The Scottish Ten – a team of heritage conservators and digital design experts from Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art – have finished laser scanning ‘the Heart of Neolithic Orkney’, Scotland (and the results are fabulous). As they aim to ‘digitally preserve’ five Scottish World Heritage Sites and five international sites, the team now moves on to Rani Ki Vav Stepwell, a thousand-year-old site in India. At Orkney, the Scottish Ten have recorded Maeshowe (a large chambered cairn), the Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar (ceremonial stone circles), the Barnhouse Stone, the Watch Stone and Skara…
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Stonehenge leaps out from its West Country surroundings like Liberace in a dole queue, so it’s no surprise that Britain’s grandest prehistoric monument has been the focus of a myriad projects since the dawn of archaeology. So what is Stonehenge’s archaeological history? And what light has centuries of excavation shed on the enigmatic treasure? Aubrey Discovers (Some of) The Aubrey Holes Stonehenge’s recorded archaeological history begins at the turn of the 17th century, with a small dig carried out by the pre-eminent physician William Harvey. Yet as much as Harvey was a pioneer of medicine, he was hardly a dab…
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James Mellaart Pre-eminent archaeologist of the Neolithic Near East British archaeologist, James Mellaart, was born in London in 1925. His family moved to Holland where his father worked as an expert in Dutch old master paintings and drawings. At the outbreak of World War II, Mellaart secured a position at the museum in Leiden, where he worked until the war ended. Then he enrolled in University College in London where he studied egyptology. His studies led him to join the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey. In the early 1950s, he began an archaeological survey of Anatolia. His first…
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Magic Stones: The Secret World of Ancient Megaliths by Jan Pohribny, Julian C. Richards “Magic Stones” documents, in stunning and evocative photographs, our ancestors’ obsession with stone. Throughout Europe stone has been used to create dwellings for the living and the dead, as a canvas for our earliest art, to celebrate the heavens and in ways that are still, even today, beyond our understanding. From the sun-drenched temples of Malta and the great tombs and alignments of Brittany to the labyrinths of icy Finland, this fascinating book explores these stones in their landscape, as part of nature and as a…
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Qin Shi Huang was apprehensive about the prospect of death so, according to Shiji, he tried hard to find an elixir that would make him immortal. Hedging his bets, he simultaneously commissioned the building of his mausoleum. The tomb complex was designed as a miniature of the capital city, Xianyang, of the Qin Dynasty, and the terracotta army signified a garrison force to protect this underground empire. The underground palace symbolized the Xianyang Palace in which the First Emperor lived, and the inner city and outer city of the tomb complex were also imitation of the capital. The terracotta army,…
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Letters from Egypt, 1863-1865 by Lucie Duff Gordon In 1862 Lucie Duff Gordon, the cousin of Harriet Martineau and a friend of Caroline Norton, Meredith and Thackeray, headed to Egypt on a solo trip designed to rid herself of consumption. She spent the next seven years in a ruined house above a temple in Luxor. She integrated quickly, setting up a hospital and welcoming the people of Luxor into her house. Her story is told through her letters. This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1865 edition by Macmillan. Adamant Media Corporation (6 Dec 2001) 386 pages
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Tucked away on an unremarkable street in central London is a chunk of oolite rock known as the London Stone. Said to date back to the founding of Roman London, the Stone is one of Britain’s most enigmatic and overlooked monuments. A proverb states that “so long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish”. Like the ravens of the Tower of London, the Stone’s fate is tied to that of the city. Historical sources from medieval times reference the Stone and its importance to Londoners, yet few people today have ever heard of it. Overlooked…
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Uncorking the Past tells the compelling story of humanity’s ingenious, intoxicating quest for the perfect drink. Following a tantalising trail of archaeological, chemical, artistic, and textual clues, Patrick E. McGovern, the leading authority on ancient alcoholic beverages, brings us up to date on what we now know about how humans created and enjoyed fermented beverages across cultures. Along the way, he explores a provocative hypothesis about the integral role such libations have played in human evolution. We discover, for example, that the cereal staples of the modern world were probably domesticated for their potential in making quantities of alcoholic beverages.…
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Tutankhamun’s Footwear Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear by André J.Veldmeijer, Alan J. Clapham, Erno Endenburg, Aude Gräzer, Fredrik Hagen, James A. Harrell, Mikko H. Kriek, Paul T. Nicholson, Jack M. Ogden, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of all time. It took Carter and his team 10 years to clear the contents of the tomb and among the objects found was a large collection of shoes and sandals. The footwear is analysed here in detail for the first time since the discovery using Carter’s records and…
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Attribution: Peterak Sir Arthur John Evans Arthur Evans discovered the Palace of Knossos in Crete 8 July 1851 Sir Arthur John Evans was born in Nash Mills, England. He was educated at the University of Oxford, and the University of Göttingen and became the curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 1884 to 1908. He spent almost 35 years excavating at Knossos, beginning in 1900. Uncovering the palace of Knossos on Crete, led to Sir Arthur John Evans being regarded as one of Britain’s most revered archaeologists. He also created the concept of Minoan civilization from the forms and…