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CWA 70

2 mins read

CWA-70-CoverWar has raged in and around the last Hittite capital of Karkemish throughout its long and prestigious history. The city – also known as Carchemish or Karchemiš – straddles the Turkish-Syrian border, and today bears witness to bitter conflict just a few kilometres away in war-torn Syria. The young T E Lawrence – later Lawrence of Arabia – dug here until the onset of the First World War forced the British Museum expedition to leave; and in 1920 the Turkish military occupied the site, peppering it with mines. Now, nearly a century later, the mines are gone and the ground has been made safe so that an international team of archaeologists can begin work again on the Turkish side of the border. Their excavations are revealing the spectacular remains of an ornate 10th-century BC palace that influenced later Neo-Assyrian design.

Santiago, the largest of the tiny Cape Verde islands off the north-west coast of Africa, was the last port of call for intrepid 16th-century sailors voyaging across the Atlantic, and grew rich as the slave trade flourished. It was also home to what must be the first church built in the Tropics.

If you look closely at the beautiful Ice Age paintings in the caves of the Quercy region, you may notice strange scratches and markings on and around the images. Are these clues to the rituals and ceremonies of the Palaeolithic artists?

Just five miles from the ruins of the Classical Greek temples at Paestum is the site of a splendid sanctuary at the mouth of the River Sele. Though there is little to see above ground, excavations have revealed extraordinary insights into what visitors to a Greek temple in its glory days would have seen and experienced.

Our last feature goes to Spain, where archaeologists have begun excavations at Zorita Castle to discover what life was like in a Medieval fortress.

IN THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

TURKEY: Karkemish New discoveries in the last Hittite capital

REPUBLIC OF CABO VERDE: First Church of the Tropics Where slave-traders came to pray

FRANCE: Marking Time Palaeolithic ritual in the sacred caves of France

ITALY: Paestum’s lost temple The sanctuary at the mouth of the River Sele

SPAIN: Zorita Castle Medieval life in a Spanish stronghold

NEWS

Found in New York

Herculaneum’s hidden texts

Oetzi’s new tattoo

Long-distance Bronze Age trade

Discovering an unknown god

The oldest part of us

The corn road

Women in the Roman military

CWA PHOTO COMPETITION RESULTS

Photo of the Year award winners 2015

NEWS FOCUS

Discovering the submerged city of Delos

SPECIAL REPORT

Philae obelisk revealed

CHARLES HIGHAM

New dates, old teeth, and mixed burials

TRAVEL

SARDINIA Giants of Mont’e Prama

CROATIA Walking to a Bronze Age hillfort in Istria

GERMANY Bonn through the ages

CULTURE

MUSEUM

Marvellous mosaics at the Bardo Museum

REVIEWS

Richard Hodges reviews the Sveti Pavao Shipwreck: A 16th century Venetian Merchantman from Mljet, Croatia by Carlo Beltrame, Sauro Gelichi, and Igor Miholjek

plus reviews of:

Early Farmers: The View from Archaeology and Science by Alasdair Whittle and Penny Bickle (eds)

A Prehistory of South America: Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent by Jerry D Moore

Early Ships and Seafaring: European Water Transport by Seán McGrail

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy by Christer Bruun and Jonathan Edmondson (eds)

The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico by Claudia Lozoff Brittenham

CHRIS CATLING

Medieval grails, shrouds, and modesty

THINKING ALOUD

Neil Faulkner discusses totemism in Part II of ‘Why do people dress up as animals?’

OBJECT LESSON

The swimming reindeer

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