The Greeks called them Scythians, the Assyrians and Achaemenid Persians called them Saka. We know them only through their lavish funeral remains. Ahead of a major exhibition at the British Museum, St John Simpson unravels the fascinating story of this mysterious people.
Category: Issues
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Travel: Molise, Italy
Searching for Samnites in the ‘Region of Little Cities’ Surprisingly few people have heard of Molise. Yet this is one of the most beautiful and the most historically engaging areas of Italy. Emerging from the road-tunnel that leads into the region, you get the impression you are entering a forgotten world – and in […]
Object Lesson: The Phaistos Disc
What is it? This enigmatic fired-clay disc, dating to around 1700-1600 BC, was discovered in the palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete. It is 16.5cm in diameter, 2.1cm thick, and its two faces bear 45 different pictographic signs – a total of 241 symbols – spiralling from the edge to the centre […]
CWA 84
The first anyone knew of the Scythians was when exquisite gold ornaments started to turn up around the Black Sea region in the 18th century. Our knowledge of these forgotten nomads has grown significantly in the last few decades, and here, ahead of a major exhibition at the British Museum, we reveal the latest on […]
Travel: Greek Temples of Sicily
Richard Hodges tours the island’s Greek temples. Sicily in February. Cheating winter with the smell of new grass and the first flowers and blossom, I promised two friends that in three days we would chase down the ancient Greeks and their Mediterranean setting. To get into the mood, I watched Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. Now […]
Forgotten kingdom: Searching for lost royalty from the days of the Aksumite Empire
In 2015, CWA reported on the discovery by Louise Schofield of the remarkable grave of a young woman she nicknamed ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Now further excavation in in Ethiopia’s Tigray Province has revealed that ‘Beauty’ was not alone – and nearby remains, assumed to be a fort, are looking suspiciously like those of a royal residence. […]
CWA 83 – New Book Reviews
Mountains and Lowlands: Ancient Iran and Mesopotamia; Three Stones Make a Wall; Rock Art Studies: News of the World V; The Caribbean before Columbus; Human Mobility and Technological Transfer in the Prehistoric Mediterranean; Life and Death in the Mesolithic of Sweden
National Museum Zurich
The Swiss past with a modern twist. Follow the flow of the rivers Sihl and Limmat into downtown Zurich, and you will arrive at a scenic fork in the water. Here is the home of the country’s newest cultural attraction: Archaeology in Switzerland, the first permanent exhibition to take up residence in the recently opened […]
Interviewing Richard Hodges: an Englishman abroad
Richard Hodges chats to Caitlin McCall about people, places, and the ‘alchemy of archaeology’. The trouble with Richard Hodges is keeping him to a single subject. I’m catching up with him on one of his flying visits to London, to discuss his new book, Travels with an Archaeologist. This collection of vignettes, along the lines […]
Reviews: Film & Apps
Letters from Baghdad The story of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) – archaeologist, explorer, spy, British political powerhouse, and the uncrowned ‘Queen of the Desert’ – requires no Hollywoodisation, and this film lends almost none. In a bold approach, directors Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum rely on the photographs and writings of Bell herself, alongside contemporary film […]
Travel: St Pierre Cathedral
Hazel Blair explores ancient Celtic roots beneath early Christian Geneva. In the 21st century, Geneva is a lively hub of international politics and underground quantum research, but archaeologists should not feel out of place in this lakeside cosmopolis: if your passion for stratigraphy trumps your interest in the Higgs boson, Geneva has another secret subterranean […]
Beyond the Pillars of Hercules – Excavating an Iron Age seat of power
A new discovery deep in the Guadiana Valley of the Iberian Peninsula is revealing the secrets of a little-known and intriguing Iron Age civilisation. Sebastián Celestino Pérez and Esther Rodríguez González tell CWA about the latest finds from a political powerhouse: the kingdom of Tartessos. In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian and geographer […]