• General

    Alexandre Piankoff

    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…

  • 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…

  • museum - 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…

  • egypt

    Tell el-Borg: Peace Fortress of the Amarna Kings

    It’s long been a common stereotype that Akhenaten was a pacifist, someone who avoided warfare when possible. If you read Heritage Key’s article on Nazi Egyptology you will see that the Nazis hate him for that precise reason. But recent research, presented this weekend at an Egyptology symposium in Toronto, shows that the Amarna leaders – including Akhenaten, King Tut and Nefertiti – all supported a sizable fortress in the Sinai desert. Located at Tell el-Borg it was a formidable bastion. It was 120 meters east-west by 80 meters north-south. The walls were four meters thick (at the base) and it…

  • 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…

  • lyn

    Top 10 Roman Sites in North Africa

    Ethel Davies, author of Bradt‘s North Africa: The Roman Coast, has travelled the region extensively. It’s a fascinating area, full of well-preserved Roman ruins, as Ethel enthused in her interview with Heritage Key. The Romans signalled their arrival and dominance in North Africa with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. By the third century AD, there were as many as 600 Roman cities at the northern end of the African continent. Prior to this expansion of the Roman empire, the northern coast had been home to Phoenician, Punic and Greek settlers and traders. Here, she gives us her top…

  • world

    Richard Burger Discovers a Ancient Utopian Society – and Love – in Peru

    For Richard Burger, archaeology has turned up many surprising things. This includes romance, which blossomed when he met his archaeologist wife, Lucy Salazar, at a dig in her native Peru. “Sites are not all that romantic. There’s too much work!” says Burger. Luckily, however, nearby Lima was in the full flood of a Southern Hemisphere Spring, and love found its way out of the dusty remains after all. But there are other surprises with wider implications for the rest of us in Burger’s work. He’s been digging in Peru for more than 20 years, much of it around the city…

  • site

    Xian City Wall

    Key Dates City Wall of Xian is an extension of the old Tang Dynasty structure, as a result of the wall-building campaign ordered by Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty (from 1370 A.D.- 1375 A.D). Xian China Key People Zhu Yuanzhang City Wall of Xian is an extension of the old Tang Dynasty structure, as a result the wall-building campaign ordered by Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming Dynasty (from 1370 A.D.- 1375 A.D). After the enlargement, the city wall stands 12 meters, 12-14 meters across the top, 15-18 meters thick at bottom and 13.7 kilometres in…

  • egypt

    Exclusive Interview: Dr David O’Connor on the Abydos Expedition

    On September 19, 2009, the American Research Center in Egypt, Pennsylvania Chapter (ARCE-PA) held its symposium on the joint Expedition to Abydos, Egypt, fielded by the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. This long-term project based in Egypt’s most ancient royal burial grounds includes some of the most prominent Egyptologists in the field today—Dr. David O’Connor, Dr. Matthew Adams, Dr. Janet Richards, Dr. Josef Wegner, and Dr. Stephen Harvey. I was able to reach Dr. O’Connor prior to the symposium for an exclusive interview. Dr. O’Connor offered his experience and insights on such subjects as…