Seeking a Byzantine rebirth All Greece is absorbing and rewarding. There is hardly a rock or stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition; and talk and incident, nearly all of it odd or memorable, thicken round the traveller’s path at every step. Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani, […]
Issues
Excavating a Phoenician shipwreck off the coast of Gozo, Malta
The Phoenicians occupied the coast of the Levant for over 1,000 years, but knowledge of their trade network and practices remains elusive. In 2007, an ancient wreck containing a large cache of ceramic containers was discovered off Malta. This ship proved to be one of only a handful of known Phoenician vessels. Since 2014, further […]
CWA Photo of the Year Competition 2018 – Winners Announced
Once again, we were blown away by the exceptional range and quality of the images submitted to the CWA Photo Competition 2018. From small finds to mighty monuments, the entries reflected the full diversity of our global heritage. With so much talent on show, we handed over the difficult task of selecting a winning image […]
National Archaeological Museum of Paestum
Fifty years ago, in June 1968, archaeologist Mario Napoli uncovered a beautifully painted tomb in a small necropolis just south of Paestum, the ancient Greek colony Poseidonia in southern Italy. It is known as the Tomb of the Diver thanks to the unique depiction on its plaster and limestone lid of a solitary young man, […]
Object lesson: the sundial of Marcus Novius Tubula
What is it? This is a Roman stone sundial, a timekeeping device that had become quite common in the Roman world from the 2nd century BC onwards. Carved out of a limestone block (54cm × 35cm × 25cm), the sundial is engraved with 11 hour-lines (demarcating the 12 horae of daylight) intersecting three day-curves (giving […]
Army of the dead
Around 8,000 life-size terracotta warriors and horses were created in battle formation to protect the burial place of China’s first emperor. But what can modern technology reveal about these faithful soldiers?
CWA 88
It sounds more like Hollywood than archaeology: thousands of life-size sculpted soldiers, brandishing real weapons and faithfully guarding an emperor’s tomb for millennia. Yet the terracotta warriors are no special effect. These soldiers are believed to have been individually crafted, capturing an army on the cusp of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The resources and […]
Hope through heritage
Before September, the people in this picture had never picked up a chisel. Now, only a few months into World Monument Fund’s conservation stonemasonry training programme, they can carve arabesques for zakhrafa jambs, prepare rectangular billet mouldings, or work an ovolo return. Not yet perfect maybe, but still astonishing progress, made more remarkable still given […]
Travel: Africa Vetus
Caitlin McCall explores Roman remains in the land of Dido, Hannibal, and Caesar. Tunisia, with its glorious sandy beaches wedged between Algeria and Libya on the north coast of Africa, covers an area roughly two-thirds the size of the UK, but with just one-sixth its population. Such a ratio of land to people means that, […]
Travel: Hadrian MCM
David J Breeze visits Aquincum in Hungary to celebrate its connection to a famous emperor. The 1,900th anniversary of Hadrian’s accession as emperor on 11 August 117 has been celebrated in style all year in Aquincum, the Roman town and military base next to Budapest, Hungary. A special exhibition was mounted in the museum, dedicated […]
Review: The Fate of Rome
The Fate of Rome: climate, disease, and the end of an empire Kyle Harper Princeton University Press, £27.95 ISBN 978-0691166834 Review by: Nadia Durrani By AD 650, the Roman Empire was but a shadow of its former self. Many have explored the reasons for its demise, but no one has yet considered the joint contribution […]
Review: Egyptian Art
Egyptian Art Bill Manley Thames & Hudson, £12.95 ISBN 978-0500204283 Review by: Lucia Marchini The arts of ancient Egypt have had enduring popularity, inspiring Roman frescoes and funerary monuments, Egyptian revival architecture in the 19th century, and Art Deco jewellery. Tutankhamun’s mask remains one of the most familiar images of archaeology, and this new guide […]