We, as modern humans, tend to look at ancient art with a 21st-century mindset. It is all too easy to stare (in…
Centuries before the gap year and package holiday became cultural staples, Western travellers were making long – and often dangerous – journeys…
There have been many Romes. From the earliest scattered huts on the Palatine to the frenetic modern metropolis, the Eternal City has…
Two decades have passed since the American archaeologist and anthropologist Michael Coe published Breaking the Maya Code (1992). This told the dramatic…
Since it was first excavated in 1748, the drama of Pompeii has excited the imaginations of archaeologists and tourists alike. Our impression…
Much of the Indus Valley civilisation was revealed to the world on Sir John Marshall’s watch as director general of the Archaeological…
The enigmatic moai that brood over Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the South Pacific are one of archaeology’s great mysteries. When Europeans…
This is an excellent account of the rise and fall of a great ancient civilisation. It starts in Phoenicia and describes the…
Herculaneum’s destruction is a familiar story. On the 24 August AD 79 Vesuvius erupted, sending superheated mud cascading though the town, killing…
The most avidly acquired antiquities of the New World during the last 50 years have been Maya relics from Mexico and Central…
Spanning Emperor Constantine’s inauguration of Constantinople in AD 330 to the city’s fall to the Ottomans in AD 1453, Byzantium is one…
In 1819, the English physician and polymath Thomas Young – best known to archaeologists for his work in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs…
The modern country of Libya – the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – encompasses one of the richest parts of the Roman…