Ancient

In this section there are articles and podcasts to cover broad theme from the ancient world such as ‘From Stonehenge to the Romans’  or more specific areas such as the role of literature or women in particular cultures. There are articles covering the Indus Valley and Mayan civilizations taking the articles in this section well beyond the boundaries of the European Ancient World.

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  • Podcast Series: The Roman Republic

    Multipage Article

    In this series of podcasts Dr Federico Santangelo of the University of Newcastle looks at the rise and fall of the Roman Republic.

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  • Podcast Series: Ancient Greek Myths and Legends

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool looks at what Greek myths and legends can tell us about how the early ancient Greeks saw their world.

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  • Podcast: Ancient Greek Drama

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool discusses what Greek tragedy and comedy tell us about the society of Ancient Greece and what has been the legacy of the great writers of this period.

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  • The Government of the Roman Empire

    Article

    The Government of the Roman Empire, as everyone knows, was autocratic, and, like all autocracies, it was ‘tempered by assassination' or by military revolution. The emperor ruled through an imperial service, at once civil and military, in which several grades, corresponding to the social classes of the empire, were always...

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  • Podcast Series: The Indus Valley Civilisation

    Multipage Article

    In this set of podcasts Dr Mark Manuel of the University of Durham looks at the Indus Valley Civilisation.

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  • Podcast Series: From the Stone Age to the Romans

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading looks at Britain and Ireland from their prehistoric beginnings to the arrival of the Romans.

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  • How can there be a true history?

    Article

    "How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell) Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....

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  • HA Podcasted History: Ancient Persia

    Multipage Article

    In this series of podcasts Professor Thomas Harrison of the University of Liverpool examines the Persian Empire, life in ancient Persian society and the Greek-Persian War.

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  • Podcast Series: Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol looks at Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion.

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  • Roman Britain

    Article

    This classic pamphlet provides an introduction to Roman Britain, examines the political history, the institutions of Roman Britain, the economic background and the end of Roman Britain. IntroductionThe Roman conquest and occupation of Britain has long been taken as the conventional starting point of English History, and there is a conventional...

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  • Prehistoric Scotland

    Article

    Prehistory is an attempt to reconstruct the story of human societies inhabiting a given region before the full historical record opens there. Its data, furnished by archaeology, are the constructions members of such societies erected and the durable objects they made. The events which should form its subject matter naturally...

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  • Diagrams in History

    Article

    One of the gifts of the social sciences to history is the use of expository diagrams; but attention is rarely given to the history of diagrams. Maps - schematized representations of locations in spatial relation to one another - can be dated back to Babylonia in the late third millennium...

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  • Podcast: Roman Britain

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of Roman Britain featuring Guy de la Bédoyère.

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  • Prehistoric Bristol

    Article

    This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...

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  • Polychronicon 132: Roman Emperors

    Article

    Everyone has seen a Roman emperor. Whether at the British Museum's current Hadrian exhibition, or in Derek Jacobi's stuttering Claudius, or in Joachim Phoenix's psychotic Commodus, most people are aware of Roman emperors to some extent or other.1 They can be semi-legendary, or have been entirely ignored by  posterity. Some...

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  • Polychronicon 126: Stonehenge

    Article

    Secondary history ought to pay more attention to stones: 1. they are accessible, logistically and educationally, and highly instructive. The Neolithic is everywhere, and generally speaking, free2. venture outside the classroom, into real space or cyberspace, and you stumble into it eventually.3. Archaeological interpretation is an accessible way into aspects...

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  • Polychronicon 116: The Roman Empire

    Article

    Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' examines the study...

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  • Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire

    Article

    Those of us in the U.K. know that many of our pupils finish their entire historical education without a satisfactory grasp of basic substantive concepts as they are used in history. Do all our low-attaining or ‘low ability’ 14-year-olds who are pressured to drop history at 14 really emerge with...

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  • Two Babies That Could Have Changed World History

    Article

    'At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered same for your arrival. Congratulations.’ This telegram was sent from Luxor on the 6th November 1922 by Howard Carter to his coarchaeologist Lord Carnarvon in Britain. It started the Tut·ankh·Amen story which led to a...

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  • Working with Boudicca texts - contemporary, juvenile and scholarly

    Article

    Please note: this article was written before the the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may now be outdated. Robert Guyver describes a model for teaching Boudicca’s rebellion to pupils aged 7 to 13. Drawing on the tradition of critical source evaluation, he nonetheless shuns aspects of that tradition in favour of...

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