• world

    From Nomadic Tribesmen to Nazi Icons: Who Were the Aryans?

    The word “Aryan” has become inseparable from poisonous Nazi doctrine over the last century, in which it became a term for describing a supposed master race of non-Jewish Caucasians, usually having Nordic features. It’s ironic when you consider “Aryan” was originally a perfectly innocent ethno-linguistic term for an ancient cultural group who couldn’t have been any different in appearance to the supposedly racially pure peoples of northern Europe the Nazis envisioned. Far from being blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned and homogenous, the “Aryans” were a dark-skinned nomadic Eurasian tribe who spread from Central Europe and Central Asia into Southern Asia, interbreeding with…

  • owenjarus

    Ancient City of Petra Tombs Reveal 61 Burials and Islamic Gold Medallion

    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…

  • world

    Cave Paintings: Techniques and Materials

    The techniques and materials used to make cave paintings and other forms of rock art are almost as diverse as the people who created them. What unites these ancient artists – across almost all of the earth’s continents and over tens of thousands of years of ancient history – is their increasing level of incredible ingenuity. Handy Work The phrase ‘cave paintings’ somewhat obscures the vast range of methods used to create works of non-portable art on rocks and cave walls. They could be painted, but they could also be drawn, daubed, scratched, chipped, sculpted in relief, engraved, stenciled or…

  • owenjarus

    Did Uruk soldiers kill their own people? 5,500 year old fratricide at Hamoukar Syria

    Five years ago an archaeological team broke news of a major find that forever changed our views about the history of the Middle East. Researchers from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, and the Department of Antiquities in Syria, announced in a press release that they had found the “earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world.” They had discovered that a city in Syria, named Hamoukar, had been destroyed in a battle that took place ca. 3500 BC by a hostile force. Using slings and clay bullets these troops took over the city, burning…

  • egypt

    A History of Archaeology and Excavation at Saqqara

    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…

  • Ann

    ‘Cheap’ Heads-Up Virtual Reality System Combines 3D Visuals With Tactile Feedback

    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…

  • rome

    Roman Living: Inside an Insula

    A Housing Crisis During the rule of Augustus from 27 BC to 14 AD, about 750 years after Rome was founded, the city’s population had ballooned to one million people. The hub of the Roman empire had transformed itself from its origins as a small agricultural community into the biggest city the world had ever known. It wasn’t until London, as hub of the British Empire, grew to one million in the mid-nineteenth century that there would be another city to equal the size of ancient Rome. However, the infrastructure and housing of Rome before the rule of Augustus was…

  • britain

    Interview: Dr Ray Howell on King Arthur, the Silures and, Just Possibly, Stonehenge

    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…

  • site

    Alexander Keiller Museum

    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…

  • world

    Interview: Has Professor Tim Harrison Discovered a Dark Age Kingdom at Tayinat?

    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…