Strata: Portraits of Humanity is a monthly half-hour newsmagazine-style show. Each episode of the human story is a portrait building on the many layers of the human experience. This is a record we are just beginning to uncover. From that perspective, Strata delivers in-depth coverage of a wide variety of archaeological and cultural heritage topics all around the world.
Roman lead coffin burial in England; Maya rain ceremony
Metal detectorists discover a lead coffin in a field near Ilchester in Somerset, England. The local police call in the archaeologists. Paul Hixon participated as a student in an ethnobotany field school in the Yucatan, Mexico...
Tehran 2015; Temple of the Giants
ALI Director Rick Pettigrew attended the 2015 edition of the Cinema Verite Iran International Documentary Film Festival at the organizers’ invitation. The affluent Greek city of Akragas in Sicily; an ambitious tyrant; an incredible victory over the most dreaded enemy; a temple of colossal proportions...
Reading Herculaneum scrolls; historic British Columbia and Nevada miner
About 2000 years ago, Mt. Vesuvius in southern Italy exploded, carbonizing a private library in Herculaneum. The papyrus scrolls are extremely fragile and many have been damaged. William Culverville, a British miner in the Cariboo mining district of British Columbia, skedaddled (i.e., escaped debts) to Nevada. While driving a stagecoach...
Historic Idaho charcoal kilns; Scottish coastal town; Anglo-Saxon sword
The Birch Creek Charcoal Kilns are a group of beehive-shaped clay charcoal kilns near Leadore, Idaho, built in 1886 to produce charcoal to smelt lead and silver ore from the nearby Viola Mine. Brora, Scotland, is where a volunteer-based excavation recorded...
Ancient Australia; replicating Alexandria coins
The Australian landscape may look unchanged, but its fossils and cave paintings tell a hidden story. In the summer of 2009, a team of numismatists is looking to replicate bronze coinage, particularly the twin eagle piece struck in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 2nd century BC...
Quivira: Conquistadors on the Plains
Spanish conquistadors four centuries ago, vainly searching for riches in the North American heartland, encountered a remarkable American civilization that eventually faded from memory. After a new look at an old Spanish journal and a long-ignored map...