Current Archaeology 354

On 6 June, we marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Among the Allied troops involved in that watershed campaign was the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne, US Army. They were nicknamed ‘Easy Company’, but – thanks in part to a 2001 TV series – today they are better known as the ‘Band of Brothers’. Less well known, though, is that in the lead-up to the landings these soldiers were based at Aldbourne on Salisbury Plain. This summer, Operation Nightingale searched for traces of their camp – our cover story explores what they found.
/nFrom airborne exploits to more watery matters, our next feature traces London’s lost rivers. The city is cut through by numerous tributaries of the Thames, but most are today built over, preserving an archaeological time capsule in their waterlogged surroundings.
/nAnother remarkable snapshot of the past comes from Wollaston in Northamptonshire. In 1997, excavation uncovered the princely grave of an Anglian warrior with a boar-crested helmet. Analysis of the burial is now complete – and the results are fascinating.
/nIn the later medieval period, high-status graves were sometimes marked with stone effigies. We take a closer look at the finely carved examples documented in Yorkshire.
/nYorkshire is also the setting of this month’s ‘In Focus’, which stars a humble cottage with an intriguing story. Marketed as Captain Cook’s boyhood home, this building was sold in 1933 to an Australian philanthropist and shipped to Melbourne where it was reconstructed brick by brick. Yet all was not as it seemed – and a recent dig in its original setting of Great Ayton has revealed that not all of the cottage made it to Australia.