Archaeology Archives - The History Press

Echoes of Ash

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 04:01:31 +0000

On a beach near Naples in October 79 CE, more than three hundred people were standing on a beach, hoping for an evacuation. Vesuvius – a volcano which needs no introduction in the world of Ancient Rome – erupted. They had left it too late, and were all instantly killed in the devastation that followed.

Neighbouring the world-renowned Pompeii, the town of Herculaneum is the neglected victim of Vesuvius. It was uniquely preserved in the aftermath of the eruption, and in many ways gives us unparalleled windows into the past.

For the first time, this fascinating new history tells the story of Herculaneum and the people who lived there. Through the eyes of the Weaver, the Slave Girl and the Pregnant Lady, the Soldier, the Fisherman and the Boxer, as well as relevant buildings and the archaeological discoveries of the past 20 years it is possible to hear their voices and build a historical picture that is more colourful, complete and alive than has ever been possible before.

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The Secret Middle Ages

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 04:01:59 +0000

The Secret Middle Ages is a controversial and completely fresh view of the medieval world through its rare and amazing artefacts. Using the wealth of medieval art, much of it unseen or ignored by museums and art historians, Malcolm Jones paints a compelling picture of the visual environment of the great mass of ordinary people between 1200 and 1500. The picture that emerges is of a civilisation that is both like and unlike our own, one that teems with the richness of life and its contradictions. Unlike most studies of the medieval world, it does not concern itself greatly with religious or aristocratic art but with the products of popular and folk art. Here we find beliefs and traditions rendered memorable by the vivid creative imagination and strong visual culture of the middle ages. Love, hatred, crime and punishment, proverbs, heaven on earth, husband-beating – all feature in the jewellery, tableware, illustrations, carvings and textiles of the period.

This book offers a major reassessment of the high medieval period and as such is not only important to specialist, but has much appeal to the general reader. It is essential reading for medievalists and those interested in the history of language and customs. It provides a brilliant and evocative picture of medieval Europe where people spent their time wearing their hearts on their sleeves, snapping sausages and getting bees in their bonnets. As Malcolm Jones writes, gems and precious metals may dazzle the eye, but a pewter brooch, though it may look tawdry, may be of more significance and can tell us more about the middle ages than a cofferful of royal jewels.

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Vikings of the Irish Sea

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 04:01:28 +0000

This book looks at the activities of the Vikings in the Irish Sea, a band of water that has been important since prehistoric times in the history of maritime cultural exchange between Britain and Ireland as well as the Scandinavian countries. The Vikings fully exploited their naval dominance to exert their influence across this area and David Griffiths presents a unique overview of the results of this dominance.

The book will look in detail at the activities of the Vikings in Wales, NW England, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Ireland. The archaeological evidence such as silver hoards and burials, along with the evidence of place-names, settlement and sculpture provide a fascinating insight into the mechanisms of Viking power in these areas.

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Cumbria’s Prehistoric Monuments

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 04:01:50 +0000

Whether it is Hadrian’s Wall, Kendal Castle or the beautiful fells of the Lake District – for thousands of years people have found a certain elegance and utility in stone. Nestled amongst these common relics are a multitude of massive stone monuments, built over 3,000 years before British shores were ever touched by Roman sandals. Cumbria’s ‘megalithic’ monuments are among Europe’s greatest and best-preserved ancient relics but are often poorly understood and rarely visited. Cumbria’s Prehistoric Monuments aims to dispel the idea that these stones are merely ‘mysterious’. Instead, within this book you will find credible answers, using up-to-date research, excavation notes, maps and diagrams to explore one of Britain’s richest archaeological landscapes. Featuring stunning original photography and newly illustrated diagrams of every megalithic site in the county, Adam Morgan Ibbotson invites you to take a journey into a land sculpted by ancient hands.

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Aviation Landmarks – Norfolk and Suffolk

Simon Appleby — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:02:02 +0000

Norfolk and Suffolk are bursting with aviation heritage, having played key roles in military aviation through the two world wars and beyond. This new edition of Aviation Landmarks– Norfolk and Suffolk presents an updated and revised account of aviation heritage and history through the two world wars right up to the present day. Nearly 70 airfields are covered, along with many lesser-known landmarks including decoy airfields, former radar stations, country houses, buildings, local heritage collections, pubs, village signs and much else. With illustrations, OS grid references and an index this reference guide to the two counties, both in the air and on the ground, will delight interested locals and aviation enthusiasts alike.

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Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture in Baroque England

Simon Appleby — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 19:07:11 +0000

Sir John Vanbrugh is celebrated today as one of England’s finest country house architects. His masterpieces include palatial private homes such as Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, greatly admired by any enthusiast of English Baroque architecture. However, his work extended far beyond such projects, and included a remarkable variety of temples, belvederes, pyramids and many other features which he designed for the gardens and parks of the estates at which he worked.

The originality of such work has shown that Vanbrugh played a crucial role in the development of the eighteenth-century English garden, and this unique and fascinating book uses the fruits of new research to assess just what contribution this great man made to our heritage.

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The World of the Gladiator

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 04:02:00 +0000

The figure of the gladiator is as compelling to us as it was to the Romans. Why are we drawn to this ancient blood sport? The usual explanation of the savagery lurking beneath our veneer of civilisation is too simplistic. Gladiatorial combat has always been far more than just an excuse for the enjoyment of violence. From its origins in the funerary religious practices of Republican Rome to the extreme form of entertainment we recognise today, the bloody business of the arena evolved into a microcosm of the Roman Empire, a self-contained world reflecting the culture, attitudes and history of Rome itself. The author brings the games and the gladiators into focus, placing them in their historical and cultural context. Using evidence from all over the Roman world, including fresh archaeological discoveries, the minutiae of the arena are set out and discussed. A picture of the gladiator’s life is built up, from training and diet, to social status and mortality rates. The history of the amphitheatre, that iconic symbol of bloodletting, is also traced alongside the evolution of the gladiator. Films like Gladiator and Spartacus demonstrate that the idea of two men fighting each other for their lives has lost none of its power in over 2000 years. The particular persistence of this public taste for spectacle is explored, with unavoidable comparisons to the modern world.

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Flint Tools Field Guide

Simon Appleby — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:14:34 +0000

Our prehistoric ancestors used flint tools every day. They were of vital importance for cutting and scraping, used for hunting, preparing food, making clothing, and building shelters, and their remnants are scattered around the countryside. Unearthing such a find is undoubtedly a magical moment, a direct link to events thousands, or tens of thousands, of years before – but how do you confidently identify the piece of flint you find out in the field? Is it only a lump of flint, or did it really have an important function, a tool prized by our ancestors? And how old is it, exactly? This new field guide by Robert Turner opens a window into prehistoric archaeology. Because flint tools were used for specific tasks and developed through the ages, it is possible to gain an approximate age of the tools you find. This helpful guide explains how to identify flint tools, and gives an important insight of how people lived and worked so many years ago.

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Castles and Strongholds of Northumberland

Simon Appleby — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:06:36 +0000

Much more than an excellent gazetteer, an engaging history using contemporary sources shows whose hands the defence of the Anglo-Scottish border was in while Henry V was at Agincourt.Subsequent surveys show how Christopher Dacre forwarded a bold project that linked a string of towers forming a defence against marauding Scots, suggesting new towers to stop gaps, a ‘dyke or defence’ joining them like a latter-day Hadrian’s Wall. Beyond this line were many peles or bastles, homes to the headsmen of the notorious reiving families cursed in 1525 by the Bishops of Durham and Glasgow because of their brutal way of life, giving rise to much romance and legend. Polite society occupied the large castles of the coastal area. This history and gazetteer, with 500 entries, will increase your knowledge of Northumberland and its proud, turbulent past.

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Historic Building Mythbusting

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 04:02:03 +0000

Go to any mediaeval building in the land and there will be interesting, exciting and romantic stories presented to the visitor. These stories include those of spiral staircases in castles giving advantage to right-handed defenders, grooves left in church porches by archers sharpening their arrows and secret passages leading from the manor houses to nunneries. Ship timbers are often cited as being used in terrestrial buildings. Burn marks on those timbers are said to be the result of unattended candles. Blocked doors in churches are thought to keep the Devil out. Delightful as these tales are, they can be a little misleading in some cases and absolute myths in others.

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