Tantra has inspired striking imagery: heavily armed gods and goddesses committing violent carnage while adorned with human body parts, or enacting acrobatic acts of union. To the initiated, these graphic scenes often symbolise victories over internal obstacles, such as greed, or the coming together of wisdom and compassion. Others, though, have taken this art at face-value and judged it a product of demon worship, raising fascinating questions about how we should interpret ancient imagery more generally.
Groundbreaking study of an ice core from the Swiss-Italian Alps is allowing us to look at European history in new ways. Information preserved in annual layers of ice is revealing past pollution and environmental conditions over thousands of years. As well as shedding new light on the impact of the Black Death, it has shown that the misery of the First World War was aggravated by a climatic anomaly inflicting cold weather and rain.
A Roman mosaic discovered in Turkey has also proved exceptional, in this case by virtue of its size. The vast composition can stake a claim to being the largest surviving Roman pavement currently known. It is just one of several mosaics discovered during construction work on a hotel.
In Peru, deforestation has brought a new site to light in an area of tropical rainforest. It is well known that upland civilisations, such as the Incas, developed a taste for goods from the tropical lowlands, raising questions about what this freshly discovered complex can reveal about who was farming the rainforest.
Another unexpected find, this time made during construction of an Albanian anti-aircraft battery in 1981, is explored in our travel section. A statuette of Pan and other traces of the god’s cult in the region help lift the lid on the circumstances surrounding the story of the deity’s demise. Meanwhile, fieldwork conducted in the Arctic last summer offers a sense of what it is like to dig in permafrost.
FEATURES
Frozen time
War, plague, and pollution from a European ice core
Discovering Roman mosaics
A fabulous new find where history meets luxury in Antakya
Cedrocucho
A pre-Inca tropical rainforest site
Tantra
An archaeology of enlightenment
NEWS
- Iron Age massacre in Iberia
- Early human footprints in Saudi Arabia
- Earliest evidence for ball games in Eurasia
- Prehispanic flood management in the Pama de Mocan
- Accessibility at ancient Greek sanctuaries
- Late Neanderthal tooth
- Smoking sumac
- Chahak’s chromium steel
NEWS FOCUS
Uncovering Roman armour at Kalkriese
CHARLES HIGHAM
Dating a prehistoric copper-production centre in central Thailand
HORIZON
Exploring the ruins of Easter Island
TRAVEL
ALBANIA
David Hernandez and Richard Hodges investigate the death of Pan
ARCTIC
Matilda Siebrecht shares the challenges and charms of archaeology in the Arctic
CULTURE
REVIEWS
Silk Roads: from local realities to global narratives; Egyptologists’ Notebooks; Working at Home in the Ancient Near East
SPECIAL REPORT
How is AI being used to study ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs?
CHRIS CATLING
Examples of ‘cancel culture’ in the past
FORUM
Letters, crossword, and cartoon
THINKING ALOUD
Unearthing a tyrant
OBJECT LESSON
A votive plaque from a Sumerian temple
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