Description
ON THE COVER
LONDON: A CITY MADE FOR SHOPPING OR KILLING?
The Romans founded London as a centre of trade and business in about AD50 – or so archaeologists and Londoners have long believed. Dominic Perring, director of the UCL Centre for Applied Archaeology, has been looking at the evidence accumulated from decades of new excavation, and offers a more convincing, and chilling, alternative.
AMONG OTHER STORIES
LOCAL AUTHORITY CUTS
Heritage jobs have been lost in museums, universities and archaeological field units. But perhaps the greatest threat, because it affects the core of public benefit across the nation, is to the practice of archaeology in local authorities. In his investigation, Mike Pitts looked closely at what happened in Northamptonshire, where – uniquely – an authority all but scrapped its archaeological services for a few years, and then put them back. The result shocked us all
ANCIENT MONUMENT PROTECTION
Meanwhile Roger Bowdler, English Heritage’s designation director, defends EH’s recent record on scheduling ancient monuments
DATING EUROPE’S OLDEST MODERN HUMANS
How long has Homo sapiens been in Europe, and for how long did they compete with neanderthals before that species died out? Working with archaeologists in Britain and Italy, the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has made the answer to both of those questions, “much longer than we thought”. Tom Higham, Chris Stringer and Katerina Douka report
ARCHAEOLOGY IN RUSSIA
British Archaeology featured Heinrich Härke’s impressions of Egypt at the time of the spring revolution. Here he presents a personal view of archaeology in Russia. This vast, complex nation opened to the modern world in 1991, but for many outsiders remains a place of mystery and concern. How is archaeology faring in the economic and political turmoil of a country that spans nine time zones?
ARCHAEOLOGY AS REHABILITATION
What is archaeology for? One man in a pioneering new project told me that excavating allowed him to sleep at night. Diarmaid Walshe, Richard Osgood and Martin Brown describe Operation Nightingale, in which injured soldiers of 1st Battalion, the Rifles, got to dig one of the UK’s most enigmatic prehistoric sites
THE STRANGE TALE OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY, ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE NAZI PARTY
The Bayeux Tapestry is an extraordinary artwork. It was also a propaganda tool for William I and Napoleon, a focus of rival French and British theories in the 19th century and, in the 1940s, the subject of intense research by German academics. Shirley Ann Brown reports
REGULARS INCLUDE
* News
Archaeologists excavate three quite different metal hoards, including a rare bronze age ornament hoard in Norfolk
* My archaeology
Artist Grayson Perry sets sail in the British Museum
* Broadcasting
Greg Bailey finds a curious abandoned TV proposal
* Books
History of ancient Britain, castles and Thomas Hardy
* Letters
Where did the British neolithic come from?
* Science
Spotty ice age horses
* Mick’s travels
Mick Aston searches for the less visited in Brittany
* Briefing
The UK’s only archaeological events listing, with exhibition reviews
* Britain in archaeology
Rounding up the best recent news stories
* CBA Correspondent
Highlights from the year’s listed building casework
* Spoilheap
The country that banned metal detectors
