Topic description and stories

Remains of the theatre at Interamna Lirenas, Italy

Roman ‘backwater’ bucked Empire’s decline, archaeologists reveal

12 Dec 2023

A rare roofed theatre, markets, warehouses, a river port and other startling discoveries made by a Cambridge-led team of archaeologists challenge...

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Kourion, Cyprus. Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

Fitzwilliam Museum prepares to launch Islanders exhibition

15 Feb 2023

The Fitzwilliam's major new exhibition, the culmination of a three-year research project, explores the evolution of island identity on Cyprus, Crete...

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Devínska Kobyla Forest steppe in Slovakia

Drought encouraged Attila’s Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest

15 Dec 2022

Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in...

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Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have hit England before Constantinople

22 Nov 2021

‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th–8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on...

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Ancient Greek ‘pop culture’ discovery rewrites history of poetry and song

08 Sep 2021

New research into a little-known text written in ancient Greek shows that ‘stressed poetry’, the ancestor of all modern poetry and song, was already...

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The city rises: Cambridge archaeologists reveal an entire Roman city without digging

09 Jun 2020

For the first time, a team of archaeologists has succeeded in mapping a complete Roman city, Falerii Novi in Italy, using advanced ground penetrating...

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The sundial pictured after excavation

Archaeologists uncover rare 2,000-year-old sundial during Roman theatre excavation

08 Nov 2017

A 2,000-year-old intact and inscribed sundial – one of only a handful known to have survived – has been recovered during the excavation of a roofed...

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Making Rome great again: fake views in the ancient world

27 Jul 2017

A political leader who seeks to make his nation “great again” and a time when ‘post-truth’ rhetoric appears to support political ambitions. Not Trump...

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Praetorian guards - Louvre Lens, France.

Opinion: How to climb the social ladder in ancient Rome

22 Nov 2016

Jerry Toner, Director of Studies in Classics, Churchill College, University of Cambridge, discusses the stratification of Roman society.

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