The British Museum is displaying 4 million items from its collection online

Photograph: The Lewis Chessmen. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Got some browsing time on your hands? Load up the British Museum’s website. Yesterday the museum decided to do an earlier-than-planned unveil of its revamped online collection. It’s now the biggest database of any museum in the world, with more than 4 million objects to click through. 

The collection features the museum’s most famous artefacts, like the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures, along with every item the institution holds from Ancient Egypt. 

But there are some new additions too – including 280,000 new object photographs that are being published for the first time. Among them are images of 73 portraits by Damien Hirst and a watercolour by the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti that until recently had been thought lost. You can also look for works by Kara Walker, William Hogarth and Rembrandt in a digital archive of 75,000 art prints. If you’re more into coins, they have about 50,000 of those – medieval, Tudor, the works. Fill your boots. 

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White Hugh MacNéill and his wars with the Lough Foyle vikings

White Hugh MacNéill must have regarded the Viking gathering on his very doorstep with a mixture of anger and fear, writes Kevin Mullan.

It was 866 and the local chiefain had just completed an armed tour of the North coast destroying Viking forts and scattering their settlements but now looking east from his Grianán of Aileach the king could see they were back.

It was less than 100 years since the first Viking raids in Ireland had taken place but they had now established a substantial colony in the perfect harbour of Lough Foyle.

Of this the fearsome White Hugh - recently elevated from the Kingship of Aileach to that of Ireland - could not have hoped for a clearer view.

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DÉCOUVERTE D'UN SITE ANTIQUE DE PRODUCTION DE L'ARGOUSIER À PERTUIS (VAUCLUSE)

À Pertuis, l’Inrap a fouillé un établissement agricole daté du IIIe siècle et plusieurs fois transformé jusqu’aux VIe-VIIe siècles. L'étude des marqueurs chimiques ayant imprégné les divers bassins de cette exploitation a révélé les traces d’une culture de l’argousier, une activité de production inédite dans l’Antiquité. 

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FOUILLE D'UNE IMPORTANTE NÉCROPOLE AU VICUS DE BOUTAE ANNECY (HAUTE-SAVOIE)

A l'ouest du vicus de Boutae, qui a précédé la ville d'Annecy (Haute-Savoie), deux opérations conduites par l'Inrap ont permis de mettre au jour les vestiges d'une importante nécropole. La chronologie (Ve-VIIe siècle), la nature du mobilier et les caractéristiques des tombes tendent à indiquer la présence précoce d’une population burgonde.

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Long-forgotten Viking mountain pass found in Norway following glacier melt

General view over valley in mountains of south Norway from beside Lendbreen glacier is seen in this undated handout picture

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Due to global warming, high-elevation ice patches and glaciers have recently yielded a myriad of historical finds for archaeologists to discover.

Archaeologists have uncovered a heavily traversed glacial mountain pass in Lendbreen, Norway, utilized by travelers throughout the Viking Age, and littered with hundreds of artifacts presumed to have been used by the Vikings during that time period, according to a new study published by the Cambridge University Press on Wednesday.
Due to the warming global climate, high-elevation ice patches and glaciers have recently yielded a myriad of historical finds for archaeologists to happen upon as they finally gain access to these areas after the layers of ice once covering them have gradually melted away over time – and much faster recently.

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Melting glaciers reveal lost mountain pass and artifacts used by Vikings

The retreat of melting glaciers has revealed a lost mountain pass in Norway -- complete with hundreds of Viking artifacts strewn along it, according to a new study.

Researchers first discovered the pass in 2011 and have been examining it, and the artifacts that have been revealed as more ice melts, ever since. Dating the objects helped them reconstruct the timeline of when this pass was used and its purpose.
The new study published this week in the journal Antiquity.
In recent years, climate change has caused mountain glaciers to melt away, revealing well-preserved markers from different periods in history beneath. This is what happened in Lendbreen, Norway.

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Coring Arctic Lakes To Study Vikings

Vikings were here, but thousands of years earlier Stone Age people were, too. D’Andrea’s team hikes down to core  a small pond next to the remnants of these people’s sea-side dwellings 

[Credit: Columbia University]

Billy D'Andrea, a Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory paleoclimatologist and Center for Climate and Life Fellow is currently doing fieldwork in Norway's Lofoten Islands. He's interested in the natural factors that may have influenced the growth of northern agriculture and rise of violent Viking chieftains during the Iron Age, ca. 500 BC to 1100 AD.

The Lofoten Islands—located above the Arctic Circle—were marginal for farming, so inhabitants were probably susceptible to small temperature swings, as well as changes in sea level (two to three meters higher in the Iron Age than today).

In this area, powerful Viking rulers and their predecessors left behind hundreds of dwellings, boathouses, and other structures. D'Andrea and his colleague, Nicholas Balascio, want to understand how the Vikings influenced the land, and vice versa, as their culture took hold, and learn why Viking chiefdoms collapsed.

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Archäologen entdecken mittelalterlichen Hof bei Pipeline-Bau

Werne-Stockum. Auf der Trasse werden die freigebaggerten mittelalterlichen Befunde zügig archäologisch bearbeitet. (Foto: EggensteinExca/G. Eggenstein)

Das untersuchte Areal liegt in Werne-Stockum, auch heute steht hier in der Nähe ein Hof. Hier wird gerade eine Gasleitung mit dem Startpunkt nördlich des Kraftwerks Gersteinwerk in Werne gebaut. Von dort verläuft die Trasse östlich bis nach Hamm-Bockum-Hövel. "Bei Anlage der Sondage und der dann notwendigen Erweiterung auf Breite der Pipelinetrasse entdeckten wir insgesamt 52 unterschiedliche archäologische Befunde", so der Inhaber der beauftragten Grabungsfachfirma, Dr. Georg Eggenstein. "Diese Befunde, deutlich erkennbare dunkle Grubenverfüllungen im hellen Sand, erstreckten sich im Verlauf der Trasse auf mehr als 100 Meter." Die dunklen Stellen im Erdreich zeigen den Experten, dass hier vermutlich hölzerne Pfostenbauten gestanden haben. Einen Hausgrundriss konnten die Archäologinnen erkennen, vermutlich ein landwirtschaftliches Nebengebäude.

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Hauskeller aus dem frühen Mittelalter in Bad Berleburg entdeckt

Von dem Kellerfundament des Gebäudes blieben nur wenige Steinlagen durch den fortwährenden Ackerbau erhalten. In der Mitte der vorderen Mauer befindet sich der Schwellstein, über den der Keller ehemals betreten wurde. (Foto: LWL-Archäologie für Westfalen/M. Zeiler)

Archäologen des Landschaftsverbandes Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) haben auf einem Acker nahe Bad Berleburg-Aue die Spuren einer mittelalterlichen Siedlung entdeckt und dokumentiert. Der wichtigste Befund aus Sicht der Expertinnen ist das steingemauerte Fundament eines Kellers aus dem frühen Mittelalter.

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Who was Edward the Elder? A brief guide to the Anglo-Saxon king

Who was Edward the Elder?

He was the son of King Alfred and Ealhswith of Mercia. A man of Wessex, he was probably born in the 870s and died in 924. After his father’s death in 899, and like Alfred, he was called king of the Anglo-Saxons, reflecting his overlordship of both Wessex and Mercia. He was married three times and had an estimated 14 children. His son, Aethelstan, succeeded him. He lived in a time when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had not yet coalesced into England, and when Vikings held sway in East Anglia and Northumbria.

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These ancient flowers were used as Anglo Saxon bubble wrap

Centuries old flower heads from a Roman vessel. 

Photo Steven Baker at Historic England.

Precious archaeobotanical finds preserved inside eight Roman pots
Surviving organic matter from the Anglo Saxon period is rare, but these fragile remains of flowers and heads of bracken are 1,500 years old.

They were discovered in 2014 inside a hoard of eight Roman bronze pots dating to the very earliest part of the post-Roman / early Anglo Saxon period, and whoever buried the hoard had done so carefully, either to keep the bronze bowls safe or perhaps as a votive offering.

For packing they used common knapweed, bracken and other plants as we might use bubble wrap to safeguard a parcel today.

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Melting Ice Exposes Mountain Pass Used by Vikings, Including Ancient Dog and Leash

Glacial archaeologists performing fieldwork at Lendbreen, Norway.

Image: L. Pilø et al., 2020/Antiquity

Archaeologists in central Norway have uncovered evidence of a heavily traveled mountain passageway that was used during the Viking Age. Hundreds of beautifully preserved items were found atop a melting glacier, in a discovery that was, sadly, made possible by global warming.

New research published today in Antiquity describes a forgotten mountain pass at Lendbreen, Norway, that was in use from the Iron Age through to the European medieval period.

Located on Lomseggen Ridge, the passageway is absolutely littered with well-preserved artifacts, including mittens, shoes, horse snowshoes, bits of sleds, and even the remains of a dog still attached to its collar and leash. Radiocarbon dating of these artifacts is painting a picture of how and when this pivotal mountain pass was used, and its importance to both local and outside communities.

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Warrior Stone

(University of Aberdeen)Left to right: Tulloch Stone, Scotland; digital model, Tulloch Stone; drawing, Tulloch Stone

A six-foot-tall monolith called the Tulloch Stone offers new evidence of the beliefs of the elusive Picts of ancient Britain, who resisted the Romans and later formed powerful independent Scottish kingdoms. Discovered by construction workers during a road project in central Scotland, the stone features a carving thought to date to the fifth or sixth century A.D. of a possibly unclothed man carrying a spear with a doorknob-shaped end. Similar figures, each holding an identical spear, are carved on two other Pictish stones that were found in cemeteries in Scotland dating to roughly the same period.

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Melting ice reveals lost viking artefacts on mountain pass

Image Credit : Antiquity Journal

Climate change is leading to the retreat of mountain glaciers.
In Norway, hundreds of rare archaeological finds have been revealed by melting ice in a lost mountain pass at Lendbreen in Innlandet County.

The finds tell a remarkable story of high-altitude travel in the Roman Iron Age and the Viking Age.

“A lost mountain pass melting out of the ice is a dream discovery for us glacial archaeologists,” says Lars Pilo, first author of the study and co-director for the Glacier Archaeology Program.

“In such passes, travellers lost many artefacts that became frozen in time by the ice. These incredibly well-preserved artefacts of organic materials have great historical value.”

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MÂCON, UN CAS D'ÉCOLE

La fouille de Mâcon et les recherches en archives éclairent un passé médiéval de la ville jusqu'alors méconnu. Sous la férule d'un archéologue de l'Inrap, des élèves de l'école élémentaire Marc Chagall se sont initiés à la discipline.

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The Hunt for the Lost Mountain Pass

Viking Age spear, originally found in one piece in front of the Lendbreen ice patch. 

Photo: Vegard Vike, Museum of Cultural History.

Global warming is leading to the retreat of mountain glaciers. Surprisingly, this has created a boon for archaeology. Incredibly well preserved and rare artifacts have emerged from melting glaciers and ice patches in North America, the Alps and Scandinavia. A new archaeological field has opened up – glacial archaeology. The archaeological finds from the ice show that humans have utilized the high mountains more intensely than was previously known – for hunting, transhumance and traveling. New important discoveries are made each year, as the ice continues to melt back.

As glacial archaeologists, our dream discovery is a site where an ancient high mountain trail crossed non-moving ice. On such sites, past travelers left behind lots of artifacts, frozen in time by the ice. These artifacts can tell us when people travelled, when travel was at its most intense, why people travelled across the mountains and even who the travelers were. This information has great historical value.

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'Spectacular' artefacts found as Norway ice-patch melts

A horse snowshoe found during 2019 fieldwork at Lendbreen. 

Photograph: Espen Finstad/secretsoftheice.com

Discoveries exposed by retreating ice include snowshoe for horses and bronze age ski

The retreat of a Norwegian mountain ice patch, which is melting because of climate change, has revealed a lost Viking-era mountain pass scattered with “spectacular” and perfectly preserved artefacts that had been dropped by the side of the road.

The pass, at Lendbreen in Norway’s mountainous central region, first came to the attention of local archaeologists in 2011, after a woollen tunic was discovered that was later dated to the third or fourth century AD. The ice has retreated significantly in the years since, exposing a wealth of artefacts including knitted mittens, leather shoes and arrows still with their feathers attached.

Though carbon dating of the finds reveals the pass was in use by farmers and travellers for a thousand years, from the Nordic iron age, around AD200-300, until it fell out of use after the Black Death in the 14th century, the bulk of the finds date from the period around AD1000, during the Viking era, when trade and mobility in the region were at their zenith.

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Remains of St Eanswythe found in Folkestone?

The remains were found in the church of St Mary and St Eanswythe 

[Image: Mark Hourahane]

Recent scientific tests on human remains kept for centuries in the church of St Mary and St Eanswythe in Folkestone, Kent, have suggested that they are likely to be those of Eanswythe herself.

St Eanswythe was the granddaughter of Æthelbert, the first English king to convert to Christianity under the Augustine mission, and is thought to have founded one of the earliest monastic communities in England in around AD 660.

Historical documents indicate that Eanswythe’s bones were kept as relics in Folkestone after her death, and were moved to the present church when it was built in 1138. There are records of an active shrine to the saint there until the 1530s; however, there is no mention of her remains after this date, and it was assumed that they had been destroyed during the Reformation – until renovations in 1885 revealed a lead container that had been hidden in a niche in the north wall and contained human bones.

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Exploring ideology on a Pictish carved stone

The Tulloch Stone: (a) photogrammetric image, (b) hillshade model, (c) interpretation. 

[Image: University of Aberdeen]

Analysis of the Tulloch Stone, a Pictish monolith discovered in eastern Scotland and engraved with a human figure holding a spear, has shed light on the ‘warrior ethos’ believed to have been prevalent in the late- and post-Roman period.

Found 1m below ground-level in an area disturbed by development work, the stone was an eye-catching monument measuring 1.94m tall and 0.7m wide, and weighing 1 tonne. The carving itself is 1.02m tall and depicts a human figure holding a spear with a distinctive kite-shaped blade and doorknob-style butt. The individual may be naked, although lines around the ankles might suggest footwear or leggings, and the shape of the figure’s head suggests an elaborate hairstyle.

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8 things you need to know about King Arthur

The legend of King Arthur, a fifth-century warrior king who supposedly led the fight against Saxon invaders, continues to fascinate today. Historian John Matthews shares eight facts about King Arthur, separating the myth from reality...

Was King Arthur real?
Arthur, sometimes known as ‘the king that was and the king that shall be’, is recognised all over the world as one of the most famous characters of myth and legend. Yet, if he existed at all (which few scholars agree upon), he would not have been a king, but the commander of an elite force of fighting men. Furthermore, he would have lived more than 500 years before medieval legends suggest.

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Medieval Cattle Raiders

(© British Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, NY)Cattle, 14th-century Irish manuscript

It was not enough for medieval Irish lords to own cows, they also had to steal them. “Stealing cows was important in this society,” says archaeologist Daniel Curley of the National University of Ireland Galway. “It was a ready source of wealth, a slight to opponents’ honor and power, and a pseudo-martial sport.” In fact, pilfering the animals is the central theme of Ireland’s national epic, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, which was composed in the seventh and eighth centuries. It tells the tale of a conflict between the kings of Connacht and the kings of Ulster over the Brown Bull of Cooley, which was owned by Daire, an Ulster chieftain.

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Æthelflæd: the Lady of the Mercians

She was a queen in all but name, but Aethelflaed, the daughter of Alfred the Great, is barely mentioned in contemporary chronicles of the Anglo-Saxon era. Writer Jonny Wilkes wonders whether England owes more to her than to her famous father

When Æthelflæd was a baby her father Alfred, destined for greatness, became King of Wessex. At around 16 years old, she was married to the Lord of the Mercians and so placed next to the seat of power of a neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom. In her 20s, she helped to build a string of fortifications and patronise churches; in her 30s, she took up the mantle of ruling in place of her indisposed husband and defeated the Vikings in battle; and in her 40s, on her husband’s death, Æthelflæd was chosen to lead above all male contenders.

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The Fastest Viking Ship Ever Found

A digital reconstruction shows that the Tune Viking Ship must have been a fast sailing  vessel that could also be rowed. Illustration by 7reasons for NIKU

Even though it was discovered more than 150 years ago, modern digital archaeology techniques have revealed many of the mysteries surrounding the Tune Viking ship. It now seems likely the Tune ship could cross the North Sea powered by a sail large enough to make it the fastest Viking ship ever discovered.

Modern techniques help shine a light on historic finds

Recent developments in digital archaeology, notably the use of georadar as a non-intrusive method of mapping sites of interest, have revealed several exciting Viking ship burial sites in Norway. Yet some of the digital tools and techniques can also prove useful in expanding our knowledge and understanding of existing finds.

There are only three Viking ships from burial sites in Norway that are well-preserved. All three—Gokstad, Oseberg and Tune—are on display at Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum. The Tune ship was discovered in 1867 on an island farm near Fredrikstad in south-east Norway. It has been the least understood of the three ships—until now.

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