a Protestant Christian. Initially inclined towards classical philology, he became interested in archaeology as a student of Georg Loeschcke at the University of Bonn. Following the receipt of his doctorate from Bonn in 1896, Karo travelled widely in the Mediterranean region, developing interests in Minoan civilisation, the Etruscans and ancient biblical commentaries. He taught at Bonn between 1902 and 1905, before moving to the DAI in Athens as Dörpfeld's deputy. Known for his urbane manner and fluency in several languages, he became well connected in the international circles of Greek archaeology, and maintained the favour of both the Greek and the German royal families. His outspoken German nationalism led to his dismissal from the DAI in 1916: he spent some time in the Ottoman Empire, where he worked to conserve cultural heritage and was linked with various efforts to appropriate ancient artefacts and bring them to Germany. Karo's views made him unpopular with the Entente-backed government that ruled in Greece after the First World War, and he took an academic post in Germany at the University of Halle, which he held until 1930. That year, he returned to Athens as director of the DAI. Although an early supporter of the Nazi government of Germany, Karo was forced from his post in 1936 by antisemitism against his Jewish ancestry. In 1939, he fled to the United States, supported by American associates including Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill, and obtained a series of visiting professorships at the University of Cincinnati, Oberlin College and Claremont Colleges. He was also accused of collaborating with the Nazi regime: though no evidence for this allegation was found, he was denied US citizenship and listed as an "Enemy Alien". He returned to Germany in 1952, and became an honorary professor at the University of Freiburg. (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—now Lincoln 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 both 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...) Iximcheʼ (Mayan pronunciation: [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...) 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...) 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 BCE, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BCE, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. From 3100 BCE onward, large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent. This lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BCE. Since the early 21st century, it has been recognized as the oldest-known civilization in America, 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 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 civilizations. 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...) North Somerset is a unitary authority area in England. Its area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare. North Somerset borders the local government areas of Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, Mendip and Sedgemoor. North Somerset contains the parliamentary constituencies of Weston-super-Mare and North Somerset. 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; English Heritage 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 68 scheduled monuments in North Somerset. The oldest site Aveline's Hole, a cave in which bones from the Mesolithic have been identified making it the earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain. There are also multiple Neolithic tumuli. There are also several Iron Age hillforts, such as the one at Worlebury Camp. Dolebury Warren, another Iron Age hillfort, was reused as a medieval rabbit warren. The Romano-British period is represented with sites including villas. Sites from the Middle Ages include motte-and-bailey castles, such as Locking Castle, and church crosses. There are also several deserted medieval settlements. Woodspring Priory is a former Augustinian priory founded in the early 13th century. More recent sites date from the Industrial Revolution and include the Elms colliery and glassworks in Nailsea. The most recent monuments are two Palmerstonian gun batteries, built in the 1860s, on the island of Steep Holm. The monuments are listed below using the titles given in the English Heritage data sheets. (Full article...) Domestication is a multi-generational mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a steady supply of resources, such as meat, milk, or labor. The process is gradual and geographically diffuse, based on trial and error. Domestication affected genes for behavior in animals, making them less aggressive. In plants, domestication affected genes for morphology, such as increasing seed size and stopping the shattering of cereal seedheads. Such changes both make domesticated organisms easier to handle and reduce their ability to survive in the wild. The first animal to be domesticated by humans was the dog, as a commensal, at least 15,000 years ago. Other animals, including goats, sheep, and cows, were domesticated around 11,000 years ago. Among birds, the chicken was first domesticated in East Asia, seemingly for cockfighting, some 7,000 years ago. The horse came under domestication around 5,500 years ago in central Asia as a working animal. Among invertebrates, the silkworm and the western honey bee were domesticated over 5,000 years ago for silk and honey, respectively. The domestication of plants began around 13,000–11,000 years ago with cereals such as wheat and barley in the Middle East, alongside crops such as lentil, pea, chickpea, and flax. Beginning around 10,000 years ago, Indigenous peoples in the Americas began to cultivate peanuts, squash, maize, potatoes, cotton, and cassava. Rice was first domesticated in China some 9,000 years ago. In Africa, crops such as sorghum were domesticated. Agriculture developed in some 13 centres around the world, domesticating different crops and animals. Three groups of insects, namely ambrosia beetles, leafcutter ants, and fungus-growing termites have independently domesticated species of fungi, on which they feed. In the case of the termites, the relationship is a fully obligate symbiosis on both sides. (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. As of 2024, 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...) Alan John Bayard Wace FBA FSA (13 July 1879 – 9 November 1957) was an English archaeologist who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly, Laconia, and Egypt, and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, Wace initially focused his scholarly interests on Ancient Greek sculpture and modern Greek anthropology. He first attended the BSA in 1902, before moving to the British School at Rome (BSR). While a member of the BSR, he participated in the BSA's excavations at Sparta and in the region of Laconia in southern Greece. Between 1907 and 1912, he surveyed widely in the northern Greek region of Thessaly, before taking a post at the Scottish University of St Andrews in 1912. In 1914, Wace returned to the BSA as its director, though his archaeological work was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he worked for the British intelligence services and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou. This project generated Wace and Blegen's theory of the long-term continuity of mainland Greek ("Helladic") culture, which contradicted the established scholarly view that Minoan Crete had been the dominant culture of the Aegean Bronze Age, and became known as the "Helladic Heresy". Wace excavated at Mycenae in the early 1920s, and established a chronological schema for the site's tholos tombs which largely proved the "Helladic Heresy" correct. Wace lost his position at the BSA in 1923, and spent ten years as a curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge as the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and resumed his covert work during the Second World War, serving as a section head for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Athens, Alexandria, and Cairo. He retired from Cambridge in 1944 and was appointed to a post at Alexandria's Farouk I University. During his tenure there, he continued to excavate at Mycenae and unsuccessfully attempted to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great. He was sacked after the 1952 Egyptian revolution, but continued to excavate, publish and study until his death in 1957. His daughter, Lisa French, accompanied him on several campaigns at Mycenae and later directed excavations there. (Full article...) Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. Between her recovery in 1961 and the beginning of 2025, Vasa has been seen by over 45 million visitors. The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). She was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. Richly decorated as a symbol of the king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. However, Vasa was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and sank only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze. The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to openly discuss the ship's problems or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished. During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around Vasa's hull by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars with invaluable insights into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques, the evolution of sailing rigs, and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden. Today Vasa is the world's best-preserved 17th-century ship, answering many questions about the design and operation of ships of this period. The wreck of Vasa continually undergoes monitoring and further research on how to preserve her. (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 only known near-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 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 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 established the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, which 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...) Homo floresiensis ( /flɔːrˈɛziːˌɛn.sɪs/), also known as "Flores Man" or "Hobbit" (after the fictional species), is an extinct species of small archaic humans 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. As of 2015, partial skeletons of 15 individuals have been recovered; this includes one complete skull, referred to as "LB1". Homo floresiensis is thought to have arrived on Flores around 1.27–1 million years ago. There is debate as to whether H. floresiensis represents a descendant of Javanese Homo erectus that reduced its body size as a result of insular dwarfism, or whether it represents an otherwise undetected migration of small, Australopithecus or Homo habilis-grade archaic humans outside of Africa. 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 at Liang Bua 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. Other earlier remains from Mata Menge date to around 700,000 years ago. (Full article...) Montevideo Maru (Japanese: もんてびでお丸) was a merchant ship of the Empire of Japan. Launched in 1926, it was pressed into service as a military transport during World War II. It was sunk by the American submarine USS Sturgeon on 1 July 1942, drowning 1,054 people, mostly Australian prisoners of war and civilians who were being transported from Rabaul, the former Australian territory of New Guinea, to Hainan. The sinking is considered the worst maritime disaster in Australia's history. The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was discovered on 18 April 2023. (Full article...) Spyridon Marinatos (Greek: Σπυρίδων Μαρινάτος; 17 November [O.S. 4 November] 1901 – 1 October 1974) was a Greek archaeologist who specialised in the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of the Aegean Bronze Age. He is best known for the excavation of the Minoan site of Akrotiri on Thera, which he conducted between 1967 and 1974. He received many honours in Greece and abroad, and was considered one of the most important Greek archaeologists of his day. A native of Kephallonia, Marinatos was educated at the University of Athens, the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin, and 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 Thera around 1600 BCE. In the 1940s and 1950s, Marinatos surveyed and excavated widely in the region of Messenia in south-west Greece, collaborating with Carl Blegen, who was engaged in the simultaneous excavation of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. He also discovered the battlefield of Thermopylae and excavated the Mycenaean cemeteries at Tsepi and Vranas near Marathon in Attica. Marinatos was head of the Greek Archaeological Service from 1937 to 1939, from 1955 to 1958, and lastly from 1967 to 1974, under the Greek military junta. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the junta; in the late 1930s, he had been close to the quasi-fascist dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas, under whom he initiated legislation to restrict the roles of women in Greek archaeology. 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...) Kronan, also called Stora Kronan, was a Swedish warship that served as the flagship of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic Sea in the 1670s. When built, she was one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world. The construction of Kronan lasted from 1668 to 1672 and was delayed by difficulties with financing and conflicts between the shipwright Francis Sheldon and the Swedish admiralty. After four years of service, the ship sank in rough weather at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676: while making a sharp turn under too much sail she capsized, and the gunpowder magazine ignited and blew off most of the bow. Kronan sank quickly, taking about 800 men and more than 100 guns with her, along with valuable military equipment, weapons, personal items, and large quantities of silver and gold coins. The loss of Kronan was a heavy blow for Sweden during the Scanian War. Besides being the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Swedish Navy, she had been an important status symbol for the monarchy of the young Charles XI. Along with Kronan, the navy lost a sizeable proportion of its best manpower, acting supreme commander Lorentz Creutz, numerous high-ranking fleet officers, and the chief of the navy medical staff. A commission was set up to investigate whether any individuals could be held responsible for the defeat at the Battle of Öland and other major defeats during the war. Most of the guns that sank with Kronan were salvaged in the 1680s, but eventually the wreck fell into obscurity. Its exact position was rediscovered in 1980 by the amateur researcher Anders Franzén, who had also located the 17th-century warship Vasa in the 1950s. Yearly diving operations have since surveyed and excavated the wreck site and salvaged artifacts, and Kronan has become the most widely publicized shipwreck in the Baltic after Vasa. More than 30,000 artifacts have been recovered, and many have been conserved and put on permanent public display at the Kalmar County Museum in Kalmar. The museum is responsible for the maritime archaeological operations and the permanent exhibitions on Kronan. (Full article...)

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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...) Ursula Martius Franklin CC OOnt FRSC (16 September 1921 – 22 July 2016) was a Canadian metallurgist, activist, research physicist, author, and educator who taught at the University of Toronto for more than 40 years. Franklin is best known for her writings on the political and social effects of technology. She was the author of The Real World of Technology, which is based on her 1989 Massey Lectures; The Ursula Franklin Reader: Pacifism as a Map, a collection of her papers, interviews, and talks; and Ursula Franklin Speaks: Thoughts and Afterthoughts, containing 22 of her speeches and five interviews between 1986 and 2012. Franklin was a practising Quaker and actively worked on behalf of pacifist and feminist causes. She wrote and spoke extensively about the futility of war and the connection between peace and social justice. Franklin received numerous honours and awards, including the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case for promoting the equality of girls and women in Canada and the Pearson Medal of Peace for her work in advancing human rights. In 2012, she was inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. A Toronto high school, Ursula Franklin Academy, as well as Ursula Franklin Street on the University of Toronto campus, have been named in her honor. For Franklin, technology was much more than machines, gadgets or electronic transmitters. It was a comprehensive system that includes methods, procedures, organization, "and most of all, a mindset". She distinguished between holistic technologies used by craft workers or artisans and prescriptive ones associated with a division of labour in large-scale production. Holistic technologies allow artisans to control their own work from start to finish. Prescriptive technologies organize work as a sequence of steps requiring supervision by bosses or managers. Franklin argued that the dominance of prescriptive technologies in modern society discourages critical thinking and promotes "a culture of compliance". For some, Franklin belongs in the intellectual tradition of Harold Innis and Jacques Ellul who warn about technology's tendency to suppress freedom and endanger civilization. Franklin herself acknowledged her debt to Ellul as well as to several other thinkers including Lewis Mumford, C. B. Macpherson, E. F. Schumacher, and Vandana Shiva. She recognized that this list had few women. In addition to the philosophy of technology, she believed that science was "severely impoverished because women are discouraged from taking part in the exploration of knowledge". (Full article...) Knap Hill lies on the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey, in northern Wiltshire, England, about a mile (1.6 km) north of the village of Alton Priors. At the top of the hill is a causewayed enclosure, a form of Neolithic earthwork that was constructed in England from about 3700 BC onwards, 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, or meeting places, or ritual sites of some kind. The site has been scheduled as an ancient monument. Knap Hill is notable as the first causewayed enclosure to be excavated and identified. In 1908 and 1909, Benjamin and Maud Cunnington spent two summers investigating the site, and Maud published two reports of their work, noting that there were several gaps in the ditch and bank surrounding the enclosure. In the late 1920s, after the excavation of Windmill Hill and other sites, it became apparent that causewayed enclosures were a characteristic monument of the Neolithic period. About a thousand causewayed enclosures have now been found in Europe, including around seventy in Britain. This site was excavated again in 1961 by Graham Connah, who kept thorough stratigraphic documentation. In 2011, the Gathering Time project published an analysis of radiocarbon dates which included several new dates from Connah's finds. It concluded that there was a 91% chance that the Knap Hill enclosure was constructed between 3530 and 3375 BC. Two barrows lay within the Neolithic enclosure, and at least one more outside it. The hilltop also contains the remains of a Romano-British settlement on an adjoining smaller area called the plateau enclosure, along with some evidence of occupation in the 17th century. An Anglo-Saxon sword was found in the smaller enclosure, and there is evidence of an intense fire in the same area, which implies a violent end to the Romano-British occupation of the hilltop. (Full article...) The tomb of Kha and Merit, also known by its tomb number Theban Tomb 8 or TT8, is the funerary chapel and burial place of the ancient Egyptian foreman Kha and his wife Merit, in the northern cemetery of the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. Kha supervised the workforce who constructed royal tombs during the reigns of the pharaohs Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III (r. 1425 – 1353 BC) in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty of the early New Kingdom of Egypt. Of unknown background, he probably rose to his position through skill and was rewarded by at least one king. He and his wife Merit had three known children. Kha died in his 60s, while Merit died before him, seemingly unexpectedly, in her 20s or 30s. The couple's pyramid-shaped chapel has been known since at least 1818 when one of their funerary stele was purchased by the antiquarian Bernardino Drovetti. Scenes from the chapel were first copied in the 19th century by early Egyptologists including John Gardiner Wilkinson and Karl Lepsius. The paintings show Kha and Merit receiving offerings from their children and appearing before Osiris, god of the dead. The decoration has been damaged over the millennia, deteriorating due to structural decay and human actions. Kha and Merit's tomb was cut into the base of the cliffs opposite their chapel. This position allowed the entrance to be quickly buried by debris deposited by landslides and later tomb construction, hiding its location from ancient robbers. The undisturbed tomb was discovered in February 1906 in excavations led by the Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli on behalf of the Italian Archaeological Mission. The burial chamber contained over 400 items including carefully arranged stools and beds, neatly stacked storage chests of personal belongings, clothing and tools, tables piled with foods such as bread, meats and fruit, and the couple's two large wooden sarcophagi housing their coffined mummies. Merit's body was fitted with a funerary mask; Kha was provided with one of the earliest known copies of the Book of the Dead. Their mummies have never been unwrapped. X-rays, CT scanning and chemical analyses have revealed neither were embalmed in the typical fashion but that both bodies are well preserved. Both wear metal jewellery beneath their bandages, although only Kha has funerary amulets. Almost all of the contents of the tomb were awarded to the excavators and were shipped to Italy soon after the discovery. They have been displayed in the Museo Egizio in Turin since their arrival, and an entire gallery is devoted to them. This has been redesigned several times. (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 North 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...) Kronan, also called Stora Kronan, was a Swedish warship that served as the flagship of the Swedish Navy in the Baltic Sea in the 1670s. When built, she was one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world. The construction of Kronan lasted from 1668 to 1672 and was delayed by difficulties with financing and conflicts between the shipwright Francis Sheldon and the Swedish admiralty. After four years of service, the ship sank in rough weather at the Battle of Öland on 1 June 1676: while making a sharp turn under too much sail she capsized, and the gunpowder magazine ignited and blew off most of the bow. Kronan sank quickly, taking about 800 men and more than 100 guns with her, along with valuable military equipment, weapons, personal items, and large quantities of silver and gold coins. The loss of Kronan was a heavy blow for Sweden during the Scanian War. Besides being the largest and most heavily armed ship in the Swedish Navy, she had been an important status symbol for the monarchy of the young Charles XI. Along with Kronan, the navy lost a sizeable proportion of its best manpower, acting supreme commander Lorentz Creutz, numerous high-ranking fleet officers, and the chief of the navy medical staff. A commission was set up to investigate whether any individuals could be held responsible for the defeat at the Battle of Öland and other major defeats during the war. Most of the guns that sank with Kronan were salvaged in the 1680s, but eventually the wreck fell into obscurity. Its exact position was rediscovered in 1980 by the amateur researcher Anders Franzén, who had also located the 17th-century warship Vasa in the 1950s. Yearly diving operations have since surveyed and excavated the wreck site and salvaged artifacts, and Kronan has become the most widely publicized shipwreck in the Baltic after Vasa. More than 30,000 artifacts have been recovered, and many have been conserved and put on permanent public display at the Kalmar County Museum in Kalmar. The museum is responsible for the maritime archaeological operations and the permanent exhibitions on Kronan. (Full article...) The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank off Spithead in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight. The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of great value as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England. The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies, and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. The remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since the mid-1980s while undergoing restoration. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the Mary Rose Museum, built to display the remains of the ship and her artefacts. Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war, and she was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. She was substantially rebuilt in 1536 and was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding, and modern experiments. The precise cause of her sinking is subject to conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive evidence. (Full article...) Great Wilbraham is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site near the village of Great Wilbraham in Cambridgeshire, England. The enclosure is about 170 metres (560 ft) across, and covers about 2 hectares (4.9 acres). 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 Great Wilbraham enclosure was first identified from aerial photographs in 1972. An excavation was begun in 1975 by David Clarke, with a planned five-year research programme, but Clarke died in 1976 and the results from the dig remained unpublished for years. The surviving part of the archive of finds and records from Clarke's dig was reanalysed in the 2000s, and published in 2006. The site was rich in finds, including Neolithic flint, pottery from periods stretching from the Neolithic to the present day, and animal bone—mostly cattle, but also some sheep and pig. Radiocarbon dating of two samples from the enclosure found dates inconsistent with their context, and were assumed to be the result of later material intruding into the Neolithic levels. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976. (Full article...) Alan John Bayard Wace FBA FSA (13 July 1879 – 9 November 1957) was an English archaeologist who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly, Laconia, and Egypt, and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, Wace initially focused his scholarly interests on Ancient Greek sculpture and modern Greek anthropology. He first attended the BSA in 1902, before moving to the British School at Rome (BSR). While a member of the BSR, he participated in the BSA's excavations at Sparta and in the region of Laconia in southern Greece. Between 1907 and 1912, he surveyed widely in the northern Greek region of Thessaly, before taking a post at the Scottish University of St Andrews in 1912. In 1914, Wace returned to the BSA as its director, though his archaeological work was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he worked for the British intelligence services and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou. This project generated Wace and Blegen's theory of the long-term continuity of mainland Greek ("Helladic") culture, which contradicted the established scholarly view that Minoan Crete had been the dominant culture of the Aegean Bronze Age, and became known as the "Helladic Heresy". Wace excavated at Mycenae in the early 1920s, and established a chronological schema for the site's tholos tombs which largely proved the "Helladic Heresy" correct. Wace lost his position at the BSA in 1923, and spent ten years as a curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge as the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and resumed his covert work during the Second World War, serving as a section head for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Athens, Alexandria, and Cairo. He retired from Cambridge in 1944 and was appointed to a post at Alexandria's Farouk I University. During his tenure there, he continued to excavate at Mycenae and unsuccessfully attempted to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great. He was sacked after the 1952 Egyptian revolution, but continued to excavate, publish and study until his death in 1957. His daughter, Lisa French, accompanied him on several campaigns at Mycenae and later directed excavations there. (Full article...) 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...) 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...) 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 Griffin Murray has described the crozier as "one of [the] finest examples of early medieval metalwork from Ireland". (Full article...) Withypool Stone Circle, also known as Withypool Hill Stone Circle, is a stone circle located on the Exmoor moorland, near the village of Withypool in the southwestern English county of Somerset. The ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. Many monuments were built in Exmoor during the Bronze Age, but only two stone circles survive in this area: the other is Porlock Stone Circle. The Withypool ring is located on the south-western slope of Withypool Hill, on an area of heathland. It is about 36.4 metres (119 feet 5 inches) in diameter. Around thirty small gritstones remain, although there may originally have been around 100; there are conspicuous gaps on the northern and western sides of the monument. The site was rediscovered in 1898 and surveyed by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray in 1905. (Full article...) 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 had 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 on 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 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...) 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 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...) St Melangell's Church (Welsh: [meˈlaŋeɬ]) is a Grade I listed medieval building of the Church in Wales located in the former village of Pennant Melangell, in the Tanat Valley, Powys, Wales. The church was founded around the 8th century to commemorate the reputed grave of Melangell, a hermit and abbess who founded a convent and sanctuary in the area. The current church was built in the 12th century and the oldest documentation of it dates to the 13th century. The building has been renovated several times, including major restoration work in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1980s the church was in danger of demolition, but under new leadership it was renovated and a cancer ministry was started. In 1958, and again between 1987 and 1994, the site was subject to major archaeological excavations, which uncovered information about prehistoric and medieval activity at Pennant Melangell, including evidence of Bronze Age burials. St Melangell's Church contains the reconstructed shrine to Melangell, considered the oldest surviving Romanesque shrine in northern Europe. The shrine dates to the 12th century, and was a major centre of cult activity in Wales until the Reformation. It was dismantled at some point, probably in the early modern era, and reconstructed in 1958 out of fragments found in and around the church. In 1989 the shrine was dismantled again and restored in 1991 according to newer scholarship. Pennant Melangell has continued to attract pilgrims of various backgrounds and motivations into the 21st century. The church is built of several types of stone and has a single nave and a square tower. On the east end is an apse, known as the cell-y-bedd, which contains Melangell's traditional grave. The interior of the church holds historically valuable objects including a 15th-century rood screen depicting Melangell's legend, two 14th-century effigies, paintings, and liturgical fittings. The churchyard contains thousands of graves—the majority unmarked—and several yew trees. (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. 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 does not 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 Caerleon pipe burial is a second-century Roman grave from a cemetery associated with the former legionary fortress and settlement, Isca Augusta, in what is now Caerleon. The main site, including its large amphitheatre, was excavated in the early twentieth century, largely by the archaeologist Tessa Wheeler, but its surrounding cemeteries were mainly known only through casual finds. In 1927 building works on a site across the River Usk from the fortress led to the discovery of a grave containing a stone-lined tomb. Within the tomb was a lead canister containing cremated bone fragments and a piece of linen bearing traces of frankincense. Also present was a 3.8 cm (1.5 in) broken lead pipe which would originally have reached the surface. This type of burial is rare in Britain and was investigated at the time of its discovery by the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler. He consulted the anatomist Arthur Keith, who determined that the bone fragments belonged to a single adult, findings confirmed at re-examination in 2001 by Alice Roberts. Tombs with vertical lead or earthenware pipes are found throughout the Roman Empire, and graves featuring other means of partial access from the surface also occur widely. These features are believed to have facilitated sacrifices and other offerings to the departed. In particular, pipe burials are thought to have allowed relatives to pour blood or wine into the container to nourish the soul of the deceased. (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...) 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...) The Corp Naomh (Irish pronunciation: [kɔɾˠpˠ n̪ˠiːvˠ], lit. '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 archaeologists 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...) Qatna (modern: Arabic: تل المشرفة, Tell al-Mishrifeh; also Tell Misrife or Tell Mishrifeh) was an ancient city located in Homs Governorate, Syria. Its remains constitute a tell situated about 18 km (11 mi) northeast of Homs near the village of al-Mishrifeh. The city was an important center through most of the second millennium BC and in the first half of the first millennium BC. It contained one of the largest royal palaces of Bronze Age Syria and an intact royal tomb that has provided a great amount of archaeological evidence on the funerary habits of that period. First inhabited for a short period in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, it was repopulated around 2800 BC and continued to grow. By 2000 BC, it became the capital of a regional kingdom that spread its authority over large swaths of the central and southern Levant. The kingdom enjoyed good relations with Mari, but was engaged in constant warfare against Yamhad. By the 15th century BC, Qatna lost its hegemony and came under the authority of Mitanni. It later changed hands between the former and Egypt, until it was conquered and sacked by the Hittites in the late 14th century BC. Following its destruction, the city was reduced in size before being abandoned by the 13th century BC. It was resettled in the 10th century BC, becoming a center of the kingdoms of Palistin then Hamath until it was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC, which reduced it to a small village that eventually disappeared in the 6th century BC. In the 19th century AD, the site was populated by villagers who were evacuated into the newly built village of al-Mishrifeh in 1982. The site has been excavated since the 1920s. Qatna was inhabited by different peoples, most importantly the Amorites, who established the kingdom, followed by the Arameans; Hurrians became part of the society in the 15th century BC and influenced Qatna's written language. The city's art is distinctive and shows signs of contact with different surrounding regions. The artifacts of Qatna show high-quality workmanship. The city's religion was complex and based on many cults in which ancestor worship played an important role. Qatna's location in the middle of the Near East trade networks helped it achieve wealth and prosperity; it traded with regions as far away as the Baltic and Afghanistan. The area surrounding Qatna was fertile, with abundant water, which made the lands suitable for grazing and supported a large population that contributed to the prosperity of the city. (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 only known near-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 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 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 established the length of his reign and gave clues about the end of the Amarna Period, which 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...)

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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...) 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 had 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 on 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 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...) Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. The term encompasses a wide variety of forms, including cenotaphs ("empty tombs"), tomb-like monuments which do not contain human remains, and communal memorials to the dead, such as war memorials, which may or may not contain remains, and a range of prehistoric megalithic constructs. Funerary art may serve many cultural functions. It can play a role in burial rites, serve as an article for use by the dead in the afterlife, and celebrate the life and accomplishments of the dead, whether as part of kinship-centred practices of ancestor veneration or as a publicly directed dynastic display. It can also function as a reminder of the mortality of humankind, as an expression of cultural values and roles, and help to propitiate the spirits of the dead, maintaining their benevolence and preventing their unwelcome intrusion into the lives of the living. The deposit of objects with an apparent aesthetic intention is found in almost all cultures – Hindu culture, which has little, is a notable exception. Many of the best-known artistic creations of past cultures – from the Egyptian pyramids and the Tutankhamun treasure, to the Terracotta Army surrounding the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Taj Mahal – are tombs or objects found in and around them. In most instances, specialized funeral art was produced for the powerful and wealthy, although the burials of ordinary people might include simple monuments and grave goods, usually from their possessions. An important factor in the development of traditions of funerary art is the division between what was intended to be visible to visitors or the public after completion of the funeral ceremonies. The treasure of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun, for example, though exceptionally lavish, was never intended to be seen again after it was deposited, while the exterior of the pyramids was a permanent and highly effective demonstration of the power of their creators. A similar division can be seen in grand East Asian tombs. In other cultures, nearly all the art connected with the burial, except for limited grave goods, was intended for later viewing by the public or at least those admitted by the custodians. In these cultures, traditions such as the sculpted sarcophagus and tomb monument of the Greek and Roman empires, and later the Christian world, have flourished. The mausoleum intended for visiting was the grandest type of tomb in the classical world, and later common in Islamic culture. (Full article...) The tomb of Kha and Merit, also known by its tomb number Theban Tomb 8 or TT8, is the funerary chapel and burial place of the ancient Egyptian foreman Kha and his wife Merit, in the northern cemetery of the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina. Kha supervised the workforce who constructed royal tombs during the reigns of the pharaohs Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III (r. 1425 – 1353 BC) in the mid-Eighteenth Dynasty of the early New Kingdom of Egypt. Of unknown background, he probably rose to his position through skill and was rewarded by at least one king. He and his wife Merit had three known children. Kha died in his 60s, while Merit died before him, seemingly unexpectedly, in her 20s or 30s. The couple's pyramid-shaped chapel has been known since at least 1818 when one of their funerary stele was purchased by the antiquarian Bernardino Drovetti. Scenes from the chapel were first copied in the 19th century by early Egyptologists including John Gardiner Wilkinson and Karl Lepsius. The paintings show Kha and Merit receiving offerings from their children and appearing before Osiris, god of the dead. The decoration has been damaged over the millennia, deteriorating due to structural decay and human actions. Kha and Merit's tomb was cut into the base of the cliffs opposite their chapel. This position allowed the entrance to be quickly buried by debris deposited by landslides and later tomb construction, hiding its location from ancient robbers. The undisturbed tomb was discovered in February 1906 in excavations led by the Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli on behalf of the Italian Archaeological Mission. The burial chamber contained over 400 items including carefully arranged stools and beds, neatly stacked storage chests of personal belongings, clothing and tools, tables piled with foods such as bread, meats and fruit, and the couple's two large wooden sarcophagi housing their coffined mummies. Merit's body was fitted with a funerary mask; Kha was provided with one of the earliest known copies of the Book of the Dead. Their mummies have never been unwrapped. X-rays, CT scanning and chemical analyses have revealed neither were embalmed in the typical fashion but that both bodies are well preserved. Both wear metal jewellery beneath their bandages, although only Kha has funerary amulets. Almost all of the contents of the tomb were awarded to the excavators and were shipped to Italy soon after the discovery. They have been displayed in the Museo Egizio in Turin since their arrival, and an entire gallery is devoted to them. This has been redesigned several times. (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 surrendered without much resistance. The castle was confiscated, but returned to the Lewknors when Henry VII of the House of Tudor 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 John Tufton, 2nd Earl of 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...) Guandimiao (Chinese: 关帝庙遗址; pinyin: Guāndìmiào yízhǐ; lit. 'Guandi temple ruins') is a Chinese archaeological site 18 km (11 miles) south of the Yellow River in Xingyang, Henan. It is the site of a small Late Shang village that was inhabited from roughly 1250 to 1100 BCE. Located 200 km (120 miles) from the site of the Shang dynasty capital at Yinxu in Anyang, the site was first studied as a part of excavations undertaken between 2006 and 2008 in preparation for the nearby South–North Water Transfer Project. Excavation and study at Guandimiao has significantly broadened scholars' understanding of rural Shang economies and rituals, as well as the layout of rural villages, which had received comparatively little attention compared to urban centers like Yinxu and Huanbei. Calculations derived from the number of graves and pit-houses at Guandimiao suggest a maximum population of around 100 individuals at the site's peak during the early 12th century BCE. The presence of 23 kilns suggests large-scale regional exports of ceramics from the village. Residents used bone tools, including many that were locally produced, as well as sophisticated arrowheads and hairpins likely imported from Anyang, where facilities produced them en masse. Local ritual practice is evidenced by the presence of locally produced oracle bones used in pyromancy and large sacrificial pits where mainly cattle had been buried, alongside a smaller number of pigs and (rarely) humans. Over 200 graves were found at the site. Apart from an almost complete absence of grave goods beyond occasional cowrie shells and sacrificed dogs, they generally resemble shaft tombs found elsewhere in ancient China. (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...) Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. Between her recovery in 1961 and the beginning of 2025, Vasa has been seen by over 45 million visitors. The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus as part of the military expansion he initiated in a war with Poland-Lithuania (1621–1629). She was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. Richly decorated as a symbol of the king's ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world. However, Vasa was dangerously unstable, with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and sank only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze. The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron at Älvsnabben in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time the king's subordinates lacked the political courage to openly discuss the ship's problems or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished. During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around Vasa's hull by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars with invaluable insights into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques, the evolution of sailing rigs, and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden. Today Vasa is the world's best-preserved 17th-century ship, answering many questions about the design and operation of ships of this period. The wreck of Vasa continually undergoes monitoring and further research on how to preserve her. (Full article...) The Beulé Gate (French pronunciation: [bœ'le]) is a fortified gate, constructed in the Roman period, leading to the Propylaia of the Acropolis of Athens. It was constructed almost entirely from repurposed materials (spolia) taken from the Choragic Monument of Nikias, a monument built in the fourth century BCE and demolished between the second and fourth centuries CE. The dedicatory inscription from Nikias's monument is still visible in the entablature of the Beulé Gate. The gate was integrated into the Post-Herulian Wall, a late Roman fortification built around the Acropolis in the years following the city's sack by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 or early 268 CE. Its construction marked the beginning of a new phase in the Acropolis's use, in which it came to be seen more as a potential defensive position than in the religious terms that had marked its use in the classical period. During the medieval period, the gate was further fortified and closed off, before being built over with a bastion in Ottoman times. The monument was discovered by the French archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé in 1852, and excavated between 1852 and 1853. Its discovery was greeted enthusiastically in France among the scholarly community and the press, though archaeologists and Greek commentators criticised the aggressive means – particularly the use of explosives – by which Beulé had carried out the excavation. In modern times, the gate has served primarily as an exit for tourists from the Acropolis. (Full article...) Offham Hill is a causewayed enclosure near Lewes, East Sussex, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 BC until about 3300 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 site was identified as a possible causewayed enclosure in 1964 by a member of the Sussex Archaeological Society. The Ordnance Survey inspected the site in 1972 and recommended an excavation, which was carried out in 1976 by Peter Drewett. The site had been badly damaged by ploughing by the time of Drewett's excavation, which limited his ability to draw conclusions from finds in the ploughsoil. Drewett mapped what appeared to be ditches, banks, and causeways before beginning to dig, and then cleared about half the site down to the chalk, confirming the location of the ditches and causeways. The majority of Drewett's finds came from the ditches, including about 7,000 worked flints, nearly 300 sherds of pottery, a human burial, other human bone, and animal remains. Most of the pottery was identified as Neolithic, and radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in one of the ditches confirmed that the enclosure dated to the Neolithic. A reanalysis of the radiocarbon dates in 2011, along with further radiocarbon dates from the human remains, concluded that the enclosure was constructed in the mid-fourth millennium BC. Further ploughing after the 1976 excavation led to the complete destruction of the site, in Drewett's opinion. The site was designated a scheduled monument in 1954. (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...) Great Wilbraham is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site near the village of Great Wilbraham in Cambridgeshire, England. The enclosure is about 170 metres (560 ft) across, and covers about 2 hectares (4.9 acres). 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 Great Wilbraham enclosure was first identified from aerial photographs in 1972. An excavation was begun in 1975 by David Clarke, with a planned five-year research programme, but Clarke died in 1976 and the results from the dig remained unpublished for years. The surviving part of the archive of finds and records from Clarke's dig was reanalysed in the 2000s, and published in 2006. The site was rich in finds, including Neolithic flint, pottery from periods stretching from the Neolithic to the present day, and animal bone—mostly cattle, but also some sheep and pig. Radiocarbon dating of two samples from the enclosure found dates inconsistent with their context, and were assumed to be the result of later material intruding into the Neolithic levels. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976. (Full article...) The Caerleon pipe burial is a second-century Roman grave from a cemetery associated with the former legionary fortress and settlement, Isca Augusta, in what is now Caerleon. The main site, including its large amphitheatre, was excavated in the early twentieth century, largely by the archaeologist Tessa Wheeler, but its surrounding cemeteries were mainly known only through casual finds. In 1927 building works on a site across the River Usk from the fortress led to the discovery of a grave containing a stone-lined tomb. Within the tomb was a lead canister containing cremated bone fragments and a piece of linen bearing traces of frankincense. Also present was a 3.8 cm (1.5 in) broken lead pipe which would originally have reached the surface. This type of burial is rare in Britain and was investigated at the time of its discovery by the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler. He consulted the anatomist Arthur Keith, who determined that the bone fragments belonged to a single adult, findings confirmed at re-examination in 2001 by Alice Roberts. Tombs with vertical lead or earthenware pipes are found throughout the Roman Empire, and graves featuring other means of partial access from the surface also occur widely. These features are believed to have facilitated sacrifices and other offerings to the departed. In particular, pipe burials are thought to have allowed relatives to pour blood or wine into the container to nourish the soul of the deceased. (Full article...) The Pioneer Helmet (also known as the Wollaston Helmet or Northamptonshire Helmet), is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the late seventh century found in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. It was discovered during a March 1997 excavation before the land was to be mined for gravel and was part of the grave of a young man. Other objects in the grave, such as a hanging bowl and a pattern welded sword, suggest that it was the burial mound of a high-status warrior. The sparsely decorated nature of the helmet, a utilitarian iron fighting piece, belies its rarity. It is one of just six Anglo-Saxon helmets yet discovered, joined by finds from Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009); its basic form is nearly identical to that of the richer Coppergate helmet found in York. Like these, the Pioneer Helmet is an example of the "crested helmets" that flourished in England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries. The distinctive feature of the helmet is the boar mounted atop its crest. Boar-crested helmets are a staple of Anglo-Saxon imagery, evidence of a Germanic tradition in which the boar invoked the protection of the gods. The Pioneer Helmet is one of three—together with the Benty Grange helmet and the detached Guilden Morden boar—known to have survived. These boar crests recall a time when such decoration may have been common; the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times, speaks of a funeral pyre "heaped with boar-shaped helmets forged in gold," forging a link between the warrior hero of legend and the Pioneer Helmet of reality. The helmet was named after Pioneer Aggregates UK Ltd, who funded its excavation and conservation. It was unveiled at the New Walk Museum in Leicester, and as of 2018 is on display at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. (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...) Alan John Bayard Wace FBA FSA (13 July 1879 – 9 November 1957) was an English archaeologist who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly, Laconia, and Egypt, and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery. Educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, Wace initially focused his scholarly interests on Ancient Greek sculpture and modern Greek anthropology. He first attended the BSA in 1902, before moving to the British School at Rome (BSR). While a member of the BSR, he participated in the BSA's excavations at Sparta and in the region of Laconia in southern Greece. Between 1907 and 1912, he surveyed widely in the northern Greek region of Thessaly, before taking a post at the Scottish University of St Andrews in 1912. In 1914, Wace returned to the BSA as its director, though his archaeological work was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. During the war, he worked for the British intelligence services and excavated with his long-term collaborator Carl Blegen at the prehistoric site of Korakou. This project generated Wace and Blegen's theory of the long-term continuity of mainland Greek ("Helladic") culture, which contradicted the established scholarly view that Minoan Crete had been the dominant culture of the Aegean Bronze Age, and became known as the "Helladic Heresy". Wace excavated at Mycenae in the early 1920s, and established a chronological schema for the site's tholos tombs which largely proved the "Helladic Heresy" correct. Wace lost his position at the BSA in 1923, and spent ten years as a curator of textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1934, he returned to Cambridge as the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and resumed his covert work during the Second World War, serving as a section head for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Athens, Alexandria, and Cairo. He retired from Cambridge in 1944 and was appointed to a post at Alexandria's Farouk I University. During his tenure there, he continued to excavate at Mycenae and unsuccessfully attempted to locate the tomb of Alexander the Great. He was sacked after the 1952 Egyptian revolution, but continued to excavate, publish and study until his death in 1957. His daughter, Lisa French, accompanied him on several campaigns at Mycenae and later directed excavations there. (Full article...) Spyridon Marinatos (Greek: Σπυρίδων Μαρινάτος; 17 November [O.S. 4 November] 1901 – 1 October 1974) was a Greek archaeologist who specialised in the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of the Aegean Bronze Age. He is best known for the excavation of the Minoan site of Akrotiri on Thera, which he conducted between 1967 and 1974. He received many honours in Greece and abroad, and was considered one of the most important Greek archaeologists of his day. A native of Kephallonia, Marinatos was educated at the University of Athens, the Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin, and 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 Thera around 1600 BCE. In the 1940s and 1950s, Marinatos surveyed and excavated widely in the region of Messenia in south-west Greece, collaborating with Carl Blegen, who was engaged in the simultaneous excavation of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos. He also discovered the battlefield of Thermopylae and excavated the Mycenaean cemeteries at Tsepi and Vranas near Marathon in Attica. Marinatos was head of the Greek Archaeological Service from 1937 to 1939, from 1955 to 1958, and lastly from 1967 to 1974, under the Greek military junta. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the junta; in the late 1930s, he had been close to the quasi-fascist dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas, under whom he initiated legislation to restrict the roles of women in Greek archaeology. 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...) 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 seven known Anglo-Saxon helmets, alongside the ones found at Benty Grange (1848), Sutton Hoo (1939), Yarm (1950), 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...) 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, which resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and they were both offensive and defensive structures: they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well as offering 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 a decline and were replaced by artillery star forts with no role in civil administration, and château or 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...) Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH CIE MC TD FRS FBA FSA (10 September 1890 – 22 July 1976) was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales and London Museum, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, and the founder and Honorary Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London, in addition to writing twenty-four books on archaeological subjects. Born in Glasgow to a middle-class family, Wheeler was raised largely in Yorkshire before moving to London in his teenage years. After studying classics at University College London (UCL), he began working professionally in archaeology, specialising in the Romano-British period. During World War I he volunteered for service in the Royal Artillery, being stationed on the Western Front, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Military Cross. Returning to Britain, he obtained his doctorate from UCL before taking on a position at the National Museum of Wales, first as Keeper of Archaeology and then as Director, during which time he oversaw excavation at the Roman forts of Segontium, Y Gaer, and Isca Augusta with the aid of his first wife, Tessa Wheeler. Influenced by the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, Wheeler argued that excavation and the recording of stratigraphic context required an increasingly scientific and methodical approach, developing the "Wheeler method". In 1926, he was appointed Keeper of the London Museum; there, he oversaw a reorganisation of the collection, successfully lobbied for increased funding, and began lecturing at UCL. In 1934, he established the Institute of Archaeology as part of the federal University of London, adopting the position of Honorary Director. In this period, he oversaw excavations of the Roman sites at Lydney Park and Verulamium and the Iron Age hill fort of Maiden Castle. During World War II, he re-joined the Armed Forces and rose to the rank of brigadier, serving in the North African Campaign and then the Allied invasion of Italy. In 1944 he was appointed Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India, through which he oversaw excavations of sites at Harappa, Arikamedu, and Brahmagiri, and implemented reforms to the subcontinent's archaeological establishment. Returning to Britain in 1948, he divided his time between lecturing for the Institute of Archaeology and acting as archaeological adviser to Pakistan's government. In later life, his popular books, cruise ship lectures, and appearances on radio and television, particularly the BBC series Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?, helped to bring archaeology to a mass audience. Appointed Honorary Secretary of the British Academy, he raised large sums of money for archaeological projects, and was appointed British representative for several UNESCO projects. Wheeler is recognised as one of the most important British archaeologists of the 20th century, responsible for successfully encouraging British public interest in the discipline and advancing methodologies of excavation and recording. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed as a major figure in the establishment of South Asian archaeology. However, many of his specific interpretations of archaeological sites have been discredited or reinterpreted. (Full article...) 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...) 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...) Maya stelae (singular stela) are monuments that were fashioned by the Maya civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. They consist of tall, sculpted stone shafts and are often associated with low circular stones referred to as altars, although their actual function is uncertain. Many stelae were sculpted in low relief, although plain monuments are found throughout the Maya region. The sculpting of these monuments spread throughout the Maya area during the Classic Period (250-900 AD), and these pairings of sculpted stelae and circular altars are considered a hallmark of Classic Maya civilization. The earliest dated stela to have been found in situ in the Maya lowlands was recovered from the great city of Tikal in Guatemala. During the Classic Period almost every Maya kingdom in the southern lowlands raised stelae in its ceremonial centre. Stelae became closely associated with the concept of divine kingship and declined at the same time as this institution. The production of stelae by the Maya had its origin around 400 BC and continued through to the end of the Classic Period, around 900, although some monuments were reused in the Postclassic (c. 900–1521). The major city of Calakmul in Mexico raised the greatest number of stelae known from any Maya city, at least 166, although they are very poorly preserved. Hundreds of stelae have been recorded in the Maya region, displaying a wide stylistic variation. Many are upright slabs of limestone sculpted on one or more faces, with available surfaces sculpted with figures carved in relief and with hieroglyphic text. Stelae in a few sites display a much more three-dimensional appearance where locally available stone permits, such as at Copán and Toniná. Plain stelae do not appear to have been painted nor overlaid with stucco decoration, but most Maya stelae were probably brightly painted in red, yellow, black, blue and other colours. Stelae were essentially stone banners raised to glorify the king and record his deeds, although the earliest examples depict mythological scenes. Imagery developed throughout the Classic Period, with Early Classic stelae (c. 250–600) displaying non-Maya characteristics from the 4th century onwards, with the introduction of imagery linked to the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan. This influence receded in the 5th century although some minor Teotihuacan references continued to be used. In the late 5th century, Maya kings began to use stelae to mark the end of calendrical cycles. In the Late Classic (c. 600–900), imagery linked to the Mesoamerican ballgame was introduced, once again displaying influence from central Mexico. By the Terminal Classic, the institution of divine kingship declined, and Maya kings began to be depicted with their subordinate lords. As the Classic Period came to an end, stelae ceased to be erected, with the last known examples being raised in 909–910. (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...)

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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, 7 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 2024 the motorway's northern half is complete, connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west will begin major construction in 2025 with completion estimated for 2031. 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...)

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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...) 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, 7 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 2024 the motorway's northern half is complete, connecting the Northern Expressway to Adelaide's inner north-west; the section running through Adelaide's inner west and inner south-west will begin major construction in 2025 with completion estimated for 2031. 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...) 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...)

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References

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