Current Archaeology 368

What a difference a month makes! As I sit down to write this letter, I have recently returned from my first post-lockdown trip to a museum and, all being well, by the time you read this I will have seen two more and visited my first research excavation since March. It is wonderful to
see more of the heritage world opening up again, and it has been hugely impressive to see the efforts that museums and heritage sites have made, both to provide online content while their doors were closed, and to make their spaces safe for returning visitors.
/nIt is to a museum that we venture for our cover story: the Museum of London Docklands, where an innovative new exhibition tells the story of the Havering hoard. Its c.453 tools, weapons, and other objects represent the third-largest Late Bronze Age hoard found in Britain (and London’s largest) – but why was it buried?
/nStaying with Bronze Age burials, we next explore a study suggesting that fragments of human bone that are sometimes found placed in later graves or scattered around settlements of this period may have been deliberately curated for years after death.
/nSpeaking of settlements: how did the early medieval landscape evolve, and how far does evidence suggest that the layout of the emerging villages was deliberately planned?
/nWe are also marking the 80th anniversary of the Blitz, with articles exploring civilian heroism and unexpected legacies in London; stories from museums around the UK; and research working to identify the remains of bombed-out buildings on a Liverpool beach.
/nFinally, we end with a 2,000-year-old object with an intrepid story to tell: a Roman funerary urn linking a fort just north of the Antonine Wall with Egypt.