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CWA 77

2 mins read

CWA 77Cambodia’s stupendous temple of Angkor Wat, and the dense forest in which it sits, are currently the focus of a major cutting-edge project, led by an international team of researchers. In addition to traditional archaeological methods, the team has used high-tech LiDAR aerial laser-scanning to ‘see’ what lies beneath the temple grounds, and through the surrounding jungle. This revolutionary work has completely rewritten the history of Angkor Wat and its vast lost city.

From Cambodia we voyage to the Nile Delta, where we discover the lost port of Naukratis, once Egypt’s great international gateway. Despite pioneering late 19th-century archaeological research at the site, Naukratis has since languished in the shadows. Who really lived there, how did the port work, and what salacious secrets were hidden away by the Victorians? Its mysteries are finally being solved by a new British Museum project.

Following the scandals of Naukratis, sinners are then shaken by the gods in a feature that draws on Andrew Robinson’s latest book Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization. When do we first find evidence for earthquakes, how did they change the course of history, and how far has our understanding advanced from archaic ideas of divine punishment? The answers are, at times, alarming.

The extremes of the earth are then explored further in the feature concerning the El Médano rock art of Chile. Discovered in the forbiddingly desolate Atacama desert that runs parallel to the teeming ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean, the art illuminates the forgotten world of an ancient fisherpeople.

Other highlights include travels in Ecuador, Oman, and Morocco, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the British Museum’s latest exhibition on Sicily.

IN THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

CAMBODIA: The secrets of Angkor Wat How cutting-edge archaeology has rewritten its history

EGYPT: The mystery of Naukratis Solving the riddles of Egypt’s international Nile Delta port

EARTHQUAKE!: How the earth shook the past Earthquakes through world history, as told by Andrew Robinson

CHILE: Painting a lost world Discovering the red coastal rock art of El Médano

NEWS

Vasco da Gama shipwreck investigated

T E Lawrence bullet discovered

New Indus civilisation inscription found

Lost in transit

‘Throne of Agamemnon’ found

Dating rock art

Hobbit’s extinction pushed back

Mass graves found near Athens

NEWS FOCUS

Rome’s Santa Maria Antiqua: Major restoration project completed

CHARLES HIGHAM

Revealing a frail immigrant at Ban Non Wat

TRAVEL

ECUADOR    Tim Tatton-Brown ventures to Quito, the historic capital

OMAN  Journeying through the land of frankincense with David Millar

MOROCCO   Richard Hodges visits the Roman sites of Lixus and Volubilis

CULTURE

MUSEUM

Sicily: Culture and Conquest exhibition at the British Museum

REVIEWS

Brian Fagan reviews Barry Cunliffe’s masterful By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean

plus reviews of:

The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age by Jim Leary

The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting their Story by Dimitra Papagianni and Michael Morse

Archeologia dell’Italia medievale by Andrea Augenti

Environment, Society and the Black Death by Per Lagerås (ed)

Keeping their Marbles by Tiffany Jenkins

CHRIS CATLING

Heritage issues, concealed cats, and magic charms

FORUM

THINKING ALOUD

Trade or no trade? Neil Faulkner considers the meaning of movement, part II

OBJECT LESSON

The Pacific god A’a