War has raged in and around the last Hittite capital of Karkemish throughout its long and prestigious history. The city – also known as Carchemish or Karchemiš – straddles the Turkish-Syrian border, and today bears witness to bitter conflict just a few kilometres away in war-torn Syria. The young T E Lawrence – later Lawrence of Arabia – dug here until the onset of the First World War forced the British Museum expedition to leave; and in 1920 the Turkish military occupied the site, peppering it with mines. Now, nearly a century later, the mines are gone and the ground has been made safe so that an international team of archaeologists can begin work again on the Turkish side of the border. Their excavations are revealing the spectacular remains of an ornate 10th-century BC palace that influenced later Neo-Assyrian design.
Santiago, the largest of the tiny Cape Verde islands off the north-west coast of Africa, was the last port of call for intrepid 16th-century sailors voyaging across the Atlantic, and grew rich as the slave trade flourished. It was also home to what must be the first church built in the Tropics.
If you look closely at the beautiful Ice Age paintings in the caves of the Quercy region, you may notice strange scratches and markings on and around the images. Are these clues to the rituals and ceremonies of the Palaeolithic artists?
Just five miles from the ruins of the Classical Greek temples at Paestum is the site of a splendid sanctuary at the mouth of the River Sele. Though there is little to see above ground, excavations have revealed extraordinary insights into what visitors to a Greek temple in its glory days would have seen and experienced.
Our last feature goes to Spain, where archaeologists have begun excavations at Zorita Castle to discover what life was like in a Medieval fortress.
IN THIS ISSUE
FEATURES
TURKEY: Karkemish New discoveries in the last Hittite capital
REPUBLIC OF CABO VERDE: First Church of the Tropics Where slave-traders came to pray
FRANCE: Marking Time Palaeolithic ritual in the sacred caves of France
ITALY: Paestum’s lost temple The sanctuary at the mouth of the River Sele
SPAIN: Zorita Castle Medieval life in a Spanish stronghold
NEWS
Found in New York
Herculaneum’s hidden texts
Oetzi’s new tattoo
Long-distance Bronze Age trade
Discovering an unknown god
The oldest part of us
The corn road
Women in the Roman military
CWA PHOTO COMPETITION RESULTS
Photo of the Year award winners 2015
NEWS FOCUS
Discovering the submerged city of Delos
SPECIAL REPORT
Philae obelisk revealed
CHARLES HIGHAM
New dates, old teeth, and mixed burials
TRAVEL
SARDINIA Giants of Mont’e Prama
CROATIA Walking to a Bronze Age hillfort in Istria
GERMANY Bonn through the ages
CULTURE
MUSEUM
Marvellous mosaics at the Bardo Museum
REVIEWS
Richard Hodges reviews the Sveti Pavao Shipwreck: A 16th century Venetian Merchantman from Mljet, Croatia by Carlo Beltrame, Sauro Gelichi, and Igor Miholjek
plus reviews of:
Early Farmers: The View from Archaeology and Science by Alasdair Whittle and Penny Bickle (eds)
A Prehistory of South America: Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent by Jerry D Moore
Early Ships and Seafaring: European Water Transport by Seán McGrail
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy by Christer Bruun and Jonathan Edmondson (eds)
The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico by Claudia Lozoff Brittenham
CHRIS CATLING
Medieval grails, shrouds, and modesty
THINKING ALOUD
Neil Faulkner discusses totemism in Part II of ‘Why do people dress up as animals?’
OBJECT LESSON
The swimming reindeer
