Sublime

But a recent, wide-ranging and in-depth (I know – impressive!) analysis of Iron Age burial practices across Britain has challenged lots of the assumptions that have become embedded in archaeology – particularly the idea of consistent rites within certain regions, but even the idea of a background of consistent ‘invisible rites’ right across the cou

Three items show that at least some of the participants in the battle or battles from which the hoard came were Christian. Two are crosses of marvellous workmanship, made of thin sheets of Byzantine gold and Indian garnets, both folded as if to compress them.

The argument for runes as an elite privilege received a decisive blow in the mid-twentieth century with discoveries in the Norwegian harbour towns of Bergen and Trondheim. Hundreds of small wooden slips, inscribed with runes, were found preserved intact in the medieval waterlogged deposits of the dockside streets. They had served a fascinating vari

Gimbutas believes, in short, that the sedentary matrilinear civilization of Old Europe was disrupted by successive waves of Indo-European invaders with a different culture and language.

For the indigenous élite in eastern Britain, part of the attraction of adopting the new language and half-familiar customs and possessions of Continental traders, brokers and bucellari, may have lain in embracing a culture that was both exotic and decidedly not Roman. The apparently wholesale rejection of Christian practice in the south and east by

Many of his contemporaries regarded them as of Roman or of later date, but Aubrey realised they were far more ancient and that they were ceremonial centres.

In 1995 archaeologists began to excavate a site in south-east Turkey called Göbekli Tepe. In the oldest stratum they discovered no signs of a settlement, houses or daily activities. They did, however, find monumental pillared structures decorated with spectacular engravings. Each stone pillar weighed up to seven tons and reached a height of five me