Architecture in Roman Britain by Guy de la Bédoyère The Roman period was Britain’s first great architectural age, though this is difficult to appreciate from the ruinous state of the sites that survive. Understanding the types and range of buildings that existed in Roman Britain depends on careful excavation of foundations and wall footings, together with fragments of windows, roofs and carved architectural decoration discovered among the debris. When this evidence is taken together with examples of better-preserved buildings that still exist in Europe, the Near East and North Africa, it is possible to recreate something of the architecture of…
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What lies behind the legends of King Arthur? Fragments of history, or just wishful thinking? While historians study the ancient manuscripts, modern archaeologists join in the hunt for clues. From Arthur’s ‘birthplace’ at Tintagel to the fabled ‘Isle of Avalon’, we sift through the evidence. Journeying across Arthur’s Britain, we search for Camelot and the sites of his battles. Do the remains confirm or contradict the traditional accounts? Far from providing objective proof, Christopher Gidlow shows how archaeologists’ interpretation of their discoveries reflects the academic fashions of their times. Sites which in the 1960s were used to prove King Arthur’s…
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Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo Dr Salima Ikram – one of the world’s leading authorities on Egyptian religion – recently chatted to Heritage Key on the subject of the cult of animal worship in ancient Egypt. In another exclusive new video interview, she dons her white coat and takes us to the lab, for a fascinating insight into the practice of animal mummification. Animals were deeply sacred in ancient Egypt, particularly from the 26th dynasty – around 700 BC – until the end of Egyptian civilization and the advent of Christianity by 400 AD. They were…
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Archaeologists have made two major tomb discoveries at the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan. They discovered a rock-cut tomb that contained the skeletal remains of 61 individuals, along with a wealth of wooden artefacts, animal bones and ceramics. The second discovery was made at a place called tomb 676. While excavating it archaeologists found a gold medallion with an Islamic inscription on it. The find dates to long after the tomb was abandoned. “This object was placed in the tomb in a later period – perhaps as a way of warding off evil coming from the tomb,” said Professor David Johnson, of Brigham Young University in Utah, who led the team that made both tomb…
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The cemetery at Saqqara is one of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt. Over six kilometres long, it boasts thousands of underground burial sites, as well as the six-step Djoser pyramid – Egypt’s oldest pyramid. The ruins at Saqqara have long attracted the interest of explorers, grave-robbers and local people. Travellers first reported evidence of antiquities at Saqqara in the 16th century. The Djoser Pyramid and the smaller pyramids around it were hard to miss – but the size of the necropolis only became apparent with the advent of excavations in the 19th century. It was not until Napoleon…
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Imagine getting your hands on King Tut’s mummy? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have created a new – relatively – low-cost virtual reality device that allows users not only to see a three-dimensional image, but to ‘feel’ it too (watch the video). From the same two California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CALIT2) engineers who created the VR system NexCave comes a new and ‘affordable’ solution for handling three-dimensional virtual objects. Tom Defanti and Greg Dawe’s heads-up virtual reality device (HUVR in short) combines a consumer 3D HDTV panel with a half-silvered mirror to project any graphic image…
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Alexandre Piankoff was a world-renowned anthropologist and Egyptologist, who made significant progress in the field of translating religious texts. Born in 1897 in St Petersburg, Russia, Piankoff first got a taste for history when visiting the majestic State Hermitage Museum in his home city. Enthralled by the Egyptology section in particular, Piankoff studied Foreign Languages and Egyptian Philology at university, before his academic life was cut short by the First World War. Thereafter Piankoff became a fervent academic, studying at Berlin, then the Sarbonne in 1924, then the University of Paris where he obtained a Phd. The Second World War…
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Heritage Key was recently introduced to Dr Ray Howell – a reader of history and historical archaeology at University of Wales, Newport and Director of South Wales Centre for Historical and Interdisciplinary Research (SWCHIR) – through the short film Reclaiming King Arthur. Filmed in association with University of Wales’ Institute of Digital Learning (IDL), it examined the Gwent roots of the legendary British monarch of round table fame – both the real figure, who may have been a 5th or 6th century local warlord, and the mythical Arthur championed in countless folk tales. Dr Howell’s latest area of research is…
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Key Dates The museum was founded in 1938. In 1966, the museum and its contents were donated to the public by Alexander Keiller’s widow. Wiltshire United Kingdom Key People Alexander Keiller was an English archaeologist and businessman who excavated at Avebury in the 1930s, and re-erected many of its fallen and buried stones. The Alexander Keiller Museum documents the history of the nearby prehistoric stone circle of Avebury, in particular archaeological excavations that have taken place there. It’s housed in an old 17th century stables and threshing barn. Most of the exhibits date from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age…
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Recent archaeological work at the site of Tell Tayinat in southeast Turkey, near the Syrian border, indicates that the ancient city was the centre of a Dark Age kingdom, ruled by people from the Aegean area. In an in-depth interview Professor Timothy Harrison, of the University of Toronto, told Heritage Key about this startling theory and the evidence that supports it. Around 1200 BC life changed suddenly throughout the Mediterranean world. The Mycenaean civilization in Greece and Crete, the Egyptian New Kingdom and the Hittite Empire, all collapsed at roughly the same time. It’s not until 900 BC that archaeologists…