Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old burial ground and shell tool processing site in Kenting National Park on the southernmost tip of Taiwan. This is the first prehistoric shell tool processing site discovered in Taiwan, and the oldest and largest found in any Pacific island. The site was discovered in 2017 during a renewal project to […]
The Library of Trinity College Dublin has digitized one of the greatest medieval masterpieces in its collection: The Book of St. Albans, handwritten and illustrated by chronicler, scribe and illuminator Matthew Paris. The artwork and verse text was previously only available in a black-and-white facsimile edition made in 1924 that cannot begin to convey the […]
Archaeologists have discovered a 1,765-square-foot floor mosaic depicting the 12 Labours of Hercules in the Roman baths of the ancient city of Syedra on the southern coast of Turkey. It dates to the 2nd century A.D. and is unique for the life-sized dimensions of the human figures. Every one of Hercules’ contests against an assortment […]
A new analysis of Late Roman-era mosaic floors discovered in Bodrum, on the southwest coast of Turkey, has found evidence that the ancient city of Halicarnassus experienced a revival of good fortune at the very end of the Roman Empire. Halicarnassus was famous in antiquity for the Tomb of Mausolus, so famous that the name […]
Cavers exploring the mining tunnels at Alderley Edge in Cheshire have discovered a cobalt mine preserved exactly as it was when it was abandoned in around 1810. Members of the Derbyshire Caving Club, who have a special lease from the National Trust to explore the Alderley Edge mines, found the historic cobalt mine last fall. […]
Archaeologists have unearthed fascinating new clues to the 6th century B.C. history of ancient Greco-Sicilian city of Selinunte in excavations of its agora and acropolis. The agora, the city’s central square, was built on a plateau overlooking the ocean. More than eight acres in area, twice the size of Rome’s Piazza del Popola, the agora […]
The magnificent Renaissance ward of the oldest hospital in Europe, the complex of Santo Spirito in Saxia on the Vatican banks of the Tiber in Rome, has been restored. Two years of work have repaired the carved wooden ceiling, the masonry and the interior and exterior plaster, reviving the huge expanse of frescoes and polychrome […]
The latest online talk from the Yorkshire Museum’s Ryedale Hoard series is so good I was rapt the whole time. (Actual footage.) → Entitled Metals, Making and Magic: The Smith in Roman Britain, the talk was delivered by Dr. Owen Humphreys of the Museum of London Archaeology, an expert in Roman ironwork. He opens with […]