7 Surprising Animal Burials
Animals have always been hugely important to humans – as food, as beasts of burden and as companions. The archaeological record has offered up some […]
Tag: history
Yew trees and graveyards
There are numerous reasons given as to why yew trees have become ubiquitous in our graveyards. Some trace it back to ancient times when druids […]
My Next Book: A Museum Miscellany
It is with great excitement that I introduce my next book A Museum Miscellany — the final instalment of my miscellany trilogy (see here for […]
The ‘Woman Question’ Solved? Female Middle Class Emigration in the Nineteenth Century
In 1851 the census exposed the bald truth that there was an excess of 500,000 women in Britain. Not only this, but the statistics also […]
Traditional European Folklore on Death and Dying
Having recently been studying Victorians and the culture of death, I have been reflecting on how many of the traditions and superstitions around death and […]
Revolutionary Relics: The Bastille Re-cast Anew
On 14 July 1789, in what would become a defining moment of the French Revolution, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison – a symbol of the […]
Traditional Signs of Guilt
In the time before DNA testing, dusting for fingerprints and blood-spatter analysis proving guilt or innocence was a rather less scientific matter. Folklore, superstition and […]
The Strange Afterlives of Ancient Egyptian Mummies
The mummified remains of Ancient Egyptians have always held a certain gruesome fascination but today the closest we are likely to get to one is […]
10 Wars with Very Unusual Names
War (huh), what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Well, that is not strictly true. Although all the killing and the destruction is very bad, […]
The Victorians and Pet Monkeys
‘Monkeys are not very agreeable domestic pets, as they are extremely fond of mischief, and are very frequently vicious and spiteful to children.’ So wrote […]