COVID-19 has not stopped these exceptional projects from going ahead. Below are all the nominees for Research Project of the Year. Once you’ve made your choice, click here to cast your vote!
Voting closes on 8 February 2021, and all the winners of the Current Archaeology Awards will then be announced on 26 February as part of our virtual Current Archaeology Live! 2021. More details of the event to come.
Illuminating Isurium: exploring Aldborough’s Roman remain
Martin Millett and Rose Ferraby, University of Cambridge, CA 369
A decade-long investigation of the Roman town, Isurium Brigantum, in North Yorkshire – including major geophysical surveys – has produced a new publication, illuminating this once-prosperous settlement and the story of its rise and fall.
Read the full article here.
Rest in pieces: exploring evidence for Bronze Age curation of the dead
Tom Booth and Joanna Brück, University of Bristol/Natural History Museum/University College Dublin/Francis Crick Institute, CA 368
Recent research has found intriguing evidence for Bronze Age communities retaining fragments of human bones for many years after an individual’s death, before burying them in later graves or within features of settlements.
Read the full article here.
Sourcing the sarsens: a Stonehenge mystery solved?
David Nash, et al., University of Brighton, CA 367
A recently found core – drilled from a Stonehenge sarsen – has made possible, for the first time, destructive sampling of a known sarsen. This has identified their most-likely origin, confirming suspicions that they were sourced locally.
Read the full article here.
The problem of the Picts: searching for a lost people in northern Scotland
Gordon Noble, University of Aberdeen, CA 364
The relative scarcity of archaeological material associated with the Picts, who occupied parts of Scotland in the 4th to 10th centuries, has long been recognised, but recent research has helped to illuminate these elusive people.
Read the full article here.
Secrets of the Black Isle: tracing Tarradale through 10,000 years
Eric Grant, Tarradale Through Time, CA 360
Far-ranging community excavations on a Highland peninsula have uncovered finds spanning millennia, from a possible structure built by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the second-largest Pictish barrow cemetery known in Scotland.
Read the full article here.
Bamburgh’s Bowl Hole burials: life and death in Northumbria’s Golden Age
Jessica Turner, Accessing Aidan Project, CA 360
Analysis of Anglo-Saxon skeletons buried on the beach below Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland has uncovered a story of far-ranging migration and a surprisingly diverse community that thrived here 1,400 years ago.
Read the full article here.
Voting closes on 8 February
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