Our universities do wonderful things

Last night I watched a parade of robed chancellors, and listened to the achievements of researchers, and marvelled. Many at the event went on today to receive Queen’s Anniversary Prizes for Higher & Further Education at Buckingham Palace. So much original work across such a wide range of topics is being conducted across the UK, …

Is new Stonehenge centre a disaster?

That’s what many seemed to think in January. The Western Daily Press called it “a £27m flop”, describing “furious visitors”, “chaotic scenes” and “queues of more than an hour”. The Daily Mail picked up the story, with a headline that summed up the apparent problem: “Moanhenge! Furious visitors criticise 'chaotic' new £27m centre at historic monument as it struggles …

More on those footprints

These extraordinary images of one of the best preserved Happisburgh footprints were sent to me by Simon Parfitt. They are snapshots from a rotatable 3D image created by Sarah Duffy at York University with MeshLab software. They were only recently finished, too late for the journal and press images. James Miles and Hembo Pagi used …

Reburials, art and DNA: another month for Richard III

What’s happened in the world of Richard III since my last post? A great deal, though that post was only a few weeks ago. I’ll round up just a few things that struck me as particularly interesting or curious. Let’s start with a curious note, and the most recent: the BBC has just reported that …

Million-year-old footprints in Norfolk

There’s a lot of interest in this new find, and it’s worth saying more about. Things like this really do not come along every year. There’s a great video made by the Natural History Museum of the team recording the prints, which Channel 4 has put online, with more detail in the film on the …

Oldest footprints outside Africa

Happisburgh has done it again! Already the location of the oldest human artefacts in northern Europe, and the furthest north any signs of early humans have been found, now the Norfolk coast has given us human footprints – nearly a million years old. They are by far the oldest outside Africa. As Nick Ashton (British …

A year in the death of Richard III

Exactly a year ago, as I write, I was getting lost in Leicester. I never did get to the bottom of it, but my satnav struggled with the city’s layout, and drew me into a suburban housing estate when I was hoping to find the university. I didn’t know it then, but I would return …

Stonework

Here’s a lovely thing. It’s a poem about an ancient place, by Mark Edmonds and Rose Ferraby – or as Mark describes it, “words by me, images by the two of us” – in the form of an illustrated book. It’s mostly the story of the making of a stone axe 6,000 years ago. A …