Our cover feature takes us to Broadway, a picturesque Gloucestershire village where excavations have revealed a palimpsest of human activity stretching back 8,000 years – including Beaker burials, Iron Age graves, and the county’s largest-known late Roman cemetery.
Funerary practices also form the focus of our next article, exploring a new exhibition that examines what three burial sites in Buckinghamshire (a solitary ‘sentinel’ grave, the Taplow ‘princely’ barrow, and a large community cemetery) can tell us about Anglo-Saxon society.
We then turn to an unusual grave that was discovered in Gloucestershire in 2017. With some of its artefacts newly on display at the Corinium Museum, we revisit the story of the Lechlade ‘chieftain’ and his enigmatic companion.
From there, we head to Anglesey, where long-running excavations have revealed the remains of a unique early medieval trading site and production centre. With the full report now published, we share some of the key findings.
We end with two shorter pieces about milestones. The first celebrates five years since the return of Time Team, and considers how technology can transform how we experience the past. The second marks 100 years since the birth of the pioneering prehistorian Aubrey Burl and 50 years since the publication of his still-influential book The Stone Circles of the British Isles.
P.S. You might notice that this month’s ‘Welcome’ page looks a bit different. We are now running contributors’ biographies and photos at the end of their respective articles, to link authors more directly to their work, and to make sure that everyone can be featured in this way (we were rarely able to squeeze everyone on to the ‘Welcome’ page). This change also means that we can highlight the brilliant trio who contribute to the magazine every single month.