Category: Historical Sites

Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

by | May 5, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.

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Scientists at work: Public archaeologists dig before the construction crews do

Scientists at work: Public archaeologists dig before the construction crews do

by | Feb 17, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
I’m the director of the Public Archaeology Facility, a research center specializing in cultural resource management. Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve significant sites, train students to be professional archaeologists and share our results with the public. We can work on up to 100 projects a year. Since our inception in 1972, the center has discovered more than 3,500 archaeological sites.

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Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity

Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity

by | Feb 10, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Many Christians believe that Glastonbury is the site of the earliest church in Britain, allegedly founded in the first or second century by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the Gospels, Joseph was the man who donated his own tomb for the body of Christ following the crucifixion. By the 14th century, it was popularly believed that Glastonbury Abbey had been founded by the biblical figure of Joseph. The legend emerged that Joseph had travelled to Britain with the Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood. For 800 years, Glastonbury has been associated with the romance of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea. Later stories connected Glastonbury directly to the life of Christ.

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1915 in Australia: the reality of total war sinks in

1915 in Australia: the reality of total war sinks in

by | Jul 22, 2024 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
1915 was a critical year for Australians, and not just because of the pride and myth-making associated with Gallipoli. Today we struggle to capture a sense of the profound shock and anxiety the landing at Anzac Cove brought to Australia. But it was this, together with a wider understanding that the war was not going well, that defined 1915 and drew Australians ever deeper into the vortex of total war.

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The birth of Ravenser Odd

The birth of Ravenser Odd

by | Jul 16, 2024 | | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
In 1290 there was an investigation into their complaint and the records of that investigation still survive. The people of Grimsby told the king’s investigators that in the time of King Henry III ‘a certain small island was born’, the distance of ‘one tide’ from Grimsby, and fishermen began to dry their nets there. One day a ship was wrecked on the island, and someone made a cabin from the wreckage and began to live there. That man, the first permanent resident of this new land, began to sell food and drink to passing sailors.

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Stonehenge first stood in Wales: how archaeologists proved parts of the 5,000 year-old stone circle were imported

Stonehenge first stood in Wales: how archaeologists proved parts of the 5,000 year-old stone circle were imported

by | Dec 11, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain was written in 1136, the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge were first spirited there by the wizard Merlin, whose army stole them from a mythical Irish stone circle called the Giants’ Dance.

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How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

by | Dec 4, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
This government-funded paramilitary force operated from 1849 (prior to Queensland’s separation from New South Wales) until 1904. It grew to have an expansive reach throughout the state, with camps established in strategic locations along the ever-expanding frontier, first in the southeast and then west and north. While staffed with non-Indigenous senior officers, the bulk of the force was made up of Aboriginal men and, sometimes, boys.

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How did 4th-century Roman coins end up in a medieval Japanese castle?

How did 4th-century Roman coins end up in a medieval Japanese castle?

by | Oct 19, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Katsuren Castle in Okinawa Prefecture is said to have been occupied between the 12th to 15th centuries so the coins cannot represent commercial links between the castle’s contemporaries and the Roman empire, which had fallen centuries before. Other finds from the castle indicate trade links with China – so perhaps the coins arrived there as curios, indirectly through trade with China or South-East Asia.

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Slavers in the family: what a castle in Accra reveals about Ghana’s history

Slavers in the family: what a castle in Accra reveals about Ghana’s history

by | Aug 22, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The Castle is situated on the West African coast, formerly and notoriously known as the “White Man’s Grave”. The castle’s origins can be traced to a lodge built by Swedes in 1652. Nine years later, the Danish built a fort on the site and called it Fort Christiansborg (“Christian’s Fortress”), named after the King of Denmark, Christian IV.

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What happens now we’ve found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII

What happens now we’ve found the site of the lost Australian freighter SS Iron Crown, sunk in WWII

by | Aug 10, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Finding shipwrecks isn’t easy – it’s a combination of survivor reports, excellent archival research, a highly skilled team, top equipment and some good old-fashioned luck.

And that’s just what happened with the recent discovery of SS Iron Crown, lost off the coast of Victoria in Bass Strait during the second world war.

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