The Palaeolith collection of the antiquarian Dr Tom Armstrong Bowes was the founding component of Herne Bay’s first museum and became one of the larger and more significant collections in the British Palaeolithic record. Its value to debates on the British Palaeolithic, however, has been limited by a stark lack of contextual data. Previously unstudied museum archives have now begun to unlock the lost provenance of this large collection so that it once again can contribute to long-standing regional questions on Acheulean typologies.

This is the first comprehensive publication of the Knaresborough 1864 hoard of copper-alloy vessels and tools. A consideration of the circumstances of the hoard’s discovery, along with a biographical account of Thomas Gott (the man who deposited the hoard in the Yorkshire Museum), for the first time enables a case to be made for a findspot. A consideration of the vessels and other objects establishes the hoard as one of the most unusual assemblages of its kind from late Roman Britain. pXRF analysis of the vessels sheds light on their composition. Finally, a discussion of the hoard places it within the international context of late Roman deposition practices.

Researchers of museum collections owe a great debt of gratitude to those responsible for curating the collections; however, staff may frequently remain innocently unaware of significant contents within the accessions. Such is a group of flint artefacts in Salisbury Museum, Wiltshire, which were found in 1860 on the outskirts of the city. The collection was rediscovered during unrelated archaeological research and comprises a series of blades, which include refitting components, demonstrating that the artefacts came from undisturbed prehistoric contexts. The blade blanks had been removed from opposed platform cores, using careful core preparation and soft hammer percussion. These characteristics can be most closely paralleled by Upper Palaeolithic Federmesser industries in Europe, which date from the end of the Last Glaciation. The existence of the Upper Palaeolithic was unrecognised at the time the artefacts were found, since when two other contemporary sites have been identified in the River Avon valley as well as others across the country. The newly recognised addition extends the distribution of Upper Palaeolithic activity further up the River Avon valley to Salisbury, where five rivers congregate, providing a convenient point for further dispersal. The finding also mirrors patterns of occupation on well-drained terrace bluffs overlooking the floodplain. Research results have yielded significant data, 160 years after the collection’s discovery, expanding current knowledge of the Upper Palaeolithic in the River Avon valley and demonstrating the continued value and potential of collections in our museums.

The human remains recovered from the famous Bjerringhøj Viking Age burial in Denmark have been missing for more than 100 years. Recently, an assemblage of bones resembling those recorded at Bjerringhøj—some with adherent textiles—were discovered in a misplaced box in the National Museum of Denmark. Here, the authors use new skeletal and comparative textile analyses, along with radiocarbon dating, to confirm that the bones are indeed those from the Bjerringhøj burial. This rediscovery offers new data for interpreting Viking Age clothing, including the presence of long trousers, and emphasises the importance of reinvestigating old archaeological collections housed within museums and archives.

Recent research on the submerged central and southern North Sea basin has focused on the end of the story: the last few millennia before the final inundation. Much older deposits do survive, however, and are documented by collections of Pleistocene fauna recovered by fishing fleets operating from Dutch and British ports during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Analysis of the British collections allows them to be assigned to specific areas of seabed and to broad stages of the Pleistocene climatic sequence. The results provide evidence of more complex and fragmentary undersea landscapes than can be detected using geophysical approaches alone, and indicate targeted areas for future work.

This interdisciplinary project, initiated by the National Heritage Board in Sweden, was undertaken to determine the environmental factors affecting the deterioration of archaeological bronzes in Scandinavia – while they still lie underground. The possible influence of soil acidification was obviously of special interest. The method was to examine 3200 prehistoric bronze artefacts from different museum collections in Sweden and Norway and compare the condition of specimens dug up in different areas at different times. The results showed that the condition of excavated bronzes had greatly deteriorated during the last 50–60 years, particularly along the North West Coast of Sweden, where the soil is very sensitive to pollutants. The archaeological context, e.g. the burial rite, was also among the factors influencing the preservation of the artefacts.

What is the fate of the material from old excavations? This article aims to generate attention towards this question by discussing the fragmentation of assemblages due to long and disjointed excavation campaigns as well as the eagerness of museums to have representative objects from famous sites. The challenge emerging is the need to explore ways of reinstating objects that may be widely dispersed and entirely decontextualized into our database. The tell at Tószeg-Laposhalom, Hungary, is used as a case study with particular attention to the campaign of 1927. This case is important for several reasons. Tószeg is a key European Bronze Age site. It is also a good example of a site with numerous excavation campaigns and many different teams being involved. Moreover, the 1927 campaign, which is documented through the correspondence between the partners, was V.G. Childe's first excavation, and the data recovered played a key role in his Central European Bronze Age chronology.