Our cover feature reads like detective fiction: archaeologists come across a pharaoh’s sarcophagus stolen in antiquity that leads them to the discovery of the tomb of an unknown king of a long-forgotten Egyptian dynasty. Dr Josef Wegner and his team from Penn Museum have found the archaeological evidence to substantiate a recent theory that there once was a third kingdom of Egypt at Abydos between Memphis and Thebes, and in so doing they have re-written Egyptian history.
In Romania, rescue excavations have revealed the country’s largest Bronze Age necropolis and archaeological evidence for the ceremonies described so vividly in Homer’s epic poem The Iliad.
Andrew Robinson takes another look at the enduring riddle of the Indus Valley script. Its enigmatic symbols continue to intrigue scholars of this long-lost language. Will the code ever be cracked?
A short walk from Rome’s city centre lies an unusual hill: it is made up of broken pieces of pottery inscribed with the minutiae of business transactions that recount 300 years of trade across the Mediterranean at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD.
Across the other side of the world, we discover the archaeological remains that bear witness to the trials and tribulations of the first Christian missionaries to venture onto the remote shores of Tanna, a tiny island that forms part of the archipelago of Vanuatu.
How did people live in Pompeii? And how did they – rich and poor – live in
the Egyptian city of Amarna? It is rarely possible to get down close to the lives of people in the past, but at Pompeii and Amarna, Andrew Selkirk provides a close-up view of how they really lived.
IN THIS ISSUE
FEATURED
EGYPT: Kings of Abydos Solving the mystery of the stolen sarcophagus, and finding the unknown pharaoh of a lost dynasty
ROMANIA: Păru Unravelling the secrets of the dead in Romania’s largest Bronze Age cemetery
INDUS VALLEY: The Indus Script A new look at an old riddle
ITALY: Monte Testaccio Excavating an amphora mountain in Rome
VANUATU: Tanna Missionaries and converts in the South Pacific
EGYPT AND ITALY: Amarna vs Pompeii, part 2 Living and working in the city
NEWS
Infant sacrifice at Carthage
Submerged Sweden
Controlling fire
800,000-year-old footprints
An odd egg at Sardis
Climate and decline of the Indus Valley civilisation
Royal Roman hoard in Germany
Uffizi plague casualties
Bog body is Inca murder victim
NEWS FOCUS
Nunalleq: Defrosting Alaska’s past
SPECIAL REPORT
Peru: using past technologies to solve future problems
CHRIS HIGHAM
Revelry and revelations at the IPPA
CWA PHOTO COMPETITION RESULTS
Photo of the Year award wimers 2014.
TRAVEL
CENTRAL AMERICA Sky High: Venturing into Maya territory
CROATIA Salona: home of an emperor and a saint
AMERICA Richard Hodges travels to the Florida Keys
CULTURE
MUSEUM
Aztecs at the Melbourne Museum
REVIEWS
Climate Change Archaeology: building resilience from research in the world’s coastal wetlands by Robert Van de Noort
Early Mainland Southeast Asia: from first humans to Angkor by Charles Higham
Constantinople: archaeology of a Byzantine megapolis by Ken Dark and Ferudun Özgümüs
Ancient Economies of the Northern Aegean: fifth to first centuries BC by Zosia Halina Archibald
Vikings: life and legend edited by Gareth Williams, Peter Pentz, and Matthias Wemhoff
CHRIS CATLING
Neanderthal Genes and Frank Sinatra
OBJECT LESSON
The Gjermundbu Helmet, from Norway
