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Major Theme

Hagia Sofia

The great church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) was one of the supreme architectural achievements of the eastern Roman empire.  It was built on the site of an earlier church by the emperor Justinian in AD 537, close to the Great Palace of the Emperors in the heart of Constantinople. It is important to us first of all because of its architectural achievement. It departs from established Classical traditions by focusing the attention of the visitor upon its interior, rather than its exterior. Continue reading →

Roman Nails

The technologies of smelting and working iron were developed in Europe, Asia and Africa. They had a major impact in many areas of life and work, including better tools for agriculture and industry, and more effective arms and armour. The production of nails also had an impact on activities such as construction and ship-building. Supplies of high-quality iron were particularly important for the Roman army, not only for weapons, but also for the construction of ships and fortresses. Continue reading →

Gold Coin of Augustus

Roman coins, like this aureus of the emperor Augustus, look deceptively like the coins that we use today. The Romans drew upon monetary traditions established by the Greeks before them to develop a comprehensive linked system of denominational coinage. By the reign of middle of the 1st century AD, millions of coins in gold, silver, brass and bronze were issued at Rome in the west and at the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Continue reading →

Theatre Masks

Classical world was a cradle of performing arts. From around 6th century BC drama was institutionalized in Athens with dedicated performance dates and purpose-built buildings. Soon theatrical performances could be seen across the whole of the Mediterranean, and beyond during the Roman Empire. From its religious routes theatre very quickly became a major source of entertainment, offering a diversity of performances including comedy, tragedy, mime or farce. Continue reading →

Coinage

Coinage emerged during the Iron Age as symbolic tokens, and gradually took on a role as a formalised method of exchange – first on the basis of their intrinsic value and later for their agreed symbolic value, as in our own fiat coinage. Throughout their existence coins have been hoarded, usually surviving due to accident but sometimes also because of their deliberate votive burial. Continue reading →

Antikythera Mechanism

Discovered by sponge-divers off the coast of the Greek Island of Antikythera in 1900, the Antikythera mechanism is by far the most complex piece of technology to have come down to us from antiquity. It is only with the most recent developments in computer-aided vision and reconstruction that we have been able to decipher its purpose as an eclipse predictor. Continue reading →

Vix Crater

The Vix crater (used for serving wine mixed with water) is the largest metal vessel surviving from the classical world. It was made about 540 BC, probably at Sparta in southern Greece, and was found in 1952 in the grave of an aristocratic woman in Burgundy in eastern France. It emphasises the social importance of alcoholic drink in many different societies. Continue reading →

Inca Mummy Bundle

Wrapped tightly in cotton cloth and accompanied by pottery, food and other socially significant material (and sometime with a detachable artificial head), Inca and pre-Inca mummy bundles represent a way not only to preserve the physical remains of the dead, but also to ensure their continued social presence.  For many societies the living and the dead often have more to do with one another than we might presume from our own social norms. Continue reading →

Mirasiviene Stela

Mirasiviene stela (Seville, Spain) may be regarded as an aid to remember a traditional story, possibly a foundational myth, among Late Bronze Age (ca. 1200-850 BCE) non-literate societies in Southwest Europe. This is a fragment of a large and carefully selected stone that was shaped and engraved by skilful hands. It exhibits striking images: a warrior-like personage accompanied by a sword, an oversized shield, a spear and two smaller human figures. Continue reading →

Meryetaten’s Bathroom at Amarna

Meryetaten was the eldest daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten, and lived some 33 centuries ago. She held an important place in her father’s court, apparently responsible for running his household, and became a queen later in her life. At the North Palace in her home city of Tell al-Amarna, there are many inscriptions bearing her name, which has led some scholars to the conclusion that this was her residence, although others ascribe a formal, ritual role to the palace. Continue reading →

Trundholm Chariot

The Trundholm sun chariot was found in a drained bog in Trundholm Mose in northwestern Zealand, Denmark. It was made in the Early Bronze Age around 1400 BC and is a masterpiece of Bronze Age metalworking. It depicts the sun drawn on its daily journey by a divine horse. The myth of the journey of the sun across the sky was an important element of Bronze Age cosmology, in which the framework of existence was an eternal cycle with its constant alternation of light and darkness. Continue reading →

Amarna Warrior Burial

Individual 59 from the South Tombs Cemetery, Tell al-Amarna, Egypt Having looked at the political role, social position and living conditions of the Amarna royals, our next ‘object’ will take us lower down the social spectrum. On the edge of the desert at Tell al-Amarna lies a cemetery of shallow burials scooped into the sand, where Amarna’s poorer people were buried in often unmarked graves, with only a few, if any, objects. Continue reading →

Amber Necklace

This Early Bronze Age amber necklace comes from the Upton Lovell G2e barrow (burial mound) in Wiltshire, one of the richest Bronze Age burials yet discovered in Wessex. It was excavated by William Cunnington in 1803 and may have belonged to a woman. The necklace originally contained over 1,000 amber beads with spacers. Continue reading →

Bronze Age Dagger

A quartz crystal dagger with ivory handle was recovered from a Copper-Age tomb in southern Spain in 2008 within a highly unusual grave assemblage, dominated by exotic Ivory objects. This unique object has a blade, around 18cm long, made from a single piece of quartz crystal that was mounted in a highly decorated ivory handle and found accompanied by a carved ivory plaque, probably part of its sheath. Continue reading →

Cheops Pyramid

The Great Pyramid at Giza (Egypt) was built for the Pharaoh Khufu (also known by the Greek version of his name – Cheops), who died c. 2566 BC. Khufu’s monument was the first of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to be created, and is the only one still standing now. Khufu was the third Pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty (during the Old Kingdom in ancient Egypt). Continue reading →

Tutankhamun Mask

The well-known boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun (also known as Tutankhamen or colloquially as King Tut) was a short-lived Pharaoh from the 18th Dynasty (during the Egyptian New Kingdom). He died when still young and is important because his tomb (Tomb KV62) in the Valley of the Kings was found almost intact by Howard Carter in 1922. During his life, he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun as a result of changes in the religion officially practised in Egypt. Continue reading →

Cheese

When archaeologists consider developments in food production, we tend to think first of the shift from hunting and gathering to the domestication of animals or cereal cultivation, both of which allow food resources to be stored and consumed when needed. Cheese production, however, is now known to date back to at least 7,500 years ago (the 6th millennium BC), suggesting that it too had an important role at this time in some societies. Continue reading →

Obsidian Mirror – Dora Moutsiou

by Dora Moutsiou The aesthetic value that obsidian enjoyed in the past reached its apotheosis in the Mesoamerican cultures whose economic and symbolic life it underwrote for ~3000 years. The symbolic importance and authority obsidian attained throughout that period is exemplified by the Aztecs’ respect towards their patron god Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Smoking Mirror. Tezcatlipoca’ s eponymous possession, the obsidian mirror, was a metaphor for rulership and power. Continue reading →

Skara Brae House

The settlement at Skara Brae, Orkney dates to the Late Neolithic (3300-2500 BC). The site was discovered in a great sand storm in the mid-19th century and was excavated by Professor Gordon Childe of Edinburgh University in the 1920s (Childe 1931). It is remarkable as it is one of the few settlements dating from this period that are still up-standing. Continue reading →

Polished Axe

Human hands have made and used ground stone axes and adzes in all parts of globe, beginning around 30,000 years ago. Whereas the chipped stone axe of the Palaeolithic is the quintessential tool of the hunter and meat eater, the ground stone axe or adze is the Swiss army knife of early cultivators. It can be employed to facilitate almost any task in the management, collection, cultivation and processing of plants – whether cereals, roots, shoots, nuts or fruits. Continue reading →

Varna Penis Sheath

The cemetery of Varna, Bulgaria is situated on the Black Sea coast. It dates to the Copper Age or Chalcolithic (late 6th millennium-5th millennium BC). The site was excavated in the 1970s and was immediately recognised as being significant as probably the earliest evidence for gold working in prehistoric Europe (Renfrew 1986). Continue reading →

Bone Flute

Music is ubiquitous in all societies today, yet it is often seen as a "luxury" by writers on human evolution and not as important as spoken language.  Unlike those writers, we shall explore the functions music can play in societies today, and use such insights to evaluate the musical instruments that begin to appear in the archaeological record from 40,000 years ago. Continue reading →

Saddle Quern

Bread is perhaps the ultimate convenience food: a ready-prepared meal that can be carried on the person and eaten as hunger dictates without further preparation. Yet bread is not a self-evident food-stuff, as it is made from flour, and this requires a mill or quern to make it. In its simplest form, the saddle quern, two stones rubbing together, becomes a vital instrument supporting life. Continue reading →

Ceramics

A small ceramic figurine depicting a zoomorph was excavated in 2001 from Vela Spila, Croatia. Archaeologists typically associate the origins of ceramic technology with the first pots and vessels made by early sedentary, agricultural societies. However, this figurine was excavated from a horizon with typical late Upper Palaeolithic material culture, radiocarbon dated to c. 15,000 BP. Continue reading →

Female Figurine

Euphemistically termed "Venus" figurines by coy 19th-century male authors, sculptures of women are prominent in the Eurasian archaeological record between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago.  We shall focus particularly on the famous figurine from Willendorf (Austria), and set her into her wider social context. Continue reading →

Obsidian Micro-core – Dora Moutsiou

by Dora Moutsiou Obsidian’s high quality for the manufacture of stone implements was recognised very early on by prehistoric tool-makers. Although the use of obsidian is more pronounced in late prehistoric times, particularly in the Neolithic, it is much earlier that the first archaeological evidence for the procurement of obsidian is recorded. Continue reading →

Handaxe

The most distinctive stone tools in deep-human-history are the handaxes. The oldest are almost two million years old from East Africa. They are exceptional because of their symmetry and their consistency in design. Handaxes are found from Britain to South Africa and from West Africa to India. They persisted for over a million and a half years at a time when the brains of our ancestors were expanding rapidly. They served a multitude of tasks in a multitude of environments. Continue reading →

Fire

The control of fire transformed the lives of our ancestors. Fire extended the length of the day making it possible to use the night-time for social activity; fire kept predators at bay; fire played a vital role in cooking food which allowed human evolution to take the pathway of larger brains which needed quality foods. However, the evidence for fire is elusive and deciding if it was truly controlled or the result of a lightning strike often difficult for archaeologists to determine. Continue reading →

The human body

Before any of the wonderful things where made or even thought about there was the human body. This had to evolve. Brains got larger, limbs changed so we became upright walkers and endurance runners, fingers shortened once they were no longer needed for climbing trees and opposable thumbs made precise grasping possible. The fine breathing needed for speech had to evolve as well as the cognitive changes that could frame sentences. Continue reading →

Introduction to module

Human history needs to be told through things. Texts help but they only reach back into the shallows of our past. In this module we go further to investigate deep human history through the wonderful things left behind. Our aim is to unite the entire span of our evolutionary history by investigating forty wonderful things described for you by experts. The story starts two and a half million years ago with the first stone tools. Continue reading →