Online Courses in Archaeology

Cave paintings, castles and pyramids, Neanderthals, Romans and Vikings - archaeology is about the excitement of discovery, finding out about our ancestors, exploring landscape through time, piecing together puzzles of the past from material remains.

Our courses enable you to experience all this through online archaeological resources based on primary evidence from excavations and artefacts and from complex scientific processes and current thinking. Together with guided reading, discussion and activities you can experience how archaeologists work today to increase our knowledge of people and societies from the past.

Read the rest of this article...

Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy: using portable antiquities to study Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age England

In the last fifteen years the role of metal-detected objects in archaeological research has greatly increased through reporting to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and the Early Medieval Corpus (EMC). There are now thousands more artefacts and coins known than a decade ago which, in conjunction with fieldwork, have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the early medieval period. This is the first time that these data have been examined on a national scale. Such an approach enables the detailed analysis of the nature of portable antiquities data, the bias within such datasets and the relationship between patterns of recovery and historic settlement (Sections 2 and 3). In the light of these new interpretations of the overall datasets, the most artefact- and coin-rich sites, known as 'productive sites', can be analysed within a new framework of understanding (Section 4).

Read the rest of this article...

Amateur archaeologist Basil Brown to be honoured

HE made one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the United Kingdom unearthing priceless treasure which is now displayed in the British Museum.

Among the historical artefacts was the unique discovery of a seventh century ship believed by many to be the grave of an Anglo Saxon king.

But ironically the final resting place of Basil Brown, the man who made the incredible discoveries at Sutton Hoo in 1939, remains a mystery.

Read the rest of this article...