Stretching down from France between the sea and the mountains, the Italian region of Liguria is home to a wide variety of historic sites. At one villa, in Pegli on the outskirts of Genoa, the recently renovated Museum of Ligurian Archaeology explores ancient activity in the area, from the first inhabitants to the Romans. A […]
World
Travel: The Arch of Malborghetto, Italy
Why was a victory monument erected 20km from Rome? David J Breeze explores the extraordinary circumstances that led to an unsung triumphal arch at Malborghetto. For the last 30 years I have visited Rome roughly every other year, taking my sons and now my grandchildren to see this marvellous city, usually staying in the comfortable […]
The Nabataeans of Petra
We travel down the spectacular long and winding Siq that leads to Petra. There, the Nabataeans founded one of the most beautiful, and perhaps also unlikely, cities in the ancient world. What persuaded these nomads to turn their hand to urbanism, and how did they find wealth in the wilderness?
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
Neil Faulkner considers the Pyramids and alternative facts
Apparently, we now live in a ‘post-fact’ world. The new American president denounces the truth as ‘fake news’. A leading White House spokesperson rejects the truth in favour of ‘alternative facts’. Veteran Middle East journalist Robert Fisk has argued that there is nothing new here: what is happening is called ‘lying’, and politicians have always […]
Travel: Thasos
With guidebook in hand, Martin Davies explores the untrammelled heritage of an idyllic Greek island. I first came across Thasos as a schoolboy reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: it was one of those exotic, magical names that sprinkle the Bard’s works and stir the imagination. Lying just off the coast of Macedonia in the Aegean, the island of […]
Circles of mystery: Strange ancient earthworks in Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest
Hundreds of enigmatic earthworks lay hidden for millennia beneath what was thought to be virgin rainforest. Who built them, and why? In searching for answers, Jennifer Watling discovered how ancient human activity holds the clues for future forest-management. The discovery in recent years of mysterious circular earthworks in western Amazonia is one of the most […]
Advertisement