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This map is one of the most important surviving examples of 13th-century map-making. It tells us much about the way English men and women viewed the world at this time. Jerusalem is in the centre of the map, and the whole world is looked upon by Christ who is attended by angels. This shows that medieval people looked at geography in relation to the Bible and to earth’s creation by God. But the map also shows an interest in local places: you can see the British Isles, and the rivers Thames and Severn. London is marked with a gold dot....

An "exceptional and rare" medieval treasure trove including more than 2,200 gold and silver coins has been found in France in what has been called a "remarkable" discovery by archaeologists. It's the kind of discovery archaeologists dream of. While investigating an area next to the former Benedictine monastery Cluny Abbey in eastern France, a research group came across a pile of medieval treasure. Photo: Alexis Grattier/University of Lyon II "It's an exceptional and extremely rare treasure," said Anne Flamman from France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "We understood straight away that it was a unique discovery and I...

Archaeologists have discovered an 'exceptional' treasure trove of precious objects at the Abbey of Cluny, a former Benedictine monastery in France's Saône-et-Loire More than 2,000 objects have been found, including silver deniers - or pennies - Islamic gold coins, a signet ring and several gold items. The discovery is the first time that gold coins from the Arab lands, silver French deniers and a signet ring have ever been found together in a single, enclosed complex. Researchers from the Universite Lumiere Lyon discovered the items as part of an archaeological dig at the Abbey of Cluny, which started in 2015....

According to author Leo Tolstoy, born at the very end of the Little Ice Age, in quite a cold country: The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he already knows, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him. So, our new technical paper in GeoResJ (vol. 14, pages 36-46) will likely be ignored. Because after applying the latest big data technique to six...

ate last month, an excavator operator was working at a peat bog in the Polish municipality of Mircze when he accidentally stumbled upon this glorious specimen of 14th century craftsmanship. The remarkably well-preserved longsword is a unique find for the area, and its discovery has prompted an archaeological expedition. The discoverer of the long sword, Wojciech Kot, donated the artifact to the Fr. Stanisław Staszic Museum in Hrubieszów, and the museum’s staff is currently analyzing the medieval weapon. The sword is badly corroded, but considering it’s been buried in a peat bog for over 600 years, its condition is rather...

England was invaded by “Dane” Vikings from Scandinavia who destroyed churches, libraries and defeated all opposition except for 23-year-old King Alfred. Forced into the swampy, tidal marshes of Somerset, Alfred, King of the Anglos and Saxons, began a resistance movement in 878 A.D. According to biographer Bishop Asser, “Alfred attacked the whole pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will eventually won the victory.” King Alfred’s Law is considered the basis for English Common Law as it contained concepts such as liberty of the individual family and church, a decentralized government and equal justice for all under...

Red squirrels are carrying human leprosy and people have been warned to stay away from the animals to minimise the risk of catching the disease. One of the strains – which is affecting squirrels on Brownsea Island, off the south coast of Dorset – shares close similarities with that responsible for outbreaks of the disease in medieval Europe. Researchers tested 25 samples from red squirrels on the island and found that all were infected with the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, though not all showed signs of the disease. Those that did had swelling and hair loss on the ears, muzzle and...

The Razzouk family has tattooed pilgrims arriving to the Holy Land for the last 700 yearsJerusalem’s “Old City” was, until the mid-19th century, the entire urban area of the Holy City. Today, it only occupies a small area (actually, less than one kilometer) in East Jerusalem, but it is still home to several of the most important religious sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike: that’s where you find the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock, and the Kotel. But the Old City is also home to the Razzouk’s tattoo shop. A sign on the door identifies it unequivocally:...

O n the surface, Oppenheim looks like your typical German town resting along the banks of the Rhine River. But there's more to Oppenheim than beer halls and a Gothic-style cathedral from the Middle Ages. Beneath its narrow cobblestone streets lies something deeper—an entire labyrinth of tunnels and cellars. “The town is practically honeycombed with cavities,” Wilfried Hilpke, a tour guide with Oppenheim’s tourism office, tells Smithsonian.com. Hilpke should know. For the past ten years, he’s spent much of his time leading hour-long hardhat tours of Oppenheim’s elaborate tunnel system, taking visitors through a journey that covers just a fraction...

Witch prison found in 15th century Scottish church: Medieval chapel was used to hold suspects before they were killed and burnedIn the years before the Reformation, a small chapel in a church on the outskirts of Aberdeen had provided a quiet place for Catholic women to pray in peace. But within 30 years of the switch from Catholicism to the Protestant faith, St Mary's Chapel at the Kirk of St Nicholas in Aberdeen took on a far darker and sinister role. Historians have uncovered evidence that the chapel, built during the 15th century, served as a prison for suspected witches...

Archaeologists in Cambodia have found multiple, previously undocumented medieval cities not far from the ancient temple city of Angkor Wat, the Guardian can reveal, in groundbreaking discoveries that promise to upend key assumptions about south-east Asia’s history. The Australian archaeologist Dr Damian Evans, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Monday, will announce that cutting-edge airborne laser scanning technology has revealed multiple cities between 900 and 1,400 years old beneath the tropical forest floor, some of which rival the size of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

Archaeologists excavating a Medieval cemetery site in Kałdus, Poland, recently discovered hundreds of graves — among them, they found 14 anti-vampire burials. Some of these people were decapitated, others buried face-down, and still more were weighted down with stones. One of the major theories about ancient “vampire” graves is that people buried in this way were unhealthy or disabled, causing their compatriots to treat them differently in death because of their physical differences in life. A team of researchers set out to investigate diseases apparent on the bones of these 14 so-called vampires.

Novgorod or Veliky Novgorod, is one of the major historical cities of Russia, and it started out as a trading station for the Varangians who traveled from the Baltic region to Constantinople by (possibly) late 10th century AD. But as it turns out, this historically significant settlement of northern Russia is also home to around thousand personal ‘tomes’ that are inscribed on bark of birch trees and are almost preserved in perfect condition. In fact, historians hypothesize that there are 20,000 similar specimens still waiting to be salvaged from the conducive anaerobic clay soil layers of the city environs. And...

Pokhara, the second largest town of Nepal, has been built on massive debris deposits, which are associated with strong medieval earthquakes. Three quakes, in 1100, 1255 and 1344, with magnitudes of around Mw 8 triggered large-scale collapses, mass wasting and initiated the redistribution of material by catastrophic debris flows on the mountain range. An international team of scientists led by the University of Potsdam has discovered that these flows of gravel, rocks and sand have poured over a distance of more than 60 kilometers from the high mountain peaks of the Annapurna massif downstream. Christoff Andermann from the GFZ German...

Link to video...despite time shown at link, it is just over 48 minutes long: Medieval Apocalypse The Black Death

Archaeologists were stunned when the thousand-year-old skeleton of a young man was found among the roots of a tree ripped from the ground. Storms blew over a 215-year old beech tree outside Collooney, Sligo, Ireland, unearthing a human skeleton. The National Monuments Service commissioned Sligo-Leitrim archaeological consultancy Archaeological Services (SLAS) to excavate and retrieve the badly disturbed remains. The burial was that of a young man (17-20 years old) and it id believed he suffered a violent death during the early medieval period. Radiocarbon dating puts the man's death at 1030-1200 AD. Several injuries were visible to the ribs and...

The Norman castle at Pevensey Bay is one of the most historic sites in Britain. It is built inside of a Roman wall, and was William the Conqueror’s headquarters. It was also used as a defense outpost by Brits and Americans in WWII It is currently several miles from the sea, but at the time when the Romans and Normans built the structures, the water lapped right up to the edge of the stone. The map below shows the bay 900 years ago, and the current seashore as a dashed line.

hen the Monoprix Réaumur-Sébastopol supermarket in Paris, France, decided to renovated their basement to get more storage space, they probably didn’t expect to uncover hundreds of human bones. But when they dug into the basement floor, that's exactly what they discovered. The human remains are, apparently, the legacy of a cemetery from a medieval hospital, reports Aurelien Breeden for The New York Times. Since the find in January, France’s National Institute for Preventive Archeological Research, or Inrap, has been excavating the site. The institute knows that the hospital itself was the Hôpital de la Trinité, built in the early 13th...

Hundreds of tourists have been evacuated from Warwick Castle after a burning cannonball fired from the world's largest working siege machine destroyed a medieval boathouse by fire.

"The Black Book of Carmarthen," dating to 1250, contains texts from the ninth through 12th centuries, including some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin. "It's easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the 'Black Book,' but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting," Myriah Williams, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "The drawings and verse that we're in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look." ... "The...