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Driving through the business parks of Tewkesbury, you might miss the hidden pieces of a medieval past that lie discreetly among the modern structures.

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Giulia Tofana's notoriety stemmed from her cunning manipulation of Renaissance society's fascination with poisons and cosmetics. Born into an era where women lacked agency in matters of marriage

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The Tuatha Dé Danann is one of the most mysterious peoples of the British Isles. Fascinatingly enough, some Celtic traditions place the prehistory of the Tuatha Dé Danann on the Greek islands in ages past. 

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About one million years ago there was a mass exodus of hominin species out of Africa and into Eurasia. Human ancestors fled their home continent in droves

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Delving into the story of the Gebelein Man unravels a fascinating tapestry of ancient lore. Discovered in Luxor in 1896, this remarkably preserved mummy

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In May 1798, General Napoleon Bonaparte led a monumental French expedition to Egypt, aiming to disrupt British trade routes and extend French influence. 

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An unexpected discovery in the heart of Nuremberg has cast new light on the city’s traumatic history. Archaeologists, initially set to inspect an area

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Exploring the lesser-known and often peculiar narratives from ancient Greek folklore unveils a realm of bizarre tales that captivate the imagination.

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A 3,300-year-old clay tablet unearthed in central Turkey has painted a tale of a devastating foreign invasion of the Hittite Empire during a period of internal strife and civil war. 

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The Battle of Lake Poyang stands as one of the largest naval engagements in recorded history, showcasing the might and strategic prowess of warring factions

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Zhoukoudian, home to the renowned Peking Man, serves as a pivotal site for understanding the enigma of Homo erectus and its place in human evolution. 

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Diodorus Siculus’ Library of History is a mine of information about the ancient world, its peoples, histories, legends, and myths. Most interesting in Book 3. 52. is the narration of the myth of Myrina, an Amazon Queen, who conquered a city in the marsh Tritonis, called Cherronesus. 

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The world’s most expansive and complex Etruscan necropolis continues to produce surprises, revealing more details about the powerful civilization that preceded the Romans as the dominant force in ancient Italy.

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Across the ancient world, a mosaic of burial practices unveils the diversity of human cultures and their beliefs. Chambered cairns, scattered throughout the UK,

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David B. Hollander/The Conversation

This silver denarius, minted over 2,000 years ago, is hardly the most attractive Roman coin. And yet, the coin is vital evidence for the early stages of a political struggle that culminated in Caesar’s assassination and the fall of the Roman Republic.

I first encountered this coin while studying Roman history in graduate school. Its unusual design gave me pause – this one depicted figures walking across a narrow bridge and dropping something into a box. I moved on after learning it depicted voting, reasoning that Roman mint officials occasionally made idiosyncratic choices.

But as voting access evolves in the U.S., the political importance of this centuries-old coin seems more compelling. It turns out that efforts to regulate voting access go way back.

Voting was a core feature of the Roman Republic and a regular activity for politically active citizens. Men, and only men, could vote in multiple elections and legislative assemblies each year. So why would P. Licinius Nerva, the official responsible for this coin, choose to depict such a banal activity?

The answer lies in voting procedures that sometimes heavily favored elites.

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Something unexpected from the early Neolithic has been found in Turkey. During excavations in an ancient cemetery, a team of archaeologists from several institutions unearthed more than 100 small ornaments that were apparently used to fill piercings of the ear and lip.

At the early Neolithic site of Boncuklu Tarla, a lost settlement discovered during excavations in Turkey’s southeastern territory that began in 2008, researchers found the miniature jewelry pieces in the graves of adult men and women who may have lived and died as long as 11,000 years ago. The researchers believe the jewelry would have been awarded to young adults going through coming-of-age ceremonies, with their piercings representing a sign that they’d reached full maturity.

“The combination of contextual and physical anthropological evidence at Boncuklu Tarla confirms, for the first time, that personal ornamentation using body perforation was practiced early in the Neolithic period,” the Turkish archaeologists wrote in a new article just published in Antiquity.  “Typological comparison of ornaments between sites shows that these practices were widespread as early as the PPNA.”

The PPNA referenced here refers to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, a stage of the early Neolithic period that lasted in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) from 10,000 to 8,800 BC.

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At the remote, ancient mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly in Iraqi Kurdistan, German archaeologists have made a surprising discovery. Evidence has emerged that suggests the site had been used as a religious sanctuary

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The ancient monarchies of Asia left an indelible mark on history, shaping economies, cultures, and trade routes that endured for centuries. Among these, the Han Dynasty

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Remnants of the world’s oldest fossilized forests and trees, dating back 390 million years, have been uncovered along the Devon and Somerset coast among high sandstone cliffs.

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The Vikings stand as legendary figures, their exploits on the seas and battlefields shrouded in myth and mystery. Yet beyond their tales of conquest and exploration lies a lesser-known aspect

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