By the middle of the 13th century, Dunwich was a prosperous coastal city with a fearsome royal flotilla, extravagant priories and thousands of happy inhabitants. It was a genuine rival to London, and the envy of Europe. But just two hundred years later the city lay in ruins, torn to…
- Part 106
Where’s Atlantis? Find Out Now with our Interactive Google Flyover
Atlantis has got to be one of the world’s most longstanding myths. Devised by Plato over 2,500 years ago, its popularity has rarely waned, and has been the birthplace for some of humanity’s most truly bizarre theories. From Gibraltar to the Aegean, it seems everyone’s had their say on the…
Headless ‘Vikings’ found in Burial Pit
Archaeologists in the sleepy seaside town of Weymouth made a gruesome discovery this month – as the bodies of 51 headless men were found dumped in a thousand-year-old burial pit. The twisted bodies were found without any traces of clothing or valuable items, as good as confirming they had been…
Today in pseudoscience
A few years ago, a well-meaning person, who knew that I had an interest in archaeology, gave me a copy of a magazine called Ancient America. The magazine carries articles that, needless to say, I havent seen in any scholarly journals.Heres a sample from their last issue. Roman coins found…
Architectural Copies: What Nashville Has in Common With Athens
Athens was the learning centre of what was one of the greatest empirical cultures in history – the Ancient Greeks. Building the foundations of civilisation, the Greeks progressed education, politics, sports, science, arts and philosophy. Spawning the concept of democracy, and influencing design and architecture for centuries to come, Athens…
Cornell University Library Archives on Flickr
Today was yet another glorious day, as I stumbled over quite a few small museums, universities and organisations that put their ‘heritage’ photographs online – on Flickr to be more precise – for the world to enjoy. Amongst today’s discoveries are the Manchester Museum (also check out their very museum…
The Manchester Hermit, an artistic way to clean out the museum cabinets
My name is Ansuman Biswas. I am an artist living in a Gothic Tower in the Manchester Museum, which is part of the University of Manchester, England. Over several months I have been exploring the museum stores and collecting my own little cabinet of curiosities.Each day over the next forty…
Rediscovered: The Best Aboriginal Books
Some 35,000 years before Stonehenge mysteriously appeared on the Salisbury Plains, there was human life Down Under, in the outback and in the bush. Before markings were made at Chauvet or Lascaux, before the pyramids and before Rome rose and fell, what is now known as Australia was inhabited by…
Ground-breaking Discovery or Old News?
In September of 2008 a paper came out in the Journal of Applied Geophysics, which reported on a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey of the site of Le Pozze in Lonato, Northern Italy. Most of the findings were from the Roman period and include the discovery of a large villa…
Daily Flickr Finds: Chris Bryant’s Xian City Wall
Xi’an is a city which boasts many ancient relics, from the famous Terracotta Warriors, to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. As one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, the city was fortified with one of the oldest and best preserved Chinese city walls. Chris Bryant’s photograph of the…