We, as modern humans, tend to look at ancient art with a 21st-century mindset. It is all too easy to stare (in…
Visitors to Athens tend to spend most of their time pursuing the remains of the great Classical city. They will probably note…
To the east of the small town of Madaba in Jordan – famed for its 6th century AD Mosaic Map, the earliest…
Egypt – How a lost civilisation was rediscovered. Joyce Tyldesley BBC Books, £17.99 In 1400 BC, the three pyramids at Giza, were…
In the 1870s, the German grocer Heinrich Schliemann decided to devote the wealth he had accumulated in grocery to go and dig…
‘Some of the recent literature on the Germanic settlements reads like an account of a tea party at the Roman vicarage. A…
In 1703, Robert Drury, aged 16, was shipwrecked on the south coast of Madagascar. For the next 13 years he was a…
A global superpower attacks a small ‘rogue state’. The superpower – arrogant, self-righteous, supremely confident – swaggers in. It is bound to…
Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University, Peter Bellwood, has written a book that is both important and stimulating. He brings…
This is the seventh edition of Coe’s Maya, a readable and enjoyable richly illustrated introduction to the New World civilisation. Here, the…
From the cover stares a glamorous European face with incongruous Egyptian make-up. But let us not judge a book by its cover.…
Every time an archaeologist looks at non-élite everyday data, this is heralded as something special, unusual, praise-worthy, and in the case of…
In a medieval, and indeed modern Rome, one building above all dominates the city: the Colosseum. Erected on a swamp in the…