Almost nothing is left of a Roman window. The wooden frame rots, the glass (when there was any) shatters and the iron rusts away, so a grille that reaches us in one piece is a rarity. One has now turned up at Augusta Raurica, the Roman city that spreads across the Swiss villages of Augst […]

Five kilometres (about three miles) of open sea, strong currents and waves that give no warning. That is the distance between the coast of Bømlo, in western Norway, and Hespriholmen, a small rocky islet that archaeologists regard as the most emblematic Stone Age site in the region. For thousands of years, groups of fishers and […]

Here is how a consultation worked. Anyone with a question (whether to travel, close a purchase, go to court, or wait for a sick relative to recover) walked up to a statue of the god Hermes in the town square, threw a handful of sheep bones onto a table, added up the points and looked […]