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: Christianity in Imperial Rome

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Emma-Jayne Graham and Professor Helen King of the Open University discuss how Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman world.

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  • Podcast: Latin Poets and their Role in Roman Society

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Joanna Paul & Dr Paula James of the Open University discuss the role and significance of the Latin Poets in Roman society.

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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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  • Podcast: Roman Imperial Society

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Emma-Jayne Graham and Dr Ursula Rothe of the Open University examine Roman Imperial Society.

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  • Podcast: St Augustine of Hippo

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Dr Conrad Leyser of Worcester College, University of Oxford, looks at the life, ideas and significance of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD).

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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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  • 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 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 169: Herodotus

    Article

    You can buy a cheap flight to Bodrum (south-west Turkey), now a popular package holiday tourist destination and in antiquity named Halicarnassus, and visit ancient Greek temples and a theatre dating back more than 2,000 years. In Bodrum’s incomparable Underwater Archaeology Museum, you can admire the extraordinary Phoenician, Carian, Cypriot,...

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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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  • 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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  • Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque

    Article

    The discovery in 1952 of the tomb of King Pakal II of Palenque has been called the most important archaeological find in the history of the Americas. Protected by a magnificently sculpted stone sarcophagus depicting Pakal’s descent to the underworld and re-birth as the maize god lay the body of...

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  • Reuse of the Past: A Case Study from the Ancient Maya

    Article

    The ruins of ancient settlements are dramatic and dominant features of the landscape today, and abandoned architecture and monuments were also significant features of the landscape in the ancient past. How did people interact with remnants of architecture and monuments built during earlier times? What meaningful information about the economic,...

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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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  • Sudan Holy Mountain: Jebel Barkal and its Temples

    Article

    This guide book was produced by Timothy Kendall and El-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed (Co-Directors NCAM Archaeological Mission at Jebel Barkal) and has been published on our website by their kind permission (© 2022 Timothy Kendall and El-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed) to support our podcast that examines the history of Ancient Nubia and the Kushite...

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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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  • 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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  • “They Ought to Know the Achievements of the Ancient Greeks”

    Article

    International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 15, Number 1 – Autumn/Winter 2017ISSN: 14472-9474 Abstract This paper focus on the role of archaeology and material culture in supporting national narratives for younger generations, examining the ideas and perceptions of prospective teachers of Greek Primary Education. Firstly, the contribution...

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