Britain has had more than sixty monarchs over the centuries. Some have been good; some have been bad, but few are held in as high regard as King Athelstan. King Athelstan, often described as the...
Archaeological excavations ahead of work to expand heating pipes in Kleinbasel, the Rhine port and industrial area of Basel in Switzerland, has uncovered fifteen graves dating back to the early...
Marine archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered the sunken remains of what looks like a medieval-era shipwreck 1,350 feet (410 m) below the...
An English metal detectorist has unearthed a medieval “love ring” made of gold and diamonds. With its noble heritage known, this rare golden artifact has been valued at a show-stopping $40,000...
Three years ago, arsonists in Ireland destroyed a recreated medieval roundhouse. Now, a team of students from the University College Dublin ( UCD ) have rebuilt it on campus. During the medieval...
If you’ve ever watched a royal ceremony on television, been to a medieval fair, or watched a film set in the medieval ages you’ve probably seen a herald busy at work. These brightly dressed men...
These days, sex is everywhere. It's in our books, films, songs, TV shows, and now, even our history articles. Although some countries still impose strict rules upon sex, the fact is most western...
We have likely all seen the stereotypical image of a knight in shining armor , but there is more to the world of armory than the steel plate armor we are often exposed to. Armor came in innumerable...
A charcoal inscription has been identified at the alleged site of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Bearing the emblem of the Swiss family von Bubenberg, the Israel Antiquities Authority...
Before coinage became common, people in medieval England would pay their rent using an array of everyday items. Amongst these was the remarkably unattractive, and underappreciated, wormlike eel! Few...
There was no end to medieval creativity when it came to torture , punishment and humiliation! The ‘scold’s bridle’ or ‘mask of shame’ was a concept developed in medieval Europe to punish people,...
Anyone with a thing against cats may get some satisfaction from a weird history “fact” circulating on the internet. Used as widespread clickbait, a frequently repeated story claims that in the 13th...
A three-dimensional likeness of a young woman buried at Galloway, Scotland’s Whithorn Priory, laid to rest at one of Scotland’s earliest Christian sites centuries ago, is about to be revealed. The...
The history of the British Isles is marked by several phases of migration and multiple periods of monumental change, including invasions by the Romans, Vikings and the Normans, and mass migration by...
The question of how to create life does not just go back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the eponymous character used forbidden science to create life. Medieval scientists tried for centuries to...
A dig to find the location of a 600-year-old medieval friary in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, has resulted in the macabre discovery of countless human remains. So far, nearly 100 skeletons have been...
Divorce is a subject that has provided endless material for drama and comedy writers through the ages, from Euripides to Shakespeare to today’s New York Times bestseller list. When Kenneth Hodges, a...
Many medieval manuscripts are works of art with devotional passages written in careful calligraphy, accompanied by vivid illustrations and ornate, decorative borders. But equally captivating is the...
Comfort in the afterlife was apparently a medieval concern. Gravesites can reveal aspects of past cultures and values, and are therefore a rich source for archaeologists and historians. An iron...
Ashkenazi Jews, who migrated into Holy Roman Empire territories around the 1st millennium AD, also settled in parts of England but how they were treated is less understood. Now, genome analysis of...
At a site in East Yorkshire, an archaeological dig has been in progress for three weeks to uncover the secrets of a medieval village. Now, archaeologists believe they have discovered a centuries-old...
The examination of urine (‘uroscopy’) as a method of medical diagnosis can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, but during the Middle Ages the examination of urine samples by physicians became...
The Cambridge University Library has just launched an ambitious new initiative that will result in the public release of an extensive collection of manuscripts from medieval times. The Curious Cures...
Archaeologists in England have found medieval holy men were “riddled with worms.” What did they expect to find in a group of people who consumed their own feces? Every once in a while, a group of...
