This month’s articles are bookended by unusual artefacts with intriguing tales to tell. The first is an elaborate pendant bearing emblems associated with Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. Analysis of its imagery has revealed a much wider story than was previously imagined, illuminating not only a royal marriage and the world of the Tudor court, but political ambitions and hopes for a lasting peace in 16th-century Europe. The other is a mysterious Roman dodecahedron. Theories abound for how these objects may have been used but crucially, unlike many previous such discoveries, this example from Norton Disney in Lincolnshire was found during a modern excavation, within a securely datable context.
Dates also form a key part of our feature about Woodhenge. It is a century since the Neolithic monument was first spotted on Salisbury Plain and, to mark the milestone, we explore the story of its discovery, and discuss recent dating evidence that sheds new light on its place within the Stonehenge landscape.
It was a military veteran who first identified the remains of Woodhenge, and our next article has a martial flavour, too. In 2008-2010, the first modern excavation of a legionary storehouse anywhere in the Roman Empire was carried out at Caerleon in south Wales. What has subsequent analysis of the project’s findings revealed about life in the fortress, and the site’s ‘post-Roman’ afterlife?
We remain in the west as we visit a new exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool, examining Treasure finds from north-west England and Wales and drawing out the stories that they can tell us about past events and individuals.
Finally, we leap forward to the 19th century to examine how accommodation built specifically for single female workers transformed women’s fortunes in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.