On a misty morning eight thousand years ago, two young women pushed their way through the head-high reeds of a tidal estuary, six metres below the busy streets of what is now modern Dublin. As they stepped onto the shifting mud flats, their baskets, wattle work and fishing ground came into view, and they could see, even from this distance, that it had been a bountiful evening. Read more

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Digging for Britain – the Alice Roberts archaeology show recently screened on BBC 2 – was about as enjoyable as a wedgie. Press ganged by commissioning editors at the BBC to start with the Romans (cause everyone loves em!), hamstrung by a presenter who knows more about anatomy than archaeology (cause everyone loves er!), the show fired too many misses to be regarded as anything other than flawed… but perhaps not fatally. Read more

When it comes to leading ladies, Marion Ravenwood owns this website’s heart. But if truth be told, there was once another contender: Dr Elsa Schneider – the Austrian art professor in Indiana Jones and The last Crusade. She played our heart like a cheap fiddle, achieving the unlikely feat (in the words of Empire magazine) of making a Nazi sympathizer seem sympathetic. Take the following exchange: Read more

Ever since Gordon Childe attempted to record the entire Skara Brae excavation on a prototype Etch A Sketch, archaeologists have hunted high and low for the holygrail in trench technology: a paperless device that can take the library to the site and the site to the library in one easy seamless move. Read more