A 13^th-century fresco rediscovered in Ferrara, Italy, provides unique evidence of medieval churches using Islamic tents to conceal their high altars. The 700-year-old fresco is thought to be the only surviving image of its kind, offering precious evidence of a little-known Christian practice.

Nubian costumes meticulously recreated of School of Form designers will soon be showcased at Berlin's Bode-Museum. 

A recent study published in Nature: Scientific Reports delves into the adaptive agricultural practices of pre-industrial communities in north-eastern Europe over the past two millennia. The research highlights how significant climatic shifts, coupled with socioeconomic factors, influenced the selection and cultivation of buffer crops to mitigate the risks associated with primary staple crop failures.

“This study shows quite vividly that due to climate change the thermophilic millet crop, which was the staple food during the first millennium AD, was replaced by other, more cold-resistant crops such as buckwheat,” states the paper’s senior author and PI of the ERC-CoG project MILWAYS, Prof. Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute.

A McGill University researcher has discovered that Guiengola, a 15^th century Zapotec site in southern Oaxaca, Mexico, which had been thought to be simply a fortress where soldiers were garrisoned, was in fact a sprawling, fortified city. It covered 360 hectares, with over 1,100 buildings, four kilometres of walls, a network of internal roads and a clearly organized urban layout with temples and communal spaces such as ballcourts, and the elites and commoners lived in separate neighbourhoods.

Scholars from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem unveil a unique papyrus from the collections held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, offering rare insights into Roman legal proceedings and life in the Roman Near East. In a new publication in the international scholarly journal Tyche, the research team reveals how the Roman imperial state dealt with financial crimes – specifically, tax fraud involving slaves – in the Roman provinces of Iudaea and Arabia. The new papyrus furnishes a strikingly direct view of Roman jurisdiction and legal practice, as well as important new information about a turbulent era shaken by two massive Jewish revolts against Roman rule. 

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that a house in England is the site of a lost residence of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, and shown in the Bayeux Tapestry. By reinterpreting previous excavations and conducting new surveys, the team from Newcastle University, UK, together with colleagues from the University of Exeter, believe they have located a power centre belonging to Harold Godwinson, who was killed in the Battle of Hastings in 1066.