Museum of Classical Archaeology, Adelaide University

30/03/2026

Visit Australia

Over 180 objects. Direct from Italy. Never before seen in Australia. ROME: Empire, Power, People opens this Wednesday!

🎟️Book your tickets: https://brnw.ch/21x19FA

16/02/2026

16/02/2026

There is still time to register for Society Sunday! Join us for a virtual presentation and live Q&A on February 22, hosted by the AIA Societies Committee, featuring Dr. Jessica Tilley.

From tomb raiders to the latest research and archaeological theories, this presentation traces how the once-“mysterious” Etruscans have moved from the margins of Classical archaeology to the center of modern media—and what’s next for the field of Etruscology in today’s multi-cultural, interconnected world.

📅 Sunday, February 22, 2026
⏰ 1 pm ET | 12 pm CT
Register: https://buff.ly/8Ip9PvD

📸 The Montereggi Project

16/02/2026

The Bay of Naples keeps on giving…

10/02/2026

I think that means early arvo on Monday here in Adelaide.

30/10/2025

There’s a turnup for the books - alabastra with opioid contents?

It had been previously suggested that Egyptian alabastron vases held perfumes or cosmetics for royal elites. Researchers analyzing a sticky, dark-brown residue in one fifth-century B.C. vessel, however, found something quite a bit stronger …

archaeology.org/news/2025/10/28/traces-of-opium-detected-on-egyptian-alabastron/

(📸 Courtesy of the Yale Babylonian Collection)

27/09/2025

She was responsible for one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in British history, but just who was Edith Pretty?

Between 1938 to 1939, Mrs Edith Pretty (1883–1942), a landowner at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, asked archaeologist Basil Brown to investigate the largest of many Anglo-Saxon burial mounds on her property. Inside, he made one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of all time. Beneath the mound was the imprint of a 27-metre-long ship. At its centre was a burial chamber packed with treasures: Byzantine silverware, sumptuous gold jewellery, a lavish feasting set, and most famously, an ornate iron helmet.

Pretty was declared the owner but refused to sell her find. In 1938, she gifted all of the treasure to the nation, gaining national and international acclaim. She remains one of the British Museum's most generous benefactors, and the ship buried at Sutton Hoo is the largest Anglo-Saxon ship unearthed to this day.

You can see the treasure from Sutton Hoo on display in Room 41.


🖼️ Cor Visser (1903–1982), Portrait of Edith Pretty (Sutton Hoo, © National Trust). Oil on canvas, England, c. (1939-1940).