Archaeology Archives

Ammonite: the remarkable real science of Mary Anning and her fossils

by History Guild | Mar 23, 2023 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of Jurassic fossils from Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset Coast from the age of ten in 1809.

Her discoveries included the first complete Icthyosaurus (although it was her little brother who first stumbled across the skull, Anning spent the next year excavating and preparing the rest of the fossil), the first complete Plesiosaurus and subsequent plesiosaur species, a perfectly preserved belemnite complete with anterior sheath and inkbag, and the first pterodactyl Dimorphodon.

Why Aotearoa New Zealand’s early Polynesian settlement should be recognised with World Heritage Site status

by History Guild | Mar 16, 2023 | Historical Sites | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Despite Aotearoa New Zealand’s rich and celebrated natural and cultural wonders, we have contributed only three to the international list: Te Wahipounamu in the South Island, Tongariro National Park in the North Island, and New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

While there is a good tentative list of potential submissions, we believe it is now out of date and the country needs to go further. Mostly, we need to be thinking in much broader terms about the reasons we value our heritage.

Why archaeology is so much more than just digging

by History Guild | Feb 27, 2023 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
People invariably want to hear about skeletons, pots and bits of shiny metal. It’s this type of stuff that you will often see in the media, giving the misleading impression that archaeological process is only about excavation.

While the trowel and spade are an important inclusion in the archaeological toolkit, our core disciplinary definition – that of using humanity’s material remains to understand our history – means that we utilise many ways of engaging with this past.

What we’re finding as we excavate Halmyris, a frontier fort of the Roman Empire

by History Guild | Feb 23, 2023 | Historical Sites, History News, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Nationalism is resurging across Europe, and with it has come increasing attention on the vulnerable outer edges of nations: borders, frontiers, and other marginal zones. Today, some of the frontiers of the Roman Empire are now national boundaries, but in antiquity these spaces functioned very differently from how we understand borders today.

Roman Britain was multi-ethnic – so why does this upset people so much?

by History Guild | Feb 13, 2023 | Advocacy, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Mary Beard, professor of classics at the University of Cambridge, has recently been at the receiving end of a “torrent of aggressive insults” for suggesting that Britain under the Roman empire – which at its height stretched from northern Africa to Scotland – was ethnically diverse. The trouble started when Beard described an educational cartoon produced by the BBC, which included a black Roman solider in Britain, as “pretty accurate”.

Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study

by History Guild | Feb 6, 2023 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
When Neanderthals are depicted in artistic reconstructions, they often have a spear in hand. Most archaeologists believe that Neanderthals were adept hunters, and we have found spears at Neanderthal sites. But our knowledge of how they used spears and how that compares with our own species has been inconclusive. Rather than using the spears for hunting, Neanderthals could have used them for self-defence or scavenging.

The Roman dead: new techniques are revealing just how diverse Roman Britain was

by History Guild | Jan 30, 2023 | Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Our knowledge about the people who lived in Roman Britain has undergone a sea change over the past decade. New research has rubbished our perception of it as a region inhabited solely by white Europeans. Roman Britain was actually a highly multicultural society which included newcomers and locals with black African ancestry and dual heritage, as well as people from the Middle East.

How the Ancient Egyptian economy laid the groundwork for building the pyramids

by History Guild | Jan 26, 2023 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
In the shadow of the pyramids of Giza, lie the tombs of the courtiers and officials of the kings buried in the far greater structures. These men and women were the ones responsible for building the pyramids: the architects, military men, priests, and high-ranking state administrators. The latter were the ones who ran the country and were in charge of making sure that its finances were healthy enough to construct these monumental royal tombs that would, they hoped, outlast eternity.

Neanderthals: Javelin athletes helped us show how effective they were at hunting with weapons

by History Guild | Jan 23, 2023 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Neanderthals used to be portrayed as unintelligent and technologically deficient, a species that went extinct because of its inferiority to humans. But researchers now generally agree that Neanderthals were adept predators, innovative builders and symbolic thinkers. So how were early humans actually different from Neanderthals? It’s getting increasingly difficult to tell. But the capability to kill at a distance – such as with a bow and arrow – has long been thought of thought of as one important threshold in our human success story.

A snapshot of our mysterious ancestor Homo erectus

by History Guild | Dec 26, 2022 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Homo erectus is now extinct. This enigmatic human ancestor probably evolved in Africa more than 2 million years ago, although the timing of their disappearance is less clear.

Homo erectus was in the news over 2018 thanks to new discoveries in the Philippines and China, which have transformed our understanding of this not too distant family member.

From ‘Australia’s Titanic’ to deadly mutineers: 4 infamous shipwrecks found on the Great Barrier Reef

by History Guild | Aug 3, 2022 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The Great Barrier Reef is incredible, with turquoise water, stunning reefs and white sandy cays. Yet its name infers something quite different – a barrier: treacherous, dynamic and dangerous to navigate.
For millennia, people navigated and traded across the northern coast of Australia and the Coral Sea.
When early European seafarers came face-to-face with the world’s largest coral reef system, it was not the beauty they saw, but a nearly unnavigable structure that could easily sink their ships.

Humans domesticated horses – new tech could help archaeologists figure out where and when

by History Guild | Feb 22, 2022 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
In the increasingly urbanized world, few people still ride horses for reasons beyond sport or leisure. However, on horseback, people, goods and ideas moved across vast distances, shaping the power structures and social systems of the premechanized era. From the trade routes of the Silk Road or the great Mongol Empire to the equestrian nations of the American Great Plains, horses were the engines of the ancient world.

Tag: Archaeology