Museum of Classical Archaeology, University of Adelaide

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).

25/09/2025

Public lecture tonight on Homer and Greek Archaeology, by our visiting international scholar, Professor Alexander Mazarakis Ainan on “Homer and Archaeology”: is the quest worth pursuing?
This is on tonight at 7 pm in Napier G04, North Terrace campus of the University of Adelaide.
Prof. Mazarakis is a leading archaeologist on Iron Age Greece - the period in which the culture which we think of as “ancient Greek” evolved, when the concept of the polis state and of Greek urban temples began, when the artist known as Homer composed The Iliad and Odyssey. The setting for these stories was, of course, in the mythical past. As Mazarakis says, “Since Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations in the late nineteenth century at Troy and Mycenae, there has been a continuous quest to prove the presence of historical truth underlying the Homeric epics. From the mid-20th century onwards, thanks to new archaeological discoveries, this debate was greatly expanded by scholars who tried to link numerous aspects of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age material culture with the poems, with opinions varying significantly. Homeric issues even became the focus of political manipulations within modern geopolitical views in the Aegean itself. This talk reviews these developments and assesses whether it is still worth pursuing a connection between objects and epics, or if it is pointless to continue posing such questions.”

It should be a fascinating evening. It is free to all. Apologies for the short notice, but it would be great if you can come in this evening in person.

25/09/2025

16/09/2025

04/08/2025

On Wednesday 13th August at 6:30pm, Dr Pamela Watson will be giving the fifth lecture in our Ancient Jordan series, presenting on “Framed Earthquakes: How the evidence from two major destructions illuminated the development of Pella in Late Antiquity (3rd-7th centuries CE)”. In person and on zoom. Register here: https://pay.sydney.edu.au/NEAF25