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Found in a farmer's field: The 2,000-year-old skeleton of the lost lady of Rome By CHRIS BROOKE Last updated at 09:14am on 23rd November 2007 In her lifetime she was a member of a wealthy family based in a bustling British outpost of the world's mightiest empire. The imperial glory has long faded. But, almost 2,000 years on, archaeologists have discovered a corner of an English field that is forever Rome. They have unearthed a coffin containing a remarkably well-preserved skeleton in the village of Aldborough, near Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire - once the site of a major Roman town, Isurium...

1629 Charles I of England dissolves Parliament and rules alone for 11 years.

A woman waiting for a bus was raped and left for dead in a savage attack described by detectives as attempted murder. An 18-year-old woman was attacked in the Malvern Road area of Leeds shortly before 11pm on Friday night. >Snip< Police are seeking a slim Asian man in his 20s in connection with the assault.

To most of us, it seems like an eternity ago that David Cameron stood outside Downing Street the morning after the Scottish electorate rejected independence, and declared: ‘The people of Scotland have spoken. It is a clear result. Now it is time for the United Kingdom to come together and move forward.’ Today, however, six months on, the latest opinion poll suggests that the General Election in May could give Labour and the Tories equal representation in the Commons, with the Nationalists sweeping Scotland to hold 56 out of 59 seats, and the balance of power at Westminster.

Early farming began in the Near East about 10,500 years ago. Farming first reached the Balkans in Europe some 8 to 9,000 years ago, and then crept westward. Locals in Britain, separated from the mainland by the relatively newly formed English Channel, did not start farming until about 6,000 years ago. But an analysis of sediment from a submerged British archaeological site called Bouldner Cliff found something unexpected. “Amongst our Bouldner Cliff samples we found ancient DNA evidence of wheat at the site, which was not seen in mainland Britain for another 2,000 years.” Robin Allaby of the University of...

The UKIP leader will share a stage with high-profile US conservatives including Sarah Palin and NRA gun lobbyists.UKIP leader Nigel Farage is expected to get a celebrity reception in Washington when he addresses America's most high-profile right-wing conference this week. Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and the National Rifle Association (NRA) gun lobby will be sharing a stage with the British politician after he was invited to address the Conservative Political Action Committee in the US capital. Aides told Sky News his philosophy has much in common with his republican hosts, who also focus on "the battle for smaller...

The listing on the official website of the British Monarchy specifies that the job in question – based at the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace – entails working "as part of a busy and supportive team tasked with driving members of the Royal Family, Household officials, guests and official visitors." That means being around some highly distinguished individuals, for what it's worth, but also getting access to some very rare machinery, the likes of which most people will never get close to: namely, the Bentley State Limousine, a vehicle designed and crafted in Crewe, based on the Arnage, specifically for...

Ancient Stonehenge Houses Unearthed Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Oct. 13, 2006 —Nine Neolithic-era buildings have been excavated in the Stonehenge world heritage site, according to a report in the journal British Archaeology. The structures, which appear to have been homes, date to 2,600-2,500 B.C. and were contemporary with the earliest stone settings at the site's famous megalith. They are the first house-like structures discovered there. Julian Thomas, who worked on the project and is chair of the archaeology department at Manchester University in England, said Stonehenge could have been a key gathering place at the Neolithic era's version of a...

Is Stonehenge Roman? Geoffrey Wainwright, the co-Director of the excavations. Geoffrey's friends will be glad to note that he has now recovered from his hip replacement, though he can still not get down the deep holes After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was...

The teams, from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Bournemouth and University College London, all working on the Stonehenge Riverside Project (SRP), explored not just Stonehenge and its landscape but also the wider social and economic context of the monument's main stages of construction around 3,000 BC and 2,500 BC... Previous theories have suggested the great stone circle was used as a prehistoric observatory, a sun temple, a place of healing, and a temple of the ancient druids. The Stonehenge Riverside Project's researchers have rejected all these possibilities after the largest programme of archaeological research ever mounted on this iconic...

Today we travel to southern Illinois, where just across the Mississippi River is located the Cahokia Archaeological Zone. Cahokia was the largest known Native American city north of Mexico. At its peak population around 1250 AD, it was larger that London, England. Of course, Cahokia was not its real name. No one knows its real name. Unlike the ancient towns in the Southeast, where direct descendants of the original occupants still live, no one even knows yet what happened to the population of Cahokia, after it was abandoned. There was an indigenous village in the vicinity of Cahokia as early...

New wooden henge, a circular ditch that aligns with world-famous monument, deemed site's most exciting find in a lifetime -- Without a sod of earth being dug up, a new henge, a circular ditch which probably enclosed a ring of timber posts and may have been used for feasting, has been discovered...only 900 metres away and apparently contemporary to the 5,000-year-old stone circle, as the most exciting find at Stonehenge in a lifetime... The henge was revealed within a fortnight of an international team beginning fieldwork on the three-year Stonehenge Hidden Landscape project, which aims to survey and map 14...

A prehistoric village has been discovered in southern England that was likely home to the builders of Stonehenge, archaeologists announced on January 30, 2007 (read the full story). The village, located 1.75 miles (2.8 kilometers) from the famous stone circle, includes eight wooden houses dated back to around 2500 B.C. The remains of a cluster of homes include the outlines of floors, beds, and cupboards. Tools, jewelry, pottery, and human and animal bones were also found. The excavated houses formed part of a much bigger settlement dating back to the Late Stone Age, according to project leader Mike Parker Pearson...

The team who worked on the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2009 are to return to their findings to explain the eating habits of the people who built and worshipped at the stone circle over four thousand years ago... the new 'Feeding Stonehenge' project will analyse a range of materials including cattle bones and plant residue... Initial research suggests the animals were brought considerable distances to the ceremonial site.. The original Stonehenge Riverside project, which strengthened the idea that nearby Durrington Walls was part of the Stonehenge complex, yielded a surprisingly wide range of material ranging from ancient tools to animal...

Stone age people drove animals hundreds of miles to a site close to Stonehenge to be slaughtered for ritual feasts, according to scientists who have examined the chemical signatures of animal remains buried there... Durrington Walls is a stone-age village containing the remains of numerous cattle and pigs which are thought to have been buried there after successive ritual feasts. The site is two miles north east of Stonehenge and dates from around 3000 BC, 500 years before the first stones were erected... The evidence points to groups of people driving animals from as far away as Wales for the...

Archaeologists at the University of Sheffield have revealed new radiocarbon dates of human cremation burials at Stonehenge, which indicate that the monument was used as a cemetery from its inception just after 3000 B.C. until well after the large stones went up around 2500 B.C. The Sheffield archaeologists, Professor Mike Parker-Pearson and Professor Andrew Chamberlain, believe that the cremation burials could represent the natural deaths of a single elite family and its descendants, perhaps a ruling dynasty. One clue to this is the small number of burials in Stonehenge´s earliest phase, a number that grows larger in subsequent centuries, as...

Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe. Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far. But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work. "What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehenge builders was," says Professor Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University. Allowing four per house, he estimates there could have been room for more than 2,000...

Message in the Stones Why transport 82 two-tonne megaliths across more than 250 miles of mountain, river and sea to build a stone circle at Stonehenge? This is one of the greatest mysteries of Britain’s best-known, but least understood, prehistoric monument. Now Tim Darvill thinks he has the answer: the famous bluestones had healing powers, and the builders of Stonehenge were creating a prehistoric Lourdes. The latest issue of CA tells all. Despite centuries of study, we seem no nearer to answering such basic questions as what is Stonehenge, who built it and why. The publication in 1965 of Stonehenge...

Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2,600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge in southwest England, scientists said on Tuesday. They suspect inhabitants of the houses, forming the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, built the stone circle at Stonehenge -- generally thought to have been a temple, burial ground or an astronomy site -- between 3,000 and 1,600 BC. "We found the remains of eight houses," Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, said in a teleconference to announce the discovery. "We think they are...

Stonehenge builders' houses found The village would have housed hundreds of people (Image: National Geographic) Archaeologists say they have found a huge ancient settlement used by the people who built Stonehenge. Excavations at Durrington Walls, near the legendary Salisbury Plain monument, uncovered remains of ancient houses. People seem to have occupied the sites seasonally, using them for ritual feasting and funeral ceremonies. In ancient times, this settlement would have housed hundreds of people, making it the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain. The dwellings date back to 2,600-2,500 BC, the same period that Stonehenge was built. "In what were...