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Penn Museum was founded on a grandiose scale in the 1880s, and we open the issue with a review of its rollercoaster history. We then follow with two features on the great civilization of the Maya of Mesoamerica. Currently, they are digging at Copán, in modern Honduras where they have uncovered the tomb of the city's founder, dated to AD 426, precisely as recorded by a Maya inscription erected centuries later by the last king of the dynasty. It has been the recent decipherment of such inscriptions that has catapulted forward our understanding of the Maya. Penn's Simon Martin describes how the Maya script was deciphered, and tells of his ongoing work on reading their glyphs.
Penn Museum also has a tradition of digging in Mesopotamia 'the cradle of civilization', most famously with their involvement in the 1930s excavations at Ur under Sir Leonard Woolley. Today, they are digging the Bronze Age city of Sweyhat in Syria. But why is this site proving to be a Mesopotamian mystery?

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What was Spain like before the Romans? The site of Pintia, in north central Spain, is providing surprising answers. From the 5th century BC until the arrival of the Romans in the 1st century BC, Pintia was occupied by the Vaccaei, an Iron Age people with Celtic links. Alas, the Vaccaei left no written history and, with the passage of time, their memory fell into legend and obscurity. However, current excavations at pre-Roman Pintia are revealing a sophisticated city, replete with gridded streets, an artisans' quarter, and an unexpectedly rich cemetery.

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Golden Mycenae is one of the most famous ancient towns in the world, but how did it work?  In the first of a two part feature, David Mason takes us to Mycenae, walking along the little-known roads to see Mycenae as the Mycenaeans saw it, with the Treasury of Atreus carefully placed for maximum impact. Thereafter, in the subsequent instalment, Andrew Selkirk leads us up onto the citadel and wonders where the ordinary Myceneans lived.

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The ‘Red Snake’, or Gorgan Wall, of northern Iran is one of the world’s greatest frontiers.  But who built it? And when?  An international team of archaeologists has been at work and here they finally unravel the secrets – and the date – of the Red Snake.
In the Euphrates valley, towns and palaces are well known, forts less so. Jerablus, a small but strong fort dating to the Early Bronze Age, was an outpost of the Biblical site of Carchemish. After the First World War, the archaeology was rendered largely inaccessible since it lay on the new border between Syria and Turkey. However, recent rescue excavations on the Syrian side of the boundary have revealed a small fortified village and one of the richest Early Bronze Age tombs yet known in the area.
T.E. Lawrence, later Lawrence of Arabia, excavated at Carchemish before the First World War. Coming full circle, he also lies behind the Current World Archaeology-backed dig. The team has been digging South Jordanian sites of T.E. Lawrence’s war against the Turks. Here they present the latest results, which are extraordinary and chilling.
This winter, Tutankhamun returned to London in a widely publicised exhibition. But how does this block-buster compare to the famous 1972 British Museum exhibition? Philip Taverner, who as Marketing Manager for Times Newspapers helped set up the first exhibition, gives us his unique perspective on the new show, and remembers the excitement of the original exhibition.
Thereafter, Brian Fagan looks at hidden rock art from Alaska; while Richard Hodges, newly ensconced as the director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, remembers his first heady encounter with the Museum.
We then offer all the usuals: news, books, letters, and diary. The magazine ends with St John Simpson, of the British Museum, who takes us on a back-page tour of the spectacular sie of Nemrut Dag in Turkey.

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The stark, abstract Cycladic figurines found in the Aegean Cyclades islands have had enormous influence on modern art.  Colin Renfrew has been studying the material since he was a young man in the 1960s. He believes Keros must have been a major ritual centre of the Cycladic civilisation in the early Bronze Age. Could it even have been the seat of the gods to whom tribute had to be paid?
Editor in chief Andrew Selkirk visited Keros this summer, and here he reveals the latest story.
We then move forward in time to the 4th century BC. Fanum Voltumnae was the sacred shrine cum parliament at which the heads of the Etruscan League would meet each year. Now, an archaeological team thinks it has found the site.

The archaeology of African traditional religions - including earth and ancestral cults, animism, and shamanism - has been
largely neglected in comparison to that of world religions, notably Islamand Christianity. However, in 2004 archaeologists began exploring the archaeology of the Tallensi of Northern Ghana, and here they tell of their intriguing finds.

With much excitement, the Terracotta Army has arrived at the British Museum. Here we look at some of the highlights of this blockbuster of an exhibition.
Thereafter, Roger Matthews leaps to the (other) cradle of civilisation with a round-up of the latest archaeological work in Central Turkey.
 This is followed by a scoop on Byzantine Butrint from its director Richard Hodges. CWA also welcomes a new columnist, Brian Fagan; originally from England, he has since made his career as Professor at the University of
California at Santa Barbara.
Finally, we end where we started: with prehistoric rituals and a back-page interview on the underground stone circle sanctuary of Xaghra in Gozo.

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CWA 25 covers the globe from the blood and gore of the Roman amphitheatre - where a mosaic by the flamboyant Magerius describes his beneficience - to Copper Age cave burials in the Levant. This issue also includes in its travels a visit to the Great Wall of China and two trips to the Caribbean, one to Antigua, the epicentre of slavery, empire and wealth; the second in search of rock carvings in St Vincent and Grenada.