Fragments of a bronze statue of the Roman emperor Augustus on horseback only the second known equestrian statue of Augustus in existence – have been found in a river near the German town of Giessen, about 40km north of Frankfurt-am-Main. The statue is thought to date back 2,000 years and the discovery has been announced by the science ministry of Hessen state. According to a statement from the science ministry, reported in The Local, this is the most well preserved Roman artefact of quality to be found in Germany to date. The discovery took place on August 12, when a…
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Jakob Kainz, a young archaeologist working on the excavation of the Links of Noltland on the Orkney Island of Westray, has discovered what is being described as a eureka find Scotlands earliest representation of the human face. Crudely scraped into a flat piece of sandstone, and measuring just 3.5 centimetres by 3 centimetres, the so-called Orkney Venus might not look like much, but its got the phizzogs of all from leading heritage experts to the Scottish Culture Minister Mike Russell who called it a find of tremendous importance beaming from ear to ear. The tiny pendant dates from as far…
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Caistor St Edmund is a sleepy village in the Norfolk countryside with no more than 300 or so villagers. Not the kind of place you expect to find the provincial centre of some of the most aggressive and violent Celts to have fought the Romans in ancient Britain. But archaeologists are convinced that beneath the small village and its surrounding fields, to the south of Norwich, lie the ruins of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum, established in Iceni territory in the aftermath of Boudica‘s famous rebellion against the Roman governor in 60-61 AD. The Roman town was in fact…
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Subsistence Habits of Prehistoric Man A team of archaeologists is hoping to find out how prehistoric man survived in central Italy at the end of the last ice age. The researchers are about to set out on a study tour of 10 different locations throughout Italy where they hope to find clues to the lifestyles and habits of early hunter-gatherer humans between 18,000 BC and around 6,000 BC. Until now their hunting and travelling patterns have been in question with two contradictory theories about how the hunter-gatherers would have got their food in an era of extreme environmental change before…
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Having grown up in the Midlands (England), I know a thing or two about grid-based cities. Miletus, was the world’s first grid based city, designed by Hippodamus in 479BC. The city boasts your usual Ancient Greek features – arches, statues, and of course – Amphitheatres. The Miletus Amphitheatre has three layers, with the underground layers constructed in 700BC and the ground level constructed in 100AD. Sleyman Demi’s photograph is of a corridor on the ground floor of the amphitheatre. The photograph is a black and white shot which could easily be taken as a lighting study of the corridor. The…
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Travel writer and photographer Ethel Davies knows the Roman coast of North Africa better than most (see her top 10 sites here). We asked her to give us an insight into how her favourite image came about. “As a professional travel photographer, I accrued a great number of images over the course of the two years of intensive work and study for North Africa: The Roman Coast (not to mention the various trips I took before my research began),” says Ethel. “Its virtually impossible to choose a favourite, as each image represents a place, an experience and even a feeling.…
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Those of you who just can’t get enough of the Ancient Egyptians and their obsessive-compulsive burial rituals are in for a treat at the Brooklyn Museum when it opens its exhbition, Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets, this November. The Museum announced:”Body Parts features thirty-five objects that represent individual body parts in ancient Egyptian art from the Brooklyn Museums collection, many of which will be displayed for the first time. While traditional exhibitions of ancient art focus on reconstructing damaged works, this exhibition uses fragmentary objects to illuminate the very realistic depiction of individual body parts in canonical Egyptian…
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Dr Zahi Hawass and a huge team of experts have just finished laser scanning the Great Sphinx, and now the Pyramids of Giza are being surveyed using the latest laser technology. Dr Hawass, who reports on the project in his blog, has employed the services of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences at the Mubarak Institute for the project, which saw Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara subjected to the same techniques in June by a Japanese group. The team hope to get the most accurate representation of the wonders to date, as Egypt attempts to model the…
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Native American protesters are standing firm this week, over the ongoing destruction of an ancient sacred mound near Oxford, Alabama. Local tribes are disgusted at a building project, which is stripping the mound’s earth as ‘fill-dirt’ for a retail complex across the road. A Creek Tribal Elder tells NBC13 in this video interview, “It just absolutely makes me sick. I have a really hard time even coming down here and looking at it.” Jackson explains that the tribe have gone down every avenue to secure the future of the mound; the state’s largest. But letters, petitions, emails and protests have…
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The city of Cahokia is the latest ancient site to go virtual, thanks to a reconstruction and online map published. Ancient Cahokia was a Mississippian city that flourished between 1000 -1400 AD. At its peak, in the early 13th century, it had a population between 10,000 and 20,000and covered nearly six square miles. This makes it larger than London ca. 1250 AD. It had about 120 mounds during this time, some used for burial, others for religious purposes. It also had palisades, communal plazas, houses and fields full of crops. The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, has an interesting online…