Cambodia’s stupendous temple of Angkor Wat, and the dense forest in which it sits, are currently the focus of a major cutting-edge project, led by an international team of researchers. In addition to traditional archaeological methods, the team has used high-tech LiDAR aerial laser-scanning to ‘see’ what lies beneath the temple grounds, and through the surrounding jungle. This revolutionary work has completely rewritten the history of Angkor Wat and its vast lost city.
From Cambodia we voyage to the Nile Delta, where we discover the lost port of Naukratis, once Egypt’s great international gateway. Despite pioneering late 19th-century archaeological research at the site, Naukratis has since languished in the shadows. Who really lived there, how did the port work, and what salacious secrets were hidden away by the Victorians? Its mysteries are finally being solved by a new British Museum project.
Following the scandals of Naukratis, sinners are then shaken by the gods in a feature that draws on Andrew Robinson’s latest book Earth-Shattering Events: Earthquakes, Nations and Civilization. When do we first find evidence for earthquakes, how did they change the course of history, and how far has our understanding advanced from archaic ideas of divine punishment? The answers are, at times, alarming.
The extremes of the earth are then explored further in the feature concerning the El Médano rock art of Chile. Discovered in the forbiddingly desolate Atacama desert that runs parallel to the teeming ecosystem of the Pacific Ocean, the art illuminates the forgotten world of an ancient fisherpeople.
Other highlights include travels in Ecuador, Oman, and Morocco, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the British Museum’s latest exhibition on Sicily.
IN THIS ISSUE
FEATURES
CAMBODIA: The secrets of Angkor Wat How cutting-edge archaeology has rewritten its history
EGYPT: The mystery of Naukratis Solving the riddles of Egypt’s international Nile Delta port
EARTHQUAKE!: How the earth shook the past Earthquakes through world history, as told by Andrew Robinson
CHILE: Painting a lost world Discovering the red coastal rock art of El Médano
NEWS
Vasco da Gama shipwreck investigated
T E Lawrence bullet discovered
New Indus civilisation inscription found
Lost in transit
‘Throne of Agamemnon’ found
Dating rock art
Hobbit’s extinction pushed back
Mass graves found near Athens
NEWS FOCUS
Rome’s Santa Maria Antiqua: Major restoration project completed
CHARLES HIGHAM
Revealing a frail immigrant at Ban Non Wat
TRAVEL
ECUADOR Tim Tatton-Brown ventures to Quito, the historic capital
OMAN Journeying through the land of frankincense with David Millar
MOROCCO Richard Hodges visits the Roman sites of Lixus and Volubilis
CULTURE
MUSEUM
Sicily: Culture and Conquest exhibition at the British Museum
REVIEWS
Brian Fagan reviews Barry Cunliffe’s masterful By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
plus reviews of:
The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age by Jim Leary
The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting their Story by Dimitra Papagianni and Michael Morse
Archeologia dell’Italia medievale by Andrea Augenti
Environment, Society and the Black Death by Per Lagerås (ed)
Keeping their Marbles by Tiffany Jenkins
CHRIS CATLING
Heritage issues, concealed cats, and magic charms
FORUM
THINKING ALOUD
Trade or no trade? Neil Faulkner considers the meaning of movement, part II
OBJECT LESSON
The Pacific god A’a
