Pravda reports that a 12th century amulet has been found in Moscow.

A unique archaeological discovery, a silver amulet dating back to the 12th century was made at a building site in the Moscow region where the DON-Stroi construction company is building a new house for the Moscow regional administration. The rare amulet was found by workers of the Archaeology Institute.

The DON-Stroi press-service reported on Monday that a scene of Christ's baptizing in the Jordan River is coined on the face of a round plate of 4 centimeters in diameter. On the reverse side, there is a fantastic creature with woman's body and 11 snakes growing out of her legs.

As we know from the Slav legends, a woman with snakes instead of the hair is a modification of the antique Gorgon Meduse; a glance at her face inevitably entails death. One of the Magi, who managed to decapitate the Gorgon, acquired miraculous strength. Another transformation of the Gorgon image in the Slav apocryphal stories is the beast of Gorgonia that guards the Eden from humans after the Fall of man. Iconography of the Gorgon head is typical of popular Byzantine and Old Russian amulets.

Specialists say that amulets of this kind are rather rare. This combination of a canonical Christian topic and a pagan image may belong to the epoch of dual faith when pagan traditions were still very strong. It was rather typical of that period that images belonging to Christianity were depicted on one side of amulets and images with snakes and spells protecting from diseases on the other one. [continue]

From the Canadian Currency Musuem site:

Take a step back in time and explore the evolution of money around the world and through the ages at the Bank of Canada's Currency Museum. A fascinating variety of media of exchange including shells, teeth, and cocoa beans, as well as today's currency, tells us about the societies where they originated.

Some of the stuff on this site requires plugins. There's a virtual tour of the musuem (you'll need Quicktime for that) and a history of money timeline which requires Flash.

That glitzy stuff is lovely, but the plain, older pages have some pretty cool stuff, too. They've got thumbnail photos of Canada's first bank notes!

From Cordis News: Technology project enables public to view Parthenon frieze online.

An information technology project funded by the Greek government has enabled archaeologists and the wider public to take an online tour of the complete Parthenon frieze, whose blocks themselves are held in three separate museums in Greece, the UK and France.

The Greek Ministry of Culture, together with the national documentation centre and first ephorate of prehistoric and classical antiquities, decided to digitalise the frieze on account of its cultural importance, and exploited new technologies in order to maximise the projects appeal and impact.

The virtual tour of the frieze, which is over a metre wide and 160 metres long, includes an introduction and a stone by stone description of the frieze in both Greek and English. Furthermore, the photographs of the original blocks, many of which are incomplete due to damage, are supplemented with drawings of the missing sections dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

Visitors can move from stone to stone in either direction using arrows and scrollbars and, by clicking a box at the bottom of the image, can chose whether or not to view the photographs with the supplementary drawings in the background.

The frieze itself depicts a great procession to the Acropolis during the Panathenaia, the festival held in honour of the goddess Athena. Some 360 human figures are represented in the frieze, along with the twelve Gods of Olympus and more than 250 animals, mainly horses. [continue]

Here's the site they're talking about: The Parthenon Frieze.

Archeology.org even has photos to go along with this Dental Wealth article:

A recent archaeological discovery suggests that a barbarian tribe known to the Chinese as the "Gold Teeth" may have acquired its name quite literally. Farmers in Halin, a first-millenium A.D. walled city 40 miles north of Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma), discovered a skeleton with eight upper teeth decorated with gold. Chinese historical records mention a "Gold Teeth" tribe living in the area between Burma and what is now the Chinese province of Yunnan over a thousand years ago.

Each of the eight teeth had been drilled with a pattern of tiny holes, and these were packed with gold foil. The pain of drilling must have been considerable. Earthenware containers thought to have been used for distilling alcohol have been found at Halin, suggesting a form of anaesthetic was available.

Discoveries of stone and bronze tools indicate that Halin has been continuously occupied for more than three thousand years. The city was part of an ancient trade route between China and India. The gold teeth and their owner most likely date to the first millennium A.D., when both the resources and technology were available to provide this elegant form of cosmetic dentistry. The gold foil inlays from Halin appear to be the earliest example of dental work from mainland Southeast Asia.

Related link:
A rare find

From the BBC: Did a meteor over central Italy in AD 312 change the course of Roman and Christian history?

A team of geologists believes it has found the incoming space rock's impact crater, and dating suggests its formation coincided with the celestial vision said to have converted a future Roman emperor to Christianity.

It was just before a decisive battle for control of Rome and the empire that Constantine saw a blazing light cross the sky and attributed his subsequent victory to divine help from a Christian God.

Constantine went on to consolidate his grip on power and ordered that persecution of Christians cease and their religion receive official status. [continue]

Related links:
Constantine I of the Roman Empire -from Wikipedia
Constantine the Great - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Battle of Milvian Bridge - from Wikipedia
Labarum (Chi-Rho) ("Labarum is the name by which the military standard adopted by Constantine the Great after his celebrated vision (Lactantius, "De mortibus persecutorum", 44), was known in antiquity.")

From the Independent: Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire.

They ran the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532.

But a leading scholar of South American antiquity believes the Inca did have a form of non-verbal communication written in an encoded language similar to the binary code of today's computers. Gary Urton, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, has re-analysed the complicated knotted strings of the Inca - decorative objects called khipu - and found they contain a seven-bit binary code capable of conveying more than 1,500 separate units of information.

In the search for definitive proof of his discovery, which will be detailed in a book, Professor Urton believes he is close to finding the "Rosetta stone" of South America, a khipu story that was translated into Spanish more than 400 years ago.

"We need something like a Rosetta khipu and I'm optimistic that we will find one," said Professor Urton, referring to the basalt slab found at Rosetta, near Alexandria in Egypt, which allowed scholars to decipher a text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics from its demotic and Greek translations.

It has long been acknowledged that the khipu of the Inca were more than just decorative. In the 1920s, historians demonstrated that the knots on the strings of some khipu were arranged in such a way that they were a store of calculations, a textile version of an abacus.

Khipu can be immensely elaborate, composed of a main or primary cord to which are attached several pendant strings. Each pendant can have secondary or subsidiary strings which may in turn carry further subsidiary or tertiary strings, arranged like the branches of a tree. Khipu can be made of cotton or wool, cross-weaved or spun into strings. Different knots tied at various points along the strings give the khipu their distinctive appearance. [continue]

If this sounds interesting, take a look at the What is a khipu? page for an explanation of how khipus (also spelled quipus) record information.

Related books:
Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu
Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records
Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu

From Ananova: Prehistoric ‘shoes’ better than modern hiking boots.

Prehistoric ‘shoes’ made out of bearskin and hay are better for mountain walks than modern hiking boots, claims an expert.

Shoe specialist Petr Hlavacek has been studying the shoes found on the feet of a prehistoric iceman whose mummified body was found in an Alpine glacier in 1991.

Mr Hlavacek, who reconstructed a pair of the shoes, said they kept the foot at an optimal temperature, allowed sweat to evaporate and dried quickly if they got wet. [continue]

If someone were to sell shoes made on that ancient model, I think I'd have to try a pair.

Somehow I missed this story during my scan of Ananova yesterday, but David over at Cronaca didn't; I found the link on his site. Cronaca is full of fascinating things at the moment: Bronze Age flood control in Somerset, Leonardo's topography, and Wellcome medical history collection, for example. Well worth a read, as are all the blogs listed in on the right side of the mirabilis.ca home page.

(PDA users: you can view the list of links to other blogs here.)

Here's the latest on that Roman barge found near Utrecht. What follows is a transcript of an Australian radio show:

EDMOND ROY: Just outside the Dutch city of Utrecht lies one of the country's oldest shipwrecks every discovered in the Netherlands.

It's a Roman Barge, it's 1800 years old and now Dutch archaeologists have managed to raise it.

Europe Correspondent, Geoff Hutchison, went along for Saturday AM.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Row upon row of bland brick apartments overlooking muddy fields. This is a new housing estate in an old land.

And at the bottom of everyone's garden is an extraordinary sight: a huge crane is swaying over the heads of dozens of people wearing hard hats, and all of them are looking into a hole about 30 metres long and 10 metres deep.

And in that hole are the superbly preserved oak timbers of a Roman Barge.

JOS BAZELMANS: It has been here for 1800 years. It's a barge from the late second century AD. It's conserved 'cause it's in water-logged conditions, without having oxygen in it, because oxygen causes rotting of the root. It's in perfect conditions, it's even including the little cabins, which were at the backside of the ship, and within these cabins we found the complete sets of utensils and instruments the crew used.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: The barge is 25 metres long, and made of German oak. It probably carried soldiers, their cattle and supplies up the Rhine River to help extend both the Roman Road and with that the Roman Empire. [continue]

From The Herald: Orkney discovery may be the first farm in Britain.

Wooden structures unearthed on an archaeological dig in Orkney could be the oldest farm settlements in Britain.

The find, off the main road from Kirkwall to Stromness, may also shed light on one of the most disputed subjects in archaeology.

For decades, archaeologists have argued about the exact timescale and nature of the so-called farming revolution - when early societies made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming - thousands of years ago.

The discovery of the Orkney structures could greatly contribute to knowledge of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, period, adding to the evidence for a settled lifestyle in villages and farmsteads on the island dating back at least 6000 years.

Dr Colin Richards, of Manchester University, led the excavation which shatters previous thinking about society during the New Stone Age, and could produce some of the earliest dates for settlement on the islands.

He said: "The houses in Orkney are all made of stone and we just never expected that we would find wooden buildings.

"It was amazing, especially when you consider that there wasn't much in the way of wood at that time on Orkney as it was treeless. [continue]

Related link:
Orkney Jar: Archaeology News

Just over 100 years ago Victorians imagined what the future would be like, anticipating marvellous inventions like personal buoyancy balloons (to allow us to walk on water), trains able to move several buildings at once, and a weather control machine, among others. Cards illustrating these splendours were printed by a German chocolate company, and now they're online. Victorian Visions of the Year 2000 is a most interesting browse.

(I found this over at Iconomy, by the way. Iconomy found the link at Sugar-n-Spicy, which is where you'll find links to other fun visual stuff, like antique table cards.)

BBC uncovers Scots jungle history.

A BBC Scotland expedition has uncovered a major haul of artefacts from a failed attempt to create a wealthy Scottish empire in the Panama jungle. The 17th century scheme - known as the Darien Venture - cost 2,000 lives, lost about half of the country's wealth and is said to have changed the course of Scotland's political history.

Many historians believe it also led many Scots to support the Act of Union and the abolition of the first Scottish Parliament in 1707.

A BBC Scotland film crew spent two weeks filming in the Panama jungle along with an international team of 12 archaeologists who helped retrace the steps of early Scottish pioneers.

During the expedition, the group found parts of the fortifications known as Fort St Andrews and the remains of huts in what was to be New Edinburgh, a communal oven and the wreck of a supply ship.

Darien had to be one of the boldest bids of its time, to set up a new colony - the basis for a new country - where the jungle was and still is the king. [continue]

Related links:
The Darien Venture - From BBC History
The Darien Adventure - from royalbank.co.uk
The Darien Scheme - The Fall of Scotland - from Historic UK
Darién scheme - from Wikipedia

From The Herald, Riddle of colossal flooding solved.

The mystery of the flooded amphitheatre has puzzled historians and scientists for almost 2000 years. But now an Edinburgh engineer has come up with a theory for how Emperor Titus flooded the Colosseum in Rome at its opening in 80AD.

A crowd of 87,000 cheering citizens and slaves had watched gladiators battle to the death in the arena that stood at the heart of the Roman empire. More than 5000 animals had been killed for sport.

But the highlight of the 100-day inauguration was a series of naval battles re-enacted in the Colosseum, according to Cassius Dio, chronicler of ancient Rome, who said: "Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water and brought in horses and bulls and other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land. He also brought in people on ships, who engaged in a sea-fight there, impersonating the Corcyreans and Corinthians."

His account left historians with a colossal question, only now answered by Martin Crapper, lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at Edinburgh University : Was the giant arena flooded to stage the mock sea battles - known as naumachiae -or were the naval re-enactments actually staged elsewhere in Rome?

Academics have long argued that holding sea battles at the Colosseum was impossible due to the underground tunnels used to spirit wild animals, slaves and gladiators to different parts of the arena.

Tales of thousands of slaves and convicts drowning in the sea battles with ships built to scale were told by Latin poets such as Martial, but were dismissed as sycophantic works of fantasy written to enhance the reputation of the emperor.

However, Dr Crapper believes he has solved the puzzle of the flooded Colosseum. [continue]

From SmallTimes.com: With one quick, tiny laser blast, ancient objects reveal secrets.

Archaeologists digging in the field might soon have a new tool at their disposal. In addition to the traditional trowel and brush, enter LMnt1 (pronounced Element One): a travel-size laser analytical instrument. It's a tool that can determine the elemental composition of an archaeological find in a few seconds. (...)

The instrument can be used to find out what kinds of alloys were used in gold-colored paint. Details on paint composition can tell researchers where an object came from, and can precisely date an item. The composition of white paint on pottery, for example, can reveal whether it came from a palace or from a poor village. Thanks to this kind of elemental information, researchers can theorize on the period and provenance of any object. And museums can find out whether an old painting was once restored. [continue]

From an article in the Edinburgh News:

IT was as important to a 15th- century aristocrat as a flash car and natty suit are to today's executives.

Beneath Edinburgh Castle's ancient floor, a status symbol that would have been treasured by a courtier of that period has been uncovered.

The simple counter - which would have been used to play backgammon or as a prototype calculator - may have been dropped by a member of King James IV's court, as he counted his riches or relaxed with his fellow aristocrats.

The find has given archaeologists a rare insight into the lives of the rich in Scotland in the 15th century.

Workmen found the deer antler counter in an old drainage pipe as they cleared a site in the Castle's Crown Square in a £3.5 million project to recreate its ancient prison vaults. [continue]

Montréal's Museum of Archaeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière has an amazing exhibition opening this week: Archaeology and the Bible — From King David to the Dead Sea Scrolls. From the museum's page about the exhibition:

Pointe-à-Callière and the Israel Museum are collaborating on an exceptional exhibition of international scope, to be presented in Montréal. Archaeology and the Bible — From King David to the Dead Sea Scrolls will bring back to North America for the first time in half a century three important scrolls discovered at Qumran, on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The scrolls will be accompanied by some one hundred archaeological pieces of remarkable aesthetic quality and symbolic and historic significance, many of them never before seen outside the State of Israel. The exhibition will lead visitors from the days of King David, 1000 years BCE, up to the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, in 70 CE.

Wow.

Here's an article about the exhibition from the Globe and Mail, Miracle of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Related links:

Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition Canada bound
Montreal museum to exhibit pieces of never-displayed Dead Sea Scrolls
Orion Centre for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Scrolls from the Dead Sea (Library of Congress Exhibition)
Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Well! I'd get a metal detector, too, if I lived in the sort of county where some hobbyist can find a royal seal matrix burried in a field. From the Independent:

A semi-pornographic royal seal, discovered in a field in East Anglia, is providing historians and archaeologists with vital clues to the life of one of the Dark Ages' most bizarre celebrities.

Queen Balthild is now thought to have been born an Anglian aristocrat, who was then sold into slavery. She married the King of the Franks, became a ruthless ruler and murderer, but was finally made a saint before she died.

With her somewhat intimidating name - Balthild means literally "Bold Battle" in Anglo-Saxon - she has long been an enigma to scholars of Dark Age history. But the discovery, by a metal-detector enthusiast, of her royal seal matrix buried in a field in East Anglia is shedding new light on her extraordinary story.

The gold seal matrix, which was originally attached to a ring, is one of the most important Dark Age artefacts ever found in Britain. On one side is a human face with her name inscribed around it in Frankish form. On the other side are two naked figures thought to portray Balthild and her husband, the Frankish (French) king, having sex. The respectable side, according to this month's BBC History magazine, was used to seal official documents, while the reverse was no doubt used to seal more private correspondence between royal husband and wife.

An analysis of her name suggests that Balthild was a member of one of the Anglian (rather than Saxon) tribes and therefore almost certainly came from an Anglian area, namely Suffolk or Norfolk.

Second, the field in which the seal matrix was found - just a few miles east of Norfolk's county town, Norwich - has been yielding further Anglo-Saxon finds, suggesting that the matrix came from a long-vanished settlement, conceivably associated with her descendants. [continue]

Related link:
Patron Saint Index: Saint Bathild

From the Guardian: Archaeologists unearth Britain's first cave pictures.

Archaeologists have discovered 12,000-year-old engravings carved by ancient Britons in a cave in Creswell Crags, Derbyshire. The depiction of the animals - which include a pair of birds - is the first example of prehistoric cave art in Britain. The discovery - by Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt, with Spanish colleague Sergio Ripoll - is set to trigger considerable scientific excitement, for it fills a major gap in the country's archeological record.

‘If this is verified, it represents a wonderful discovery,’ said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. ‘There are fine examples of cave art in Spain and France but none has been found here - until now.’

Modern humans appeared in Europe 45,000 years ago and quickly replaced the continent's occupants, the Neanderthals. One of the settlers' first acts was to create works of art, something no previous human species is believed to have done. The best preserved of these works are the galloping horses and charging rhinos painted on cave walls at Lascaux and Chauvet in France and at Altamira in Spain. [continue]

I like unusual grains, so couldn't resist taking a peek at this article, Ancient Grain Spelt Finds Niche in Modern World.

LONDON (Reuters) - Little-known strains of wheat such as spelt are making a comeback in health and environmentally conscious Europe. (...)

Spelt, a tall and gangly plant, was once a key source of grain nutrition for Europeans from Belgium, through the Upper Rhine valley, Bavaria and Switzerland into Austria, but it was driven to farming's fringes by mechanization some 150 years ago.

Higher in protein content than its nemesis soft wheat, it cannot compete with the latter's huge yields under the mineral fertilizers of industrial farming. The first harvesters also broke its brittle ears and severely cut yields.

But renewed health consciousness, the rise of organic farming, and the 900th anniversary of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German abbess and mystic, helped trigger a comeback in the rugged grain that thrives where its cousins wither.

(Emphasis mine.)

<boggle> What's Hildegard doing in an article about spelt? A web search found this reference at all-organic-food.com:

Some 800 years ago Hildegard von Bingen, (St.Hildegard) wrote about spelt: "The spelt is the best of grains. It is rich and nourishing and milder than other grain. It produces a strong body and healthy blood to those who eat it and it makes the spirit of man light and cheerful. If someone is ill boil some spelt, mix it with egg and this will heal him like a fine ointment."

Fascinating. And the Abtei St. Hildegard site even has a Spelt Products and Liqueur page.

Related links:
What St. Hildegard had to say (on spelt) - purityfoods.com
Nutritional content of spelt

Books:
From Saint Hildegard's Kitchen: Foods of Health, Foods of Joy
The Spelt Cookbook: Cooking With Nature's Grain for Life

A few spelt recipes (all untested):
Steamed Spelt
Steep Hill Spelt Recipes
Hi-Energy Cookies

From the Scotsman: Inquiry reveals archaeologist faked top finds.

Japan is having to hastily rewrite its entire pre-history after an archeologist known as "The Hands of God" was revealed to have systematically faked his fantastic discoveries.

For nearly 30 years, Shinichi Fujimura happened to be in exactly the right place at just the right time. He unearthed stone tools that offered a vast new treasure trove of data about Japan's middle Palaeolithic age. Other finds were dated to 100,000 years ago.

But a full-scale investigation by the Japanese Archeological Association has confirmed the worst - that Mr Fujimura , 53, was committing fraud on a vast scale.

He entirely fabricated his astonishing finds at 159 of the 178 sites he worked on, it concluded.

Mr Fujimura's career began to unravel after he was photographed by a Japanese newspaper journalist removing stone implements from a plastic bag and burying them at one set of ruins. [continue]

Related links:
Shinichi Fujimura's Stone Age Discoveries (incriminating photos)
Archaeological probe dismisses ‘findings’ of disgraced Fujimura

From the BBC: Boys 'bounced' in bizarre tradition.

A bizarre 14th century tradition which involves bouncing children on stones has been re-enacted in a south Wales town. Hundreds of people turned up to take part in the generations-old Beating the Bounds tradition of walking the boundary Llantrisant, near Pontypridd, on Saturday.

Around 500 completed the seven mile walk to mark out the town's border.

The event - which happens every seven years - involves a curious tradition of bouncing young boys on boundary stones so the children would remember where the edge of town lay. (...)

The Beating of the Bounds started after King Edward 1 presented the townsfolk with their first Charter in 1346.

He allowed them the freedom to trade without paying tolls within the boundaries of the town.

The tradition started as a celebration of these freemen's rights. [continue]

A Norwegian kid found a Viking ring on a class field trip. From Aftenposten:

A sixth grader unearthed a ring during a class outing to Borre National Park, where children could try their hands at archeology. The ring was likely part of a larger piece of woman's jewelry and probably over 1,000 years old, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reports.

Magnus Hempel Naess was on a field trip with Galleberg Elementary School from Sande when he made the exciting discovery at the Midgard Historical Center. Magnus was digging near the ship mound where the major Borre find was made.

"I was digging for something like this and there it was!" the sixth grader said. Magnus noticed the ring shining in the sun and gave it to archeologist Terje Gansum, even though it was tempting to pocket it.

"We had, after all, been told to turn in anything we found," Magnus said.

Gansum believes the ring hung with others like it in a necklace.

"From the size, which is 6mm (.23 inch) wide, and the execution, which is like gold leaf, it can't take much weight and is probably part of a larger woman's piece. It is of eastern inspiration, possibly from the Finnish or Baltic region," Gansum said.

"If the ring is part of the ship's mound it is 1,100 years old, or more," Gansum said. [continue]

Related links:
Midgard - historical centre in Vestfold
Midgard Historisk Senter - Midgard Historical Centre. (Site is in Norwegian; English version of the site is under construction.)
Tur til Midgard Hidtorisk Senter (in Norwegian, but mostly photos)

From the BBC, Roman barge excites archaeologists.

A 1,800-year-old barge that once sailed along the borders of the Roman Empire will rise to the surface again this month in the Netherlands.

The vessel is currently being excavated by archaeologists from the bottom of Heldammer Stroom, an offshoot of the old course of the River Rhine near the city of Utrecht.

First discovered in 1997, it is said to be beautifully preserved.

"It's very special," said Mr Andre Van Holk, the maritime archaeologist heading the research team.

"Most ships that have been found so far were deliberately stripped and sunk to fortify riverbanks and this is the first one that seems to have sunk due to natural causes." [continue]

Another one from the Telegraph: Anglo Saxon brooch has oldest writing in English.

What is believed to be the oldest form of writing in English ever found has been uncovered in an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. It is in the form of four runes representing the letters N, E, I and M scratched on the back of a bronze brooch from around AD650. The six inch cruciform brooch is among one million artefacts recovered from a site at West Heslerton, near Malton, North Yorks, since work began there in 1978. Dominic Powlesland, the archaeologist leading the excavation team, said: "This could well be the earliest example of written English we know of.

"Only one or two other runic inscriptions from around this period have been found, but this is either the earliest or one of them. We have no idea what the letters mean, except that it would have been something in early English.

"Whether it is a charm of some form, a person's initials or the first letters of a phrase is something only future research will be able to determine. It was obviously something treasured by its owner as it had been carefully repaired."

The site alongside the cemetery is the first Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain to be forensically excavated using modern techniques. [continue]

From the Times Online, Found: Queen Nefertiti's mummy.

British archeologists believe they may have identified the body of one of the most legendary beauties of the ancient world.

They are confident a tattered mummy found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is probably Queen Nefertiti, stepmother of the boy king Tutankhamun and one of the most powerful women in ancient Egypt.

The conclusion has been made after 12 years of research, using clues such as fragments of a wig and the piercing of the mummy's ears. The breakthrough came after the Egyptian authorities allowed the 3,500-year-old body to be examined in detail for the first time.

Under a pile of ancient linen, archeologists found a broken-off arm bent in a way that was permitted only if the dead person was a pharaoh or queen.

Joann Fletcher, a key member of the research team from York University, said: "It's a royal woman of the late 18th dynasty who wielded tremendous power. There are not many who fit that description. We can never have cast-iron certainty that it is Nefertiti but we have narrowed it right down." [continue]

From the People's Daily: Sculptures Unearthed near Ancient Beijing Bridge.

A group of stone sculptures believed to be up to 600 years old have been found buried near Beijing's famous Lugou Bridge.

Sources with the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics said that a host of sculptures depicting animals and people, and stone columns, were found in an area 100 meters long and eight meters deep. They were probably made during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), said Zhu Zhigang, a prestigious researcher with the institute.

One of the stone columns had an inscription about the maintenance of the bridge in May of 1498. (...)

Lugou Bridge was also called Marco Polo Bridge because the Italian traveler had described it as a "unique and the most magnificent" bridge in the world when he came to China during the 13th century. [full article]

Lugou Bridge - from chinapage.com

From the BBC: Ancient abbey's virtual world.

Tintern Abbey, near Chepstow in Monmouthshire, has been brought back to its former glory through an interactive tour which was created using technology seen in computer games.

People can now search the ruins from their PC and see what the abbey would have looked like in 1320 compared to today.

The abbey has been recreated to specific detail from the type of tiles used on the floor to any cracks in the windows. [continue]

Sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Still, I think I'd prefer to wander through the Tintern Abbey ruins again, and use my imagination for the rest.

Related links
CADW tour of Tintern Abbey
Tinturn Abbey - a few more photos.
Cistercians in Wales
Tintern Abbey - followup post found on the Diversions weblog

Trust the BBC to keep us up to date on medieval toilets.

...an exhibition in Paris sets out to show that toilet facilities in the Middle Ages may not have been as primitive as previously thought.

To prove their case, the curators have put on display the city's oldest water-closet, which was used by the de facto King of France between the years 1409 and 1413.

John the Fearless had a toilet that enjoyed all the facilities that the technology of the day had to offer.

Situated at the top of the tower that bears his name in the city's second arrondissement, the lavatory of Jean Sans Peur Duke of Burgundy has a padded seat, chimney heating and a system of air circulation for odour combat. [continue]

From the Herald Sun: Remains of ancient church found.

Archaeologists say they have unearthed the remains of a giant cathedral in eastern Germany known to have been built by Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great in the 10th Century.

"This is one of the most important finds on the history of the early Middle Ages in Europe," said dig leader Rainer Kuhn of the State Office for Archeology in Magdeburg. The researchers uncovered a stone crypt last week, and closer analysis confirmed their hunch that the grave site might be part of Otto the Great's cathedral, which a millennium ago was one of Europe's most opulent churches.

Laden with Italian marble, glass mosaic stones and glazed wall tiles — remains of which were all found at the site — the romanesque cathedral was as extraordinary in its beauty as in its size.

"It was the largest house of worship north of the Alps apart from the Cologne Cathedral," said Kuhn, adding that it was believed to have measured 80 metres long and 60 metres high. [continue]

Related link:
Magdeburg - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Skeleton holds key to Holy Roman cathedral - from abc.net.au

This could jazz up a lot of museum websites! From the BBC: Virtual future for ancient relics.

A 3D scanning technique being tested at the British Museum could pave the way for virtual museum displays.

The museum is making digital copies of fragile clay tablets from ancient Iraq using a new laser scanning method.

"It's a bit like a photocopier but a million times more powerful," explained Dr Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper in the Department of the Ancient Near East.

After scanning the object, a 3D image is created, which could be published on a website.

The data can also be used to steer robotic machinery to cut out an exact replica of the original.

"You have to imagine that you have a block of cheese. You turn on the machine and the laser cuts out this cheese in three dimensions," Dr Finkel told the BBC programme Go Digital.

The idea started last year, when museum curators from Iraq requested copies of 1,000 clay tablets to furnish a new exhibition in Mosel. It will be dedicated to King Ashurbanipal, who reigned over the region in seven BC.

The British Museum currently houses thousands of tablets from the king's personal library.

They contain tiny millimetre-deep inscriptions written in cuneiform - the oldest type of writing known.

These ancient pages include dictionaries, fictional stories and lists of farming stock.

Copying this many objects using traditional resin moulds would take several years. But using the new laser scanner, the production time would be cut to weeks. [continue]

Tiberias archaeological digs uncover the remains of 12th century Crusader fortress:

Archaeological digs being carried out by the Antiquities Authority in the old city of Tiberias have revealed impressive remains of the gate and wall of the city's 12th century Crusader fortress. The digs are part of a tourism development project initiated by the Tourism Ministry.

The digs are underway along the Lake Kinneret promenade, close to the Rabbi Haim Abulafiya ancient synagogue, with the assistance of the Tiberias Municipality and the Avnei Derekh and Rushrush companies.

One of the posts of the gate that has been uncovered shows a portion of a magnificently decorated crossbeam. According to Yossi Stapensky, who is overseeing the dig on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, "It appears that this item, which originated from a public building from the Roman era, was incorporated into the fort to beautify the gate and impress all those coming into the city."

The wall of the fortress is constructed of large basalt stones and is the widest (3.4 meters) uncovered till now in Tiberias. Portions of the wall are also believed to have come from a public structure from the Roman era. [continue]

From the BBC: Ancient brick found in cupboard.

A retired lawyer has told how he found a 4,000-year-old mud brick wrapped in a paper bag in the back of a wardrobe. Paul Morrison, 48, of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, was helping clear his cousin's house in Cambridge when he found a package in a cardboard box.

Experts have examined the brick, about the size of a large biscuit tin, and confirmed that it came from Ur - modern-day Iraq - and dates back to about 2300BC.

The brick, which could have come from the side of a tomb, is now going on show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

"It is one of those things that you wouldn't believe until you see it," said Mr Morrison, who is studying for an Open University degree in history. [continue]

Related link:
Fitzwilliam Museum

From iccoventry.co.uk: Monk's resting place uncovered.

Archaeologists have uncovered a 14th century gravestone which marks the final resting place of a Coventry monk. (...)

Made out of Purbeck marble, it would have originally been laid in the floor on the east side of the south wall inside the magnificent Chapter House.

The gravestone shows it marks the final resting spot of a sub-prior called John Aylmer.

No exact date of death is known, although experts say the stone is typical of those dating from the early 1300s. It appears to be backed by historical records which show a priest called John Aylmer witnessed the signing of deeds in Coventry in 1280.

The writing on the slab is in excellent condition decorated with a phrase in French which says: "You who pass this way pray for the Sub-Prior John Aylmer who lies within."

Margaret Rylatt, archaeological consultant to the Phoenix Initiative, is excited by the discovery. She said: "To be buried here on the east side of the Chapter House means that John Aylmer was an important person.

"It is a particularly fine example of a 14th century gravestone because - unlike many others - the detail and decoration on it is first-class because it has been buried and not walked upon over the last 700 years. [continue]

From an article in the print version of today's Vancouver Sun:

About 100 Inuit from the Nunavut town of Cambridge Bay have given saliva samples to genetic researchers from Iceland who are trying to solve one of the enduring mysteries of the New World: Did Viking voyagers who settled in Greenland and Nefoundland 1,000 years ago — but whose descendants inexplicably vanished by the 1400s — disappear because they intermarried with and were eventually absorbed the the Inuit?

The study, University of Iceland anthropologist Gisli Palsson says, aims to resolve the debate surrounding the fate of the Norse colony as well as the controversy sparked by Canadian explorer Vilhjamur Stefansson's alleged discovery of "Blond Eskimos" on Victoria Islan in 1911.

Stefannson's claim caused an international sensation but eventually tarnished his reputation in scientific circles.

"It's still one of the mysteries of the archeology of the north," says Palsson. The last thing we hear of the Norse colony is in the early 15th century, when there was an invitation to a wedding in western Greenland. After that, not a word. When a Scandinavian missionary arrived in 1721, the colony is gone; all that's left is the physical remains." (...)

Theories about the collapse of the Norse settlements abound. Did the colonists — who numbered about 5,000 at their peak — succumb to a plague or an attack by hostile Inuit? Did they stareve to death in an era when climactic change made farming impossible and Viking pride prevented them from acquiring survival skills from their native trading partners?

"They didn't adopt harpoons, they didn't adopt skin clothing and they didn't adopt skin boats," U.S. archeologist Thomas McGovern told Discover magazine in 1997. "The extinction of the Norse in Greenland, aided certainly as it was by climactic change, could have been avoided if they had [taken] more of these adaptations from the Inuit."

Palsson, who is writing a biography of Stefansson, doesn't rule out the possibility Norse expeditions to Newfoundland, Labrador and Baffin Island led gradually to peaceful intermingling with the Inuit, abandonment of the Greenland settlements and, finally, assimilation.

Related links:
Inuit Genetic History and The Fate of the Norse Settlements - from circumpolarroute.org
Nunavut - from wikipedia.org
About Cambridge Bay - from polarnet.ca
Gisli Palsson's home page

From the Guardian, Fit for a king: George II's kitchen secrets revealed.

All King George II's subjects could do was sing about being given a partridge in a pear tree for Christmas. The king got three partridges, it was disclosed yesterday - and ate them for his festive dinner. The hungry monarch also got 24 larks, seven quails, six snipe, three teals, three pullets and three cockerels. These were snacks in a 27-course royal banquet which began with plum broth, included asparagus, oysters and turkey and groaned to a halt with hasty pudding and, as a savoury, loach.

Every titbit of this epic gourmandising by George and his guests on Christmas Day 1737 is revealed in two royal household manuscripts for the period.

Not inappropriately, the official who kept the fuller of these records held the title Yeoman of the Mouth to His Majesty's Privy Kitchen. In effect, he was George's head cook.

The documents will be offered for sale in London by the York antiquarian booksellers Ken Spelman's early next month, when they are expected to fetch £35,000.

They list all the royal menus for nearly two years while George was Prince of Wales, and for 18 months towards the end of his reign. [continue]

From the People's Daily: Ancient Stone Table Found in N. China.

A 460-year-old stone table used in an ancient temple has been unearthed in Qingxian County of Hebei Province.

Workers on a construction site in Juedao village found the relic, a columnar stone object 53 centimeters high and 33 centimeters in diameter with a pronounced bulge around its middle. (...) The table was used for ceremonial purposes in pagodas as a memorial to dead nuns or monks. [continue]

From the BBC, Peruvian farmers learn from history.

Agricultural techniques perfected by Inca farmers 500 years ago are beginning to have a dramatic effect on the incomes of today's farmers in Pampachiri, one of the poorest areas of Peru.

An ancient water transport system, developed by the Wira people and refined by the Incas, has been restored by the Cusichaca Trust NGO using traditional methods.

Clay, stone, sand, and a certain type of cactus juice, have restored the system of canals and terraces, in turn helping repair the area's shattered economy.

"This is what we specialise in - rather than using cement or other materials brought from outside," Douglas Walsh, of the Cusichaca Trust, told the BBC World Service's Discovery programme.

"We use locally-available materials to help farmers irrigate their terraced land." [continue]

From ScienceDaily.com: Research Recreates Ancient Roman Virtual Reality With 21st Century 3-D Technology.

The remains of Pompeii's ancient villas show that the Romans decorated their villas with extravagant wall paintings of theatre scenes that used tricks of perspective to impress guests with what seemed at the time an early version of virtual reality. Now, researchers at the University of Warwick are transforming these ancient forms of perspective painting into the 21st century version of virtual reality using 3-D digital models that allow viewers to tread the boards of long-lost Roman theatres.

The ancient wall paintings of stage-sets suggest 3-D architectural structures on 2-D surfaces. The technique of perspective scenic painting, or skegnographia, first evolved in 5th century BC Greek theatre and embellished flat façades of stage buildings. Later, the Romans adapted the skill to decorate their homes.

The project, carried out by The University of Warwick's e-lab in conjunction with Professor Richard Beacham from the University's School of Theatre Studies, combines the Roman wall paintings and state-of-the-art computer modelling to transform our understanding of ancient stages. From the ancient ornate wall paintings, the structure and scenes of the actual stage buildings are recreated, so researchers can explore 3-D theatre models and provide insights impossible to obtain from a flat diagram or book. [continue]

Related link:
Roman 'virtual reality' recreated - BBC

Fascinating news for Roman history buffs: Rome - another Italian city on water?

Early Rome was not as we imagine it. It was a "shimmering city on water" and — like Venice — subject to frequent flooding, according to a leading American archaeologist.

Professor Albert Ammerman, who was educated in Britain and is known for his work on the archaeology of Venice as well as the origins of the Roman Forum, says that he has established that the Tiber "was not where it is today. It was a much broader river, stretching to the foot of Capitol Hill. This means that we have to completely rethink our idea of early Rome".

Professor Ammerman's discovery shows that "a traveller approaching Rome in the Republican era — say at the time of the Punic Wars — would have seen an astonishing sight: the Temple of Jupiter towering above him on Capitol Hill, but also a line of other great temples on the river bank, appearing to rise out of the water."

The remains of the riverside temples are now marooned in a busy thoroughfare 100 yards back from the present Tiber embankment, "and we tend to assume that that was pretty much the case in ancient times too. But, in fact, the river was where the road now is, right under Capitol Hill," he says.

Professor Ammerman, who studied environmental archaeology at London University and now teaches at Colgate University in New York, obtained the consent of the Rome city council to drill 24 "cores" or bore holes in and near the Velabrum Valley, which lies between the Capitoline and Palatine Hills and leads to the Forum.

"The material extracted shows us that there was a man-made riverbank much further inland from the present Tiber," he says. "There is a structure of cappellacio tufa blocks used in the sixth century followed by grotta oscura, another kind of volcanic rock which we know the Romans brought from the Etruscan city of Veii and used for building after they conquered it in 396BC." This dating has been confirmed by experts from Oxford University.

Ammerman says that until now scholars have underestimated "the dynamic nature of the Tiber, the extent to which it rises and falls. Since the modern embankment was built in the late 19th century the river has been channelled. But in fact it can go from three metres above sea level to between eleven and thirteen metres. This means it would have flooded the Velabrum regularly, creating an effect in Rome not unlike the acqua alta of Venice."

Ammerman says this explains why the Temple of Vesta, the Temple of Portunus, the god of harbours, and temples to Janus, Hope and Juno — now incorporated into the 12th-century Church of San Nicola in Carcere — were built on podiums some 15 metres high. [continue]

From the BBC: Police seek out Roman potter.

A police fingerprint expert has been helping archaeologists track the work of a 1st Century Roman potter.

David Goodwin, head of Northamptonshire Police's Fingerprint Bureau, was drafted in to help prove fragments of pottery found in London were cast by the same man.

A ceramics specialist at the Museum of London, approached the police for help after discovering prints on the ancient Roman relics.

It is thought to be the first time that criminal fingerprinting techniques have been used to assist an archaeological dig. [continue]

From the BBC, Ancient Nicaraguan society found.

Archaeologists have discovered what they describe as a previously unknown ancient civilisation in Central America.

The site, near the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, dates from before the Mayan era, and relics include what appears to be a centre for mass production of ceremonial columns.

Researchers have been working on the site at El Cascal de Flor de Pino, near the town of Kukra Hill for six years.

They've found evidence of an ancient town and several outlying villages, which developed around 2,700 years ago and lasted for a thousand years.

There are monuments, petroglyphs (rock paintings) and pottery, and most remarkably, an area where many huge columns were formed out of rock - columns which may have been used at burial sites. [continue]

From the Harvard Crimson Online: Rare Codex To Help Solve Mysteries of Mexico's Past.

After nearly two decades of sitting in a cramped safety deposit box, a 16th century manuscript called crucial to understanding Mexican history has resurfaced —and scholars from Harvard are joining an effort to decipher the long-lost historical gem.

Scholars from Harvard's David Rockefeller Center will join Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia, to study, restore and publish their findings about the rare codex, which survived the Spaniards' purge of manuscripts in the 16th century. [continue]

From the International Herald Tribune: In the Italian dust, signs of a past Jewish life.

An excited archaeologist leads a visitor to a wooden board protecting a discovery made just the previous afternoon. It is a seven-branched candelabra, the original symbol of the Jews, carved into a slab found at a burial niche. The carving is so sharp and clean, it might have been completed yesterday.

The quality and clarity foreshadow even more important finds likely to come. The catacomb is only one of dozens of Jewish sites, artifacts, documents, rare books and manuscripts being discovered, analyzed and restored in southern Italy and Sicily. This work by scholars and government authorities is beginning to flesh out the largely unknown story of vibrant yet long-lost communities of Jews that inhabited the region from Roman times to the end of the Middle Ages. Jews were expelled from southern Italy, known then as the Kingdom of Naples, in the 16th century. [continue]

From an article at the Oregonian:

Amid the ruined temples of a civilization abandoned 4,000 years ago in southern Iraq, archaeologists on a 1968 expedition noted a striking parallel: Fragments of the long-extinct Sumerian civilization they were unearthing seemed to depict the present-day lives of the nearby tribal people.

They speared fish from slender wooden boats, herded water buffalo and fashioned fantastic vaulted houses from the few building materials the marshes had to offer: reeds, clay and buffalo dung.

Their secluded villages dotted the vast marshes and stream-braided lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Dwellings and barns straddled the waters on fixed islands laboriously constructed from layer upon layer of hand-woven reed matting and mud. [continue]

In China, new caves have been found in ancient buddhist grottoes.

Provincial cultural relics officials in Zhengzhou has (sic) reported the discovery of several new caves and niches under a highway in the renowned Longmen Grottoes in Luoyang City of central China's Henan Province.

The provincial cultural relics protection administration said that the new caves and niches were discovered by workers rebuilding a highway running across the grottoes area. The Luoyang city government had begun work on the highway in mid-April of this year.

The caves and niches, which contain more than ten beautiful Buddha figures, are believed to have been built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). [continue]

From the Telegraph: Archaeologists stroll down Roman high street.

A Roman high street, complete with a pedestrian walkway, shops and a roadside shrine where weary travellers could refresh their spirits and curse their enemies, has been unearthed by archaeologists.

The 200-yard stretch of Roman village life was uncovered in farmland destined for a housing estate in Northamptonshire. The site is so large, and the finds so plentiful, that archaeologists have yet to uncover many of its secrets.

But because the street and foundations are so well preserved, researchers say it will offer an exceptional glimpse into life in a typical Roman roadside settlement.

The remains were found to the north of Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire. [continue]

From u.tv, O'Neill castle remains found.

Remains of a medieval castle believed to be one of the first built in Ulster have been uncovered in a former County Tyrone military base.

They are thought to date back to the early 14th Century and to have been built by Irish chieftain Domnall O'Neill.

Archaeologists have examined the site in the centre of Dungannon and recovered thousands of artefacts, but it has now disappeared under tonnes of concrete in preparation for development.

While the sealing of the site will preserve the remains, it prevents further exploration. (...)

Castle Hill in Dungannon has long been pinpointed by historians as the location of the O`Neill stronghold, dating back to the 10th century, but contemporary references to the castle are few. [continue]

From discovery.com, Egyptian Mummy's Life, Death Revealed.

High-tech analysis of a mummy, nicknamed "Cleo," is shedding light on the life and burial of the middle class woman inside the wrappings who lived 2,000 years ago in Egypt.

Late last month she underwent a CAT scan, or computerized tomography, which digitally reconstructs three-dimensional objects using thousands of photographed slices. A laser scan also was done on the outside surface of the mummy, making this the first time these two processes have been performed on a mummy.

Together, the laser and CT scans will enable researchers to create what could be the most accurate facial reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian. The analysis also is revealing intriguing details about Cleo's life, death and burial. [continue]

From the Daily Record: Vikings raped, pillaged, then did ironing.

Vikings were responsible for introducing ironing to Scotland.

The pillaging Scandinavians were surprisingly conscious of their appearance and regularly smoothed their clothes.

Excavations across Scotland have revealed evidence that the Nordic warriors used ironing boards and smoothing stones to make the job easier.

Dr Euan MacKie, of Glasgow University, said he found out about the ironing culture by chance 10 years ago, when his colleague's child found a piece of a whalebone on the Hebridean island of North Uist.

He said: "It is probably right to say Vikings introduced ironing to Scotland."

"The archaeological findings from before the Viking era have produced no evidence of similar activity. " [continue]

From the Guardian, New view of medieval window.

Gloucester Cathedral is famous today as the location of the cloisters used in the Harry Potter films. But from next weekend visitors will be able to see, in close-up and glorious colour, one of its more magical and magnificent features. For the first time the cathedral's newly restored 650-year-old stained-glass great east window is going on show from nearby vantage points in the choir, just a few metres from its glowing colours.

The window, 22 metres by 12 metres (72ft by 38ft), is just about the biggest expanse of medieval glass in Britain.

Created in 1350, it has survived the wars of the roses, the reformation, and even its removal into storage during the second world war. More than three-quarters of the original glass is intact.

The ingenuity of the medieval craftsmen means that a whispering gallery spans the window, and that it can be seen unusually close-to and from a vantage point some way up, rather than from below.

Cleaning - more than 150,000 cotton buds were used in a painstaking operation involving the use of ionised water - has revealed in new detail several intriguing figures in the glass.

They include, at the top where God the Father might normally be expected, the figure of an early pope, complete with traditional triple-crown mitre, who has presided over the Anglican cathedral unnoticed for nearly 500 years since its adherence changed during the Reformation. [continue]

From BBC News, 10 things we didn't know this time last week:

When Elizabeth I wrote to her suitors, she used a secret love code of Old French sprinkled with Greek and Roman letters. That code has been broken by a retired crossword compiler and a cryptographer from British intelligence, who worked out that each Roman, Greek and nonsense letter has an equivalent in the conventional alphabet, for instance pi equals e.

Anybody have more details about this?

Related link:
National Maritime Museum - Elizabeth exhibition

Related book:
Elizabeth I: The Exhibition Catalogue

From Frankfurter Allemeigne Zeitung: A triumph over the Romans seen as the birth of the German nation.

From the Alps to the North Sea everyone would probably be speaking a mixture of French, Italian and Spanish, and it is unlikely there would ever have been a German Empire. History would have taken a different course, and Europe would be a very different place, if the Varus Battle had not taken place.

This battle — 1,994 years ago, in AD 9 in the Teutoburg Forest — stopped the expansion of the Roman Empire into Germania, and sent the advancing Romans reeling back toward the Rhine, from where they would never venture north again. In the 19th century it became an important part of the mythology of German nationalism, and many patriotic Germans continue to see Arminius's victory over three Roman legions as the birth of the German nation.

Hence the interest in a new exhibition at the Archeological Museum Frankfurt on the legend of the Varus Battle, centering around numerous relics found by archeologists almost two millennia after this historic event.

Over the centuries, as many as 700 towns and places in Germany and the Netherlands have claimed that they were the site of this devastating defeat for an empire accustomed to victorious triumph. Today, however, almost all historians and archeologists are in agreement that the ravines, thick forests, marshlands and bogs where the Teutons trapped the armies of the Roman governor Varus were north of the present-day Lower Saxony city of Osnabrück. Specifically, between a forest and a bog at the foot of the Kalkriese hill.

The great German historian Theodor Mommsen suspected this as early as 1885, though other experts on Roman history did not believe him, and only a decade earlier a giant statue commemorating the battle had been built some 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south. It took a British amateur archeologist and a couple of Roman catapult projectiles and coins that he dug up in 1997 at the foot of the Kalkriese to convince archeologists that a systematic excavation of the area might be worthwhile. They started their work in 1989 and soon thereafter found the iron mask of a knight. [continue]

The Budapest Sun has just published an article about the "labyrinthine network of caverns and passageways" in Castle Hill, Budapest:

During the middle ages, the existing caverns, formed by the thermal water, were linked up by man-made passages. The population of Castle Hill had started to expand after the Mongol invasion of 1242. King Béla IV ordered the building of the Buda Castle. In Medieval Buda, 300 houses had 285 wells fed by "cave water". King Béla IV chose the hill, partly because of its strategic location, and because its wells and caves provided water and protection for castle dwellers even in times of battle.

The inhabitants of the medieval castle region probably chanced upon the caves hidden in the depths of the hill while digging wells, even before the castle was built, as exploration work has revealed cave development from as early as the 11th century. It is possible that the arrangement of houses on the surface was laid out according to the cave cellars below.

Fables tell of secret tunnels and covert military actions. One legend has it that during King Mátyás's rule in the 15th century there was a tunnel used as an escape route that led to Margitsziget. Engineers poured cold water on this theory, saying it would have been discovered when digging the tunnel for the second metro. However, one tunnel, leading all the way to Budatétény, 22km away, has been explored. The existence of another supposed tunnel to Visegrád, 40km north, has not been proved.

Rock cellars, partly filled with silt, were discovered during the reconstruction of the medieval Church of Our Lady (Mátyás templom) in the 1870s. The Civil Engineering Authority commissioned Ignác Schubert to survey all the cavities. Schubert made the first survey of the underground city in 1882, discovering 120 rock cellars in an area from Szent György tér as far as Bécsi kapu. [full story]

Related link:
Caves in Budapest - from budapestinfo.hu

I don't suppose you're building a cromlech in your garden, are you? A farmer in Devon has built one on his property, though, because he wants to be burried in it. From the BBC: Farmer builds own burial chamber.

A Devon farmer has realised his dream by building a Bronze Age burial chamber on his land.

Gavin Dollard transported four huge pieces of granite from Dartmoor to his estate near Ivybridge to carry out the construction.

It is thought to be the first time in 2,000 years that a cromlech - defined as a prehistoric monument made of stones and thought to be a burial tomb - has been built in the UK. [continue]

Related link:
Photo of ancient cromlech

From the Guardian, an article about Pope Julian II and the portrait Raphael painted of him: 'Why a book? Show me with a sword':

The National Gallery is home to one of Raphael's great masterpieces: a painting that influenced Titian and Velazquez, that haunts the history of western art. But it is not the Madonna of the Pinks, the painting the gallery is campaigning to buy.

Raphael's portrait of Pope Julius II was a masterpiece acquired, as it were, by accident in 1970, when what was thought to be a copy was recognised as the original, and therefore as one of the most precious creations of the Renaissance. But to understand why it is so unique, you have to begin at a siege 500 years ago.

It was a scene that a few years later would make wonderful Reformation propaganda, something out of a German woodcut of the Apocalypse in which the anti-Pope rides over the land bringing death, pestilence, famine and war. The French and Italian defenders of the besieged fortress of Mirandola in the Duchy of Ferrara, which Julius was attacking as part of his campaign to drive France out of Italy, looked down from their battlements in 1511 and saw a vision out of a nightmare. A white-haired fury was riding up and down the attacking army, barking orders, abusing slackers, praising where praise was due, filling his army with heart and rage. Pope Julius II led from the front. His headquarters was so close to the walls of Mirandola that a cannon shot killed two staff in his kitchen. This just made him angrier. The defenders ended up putting their last efforts into trying to kill the Pope as he egged on his men. When they offered to surrender, he quibbled over the clause that he should spare their lives.

Giuliano della Rovere was born in 1443. There was amazement when he was elected Pope 60 years later, in 1503. The cardinal was a known troublemaker, "notoriously difficult by nature and formidable with everyone", in an age when no one expected Popes to be exactly holier than thou. The Papacy was a landowner, a political state, a diplomatic office - too important to be left to the clergy.

Giuliano della Rovere was a man dedicated to the Church. It was just that he believed in the Church militant rather than pious. He had less faith in the power of prayer than in power, pure and simple. Michelangelo once asked him if, in the bronze statue he commissioned the Florentine sculptor to make of him in Bologna, Julius would like to be shown with a book in his left hand, to signify scholarship. "Why a book?" he replied. "Show me with a sword." [continue]

Related links:
Pope Julius II - Catholic Encyclopedia
Julius II (Pope, 1503-1513) - Luminarium
Pope Julius II, Raphael (1511-12) - Guardian
National Gallery

From the BBC, Gilgamesh tomb believed found.

Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history.

The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name.

Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King.

"I don't want to say definitely it was the grave of King Gilgamesh, but it looks very similar to that described in the epic," Jorg Fassbinder, of the Bavarian department of Historical Monuments in Munich, told the BBC World Service's Science in Action programme.

In the book - actually a set of inscribed clay tablets - Gilgamesh was described as having been buried under the Euphrates, in a tomb apparently constructed when the waters of the ancient river parted following his death.

"We found just outside the city an area in the middle of the former Euphrates river the remains of such a building which could be interpreted as a burial," Mr Fassbinder said. [continue]

Related links:
Epic of Gilgamesh

Update, May 6th, 2003:
Experts search for grave of legendary Gilgamesh

From the Daily Yomiuri: Imperial porcelain unearthed.

More than 300 dishes and bowls decorated with the Imperial chrysanthemum seal, believed to be made between the 17th and 19th centuries, have been unearthed at the Kyoto Imperial Palace in Kamigyo Ward, Kyoto, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

They are reportedly Arita ware porcelain, made in Aritamachi, Saga Prefecture. They were believed to be made at the request of the Imperial family and given to aristocrats.

According to historians, it is the first time so many dishes and bowls with the Imperial chrysanthemum seal have been excavated. They said the unearthed objects could help them imagine how tables of aristocrats and the Imperial family were decorated. [continue]

From the BBC, Prehistoric cavern unearthed.

The largest prehistoric man-made cavern in the world may be hidden under a north Wales peninsula. The cavern is part of a Bronze Age copper mine complex which was first uncovered in 1987 at Great Orme's Head near Llandudno.

Archaeologists excavating the 4,000-year-old site made their latest discovery 130ft below ground in December and have estimated it is at least 50ft in length.

They know the roof area is large, but will have to dig down through many layers of silt before they discover exactly how deep it is.

They have previously excavated four miles of tunnels at the complex, which is the largest Bronze Age copper mine in the world and is open to the public. (...) Surveys indicate there are about 10 miles of tunnels in the area. [continue]

Related link:
Kendrick's Cave - from Llandudno Tourism.

From the BBC, Earth's ancient sea water to be analysed.

British scientists are about to pioneer a way of investigating water droplets that have survived from seas where the Earth's first microbes developed 3.8bn years ago.

"This will be the oldest sea water ever investigated. We should learn a lot by comparing it with much later samples," said David Banks, of Leeds University, who is working on the project with colleagues in Denmark and South Africa.

A £1m laboratory opens in Leeds today to house the laser equipment which will be used to penetrate minute "wet" pockets in emerald and quartz crystals. Known as "fluid inclusions", the microscopic remnants of the Archean age are possible clues as to how life developed on a hostile planet. [continue]

From the BBC, Bustard project takes off.

Ornithological experts from Russia have just finished visiting Wiltshire as part of a project to bring a rare bird back to the UK.

The great bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world, but has not been seen in the UK since the 1870s.

Six Russian experts are working with the UK Great Bustard Group, the Zoological Society of London and Stirling University in an ambitious plan to return the bird to the country.

David Walters, head of the Great Bustard Group, told BBC News Online that the bustard was the most impressive bird he had ever seen.

"It is very handsome and quite tall: a male can reach the waist of an average person.

"It is the missing part of Wiltshire's natural and cultural heritage. On the coat of arms it is the county bird." [continue]

From the Italian website AGI Online, Pompeii: "Roman" wine being auctioned also on Internet.

The wine is called "villa of mysteries" and the 1721 bottles of it produced in 2001 will be auctioned (also via the web) next April 29th. Its characteristics are not only those of traditional wine (red, with an alcoholic grade of 13.5 percent, made from 90 percent Piedirosso grapes and 10 percent Sciascinoso grapes), but above all is notable for being produced with different techniques but the same sort of technology as used by the Romans in Pompeii before the eruption of August 23 in 79 AD. The first batch produced which have been entrusted by Pompeii's Archeological Bureau to a well-known wine-making company in Campania, that is bottles 1 to 6, are destined to the President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, under whose patronage the experimentation was carried out that since 1996 has brought to today's auction. The other bottles will be sold in an auction carried out in the first place by the Finarte-Semenzato House, and then later on an internet address.

Update: See also Experts recreate the Pompeii wine praised by Pliny at the Telegraph's website.

From the StraightsTimes, Excavation at Padang opens doors to ancient city.

An archaeological excavation at the Padang has turned up artefacts to support the theory that there was already an ancient city teeming with trade in Singapore as early as the 14th century.

Numerous artefacts, including Chinese coins from the Tang (AD 618-907) and Sung (AD 760-1279) dynasties, porcelain shards from the Yuan (AD 1260-1368) dynasty and beads from India, have been dug up from a 4.5 m by 2 m patch of ground just outside the Singapore Cricket Club.

Associate Professor John Miksic, who is leading the dig, said the site is 'very rich with artefacts, perhaps because there hasn't been any construction on it'.

In fact, the team of eight, including staff from the Singapore History Museum and volunteers, made substantial finds after digging down just 80 cm.

What is particularly significant about this excavation is that it is the first dig in the heart of the ancient part of the city to throw up so many artefacts. [continue]

From nature.com, Dart thrower caught on camera.

The atlatl - pronounced "at-la-tal" - is a hand-held spear-thrower that was developed in northern Africa 25,000 years ago. Now high-speed video imaging of modern-day atlatl throws could help to settle archeologists' debates about the design and construction of the simple but effective gadgets.

Atlatls spread all over the world before being largely superceded, around 10,000 years ago, by the bow and arrow. The atlatl's springy lever action flings flexible, lightweight darts at speeds of more than 100 kilometres per hour over distances of more than 200 metres.

From digitized footage of atlatl throws, Californian electronics researcher and primitive-technology enthusiast Richard Baugh has developed a computer model of the weapon's performance. By varying its parameters, such as the mass and flexibility of the atlatl or dart, Baugh can explore the effects of these specifications on throwing speed.

Atlatls look rather like huge crochet hooks. They have a wooden shaft 30-100 centimetres long, with a handgrip at one end and a spur at the other into which a dart slots before being shot out with a flick of the wrist. The weapon works on the same principle as the gizmos sold in pet stores to help dog owners throw tennis balls.

A few atlatls have a curious weight, called a banner stone, mounted halfway up the shaft. Some archeologists argue that these stones were counterweights to increase throwing performance - others believe that they were merely decorative. [continue]

From ABC News, Australia: Three-year Cairo dig turns up ancient tombs.

A team of French archaeologists has unearthed a complex of tombs south of Cairo which date back to between 2350 BC and 2180 BC, Egyptian officials say.

The discovery of the tombs, hewn out of the rock in the Saqqara region, 20 kilometres south of the capital, was the fruit of a three-year dig, antiquities chief Zahi Hawas said.

One of the tombs is believed to be that of a priest of the Sixth Dynasty pharaoh, Pepi I.

Sculptures of the priest, his wife and 13 children, were found in the walls. [continue]

From The Herald, Archaeologists race against time in search of medieval relics.

Relics of Glasgow's medieval past have been found on the site of a former car park in the city centre.

Pottery from the fourteenth century and foundations of nineteenth-century tenements, plus cobblestones, have so far been unearthed, although the ultimate prize, a fifteenth-century Franciscan friary garden, has still to be discovered.

But time is running out before the site is turned into a £55m science park, and archaeologists have only two more weeks to dig deeper before formal construction work begins and further secrets of how people lived and worked centuries ago are buried beneath the concrete.

It is suspected the site could hold the remains of an extension to the convent of Franciscan (Grey) Friars, founded in 1473, and widely believed to contain friary gardens - an oasis of calm in the centre of then Old Glasgow, from where the city developed. [continue]

From reuters.com, Pompeii Offers a Whiff of Ancient Rome.

Entombed in volcanic ash 2,000 years ago, Pompeii has long offered visitors a glimpse of ancient Roman life. Now they can also get a sniff.

Directors at the sprawling archaeological site inaugurated "The Perfumer's House" on Tuesday and took the stoppers off 15 different perfumes concocted after a decade of research.

Lily, rose, basil and fennel are just a few of the heady scents that once fired the imaginations of ancient Romans, said Anna Maria Ciarallo, Pompeii's head of biological research.

"Finally, and based on scientific research, we can give Pompeii back some of its fragrance," she said.

Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in a fiery deluge in 79 AD. Hundreds of temples, villas and fleeing Romans were trapped in the shower of volcanic ash. It is now one of the world's most-visited tourist sites.

The perfumes, which often mixed spices imported from Egypt and India with native plants, will be on display at Pompeii until June 2 along with copies of the bronze, glass and alabaster vials found at the site.

From the National Geographic, Bible-Era Artifacts Highlight Archaeology Controversy.

Dug up or done up? Recently publicized artifacts from the Bible lands have stirred unusual controversy among archaeologists and other scientists. It's not unusual for archaeologists to turn up fragments and shards in a structured dig as they sift through rubble and examine remnants of buildings and caves. Teams of archaeologists and adventurers regularly trek to Israel and other countries in the near Middle East hoping to unearth Biblical-era artifacts.

However, when artifacts emerge on the scene quite apart from archaeological digs, experts rightly question authenticity. Further, when an owner can't prove provenance of an artifact and lacks a certifiable history of the item's origins, there's reason to wonder where the artifact came from. Artifacts without documentation that are promoted by dealers or private collectors require informed impartial scrutiny. Looted artifacts also find their way into the clandestine international antiquities market.

Antiquities from the distant past are difficult to date precisely. The time span during which materials like papyrus, bone, stone, pottery and glass age can be measured, but not with absolute precision. Usually, when artifacts emerge in the course of an archaeological expedition, documentation accompanies the discoveries. [continue]

Related mirabilis.ca entries:
Ancient bone box found - link to Jesus?
Ancient Israeli tablet found

More coin news! This time somebody's found rare coins dating from the second Jewish rebellion.

Israeli archaeologists excavating caves near the Dead Sea have found nine rare silver coins believed to date back to a failed Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century.

The coins add another layer to the story of the families Shimon Bar Kochba led into hiding in the caves of the Judean Desert -- what turned out to be the end of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans, which resulted in their exile. Archaeological finds relating to the three-year rebellion are rare.

About 2,000 coins from the rebellion are known to exist, and this is only the second time archaeologists have found such coins on a dig, said Hanan Eshel, who led the digs and is the head of the Jewish Studies and Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University.

Of particular rarity is the largest Jewish coin ever issued, a half-ounce silver coin known as the Petra Drachma.

One side of the coin shows Jerusalem's second Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans during the first Jewish rebellion in the year 70. The other side shows another important Jewish symbol -- the image of four plants, known as the four species, used during ceremonies for the festival of Sukkot. [continue]

Related link:
Israeli caves yield ancient coins (BBC)

From Zeenews.com, Massive haul of ancient coins fished out of China river.

Some five tonnes of ancient coins dating back to the northern song dynasty (960-1127) have been retrieved from the Jialing river in south-western Chongqing municipality, a report said today.

The coins, nearly covering all denominations used in the northern Song dynasty, have varying sizes, with their diameters varying from one to four centimetres.

Archaeologists speculated that the large quantity of coins were once loaded in an official ship for tax levies, but sank to the bottom of the river after it was overturned by a flood or another type of accident.

The coins were thus inundated in the river for thousands of years, archaeologists said, because of the difficulties involved for salvaging at that ancient time.

From the BBC, Virtual life for ancient theatres.

Ancient Greek theatres have been brought back to life digitally by British researchers.

The team at the University of Warwick used state-of-the-art 3D computer technology to create a virtual reality model of the Odeon of Pericles, originally built mid-fifth century BC in Athens.

The model revealed that most of the audience would have had a terrible view, with the stage obscured by rows of pillars.

The researchers are recreating 30 European theatres in order to learn more about what it felt like to watch a performance thousands of years ago.

The Odeon of Pericles was the first indoor theatre and served as a prototype for modern auditoriums. [continue]

From UPI, Super-freezing tells age of lead artifacts.

Israeli investigators said Tuesday that they have found a new technique to measure the age of ancient metal artifacts.

The method parallels radiocarbon dating, which has been used by archaeologists for decades to determine the age of bones and other organic relics.

Until now, scientists had no direct way of determining the age of archaeological finds made of stable metals, including lead. But researchers have found that turning lead into a superconductor by super-freezing the metal, then looking at the level of oxidization -- rust -- made distinct by the process, could provide a new way to peer into the past. [continue]

United Press International reports that Germs could save ancient stone monuments.

Common soil bacteria could help protect ancient stone monuments and marble statues from corrosive pollution, scientists in Spain report.

The research team's new germ-based technique "mimics what nature has been doing for eons" and promises to be inexpensive, geologist Carlos Rodriguez-Navarro of the University of Granada in Spain said.

"We foresee practical application of the proposed bacterial treatment a few years from now," Rodriguez-Navarro told United Press International.

The more polluted the air gets worldwide, the more acid rain endangers not only health but also priceless art. The marble and limestone found in sculptures and landmarks worldwide are made of the same mineral found in seashells, coral, eggshells and chalk. This calcium carbonate is especially vulnerable to corrosion.

"Imagine the unfortunately common situation of a decaying Gothic or Renaissance portal of a European cathedral," Rodriquez-Navarro said. "The economy of many countries with a rich cultural heritage strongly depends on safeguarding this principal asset."

In the past, conservationists tried impregnating stone with acrylic or epoxy resins to strengthen the decayed, porous rock, "but they resulted in further damage -- peeling of treated layers, yellowing in some cases," Rodriguez-Navarro said. Scientists also considered washing stone with limewater, but this only forms a loose powder that's too superficial to protect anything.

In the past two decades, researchers suggested harnessing mineral-secreting germs as an environmentally friendly, low-maintenance art conservation workforce to harden rock. Most soil bacteria secrete calcium carbonate to help balance out internal body acidity. (...)

The researchers then tried using another common soil bacterium, a harmless germ known as Myxococcus xanthus, which can glide en masse over surfaces and penetrate deep into the stone's pores. Moreover, while Bacillus sometimes grew uncontrollably, stopping up pores, Myxococcus -- handled properly -- spontaneously kills itself once feeding stops without leaving behind spores.

Rodriquez-Navarro and a team of crystallographers and microbiologists experimented with a highly porous limestone often used in Granada's most outstanding yet crumbling landmarks. In findings appearing in the April issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the new cement their bacterial soup formed "is exceptionally hard, even harder than the original," Rodriquez-Navarro said. [continue]

From the New York Times, Lost No More: An Etruscan Rebirth.

... the Romans owed more than they ever admitted to their accomplished predecessors and former enemies on the Italian peninsula, the Etruscans. They were known as Rasenna, and Tusci or Etrusci by Romans, whose historians generally ignored or belittled them.

It has been left to the archaeologists and art historians of today to part some of the veils of time obscuring Etruscan culture and restore these enigmatic people to their proper place in pre-Roman history.

The Etruscans, who occupied much of north-central Italy in the first millennium B.C., traded far and wide in the Mediterranean. Their prosperity and taste for luxury supported a long trading chain leading north to the Baltic Sea for prized amber. That, some experts speculate, may account for the migration of a common Etruscan man's name, Lars, to Scandinavia.

Of more enduring importance, the Etruscans were a conduit for the introduction of Greek culture and its pantheon of gods to the Romans. The Etruscans developed a version of the Greek alphabet, a step that influenced Roman letters and thereby northern Europe's. They built the first cities in Italy, when the hills of Rome stood barren of promise, and their influence shows up in later Roman works of architecture and engineering.

If the Etruscans were once considered a "lost" society, scholars said at a recent symposium here at the University of Pennsylvania, they are now being found in new excavations and a closer examination of the wealth of artifacts that have been uncovered over the last century. [continue] (NYT requires free registration.)

From discovery.com, Archaeology to the Rescue.

Alexandria, Egypt — When rescue archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur heads to work downtown, he goes way down — down to bedrock — 40 feet deep. His vertical commute lands him in the remains of the ancient city of Alexandria, founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great.

Over the past dozen years, Empereur has led a small, multi-disciplinary team of specially-trained archaeologists in a race-against-the clock during excavations of 15 urban sites. Their mission is rescue excavation, which means moving fast: "When a developer wants to demolish an old building and replace it with a tower," he says, "we have a few weeks to excavate down to rock."

Among the most intriguing of the land excavations he's involved with now is a new dig in the eastern part of the modern city. Here, in the nursery of a Latin cemetery — a section where plants were grown but that has only sparse traces of modern burials — is an alabaster tomb dating back to the early 3rd century B.C.

"Maps developed from geophysical imaging of the site show large subterranean anomalies reaching deep below the surface," Empereur said in November. "These could be interpreted as tomb chambers. In the coming weeks we hope to excavate down to their level to check on this hypothesis."

As director of research with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Centre d'Etudes Alexandrines (CEA), Empereur is passionate about saving Alexandria's melting-pot heritage while studying its rich history through land and underwater excavations.

Within the city, Empereur's team has uncovered Roman and Ptolemaic dwellings as well as ancient cemeteries and many cisterns. From 1994, the CEA has excavated in the sea off Alexandria, exploring the sunken ruins at the foot of Qaitbay Fort and the wrecks of Greek and Roman ships.

"By discovering these cargos from antiquity, we have a new image of the trade between Alexandria and the Mediterranean from the 4th century B.C. to the 7th century A.D.," Empereur says. "We have found hundreds of amphoras used to transport wine and oil. And many other kinds of cargos with fruits."

Rescue archaeology is its own unique discipline, Empereur explains. Archaeology normally gets done by teams of scholars who travel to dig sites and stay for several months before heading back to their sponsoring museums or universities, only to return again later to those sites that have remained secure in their absence, and in a good state of preservation.

Not so with rescue archaeology. There is no down time.

"You cannot leave the site you are excavating until the end (of the job)," Empereur says. "If you stop, the owner of the land will take it back. There is stress to work quickly. We are racing against time, against developers of airports and motorways. It is difficult to stop the development of a city where the price of the square meter is so high. We are salvaging what we can." [continue]

From an article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Deep in the ruins of a Hebrew town sacked nearly 3,000 years ago by an Egyptian Pharaoh, scientists say they have discovered new evidence for the real-life existence of the Bible's legendary kingdoms of David and Solomon.

The evidence refutes recent claims by other researchers who insist that the biblical monarchs were merely mythic characters, created by scholars and scribes of antiquity who made up the tales long after the events to buttress their own morality lessons.

The debate, however, is not likely to subside, for archaeology is a field notable for its lengthy quarrels among partisans, however scientific they may be.

The latest evidence comes from Israeli and Dutch archaeologists and physicists after seven years of digging at a historic site called Tel Rehov. The site is in the Jordan valley of Israel, where successive settlements rose and fell over the centuries.

Using highly sophisticated techniques for establishing dates through the decay rate of radioactive carbon, the scientists have pinned down the time of a disputed moment in history, recorded in the Bible, when a Pharaoh now known as Shoshenq I invaded Jerusalem.

As the book of Chronicles relates in the Old Testament, Shoshenq (the Bible called him Shishak) came "with twelve hundred chariots and threescore thousand horsemen" and plundered Israel's capital, as well as such towns and fortresses as Rehov, Megiddo and Hazor.

The Pharaoh later listed those conquests on a monument in the temple of Amun at Karnak, where the Egyptian city of Luxor now stands.

The new timetable places Shoshenq's rampage and looting at Rehov in the 10th century rather than the 9th, a highly significant difference. It sets the date at about 925 B.C., some five years after Solomon was said to have died, and some 80 years earlier than other archaeologists maintain. [continue]

From the Times Online, Sacrifice find supports legend of Siena's Roman heritage.

Archaeologists at Siena cathedral have uncovered evidence to support the legend that the Tuscan city was founded by the Romans.

According to the "founding myth", the name Siena derives from Senius, son of Remus, who founded Rome with his twin brother, Romulus. Senius fled to Siena to escape persecution by his "wicked uncle" Romulus, who sent warriors on horseback to stop him.

An official history of the Palio, Siena's famous horse race, suggests that this explains the city's subsequent fascination with horses. Archaeologists said yesterday that they had evidence of a ritual sacrifice, dating to early Roman times, in a well beneath the transept of the Duomo, near the Campo, the piazza where the Palio is run every summer.

Riccardo Francovich, professor of archaeology at Siena University, said his team had found the bones of three slaughtered dogs and a horse, with each animal cut up into three pieces. Professor Francovich said the slaughter of animals was a "votive ritual" used by the Romans to bring good fortune when founding a new city. [continue]

From the BBC, Cosmic link to stone circles.

Stone Age people in Ireland appear to have built tombs based on a detailed knowledge of how the Sun moves across the sky during the year.

Tombs at the archaeological site of Loughcrew in County Meath align with the rising Sun at the spring and autumn equinoxes.

The inside of the chambers are spectacularly illuminated by a shaft of sunlight at dawn on these days, said Frank Prendergast of the Dublin Institute of Technology.

It suggests settlers in the area some 5 to 6,000 years ago knew the yearly cycle of the Sun and perhaps centred their lives around it.

Tombs found elsewhere in Ireland have been found to point towards the rising Sun at the summer and spring solstices. [continue]

China Unearthed Shang Oracle Bones Again, 104 Years Later of First Discovery. From the People's Daily:

China recently unearthed again oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th-11th century B.C.) in Daxinzhuang Shang ruins, more than 100 years later of the nation's first discovery of inscribed animal bones and tortoise shells in Anyang City of central China's Henan Province.

This time's excavation area is located at the south-east of Daxinzhuang ruins, and 30 "tanfang" (artificial pits in dimension of 10*10 meter or 5*5 meter, as a method in archaeological works) were excavated, said professor Fang Hui of archaeological department of Shandong University at a news briefing on April 8, who is charge of the excavation work.

The inscribed bones found this time are from four "tanfang" of Shang culture layers. Eight pieces carrying Chinese characters have been sorted out, four of them could be pieced together into a whole page, including 25 characters. They have been confirmed, through the shape of bones, character and grammar, to belong to the same group of inscriptions unearthed in Anyang City a century ago. [continue]

From travelchina.com, here's some background information about oracle bones and the script used to write on them:

Oracle Script is an ancient script carved on tortoise shells or animal bones. Having emerged during the Shang Dynasty (BC 1600-1000), Oracle Script is considered the oldest script in China.

During the Shang Dynasty, the ancients reckoned the natural elements as the exertion of some mystical power. When there were floods, drought, lightening and thunder, or some big events, like royal hunts, journeys and military campaigns, through divination, ancients would predict the future by "reading" the messages of nature. The divination performer first drilled holes on tortoise shell or a piece of bull scapula, then put it over fire. Since the shell or bone would crack irregularly under heat, the diviner could supposedly interpret these cracks as good or bad omen. All the dates and results of the divination were written down on the shells or animal bones, which became the earliest historical document with writing symbols. [continue]

Related links:
Ancient China's Shang Dynasty's oracle bones found in Shandong Province
Shang Dynasty Oracle Bones
Oracle bones
Photo of an oracle bone
Oracle bone with photo and translation
Oracle bone script

I love this kind of stuff: Roman pipeline kept water flowing, from nature.com.

Computer modelling is lifting the lid on the secrets of Roman hydraulic engineering. Hitherto mysterious hurdles and holes, it hints, may have smoothed the flow of water.

In the third century AD, Roman engineers built a system of tunnels and tanks to bring water to the city of Aspendos, today in Turkey. Aspendos was a crucial hub of Roman trade in Asia Minor, sitting at the crossroads of important routes with river access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Roman writer Vitruvius described the now-ruined system for delivering water to a major settlement. But aspects of his account remain obscure to modern readers because the meaning of some of his Latin terms has been lost and because there were probably other features of Roman civil engineering of which no record survives.

So Charles Ortloff and Adonis Kassinos of the private company CTC/United Defense in Santa Clara, California, have tried to make sense of the Aspendos siphon system by calculating how water might have flowed through it.

A pipe made from stone blocks bored with 30-centimetre holes carried water from an aqueduct across a 1.5-kilometre valley, running down its northern wall and across its floor before ascending its southern side. Here water was gathered in a storage tank to supply the city.

The aqueduct to the north was higher than the tank in the south, so an overall downward gradient drove the water through the pipe. But en route across the valley, two arched stone towers took the pipeline up and down again.

Why did the Roman engineers build these apparent obstacles? Ortloff and Kassinos calculate that the arches divided the siphon system into three shorter legs, damping out any sloshing that could have made water supply intermittent or even damaged the pipeline.

The researchers also have clues to a second mystery. Vitruvius says that the key to the siphon's success are colliquiaria - a Latin technical term whose meaning is no longer known. Otrloff and Kassinos believe that the colliquiara may be the little holes, about 3 centimetres wide, that perforate some of the pipeline's blocks.

The pair carried out tests on a scale model, and conclude that the holes probably reduced turbulence in the flow by letting air and water escape. [continue]

From the Ross-shire Journal, Exciting Viking evidence unearthed in Dingwall.

A research project of five years has revealed that Dingwall is the site of one of the most important Viking remains in Scotland.

It has long been believed that Dingwall took its name from the Norse word, Thingvoll, meaning meeting place, but the actual site of the ancient court of administration has never been found.

Now, however, Dingwall historian David MacDonald and his wife Sandra, both former teachers, say they have definitive proof of the site of the Norse court. (...)

They unearthed documentary evidence, both national and local, dating between 1500 and 1820 which clearly identifies the site of the long-lost "Thingvoll" of Dingwall's Viking past. [continue]

From British Archaeology, Tale of the Bronze Age barge sunk in Trent.

Two years of conservation and study of one of Britain's largest prehistoric boats has shed new light on the working life and sinking of a Bronze Age barge on the River Trent.

The logboat, discovered during quarrying work at Shardlow in Derbyshire in 1998, has been radiocarbon dated to about 1300 BC. The stern is missing, destroyed by quarry machinery, but 11 metres of the boat survives. Its original length has been estimated at a minimum of 14 metres - making it very similar in both size and date (though not in construction) to the famous Dover Boat found in 1992. Most known Bronze Age boats are a little over half that length.

Evidence from the quarry and surrounding area has suggested that this part of the River Trent was slow-moving, shallow, very wide and dotted with islands in the Bronze Age. The boat was found next to a causeway - a double line of posts packed with brushwood and stones - running from the shore to one of the islands.

The boat was found laden with a cargo of flattish sandstone blocks, presumably brought to add to the causeway. Identical stones can be found today on the riverbank some two miles upstream from the quarry. A raised wooden rib (or 'cleat') inside the boat suggests that, when laden, it was towed downstream like a barge, but it was probably paddled upsteam to reload.
[continue]

From the Daily Telegraph, A facelift for Wren's stairway to heaven.

It could have come from a Harry Potter film, and it did feature in The Madness of King George. Sir Christopher Wren's geometric staircase is one of the hidden treasures of St Paul's Cathedral which are being restored in readiness for a public debut.

The hanging stairs, which appear to defy gravity, are being cleaned and repaired as part of a £40 million facelift to mark the cathedral's 300th anniversary in 2008.

Wren, who was a mathematician and astronomer as well as an architect, designed the staircase to give the Dean of St Paul's a private route from the south-west corner of the cathedral to his library.

"Wren was in love with geometry," said Jo Wisdom, the librarian. "These stairs are the declaration of that love."

Each step of the cantilevered staircase is supported primarily by the step below, and damage to one could undermine the integrity of the whole.

Some steps are showing signs of cracking, and the structure has been closed to all but a handful of visitors.

But, along with the library, which houses 23,000 books including a 1526 Tyndale New Testament, it should be open to the public within five years. [continue]

And won't that be fun to visit!

You know about Avebury, right? Similar to Stonehenge but just a little less famous. Now the tilting stones there are going to be re-set in their proper postions. From the BBC, Ancient stones set for repair.

Two monoliths which form part of the Avebury stone circle are to be returned to their proper positions. The ancient stones at the centre of the circle are close to toppling over after listing precariously for more than 300 years.

The task of returning the 50-tonne stones to the vertical will begin on Monday and is expected to take up to seven weeks.

Once the work is complete, visitors will be able to get up close to the stones for the first time in six years.

The site, near Marlborough in Wiltshire, is managed by the National Trust, and is thought to date back to around 2800 BC. [continue]

Related links:
Work starts on Avebury megaliths
Work to straighten huge standing stones begins
Avebury -Stone Circles and Earthworks
Avebury 360° views

Ooooh, there's more! This from the Guardian: Coins and helmet unearthed.

A treasure hidden under the rolling fields of Leicestershire for 2,000 years had to remain secret for a further three years, with an agonised group of amateur archaeologists all the while bursting to report one of the most important finds in decades. Thousands of Iron Age gold and silver coins have come to light - adding more than 10% to the total so far recorded in this country. With them was found a Roman parade helmet made of finely worked gilded sheet silver that once would have dazzled in the sunlight.

The helmet is still being prised out of a block of earth by conservators at the British Museum in London. It is the only one found in Britain, and suggests a plot as glamorous as any Hollywood movie.

It clearly belonged to a centurion or other senior officer, but almost certainly was buried in the decades before the Roman invasion of the first century - suggesting that it belonged to a Briton who crossed the channel, joined the legions, prospered mightily, and returned to tell the tale and make a stupendous offering to the pagan gods.

The first coins were spotted in 2000 by a retired teacher, Ken Wallace, while walking across a ploughed field. He returned with a metal detector and found hundreds more. [continue]

Can you just imagine finding something like that? The main problem with living in Canada is that I haven't a hope of discovering burried treasure left behind by Romans.

Related article:
3,000 Iron Age coins found at pagan site
Rare coins are officially 'treasure'!

From the Independent, Ancient gold hoard found in Midlands.

The world's largest hoard of ancient gold and silver coins has been discovered in the East Midlands.

Preliminary examinations of the material - the most significant find in recent British archaeological history - revealed it was most likely buried as a pagan religious offering at around the time of the Roman invasion in AD43.

Archaeologists unearthed between 3,000 and 4,000 silver and gold ancient British coins as well as other treasures near Market Harborough in south Leicestershire - inside the military frontier zone established by the Roman invaders in the first four years of the occupation.

This suggests that the hoard was a votive offering, probably designed to ensure the Romans' victory. The archaeologists, directed by Vicki Priest of Leicester University's archaeology department, also found the remains of agilt silver Roman cavalry helmet. It is the only piece of gold and silver Roman military equipment found in Britain and would have been worn by a senior officer. It is possible that it was given to a British tribal leader as a diplomatic gift.

Leicester, the capital of the probably pro-Roman local tribe, the Corieltauvi, was a few miles away and it is likely that Corieltauvian leaders were among the British kings and magnates who swore allegiance to Claudius, the Roman emperor, at a diplomatic gathering in Colchester, just a few months after the invasion.

The coins, worth the equivalent of about £200,000 at the time of the Roman conquest, date from the first four decades of the first century AD. Most are Corieltauvian, but some were minted by other British tribal groups. [continue]

From today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Trove of leaf fossils raises new questions about ancient plant life.

Peter Wilf's work as a paleobotanist has taken him far and wide, from the Rocky Mountains to Pakistan, in search of fossil evidence of ancient plant life. But nothing prepared him for what he found during excavations in the Patagonian desert of Argentina in November 1999.

In two weeks of collecting at Laguna del Hunco, a site 800 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, Wilf and colleagues from Argentina and the United States gathered more than 1,500 fossils and identified more than 100 leaf species in a deposit dating back 52 million years, more than tripling the known diversity of the site.

"This is something that really overwhelms you when you're down there," said Wilf, an assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State University, noting two-thirds of the new species were found in just four holes. And subsequent analysis would confirm that the diversity of plant species found in those holes is far greater than has been found in similar excavations anywhere else in the world.

South America today is known to harbor more species of plants, animals and insects than any other region. Wilf's findings, published Friday in the journal Science, show that South America enjoyed that same distinction 52 million years ago.

That fact runs counter to the so-called "refuge theory," which for the past three decades has been the leading explanation for the extreme biological diversity of South America, and thus may force scientists to rethink the conditions believed to give rise to new species. [continue]

From the Guardian, Signs of abbey's bygone times.

The mysterious stone "signatures" of some of Britain's most skilful medieval craftsmen have been collected and reprinted on a set of tiles at the newly restored ruins of Rievaulx Abbey near Helmsley, north Yorkshire. Thirty three of the carved signs scattered about the walls of the 12th century masterpiece have been copied on to flooring around the abbey's visitor centre.

They are known as banker's marks because they allowed the foreman to identify the number of stones each mason laid each day and how much he should be paid. (...)

The operation has revealed unexpected new material about Rievaulx's role in the medieval economy, including evidence of ironworks.

Most of the marks date from the rebuilding of the abbey in the 1150s by the abbot Aelred, who headed the wealthy Cistercian community and recruited scores of craftsmen.

"Each one was unique," said English Heritage spokesman Richard Darn. "They provide information about where each particular craftsman was working. Together they help to build up a pattern of how such a marvellous monument was built."

How can they publish stuff like this without including photos? Sheesh.

Related links:
Medieval Signature Stones at Rievaulx
Abbey of Rievaulx - Catholic Encyclopedia
Rievaulx Abbey
Rievaulx Abbey -Cistertians in Yorkshire website
Rievaulx Abbey: Infirmary Cloister - 360° Quicktime view

Related entries on mirabilis.ca:
Cistercians in Yorkshire

From icCoventry.co.uk, Medieval past revealed.

Medieval pottery and old shoe leather have been unearthed from an old Coventry ditch that follows the line of the city wall - demolished on the orders of King Charles II. (...)

Like many important towns in the Middle Ages, Coventry was protected by a wall that its citizens started to build in 1350 - but didn't finish for 180 years!

Today only a few fragments of the wall, along with two of the original 12 medieval gatehouses, at Swanswell and Cook Street, remain standing.

The wall itself was largely destroyed in 1662 on the orders of King Charles II.

The young king never forgot that Coventry people had been staunch Parliamentarians during the Civil War and refused to support his ill-fated father, who was subsequently beheaded.

This week, Iain Soden, the city's planning archaeologist, is studying the findings of pottery and shoe leather preserved in the defensive ditch which ran along the wall.

He said he was recommending that any new development on the Bond Street site must preserve the ditch for further excavations at some future date.

He said: "The oldest pottery we have found dates back to the 13th century and there will be many seeds, insects and other items preserved in this ditch which we may want to examine."

Anybody feel like going on a virtual tour of Underground Paris? Catacombs and bones, oh my.

Far below the city streets of Paris, in the quiet, damp darkness, seven million Parisians lie motionless. Their skeletons, long since dis-interred from the churchyard graves their survivors left them in, are neatly stacked and aligned to form the walls of nearly one kilometer of walking passage.

Welcome to the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary-- The Empire of the Dead. [continue]

From nature.com, New dating trick for bricks.

Roasting ancient building materials might help archaeologists to date them.

Bricks swell very slowly as they age, because they absorb moisture. Heating dries them out. How much they shrink indicates how old they are because it is proportional to how long they have been wicking up water, argue Moira Wilson of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK, and colleagues.

The researchers performed a series of experiments with new and old bricks. First they found that newly fired bricks, aged naturally in air over several months, contract to their original dimensions after a couple of hours of heating at 450°C.

Next, they artificially aged new bricks by exposing them to very hot steam. A few hours' steaming seemed to have a similar effect to a few centuries of normal ageing. Dry heating nonetheless restored the bricks to their original size. This suggests that heat treatment might return even old bricks to their freshly fired state.

Finally, the team was surprised to find a similar relationship between shrinking and age for building blocks 20 years old, 120 years old, or Roman samples 1,900 years old. This is despite the fact that the technological process of firing clay has changed considerably over the past two millennia. [continue]

From the The Western Mail, 1811 clue finds Roman villa.

A Roman villa has been discovered in Wales, and could change historians' understanding of the Empire.

Two hundred years ago the famous Pembrokeshire antiquarian Richard Fenton claimed to have discovered a Roman villa in the county.

However, his published account was largely ignored. Fenton, after all, had been known to be wrong before. And it was commonly accepted for many years that the Romans had never ventured so far west.

But more recent archaeological discoveries have suggested that the Roman influence in Pembrokeshire was greater than previously thought.

The archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler uncovered a small Roman fort near Amble-ston in 1921 and a Roman villa was discovered at Amroth, on the border with Carmarthen-shire, in the early 1950s.

More recently the traces of a Roman road heading west from the Roman regional centre at Carmarthen (Moridunum) to as far as Wiston, near Haverfordwest, have been discovered.

And now, almost two centuries after Fenton's account, a Roman villa appears to have been discovered in the very place he pinpointed all those years ago.

In a story worthy of Indiana Jones himself, Pembrokeshire-born archaeologist Dr Mark Merrony has followed Fenton's footsteps and found the remains of a large rectangular Roman building near the village of Wolfscastle.

The discovery could change our understanding of the Roman presence in Wales and certainly suggests that their influence over this remote part of Wales was much greater than once thought. [continue]

From The Scotsman: Mystery of ancient wreck gives historians something to mull over.

The mystery surrounding a ship which sank off the Scottish coast more than three hundred years ago may have been solved by a group of amateur historians.

Since the 17th-century the true reason why the vessel, which has lain off the west coast, made the journey has eluded historians.

Until now they had no idea where it came from, what it was doing in those waters or even when it had sunk.

But a group of experts now believe she was a Dutch vessel carrying a cargo of high-powered guns sent to attack Mingary Castle, in the Sound of Mull.

Phil Richards, a diver from Southampton, stumbled across five cannons resting on the seabed during an expedition in the Ardnamurchan waters two years ago.

He said: "It was more luck than judgment. A lot of people dive for years looking for this kind of thing.

"I wanted to find out more about the ship. I was convinced it held an interesting story."

Following this, local historian Nicholas Maclean-Bristol ploughed through mountains of historical documents to uncover the truth about the mystery ship.

He said: "At one time Mull would have been as heavily populated as the Isle of Wight, and the waterway as busy as the Solent.

"There are a number of wrecks near here because there was so much traffic in these waters."

Eventually his researches led him to discover a 350-year-old diary written by John Weir, a Puritan who was imprisoned in the castle by its owner, the Earl of Argyll, a parliamentarian
.
He added: "The diary talks of the Dutch ship being lost in the waters.

"It seems that the ship had been sent by the king to attack the castle in 1644.

"This is the best evidence we are likely to find and the most likely explanation for what happened." [continue]

Hey, do you remember reading about the monks of the Esfigmenou Monastery a while back? They're the ones on Mt Athos who've been officially evicted,, but they refuse to leave. Well, here's another tidbit about them from the International Herald Tribune, Embattled monks cling to a treasure.

Despite its needs, the monastery refuses to part with a treasure. Remnants of a tent used on campaign by Napoleon Bonaparte are in safekeeping there. French governments, among others, have asked to buy these relics at any price, but the Mount Athos authorities refuse.

The monastery has two pieces (the only parts missing from the whole, which would enable the French to reassemble the great commander's tent). One is 3x3 meters (10 feet by 10 feet), the other 1x0.37 meters, with gilt-embroidered scenes.

From evidence collected by monks, the tent segments were donated to Esphigmenou in 1819 by Patriarch Gregory V. How the remnants fell into his hands is unknown.

What is known is that Greek pirates seized Napoleon's tent from a ship carrying it and other equipment to Alexandria, when Napoleon occupied Egypt. Three segments of the tent were sold, while the fourth (the large and small pieces) went to the Phanar and ended up on Mount Athos.

Experts say that the tent is a masterpiece of 18th-century tapestry and gilt embroidery, crafted by the Gobelin works in Paris, and that it belonged to Louis XV before it came into Napoleon?s possession.

The larger part was sometimes used as a curtain in the entrance of the simple church at the monastery, but for the past few decades it has been placed in a glass display case for safekeeping in the vestry.

UPDATE: I've removed the link to this story on the International Herald Tribune's site, because the IHT has deleted that page.

From nature.com, Ancient civilization goes online.

Archaeologists could soon be making discoveries about the Maya from their computers. The first stage of a new online database is set to go live later this year, housing hundreds of thousands of documents on the excavation of Tikal, one of the most important settlements in ninth-century Mesoamerica.

The Tikal Digital Access Project will enable everyone from schoolchildren to scholars to search the notes, photographs and sketches made by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology when they worked at the site between 1956 and 1970.

"There is still a lot to uncover about the Maya, and about the impact of Tikal," explains one of Sharon Misdea, a member of the project team. "This is the only copy of the documentation of the artefacts that we know of," she adds. "We wanted to make this information more accessible to our Guatemalan colleagues who continued the research."

Home to 60,000 people in its heyday, Tikal has been likened to Rome. Archaeologists have excavated over 3,000 plazas, temples, tombs and palaces there, covered with hieroglyphics that outline the region's dynastic and political history. [continue]

From discovery.com, Oldest Swords Found in Turkey.

The most ancient swords ever found were forged 5,000 years ago in what is today Turkey, according to Italian archaeologists who announced the results of chemical analysis at a recent meeting in Florence.

Digging at Arslantepe, a site in the Taurus mountains of southeast Anatolia, Marcella Frangipane, professor at the department of historical science, archaeology and anthropology of antiquities of Rome University, found nine swords dating back to about 3,300 B.C.

Blade and hilt were cast in one piece; moreover, three swords were beautifully inlaid with silver.

"Their length ranges from 45 to 60 cm, and this leaves no doubt about their use. They predate of 1,000 years the most ancient swords found in Alaca Hoyuk, still in Turkey," Frangipane told Discovery News.

Analysis of the arsenic-copper alloys indicated great metallurgy skills. When forging the swords, arsenic was used as a deliberate alloying element in order to change the properties of copper and produce a stronger metal.

The swords were found in a large, palace-like complex, along with eleven lance tips, made of the same alloys, driven into a wall.

Dating from 3,350-3,000 B.C., the complex represents the most ancient administrative palace in the Near East. [continue]

From the Scotsman: Hunt on for Tsars' Amber Room.

Crafted entirely out of amber, gold and precious stones, it was a masterpiece of baroque art and widely regarded as the world's most important art treasure.

When its 565 candles were lit, the famous Amber Room was said to glow a fiery gold.

Looted by the Nazis , its whereabouts have been a mystery since the dying days of the Second World War.

But now a new German investigation believes it has found where the treasure, worth £120 million today, lies - in abandoned mine workings in the former East Germany. [continue]

Related links:
The Amber Room - The Adventure Begins
Treasure hunters seek a golden room
On the trail of the Amber Room

From a NYT News Service article at the Taipai Times: Baseball’s family tree traced to the Ancient Egyptians.

No disrespect meant to Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright or anybody else who might claim responsibility for the game we call baseball, but Thutmose III had them beat by three millennia or so. Thutmose ruled Egypt during the 15th century BC, and is the first known pharaoh to have depicted himself in a ritual known as "seker-hemat," which Peter Piccione has loosely translated as "batting the ball."

"The word they use is ‘sequer,’ which literally means ‘to strike’ or ‘to hit’," said Piccione, 51, an Egyptologist and professor of comparative ancient history at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, "but in the context, he’s there with the bat. I translated it as ‘batting the ball.’"

The context he’s referring to is a wall relief at the shrine of Hathor, the goddess of love and joy, in Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir-el-Bahari, where Thutmose is seen holding a softball-size ball in one hand and a long stick, wavy at the end, in the other. The hieroglyphic over the scene reads: "Batting the ball for Hathor, who is foremost in Thebes." The date is 1475 BC. [continue]

From the Independent: Ancient Tasmanian tidemark helps scientists track sea levels.

Australian scientists have gained new insights into rising sea levels thanks to a benchmark carved by an amateur meteorologist 160 years ago in cliffs near the infamous convict settlement of Port Arthur.

The benchmark, the oldest in the southern hemisphere and one of the earliest anywhere in the world, was made by Thomas Lempriere, a senior officer at the penal colony in south-eastern Tasmania.

It was gouged out of a sandstone rock face on the Isle of the Dead, off Port Arthur, where convicts were buried seven deep in mainly unmarked graves. The discovery of the carving at this lonely spot, looking out across the Southern Ocean towards Antarctica, was greeted with excitement by oceanographers.

But the benchmark had no scientific value without accompanying tidal records, and they were lost. Then, by a stroke of luck, Lempriere's original data, logged over several years, was found in the Royal Society's archives in London. The records, compiled long before the issue of global warming reared its head, enabled marine scientists from the University of Tasmania to compare sea levels from the mid-19th century with present-day levels. Their research, to be published next month, established that the waters off Port Arthur have risen by an average of 1mm a year since 1841. [continue]

From the Edinburgh News, Medieval warriors given second burial.

Two brave medieval warriors badly injured by marauding English soldiers have been laid to rest for a second time.

Both men suffered brutal sword wounds to their skulls during hand-to-hand fighting with troops loyal to English monarch Richard II.

The fighters’ remains were buried in a forgotten cemetery within the ancient Scots abbey they defended so bravely - but centuries later their bones were disturbed, along with the skeletons of 135 medieval Scots, by workmen laying a sewer.

Yesterday, a dignified funeral service was held, as the carefully gathered remains of the men, women and children were laid to rest under a special memorial.

Archaeologists were called to historic Newbattle Abbey College, Dalkeith, Midlothian, after the first bones were uncovered in November 2000, and spent months excavating the site.

The remains included males and females, from newborn babies through to people in their 70s.

Experts said the find had given them a unique insight into an important era of Scotland's history and yielded valuable information about life in medieval Scots monasteries. [continue]

From British Archaeology, Burial with the Romans.

For most of us, Roman culture is a byword for civilisation in an otherwise ‘barbarian’ ancient world. When we think of the Romans, what springs to mind are their achievements in art and literature, architecture, engineering, law - and all the rest.

Yet the undeniable sophistication of the Romans has led many archaeologists to expect civilised treatment of the dead. When excavating cemeteries in Roman Britain, we go to huge lengths to explain away graves that suggest violence and mistreatment of dead bodies. We avoid any suggestion of Roman practices that would be regarded as abhorrent today.

Evidence, however, tells a different story. It points to religious and ritual killings in Roman Britain, infanticide, punishment burials and mutilation of bodies after death. Some of the evidence is very strange; and not all of it can be explained with certainty. But one thing is clear. The Romans in Britain did not always treat the dead as we would wish to be treated now. [continue]

From Ananova, Hungry dogs find 2,500-year-old mummy.

Two dogs digging for a buried bone in their owner's backyard in Chile found a 2,500-year-old mummy.

Ivan Paredes, who lives in Arica, could not believe his eyes when his dogs dug up the ancient body.

He told La Cuarta online: "The dogs were trying to find bones buried in the backyard as usual, but they started to bark very loud and I came to check what was going on and found the mummy of child."

Archaeologists believe it is the remains of a boy buried by his parents who would probably have been farmers. [continue]

Marishka over at The Sleeping Dragon describes her adventure in do-it-yourself archeology:

Our area was built up from about 1820 — 1870, having previously been market gardens on land belonging to what is now Kensington Palace. Much of it has been undisturbed ever since so the archaeologically minded of us tend to get very excited when anyone ('phone company, gas board etc) starts digging a hole. Today I struck gold, well pot actually but an archaeologist can get more excited over an old bit of broken pottery than a Klondike miner finding a hen's egg sized lump of gold! They are replacing the gas mains for the first time in 30 yrs, but record keeping being what it is, no one is quite sure which bits have been replaced before, and which bits are still the handy work of the good old Victorian Irish navvies. Kinda scary huh?

Well, since Christmas I've been staring down holes whilst bemused gas workers take pity on me and share their tea, but everything they've uncovered so far was replaced sometime in the 1970's and anything around it has been either bare soil or so damaged it was unrecognisable.

Today was the day, though, when all that staring and shivering finally paid off — a genuine early Victorian rubbish pit! Imagine my glee!! A mere whole afternoon's trowelling and I have a huge basket of something like a hundred items . . . [continue]

There are updates here in Marishka's archives for March 2003.

The BBC reports on another interesting archeological discovery: Skeletons found in school yard.

Archaeologists have discovered one of the earliest Christian burial sites underneath a school playground in north-east England.

A total of 80 Dark Ages skeletons have been found in the grounds of Bishopsmill Special School in Stockton, Teesside.

The cemetery dates back to between the 7th and 9th Centuries, with the bodies buried east to west - which marks the graves out from earlier pagan burials that faced north to south.

Peter Rowe, sites and monuments officer for Tees Archaeology, said the dig could reveal how and when Christianity took hold in north-east England.

He said: "This is one of the best finds in recent years. We have had other very early Christian burial sites in cathedral towns such as York and Ripon, but this is the furthest north.

"We know there was a monastery built in Hartlepool in about 640, so these bones could belong to some of the first converts who died 30 or 40 years later."

Well, here's some good techy news! From the National Geographic, New Internet Tech 153,000 Times Faster Than Modem.

Scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds, the California Institute of Technology said today. The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

The researchers achieved a speed of 8,609 megabits per second (Mbps) by using 10 simultaneous flows of data over routed paths, the largest aggregate throughput ever accomplished in such a configuration, Caltech said in a news release. "That is 153,000 times that of today's modem and close to 6,000 times that of the common standard for ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) connections." [continue]

Where do I sign up?

Would you sail from Chile to Australia in a boat made of reeds? Me neither. But this guy's up for the challenge:

A US adventurer has set sail for Australia from Chile in an attempt to cross the Pacific Ocean on a boat made of reeds.

Peter Buck's straw-coloured, crescent-shaped Viracocha II was slowly towed into open sea by a Chilean navy boat yesterday watched by a small crowd. Mr Buck, a 39-year-old biologist from Massachusetts, said he expected to complete the 17,700km journey to Sydney in six months.

Mr Buck hopes his trip will prove that pre-Incan Aymara civilisations that lived in what is now Peru and Bolivia, ventured in high sea sailing, even reaching Polynesia.

"We want to check how far a totora - or cat-tail - reed boat can go, and prove that the first people who reached Easter Island and other Polynesian islands came from South America," he said. [continue]

From an article at ExpressIndia.com:

A couple of kilometres ahead of the confluence of Man and Bheema rivers, near the temple-town of Pandharpur, once thrived a Satavahana era (270 BC-30 BC) trade post. Residents of this post may have been part of the trade that extended even till far-off Rome. Till February 28, it lay under a white-ash mound overlooking the dry sand-filled bed of Man.

Two weeks of digging the mound at Modavi village has yielded a few surprises for the team of archaeologists from Deccan College. "For the first time we have come across a possible ritual site which is not very common in the Satavahana era settlements discovered so far," says Deccan College archaeologist Vasant Shinde, who is leading the excavation team which includes post-graduate students from Shivaji University's Solapur-based Centre for Ancient History. [continue]

From the Independent: Prehistoric mummies unearthed in Hebrides.

Mummification was practised by prehistoric Britons, according to a discovery made by archeologists from Sheffield University who have found the skeletal remains of two mummies buried under the floor of a 3,000-year-old house on the Hebridean island of South Uist.

The find, at Cladh Hallan on the west coast, will be officially announced on the BBC this Tuesday. It is the first indication that some prehistoric Europeans mummified their dead.

The archaeologists realised that something was unusual about the skeletons when tests revealed the individuals had died up to 500 years before they had been interred. Detailed forensic tests then showed they were mummified using peat as a preservation agent.

"The discovery is likely to redefine key aspects of life and death in prehistoric Britain," said Dr Mike Parker Pearson, director of the excavation. "It suggests that ancestors were even more central to ancient British belief systems than we had previously thought. We had never expected to find evidence for mummification in prehistoric Europe. This find is therefore a complete revelation." The discovery may also help to explain why some 15 million Bronze Age bodies are missing according to funerary evidence. If mummification was very widely used, many bodies would never have been buried.

The older of the two mummies, a man, died in around 1500BC, while the other, a woman, died around two centuries later.

Scientific analysis concluded the bodies were placed in a peat bog for between six and 18 months. The bodies were then exhumed and kept above ground until being buried again in around 1000BC. [continue]

Here's a pleasant eyeful: the Art and Architecture of Venice.

For more than 1,000 years the Cornaro family commissioned the artists and architects of Venice to create palaces, chapels and church art, villas, paintings and theaters. Its male lines are extinct now in the Veneto, but the family found immortality in the art with which it endowed posterity.

The art they commissioned and acquired opens a window to the long history and rich artistic fabric of La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic.

The site includes photos of (and details about) the Cornaros' palaces, their chapels and church art, their villas and castles, their paintings, and their theatres.

It was the Greeks who ‘invented’ Antarctica, thereby enabling it to be discovered almost 2,000 years later. Everything in the world, so taught the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) has somewhere its equivalent, as if ordained by a law of symmetry. As there was in the north of their imaginary sphere-shaped world, under the starry picture of the Bear (Gr. arktos), a cold zone, the Arctic, there must likewise be a correspondingly cold zone on the southern half of the sphere.

This is from the Chronicle of Antarctica Expeditions page, which is part of the Antarctica, Terra Australis Incognita website. These is the sort of site that could keep a person happily distracted for rather a while. For example, take a look at this incredible photo, or the Antarctica's Wilderness Values page it leads to. Or read about the explorations of James Cook and others.

The excellent Portage blog points us to the CN Images of Canada Gallery. What fun! Here are some of my favourite photos:

Grey Own in a canoe with a beaver (ca. 1931)
Ancient fire fighting equipment (1924)
Driving through an ancient cedar in Stanley Park (ca. 1937)
Streetcars on Granville Street in Vancouver (ca. 1927)

The site includes a search feature, so you can plug in the name of your (Canadian) city and see what comes up.

From the Guardian: Necropolis proves headache for Vatican car park builders.

Tombs from the time of the Roman emperor Nero have been unearthed as the Vatican tried to clear space for a multi-level underground car park.

Digging for the 300-space car park began several months ago, but Vatican officials are now rethinking the project after the remains of the nearly 2,000-year-old necropolis were unearthed.

Among the graves is the tombstone of Nero's secretary, along with well-preserved urns and amphorae.

Officials denied that the plans for the car park would threaten the discovery.

"Of course, no one will destroy any archaeological finds," said Monsignor Francesco Marchisano, the head of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology.

Other Vatican officials, desperate to "decongest" the Vatican, told the newspaper la Repubblica that ancient ruins were uncovered every time digging began in Italy. In this case they "did not seem that important", they said, and should not prevent the car park from being built. [continue]

Related link:
It looks like tickets for 2000-year-old graves

Update, March 12th, 2003:
Vatican accused of destroying history to build car park

From the Times of India: Ancient seals found at Hatab excavation site.

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Vadodara circle, has unearthed 160 ancient seals, with the Brahmi script inscribed on them, from the Hatab excavation site, located some 20 km south of Bhavnagar. The seals are said to be 2000 years old and were probably used to stamp goods that were to be exported.

"For the past one year, we have worked at the site and have dug up several artefacts. All of them suggest that Hatab might well be the ancient trading centre, referred to as ‘Ashtakapra’ in the ancient Greek work ‘Periplus’ and which also finds a mention in historical records of ancient geographer and eminent astronomer Ptolemy," says ASI superintending archaeologist and director of excavations, Shubhra Pramanik.

"The city has been recorded in history as a flourishing port in the 2nd, 5th and 6th Century AD. The seals come from a pocket of the mud fortified ancient town, which is surrounded by a moat. The moat has an inlet that leads to the Gulf of Cambay thus suggesting sea trade," says Pramanik. [continue]

From Information about The Underground Cities, Cappadocia, Turkey:

The underground cities of Cappadocia are worthy of a visit. Let's take Derinkuyu for example. The one time home of up to 20,000 people, it's 18 storeys descend into the Anatolian plateau 50 kms south of Goreme. Stop and think about that for a while. A large, market town sized community digging a settlement out to guarantee themselves a degree of protection.

There are 8 floors of tunnels open to the visitor and this is enough to give you an idea of the sensation of living in a labyrinth like this. The ventilation shafts, circular and descending from the surface to the lower levels, bring home the scale of the enterprise while the massive circular doors - which were rolled across the passages and sealed from the inside - remind you of the motivation for moving underground in the first place.

Here are some photos and details about the underground city at Kaymakh. And oh, there's much more information:

The Underground Cities of Cappadocia
Turkey's Underground Cities
Underground Cities (good photo here)
Underground Cities
Overview of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli
Underground Cities (a few small photos)
Cappadocia's Underground Cities
Derinkuyu Underground City ("built as a defence and hiding site during the period of the spreading of Christianity.")

Here are a few fun pages about the history of eating utensils, complete with excellent photos. And oh my, what you'll learn. For example:

By the 7th Century A.D., royal courts of the Middle East began to use forks at the table for dining. From the 10th through the 13th Centuries, forks were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium, and in the 11th Century, a Byzantine wife of a Doge of Venice brought forks to Italy. The Italians, however, were slow to adopt their use. It was not until the 16th Century that forks were widely adopted in Italy.

From Biblical Archaeology Review: New Finds at Ein Gedi.

Excavators have found two folded papyri and 11 bronze coins in a desert cave within the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, near the western shore of the Dead Sea. Three of the coins bear the name "Shimon," Hebrew for Simon, and date to the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132-135 A.D.), which was led by Simon Bar-Kokhba. The artifacts were discovered last November by a team headed by Hebrew University’s Amos Frumkin and Bar Ilan University’s Hanan Eshel, inside a cave measuring just 23 feet by 13 feet. [continue]

Related links:
Ein Gedi
Ein Gedi Reserve
Ein Gedi: An Ancient Oasis Settlement

From National Geographic: Nursing an "Extinct" Tree Back to Health.

In 1994 a bizarre-looking tree previously known only from 120 million-year-old fossil leaves was discovered alive and well in a rugged gorge west of Sydney, Australia.

Fewer than 100 Wollemi pines exist in the wild, and scientists and horticulturists are undertaking a massive effort to cultivate additional trees to improve the species' chances of survival. By 2005/2006 more than half a million of them will go on sale worldwide as garden and indoor plants. [continue]

Related links:
Wollemia nobilis (good thumbnail photos, detailed information)
Wollemi Pine - a very rare discovery
Wollemi carboniferous trees, thought to be extinct for thirty million years, discovered in Australia
The Wollemi Pine - Almost as rare as a dinosaur?
Dave Noble's Homepage (He's the guy who discovered the Wollemi pine - scroll down for a couple of photos.)

From the Guardian: Tests show cathedral timbers are original.

In 1222 they had a crisis in Salisbury. Masons were racing ahead raising the walls of the cathedral, but the carpenters were running out of timbers needed for the roof.

Their startling solution was revealed yesterday when the cathedral and English Heritage released details of tests on the age and origins of the timbers.

In the eastern chapels, which have some of the finest surviving medieval roofs in the country, and elsewhere, the wood is Irish, from ancient oak trees from a forest south of Dublin, felled from 1222 on.

"The quality was superb, far in excess of what was needed for the job," Dan Miles, of the Oxford dendrochronology laboratory, said yesterday.

The Irish timber came from an area between Dublin and Waterford. It would have been shipped to Southampton or Bristol and taken to Salisbury on ox carts. Much of the cathedral's timber was assumed to be 17th-century replacement. But the tests have proved that a remarkable percentage is original, from the last phase of building work between 1220 and 1258. [continue]

Related links:
Why Irish helped raise the roof on Salisbury Cathedral

From Nature.com: Plants tell Colosseum's story.

The Roman Colosseum's history is stamped on its plants, say Italian researchers. In plant surveys spanning 350 years, they have charted the monument's progress from slum to tourist attraction, as well as Rome's growth into a metropolis and the city's changing climate.

Built in the first century AD, the Colosseum housed Gladiatorial combat until the sixth century. By 1643, when Italian doctor Domenico Panaroli compiled the first plant survey, the Romans had made themselves at home. "It was full of people living and working, and a hideout for thieves," says Giulia Caneva of the University of Rome.

Work on clearing the amphitheatre began in about 1810, under Napoleon's rule. There were three surveys of the Colosseum's flora in the nineteenth century, and one in 1951. Caneva and her colleagues did one more in 2001.

Such a wealth of data is almost certainly unique for a single site, says botanist Jim Dickson of the University of Glasgow, UK. "I find it hard to believe that anyone else has kept records for over four centuries," he says.

In total, the lists contain 684 species — peaking in 1855, with 420, and declining to 242 today. About 200 of these were ever-present.

As the use of the amphitheatre changed, agricultural weeds gave way to opportunists associated with disturbed ground, Caneva's team has found. There has also been a steady influx of exotic aliens.

This is what you'd expect, says Dickson. "There's more transport of plants now, deliberately and accidentally, than there's ever been," he comments.

The plant record also reveals a shift towards species that prefer a warmer, drier climate. This is partly due to Rome's growth, says Caneva: "The Colosseum used to be on the edge of the city; now it's in the middle." [continue]

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an ancient temple has been discovered in the Cambodian jungle.

A previously unknown temple has been found in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, government officials said yesterday.

Chen Sran temple was recently reported discovered around 40 kilometres from the Thai-Cambodia border, deep in the jungle in northern Preah Vihear province. It was constructed in dedication to Brahmin beliefs in the ninth or tenth century, cultural officials said.

The monument was not known to authorities until villagers reported it to a provincial cultural officer, said Uong Von, chief of the heritage department at Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.

Then around two months ago a group of cultural officials visited the temple deep in the forest, he said. The temple was found to be quite sizeable at 15 meters tall, measuring 150 metres in length and 100 metres in width. [continue]

From EMagazine.com, The Sinking City: Venice?s $3 Billion Plan to Stop a Rising Sea Gets Mixed Reviews.

It?s a clear, calm night?no storms, no wind, no unusual weather of any kind?but Venice?s Piazza San Marco is flooding. As the tide crests, seawater begins pouring from storm drains, forming a growing pond in the middle of the city?s most important square. The vestibule of the sumptuous San Marco Basilica begins filling with water, amusing tourists, some of whom wade laughing in the ankle-deep pond.

But Venice?s flooding is no laughing matter. The sea is rising, the city is sinking, and the damage to its historic buildings, bridges and artworks is becoming increasingly apparent. Green algae now grows on the porous brickwork of many of the 14th and 15th century palaces along the Grand Canal because the flooding sea frequently tops the building?s waterproof stone foundations.

After decades of debate and study, the Italian government finally has a solution to save Venice from the sea. The centerpiece, approved in December, is a $3 billion project to build 79 enormous hinged gates to separate Venice and its lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. But the project has drawn criticism from environmentalists and a few prominent scientists who warn it will turn into a financial and environmental disaster. [continue]

(And yes, I know Venice really is sinking. The "if" in this entry's title is there because Spirit of the West's If Venice is sinking song is in my head every time I read about this topic.)

Related links:
Venice in Peril
Save Venice
Lagoon of Venice: measures for the defence against high tides and sea storms and for the environmental equilibrium of the lagoon

Related books:
Venice Against the Sea: A City Besieged
A History of Venice

Update:
Venetians Look to Moses to Save Them from Water - April 25th, 2003, Reuters.

From a BBC article, Riddle of 'Baghdad's batteries'.

It was in 1938, while working in Khujut Rabu, just outside Baghdad in modern day Iraq, that German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig unearthed a five-inch-long (13 cm) clay jar containing a copper cylinder that encased an iron rod.

The vessel showed signs of corrosion, and early tests revealed that an acidic agent, such as vinegar or wine had been present. (. . . ) Konig did not waste his time finding alternative explanations for his discovery. To him, it had to have been a battery. [continue]

Related links:
Smith College Museum of Ancient Inventions: Baghdad Battery
The Baghdad Battery

From the Telegraph: Lost glories of Pompeii revealed for the first time.

Many of Pompeii's greatest archaeological finds are to be put on public display for the first time.

The celebrated Villa of the Papyri will open its doors for the first time next month while a major exhibition will show the best objects unearthed from the villa and the Pompeii area.

The villa, one of the most important and evocative ancient sites in Italy, was the rambling, stately retreat in Herculaneum of Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso.

Stumbled upon in 1752, it was then only partially excavated, when 1,800 papyrus scrolls of classical works, statues and artefacts, were found. It then fell into neglect.

Much of the villa's 30,000 square-foot area has yet to be uncovered. Scholars believe it may conceal a second library, containing lost works such as the missing volumes of Livy's History of Rome. [continue]

Ancient Roman villa may hold world's richest literary treasure
How did the Villa of the Papyri get into this state?
The unknown treasures of the Villa of the Papyri
Ancient Herculaneum
Hunt for Treasures of villa buried by Vesuvius
Herculaneum Papyri Photos
Herculaneum (some photos)

From the CBC: Ancient fur coat going on display.

A 550-year-old fur robe worn by a young aboriginal hunter in northwestern B.C. will be shown at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria this weekend. The young man's remains were found in 1999 in a glacier – which preserved his robe made from more than 100 Arctic ground squirrels. The Champagne and Aishihik First Nations named him "long ago person found." His body was cremated in a traditional ceremony. His robe has been meticulously preserved and studied by archaeologists. "Ice finds provide a unique, rare opportunity where things are uniquely preserved. This gives us an accurate picture of how long certain types of weapons or clothing have been used," says the B.C. Museum's Grant Keddie.

Related website:
Royal BC Museum

Related Mirabilis.ca postings:
Ancient Yukon feathers, thawed
Thawing artifacts

From the Guardian: Crowe got it wrong: gladiators were the film stars of Rome.

Far from the Hollywood image of a grubby desperado fighting for his life in a lawless arena of horror, the real- life Roman gladiator was a highly trained and pampered professional - rich, famous and pursued by groupies.

New research has poked massive holes in the long- accepted image of gladiators as poor wretches sent to gruesome deaths in front of crowds baying for blood.

Gladiators were in fact provided with the best food and healthcare during their years of training and were given the best medical treatments: they were the football stars of their day, with sponsorship deals and a share of the prize money. [continue]

Here's a bit from the Ancient Chinese Explorers page, which is part of Nova's Sultan's Lost Treasures site.

In 1999, New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof reported a surprising encounter on a tiny African island called Pate, just off the coast of Kenya. Here, in a village of stone huts set amongst dense mangrove trees, Kristof met a number of elderly men who told him that they were descendants of Chinese sailors, shipwrecked on Pate many centuries ago. Their ancestors had traded with the local Africans, who had given them giraffes to take back to China; then their boat was driven onto the nearby reef. Kristof noted many clues that seemed to confirm the islanders' tale, including their vaguely Asian appearance and the presence of antique porcelain heirlooms in their homes.

If Kristof's supposition is correct, then this remote African outpost retains an echo of one of history's most astonishing episodes of maritime exploration.

Six centuries ago, a mighty armada of Chinese ships crossed the China Sea, then ventured west to Ceylon, Arabia, and East Africa. The fleet consisted of giant nine-masted junks, escorted by dozens of supply ships, water tankers, transports for cavalry horses, and patrol boats. The armada's crew totaled more than 27,000 sailors and soldiers. The largest of the junks were said to be over 400 feet long and 150 feet wide. (The Santa Maria, Columbus's largest ship, was a mere 90 by 30 feet and his crew numbered only 90.)

Loaded with Chinese silk, porcelain, and lacquerware, the junks visited ports around the Indian Ocean. Here, Arab and African merchants exchanged the spices, ivory, medicines, rare woods, and pearls so eagerly sought by the Chinese imperial court.

Seven times, from 1405 to 1433, the treasure fleets set off for the unknown. These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading links -- from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf -- under Chinese imperial control. This took place half a century before the first Europeans, rounding the tip of Africa in frail Portuguese caravels, 'discovered' the Indian Ocean. [continue]

Related mirabilis.ca postings:
Ancient Chinese map of Africa
Manchu

From discovery.com, Ancient Roman Valentines Wrote of Lust, Suffering.

A recent comparison of sentiments in modern Valentine's Day cards with classical Roman poetry and love letters revealed the Romans held a very different view of love from that of today's couples.

For the ancient Romans, love was associated with lust, pain and suffering, a far cry from today's sentimental writings about caring and sharing, according to a Hamilton College press release. [continue]

From Eurekalert, In-situ preservation of archaeological artefacts.

Preserving archaeological discoveries requires as much care as unearthing them. The army of terracotta soldiers uncovered at Xi'an, China, is a wonder to behold but shows the dangers of poor conservation arrangements. After several years of public display and exposure to air, the terracotta is drying out and the figures are crumbling. The curators cannot reverse the deterioration and many now regret the original excavations.

Leaving discoveries in situ now appears more and more attractive to archaeologists. But this approach brings its own problems. Isolated sites may not benefit from the specialised buildings and on-site expertise that museums have and each case is different.

Milan Kovac, a Slovene-Swedish architect, has spent most of his working life developing techniques and technology which can preserve ancient objects and monuments in near perfect condition at their site of discovery. He led the Swedish and Slovenien project partners in the EUROCARE ARCH IN-SITU project aimed at developing techniques to assess the needs of different sites and find customised solutions to the individual problems. The project brought together an array of experts including archaeologists, lighting engineers, materials scientists and microbiologists to tackle problems ranging from climate and weather through pollutants such as acid rain to careless tourists. [continue]

Tonight I stumbled upon The Modern Antiquarian: "a massive resource for news, information, images, folklore & weblinks on the ancient sites across of the UK & Ireland". If you're interested in this sort of thing, you must go play with the Techno Map Browser. It requires Flash and takes a bit to load, but is it ever cool. Click on any map dot, and up come photos of the related ancient site, and information, too.

From the Guardian, French island monastery to be freed from mud.

The historic French island monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel is about to be freed from a decades-old build-up of sand, slime and sludge which has almost completely clogged up its magical setting.

State-appointed surveyors last week submitted studies showing an overwhelming majority of people living near the abbey, off France's north coast, support plans to scoop away half a century of silt and restore its natural channel.

A local government official said yesterday that the project, which would involve ripping up a road built to the islet in 1879 and replacing it with an electronic shuttle, could be under way by early next year and take up to four years. It could cost up to €134m (£88m).

"The reason why Mont-Saint-Michel is so magnificent is because at high tide, it really does look like an island," the official said. [continue]

A website about the project (It's called Official website of the syndicat mixte for the restoration of the maritime character of Mont St Michel; what a mouthful!) has lots more details.

Related links:
Photos of Mt St Michel
Mt St Michel page from Medievel art and Architecture

From The Scotsman, The Scots and the lost city of Egypt.

A Scottish archaeological expedition, operating on a shoestring budget, has uncovered an ancient Egyptian city, buried by the sands of time.

The expedition, which scrapes together £10,000 a year to maintain its dig near Memphis, the ancient Pharaonic capital, has written a new page of Egypt’s history.

For the newly-discovered town, situated near the necropolis of Saqqara, 15 miles from Cairo, is almost certainly where the workmen who built the pyramids lived with their families.

The presence of large temples, some nearly 200ft square, a number of tombs and the mix of large and small dwellings indicate a place where the wealthy lived alongside the artisan, a "real" town that will offer a unique insight into Egyptian life unaffected by the glamour of the royal and aristocratic classes. [continue]

Related links:
British archaeologists uncover ancient Egyptian town

From the National Geographic, Medieval Garden Intrigues British Archaeologists.

The buried remains of a 700-year-old garden at Whittington Castle in Shropshire, England, could substantially change historian's understanding of medieval gardens.

The 14th-century garden had one of the earliest and largest viewing mounts ever found in England, an unusual layout, and an elaborate ditched water system.

Viewing mounts were built to provide elevated views of a castle's garden, grounds, and surrounding landscape and symbolized the owner's wealth and high status.

The Whittington Castle mount, a 16-foot (5-meter) man-made mound, puzzled archaeologists for years. It was originally thought to be part of the castle's defenses or a viewing mount built later in the 16th or 17th century.

A view of Whittington Castle as seen from it's 14th-century garden mount. The 16-foot (5-meter), human-made structure puzzled archaeologists for years.

The discovery by historical researcher Peter King of a reference in records dating to 1413 to "a garden with a ditch of water around it," led archaeologists to conduct a geophysical survey of the area. Employing techniques such as magnetometry, ground penetrating radar, and soil resistivity surveying to look below the site's surface, the archaeologists traced the buried outlines of the paths and rectangular plots of the garden. The findings suggest the mount and garden were built sometime between 1300 and 1349. [continue]

Related links:
English Heritage helps unlock secrets of unique medieval water garden at Shropshire Castle
Whittington Castle Preservation Trust

From Wessex Archeaology, Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps.

The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say.

The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain.

The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than ten times as many objects as any other burial site from this time. When details were released, the media dubbed the Archer "The King of Stonehenge".

The grave was found three miles from Stonehenge, near Amesbury in Wiltshire, last May during an excavation by Wessex Archaeology, based nearby at Salisbury, in advance of the building of a new housing scheme and school.

The Archer was obviously an important man, and because he lived at the same time that the stones at Stonehenge were first being built, archaeologists believe he may have been involved in its creation. [continue]

The Amesbury Archer website has more information about the excavation, the finds, etc.

Related links:
King of Stonehenge found?
Amesbury's Bronze Age Archer
Was the Amesbury Archer the 'King of Stonehenge'?
The Amesbury Archer
‘The Amesbury Archer’: a well- furnished Early Bronze Age burial in southern England

From the BBC, Geologists investigate Trojan battlefield.

The whereabouts of Troy had long puzzled scholars. In ancient Greek times, Troy was said to be very close to the sea.

Then in the 1870s, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered what were believed to be the remains of an ancient city well inland from the coast of what is now Turkey.

Homer's tale relates to a time when a large inlet of the Aegean Sea reached towards Troy.

Scientists now believe that, over the centuries, this inlet became silted up with the deposits from rivers, pushing the coastline back to its present-day position.

Classics expert Dr John Luce said: "At Schliemann's excavation, he took the site of the camp mentioned by Homer to be on the beach which one sees today, but in the course of 3,000 years the great rivers of [Scamander and Simois] have brought down enormous quantities of silt which have advanced the coastline by miles."

Since 1977, Dr Luce has been involved with an international group of researchers who have taken part in a systematic drilling programme in an attempt to document the landscape changes.

Dr John Kraft, from the University of Delaware in the US, carried out the geological investigations, together with Turkish colleagues, drilling out samples of sediment from well below the surface.

"We drilled for 70 metres below the flood-plain surface and we found 70 metres of marine material," he explained.

Further drilling south on the plain revealed what the researchers believe to have been a major marine area, leading them to conclude that the sea had been pushed back to its present location by a build up of silt deposits in the delta.

"It was right in front of Troy that we were drilling a hole and seashells came out," Dr Kraft enthused. [continue]

From the CBC, Ancient feathers bring clues to Yukon's past.

Scientists say ancient artifacts from Yukon's melting glaciers are giving them new insights into the lifestyles of North America's first people.

They have identified feathers in ancient arrows that tell them about hunting practices of Yukoners 8,000 years ago. (. . .) Archeologists found the feathers on ancient arrows and hunting darts over the past few summers. They've been combing high mountain ice patches for evidence of ancient hunters. [continue]

Related info:
Thawing artifacts - mirabilis.ca entry from January 17th, 2003.
Tour Yukon

From Kathimerini, Greece guards sunken treasures.

Hidden somewhere in an anonymous Athens office building lies an adventurer's ultimate dream - a modern-day map charting in detail more than 1,000 ancient shipwrecks still submerged in Greek seas.

For centuries, generations of treasure hunters have explored the depths around the Greek mainland and its offshore islands, but only since the development of new technologies have marine archaeologists been able to track down the hundreds of wrecks hidden in the idyllic waters. And they don't want to share the information with amateurs out for a quick buck. "These (shipwrecks) have been recorded electronically, they are everywhere," said Aikaterini Dellaporta, director of the Culture Ministry's Department of Underwater Antiquities. "If we ever publish the map, I fear that a lot of areas will have diving restrictions," she said.

The Greek authorities reward those who stumble across something of historical value by chance. Many treasures found in the past were discovered by fishermen or sponge divers. Treasure hunting is illegal in Greece and scuba diving is allowed only in a few restricted centers alongside 500 kilometers (310 miles) of the country's 15,000-kilometer coastline.

The authorities are concerned that antiquities found by amateur divers could end up on the black market, scooped up by shady collectors around the world. Greek marine archaeologists have documented and mapped more than 1,000 shipwrecks - the oldest near the island of Dokos in the Gulf of Argos - dating back to 2200 BC, as well as sunken cities, many submerged in ancient times by powerful earthquakes. [continue]

When you arrive at the door and see that the sanctuary knocker looks like this, you know that the rest of Durham Cathedral is bound to be interesting.

Durham's Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin is the last resting place of: St Cuthbert - the greatest of the early English saints; St Bede - the finest scholar of his age; and the head of St Oswald - the warrior king and martyr. In addition, it was for centuries both home for a community of Benedictine monks and seat of the mighty Prince Bishops of Durham. (. . .) The cathedral building - a large part of which dates back some 900 years - is widely regarded as one of the most complete and perfect examples of Romanesque architecture still in existence.

That's from the introduction page of the Durham Cathedral and Castle website. The cathedral tour at that site is a treat: decently well organized and detailed. (There's even a glossary!)

Durham Cathedral contains the tombs of St Bede and St Cuthbert. There was a monastery at Durham for 450 years, until England's eternally annoying reformers forced the monastery's dissolution in 1540.

Related links:
Durham Cathedral (official website)
Durham Cathedral - great buildings online
photos of Durham Cathedral
Durham Cathedral History - from North East England History Pages
Interactive map of Durham Cathedral
Mystery Worshipper report of Durham Cathedral - from ship-of-fools.com
The Venerable Bede - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
St Cuthbert - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

It turns out that Jesuits have been commemorated on postage stamps all around the world. The philatelic display of the Jesuit mission displays many of these stamps, neatly sorted into "what type of Jesuit?" categories:

Jesuit Mathematicians, Scientists and Astronomers,
Jesuit Artists and Jesuit Scholars,
Jesuit Founders and Schools, and
Jesuit Missionaries and Saints.

A very interesting browse.

"As humans emerged from the Stone Age, they built little cities. The discovery in central Italy of a 7,800-year-old settlement reveals the dawning of Western civilization." Discover Magazine's article about this underwater stone age city, La Marmotta, is now online.

The Times of India has a fascinating article about the history of coins. Here's one tidbit from Money talks: Ancient coins refute myths.

When Mohammad bin Tughlaq introduced copper currency in the 14th century, he made a critical mistake—he failed to put an official stamp on the coins. Soon, every housewife was melting her copper vessels, every mohalla had sprouted a mint.

"In those times, the face value of a coin was the same as its intrinsic value. Tughlaq’s idea of substituting silver coins with token copper ones was good, except that he was naive," explains Shailendra Bhandare, a numismatist with the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Adds Subhadra Anand, history professor and principal of National College, "People paid their taxes with copper coins, but demanded their wages in silver. The treasury overflowed with counterfeits, and the economy eventually collapsed." Even today, it’s possible to stumble upon these 700- year-old fakes at Chor Bazaar—and with them a chapter of history. [continue]

Related links:
The archaic Indian punch marked coins - approaches to classification by Shailendra Bhandare
Tughlaq dynasty
Medieval India Coinage - from the Reserve Bank of India Monetary Museum. (Scroll about half way down the page. Under the "Coins of the Khiljis" header you'll find a section on Muhammed bin Tughlaq and his monetary experiments.)
The contribution of coins to the history of India
Indian coinage
Coin India: The Virtual Museum of Indian Coins
Coining a life-long passion - article about Sennen Duorado and his collection of Indian coins

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Glory of Byzantium is exactly the right sort of website: a combination of information, and beautiful, beautiful images. Explore the works of art or the themes in Byzantine art. Then there's the history section, and a Byzantium through the ages timeline, too. Lovely.

From news.com.au, Vatican steps up Pius XII defence

The Vatican is stepping up its defence of World War II-era Pope Pius XII, criticised by Jews for failing to speak out against the Holocaust, as it prepares to release documents on pre-war Vatican-German relations next month.

An influential Italian Jesuit magazine close to the Vatican has published an article describing Pius' willingness to help members of the German resistance to the Nazis, supported by newly discovered Vatican documents in its own archives.

The magazine, Civilta Cattolica, also plans to publish a second article in coming weeks on the 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler, using more of the documents, said the articles' author, the Rev Giovanni Sale.

In addition, amid the increasing threats of a new war against Iraq, Pope John Paul II and his foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, have both quoted Pius in recent weeks, recalling his opposition to World War II and the "appalling" toll war takes. [continue]

Related mirabilis.ca entry:
Vatican pre-WW2 archives

From the Sophia Echo: Oldest trade ship discovered.

Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the remains of The Titanic, chose the beginning of January to announce the fact that last summer he had found the remnants of the oldest commercial ship in the world. And he found them in the Bulgarian part of the Black Sea.

This special exploration near the shore of the town of Varna started with the intention of finding something else, something bigger from a scientific point of view, something that would revolutionise the history of mankind. Ballard came to the Black Sea to search for another ship that has another meaning and is referred to as Noah's Ark. [continue]

From a History Today article posted at bethsuryoyo.com, Hasankeyf: A City in Peril.

'Try to imagine a steep cliff rising from the water and crowned by a decaying castle, the whole face of it perforated with cave-dwellings of a very early date in which the present inhabitants live; and at the end of a cliff a ruined mosque with a minaret, from the side of which a grandiose and now broken medieval bridge stretches over the majestically winding river to the opposite shore.'

This is how Dr S Guyer described his first sight of Hasankeyf as he sailed down the River Tigris through south-eastern Turkey, heading for Iraq. The German adventurer made his journey in the early 1920s, although if he went back today, little would have changed. What he would find is a small army of Turkish archaeologists working against the clock to discover the secrets of ancient Hasankeyf before it is flooded by the waters of the proposed Ilisu dam. The Turks say their aim is to have the dam operational by the next decade. [continue]

Related:
In pictures: Hidden treasures of Hasankeyf
Don't build Illsu Dam - photos
Why Hasankeyf? Photos & info
Before the deluge - part one - Guardian article
Before the deluge - part two -Guardian article
Naomi and Naime (account of a visit to Hasankeyf)

From Street in Germany leads to road in Rome at iol.co.za:

A well-preserved segment of a Roman road has been unearthed just one metre below a city street in Cologne, archeologists announced on Tuesday.

So intact is the 700-metre-long stretch of paved roadway that wheel ruts caused by chariots and carts were still clearly visible in the 2 000-year-old roadway.

"It is a prime example of Roman road engineering," a spokesperson for the Cologne municipal archaeological department said. "The paving stones are still in place as are the periphery gutters."

Archaeological evidence indicates the road was still in everyday use in the early 19th Century before finally being covered over by a more modern thoroughfare.

The road linked the Roman colonial outpost at Cologne, known as Colonia Agrippina to the Romans, with the Limes road which in turn led - as did all major roads in those days - directly to Rome

From the Weight of Tradition article at Greece Now:

The standing long jumpers in the ancient Olympics may not have known much about spikes and heels, but no one could accuse them of being light in the purposeful design department.

They made themselves hand-held weights, or halteres, out of heavy stone or lead to add inches to their bare-footed best. And a new study confirms that - minus, perhaps, a bruised heel or two - they had it down to a science.

Professors Alberto Minetti and Luca Ardigo, human movement researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University, say their computer simulations and experiments with volunteers show that a pair of halteres weighing from two to nine kilos will augment an athlete's takeoff speed and the length of a jump. The optimum weight of the two halteres taken together, they add, is five to six kilos.

By swinging their arms forward at takeoff and backward just before landing, athletes with good timing and knee-shoulder coordination can add at least 17 centimetres to a three-metre leap, write the researchers in the 14 November issue of the scientific journal Nature.

Minetti and Ardigo say that the shift in the "centre of mass" and the "greater ground-reaction force" generated by use of weights are the reasons why halteres are anything but excess baggage. [continue]

From an article at independent.co.uk, Stone age man drank milk, scientists find.

Early Britons drank milk as far back as 4,500 BC, according to a chemical analysis of pottery fragments unearthed at several stone age sites in southern England.

Scientists have identified the chemical signature of dairy products such as milk, cheese or yoghurt inside a variety of cooking pots used for preparing food in neolithic Britain.

Mark Copley, an organic chemistry researcher at Bristol University, said the discovery suggested dairy products formed an important part of the stone age diet almost immediately after the introduction of livestock farming to Britain some 6,000 years ago.

Although it was known that ancient Britons kept livestock for meat, it was not clear whether the milk from the ruminant animals – sheep, goats and cows – was also collected for human consumption.

The question of dairying is important in understanding the nutrition and culture of ancient Britain but until now archaeologists have had little to go on other than the odd discovery of specialist vessels or putative cheese strainers. [continue]

Update:
Dairying Pioneers: Milk ran deep in prehistoric England - from Science News Online, Feb 1st, 2003.

From News in Science.

People of the Bronze Age traded and travelled more widely along a network of ancient highways in the the Middle East than previously thought, newly-released satellite images show.

About 5,000 years ago, wheeled wagons navigated wide dirt roads that extended dozens of kilometres across the fertile prairies of northern Iraq and what is now modern-day Syria and Turkey, and probably reached all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, American researchers said.

"We assumed that these ancient sites were pretty parochial, but in fact they were tied together by well-travelled highways," said Associate Professor Tony Wilkinson, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, who co-authored a paper on the findings to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Antiquity. [continue]

Related article:
Satellites Uncover Ancient Mideast Road Networks - New York Times. (Requires free registration.)

From Monasticism in Britain:

Benedict's Rule was brought to Britain in 597, by St. Augustine, who had been sent by Pope Gregory the Great (both of whom were Benedictines) to preach to and convert the Saxons, who had taken over control of the island, by this time. The Benedictine observance co-existed with other observances of Celtic origin for some 50 years, but, in the end, prevailed at the Synod of Whitby in AD 664, thanks to St. Wilfred of York, St. Benedict Biscop and others.

Over the next 900 or so years the Benedictines, and all other monastic orders, would go through various vicissitudes which came to an abrupt end, around 1540, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

Can you name the orders that had monasteries in England? This site does, and they include a bit of information about each, including the more obscure ones. (Tironensians, Premonstratensians, and Gilbertines: oh my!)

From The Age of Unreason:Cartographic Blunders of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries at mercatorsworld.com.

Twelve-foot giants tower over European explorers in Patagonia, a name itself based on a dog-headed monster from Spanish myth. Cannibals festoon shrubs with severed arms and legs. The outer reaches of North Carolina comprise the entire continent of North America, with the trade-rich Indies just beyond Pamlico Sound. The Seven Golden Cities of Cibola are in South Carolina.

Early maps portray these legends - and many more - as topographic fact. Errors, chimera, and distortions usually are easy to detect, and many are well-known among map aficionados. Not so obvious are how they originated and why they survived for centuries.

Fifteenth- and sixteenth- century explorers, travelers, and mapmakers suffered primitive navigational tools, chaotic spellings, inferior printing techniques, and a simple lack of knowledge, but these handicaps do not account for all cartographic distortions. Wishful thinking and superstition also clouded cartographic perceptions. Mapmakers, who rarely had firsthand information, accepted the exaggerated accounts of travelers, who in turn sometimes based their stories on hearsay. Information blended with myth - that peculiar combination of folklore, religion, instruction, and entertainment. In the words of cartographic historian R.A. Skelton, cartographers worked at "the uncertain boundary between knowledge and ignorance." [continue]

From the Aethelstan Project Treasure Legend page at vikingtreasure.com.

Organizing a legitimate treasure hunt is a great metaphor for life. It seems that everyone is searching for something but what they will find is uncertain. Our treasure hunt is perhaps more formal than most, consisting of an expedition to unearth the lost chests of silver coins buried by Egil Skallagrimsson in 982 AD in southwestern Iceland. Although a modern day treasure hunt may sound like a child’s fantasy, the existence of the chests of silver is well documented in historical records and many of the ancient Icelandic sagas. The Aethelstan Project has conducted extensive research into the existence and location of the treasure.

As history recounts, the chests of silver coins were given to the Viking poet by King Aethelstan of England for his participation in the battle of Brunaburh. During the battle, Egil’s brother Thorolf Skallagrimsson is killed and in compensation for the death of his brother and in payment for his services in battle, King Aethelstan bestows on Egil two great chests of English silver coins. These coins were eventually taken back to Egil’s farm in Iceland. Much of this historical record was recorded first-hand in poetry written by Egil Skallagrimsson that still survives today detailing the battle, the gifts and the long trip back to Iceland.

The legend behind the burial of the coins is equally fascinating. [continue]

The website includes details about the location, the techniques, the plan, and so forth. I love the summary of the plan:

1. Read the books
2. Find out where Egil buried the treasure
3.Locate the burial place on a map with a big X
4. Go get it!

Related sites:
Egil Skallagrimsson and the Viking Ideal
The story of Egil Skallagrimsson
Vikingar på Unga Fakta! (fun site, but all in Swedish)
How Do We Know about the Vikings?

Related book:
Egil's Saga

Oooh! I love it when I find news about some fascinating archaeological discovery, particularly if Vikings, coins, and jewelry are involved. From the Copenhagen Post, Fascinating glimpse of Viking elite’s lifestyle.

Archaeologists excavating Denmark's most important site - a huge Viking manor house complex on Lake Tissø, west of Copenhagen - are gleaning key information about the life style of the Norse elite over one thousand years ago.

The 2002 dig at the site, located north of the town of Slagelse in west Zealand, Denmark's largest island on which Copenhagen is situated, ended in December with the sensational discovery of the foundations of a manor house building dating back to 500-600 AD - the original building on the site.

"The newly discovered manor house pre-dates the main building on the site by some 500 years," said Lars Jørgensen, leader of the Danish National Museum's Tissø dig. "Post holes indicate that it was 38 metres long and some 8 metres high, and the first such building ever unearthed in Denmark."

"The very size of the building came as a surprise to us, as it is four times bigger than any other manor or farmhouse of that period. Its existence tends to reinforce our theory that the site was used for representational and/or ritual activities by the Viking elite of the time."

Among exciting artefacts from last autumn's dig are a golden hinge and jewellery and other metal items, as well as chunks of white-plastered mud wall.

One theory is that the original manor house probably burned down necessitating its replacement by the already excavated main building nearby.

Archaeologists have had their eyes on Tissø since the discovery there in 1977 of a stunning Viking gold necklace weighing 1.8 kilos - the biggest Viking artefact ever found in Denmark - now on permanent display at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen. Systematic annual digs began in 1995 at the site on the western shore of Lake Tissø, 60 km from Copenhagen. Here, experts from the Danish National Museum have been unearthing the foundations of what are the largest buildings yet discovered from Denmark's Viking period, dating from 500-1050 AD, along with a substantial treasure trove of high quality artefacts and evidence of workshops, outhouses and adjoining buildings, pit houses and smelting activity. [continue]

Related stuff:
Danish history -the Viking age
Wolfshead Gallery - Viking Coinage
A new Nordic coin with a ship depiction - found on west shore of Tissø lake

From the British Waterways and Canals page at britainexpress.com:

Until the 18th century most heavy goods were transported within Britain by river. And it isn't hard to see why. A healthy horse could pull a cart laden with two tons. That same horse could pull a river barge weighing one hundred tons. But by Tudor times the navigable rivers were gradually silting up. Several acts of Parliament were passed to keep the rivers clean, but by the 18th century the rivers could not keep up with the demands of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. It was time for a change, and canals provided that change.

The first major canal was built by the Duke of Bridgewater in 1759 to carry coal from his mines at Worsely to Manchester. The Duke's engineer, James Brindley, became the 'pop star' of the canal set, and for the next dozen years he was in constant demand to create canals for other entrepreneurs. [continue]

Now there are over 2000 miles of canals through Britain, with narrow riverboats floating up and down them. It's mostly a recreational thing these days. . . maybe one day we'll rent a narrowboat and float our way through the English countryside.

Here are some photos of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, and a collection of photos from a Narrowboat holiday in Cheshire. I think I like this photo best.

Related links:
The Transport Revolution: Canals
James Brindley
British Canal History
Canals 1750 to 1900
The history of the British canal system – A special view of the industrialisation.
Waterway archive
Bridgewater canal history
A new golden age of canals in Shropshire
Waterways Interactive
British Canals
UK Parlaiment - Memorandum submitted by British Waterways

Michael McCormick is a professor of medieval history at Harvard. He's got some interesting things to say about the use of DNA in historical analysis; here's an excerpt from the DNA and the fall of Rome in the Harvard Gazzette.

According to McCormick, some specialists have been able to establish kinship among people entombed in the same area of an early medieval cemetery. Others have used DNA evidence to distinguish wild from domesticated geese on Anglo-Saxon farmsteads, and thus illuminate the development of early agriculture and husbandry.

Techniques of biological research may even provide new insights into a field that has long been the province of traditional scholarship - the study of ancient and medieval manuscripts.

"Theoretically, the DNA of the animals whose skins furnished the parchment pages of ancient and medieval books survives in that parchment," McCormick said. "It might be possible not only to determine the species of animal that supplied the skin, it might even be possible to reconstitute the history of the herds from which they came."

The history of disease is undergoing a revolution today as well, precipitated by the revolution in molecular biology. And disease, McCormick points out, is not just about human suffering, important though that is. Networks of contagion are often networks of communication, and major epidemics have differential demographic and economic impacts.

In England, for example, recent research has provided molecular evidence that a particularly devastating form of malaria afflicted Roman Italy in the fourth century A.D. French medical researchers at the University of Marseilles demonstrated the presence of bubonic plague DNA in the excavated remains of victims of the 14th century Black Death. Such evidence is of great interest to McCormick and other scholars investigating the nature, extent, and impact of the great wave of plagues that helped bring down the Roman economy in the age of Justinian. [continue]

From the Telegraph, Roman site points to a Greater Londinium.

The map of Roman London will have to be redrawn after the discovery of a settlement including a palace or military headquarters about a mile outside the city walls.

A site roughly the size of a football pitch was found after the demolition of a theme pub in Shadwell, east of the Tower of London, which was previously thought to be Londinium's boundary.

Although it is still considered unlikely that London spilled outside its walls, the discovery of what archaeologists described yesterday as a "major status building" suggests significant development on the periphery.

"This completely rewrites the story," Alistair Douglas, who works for Preconstruct Archaeology, said yesterday.

"We knew there was archaeology here, but we did not expect something this big. This is very exciting. We started off with a very small trench, but we have had to keep going as we find more evidence." [continue]

Related BBC article:
Roman palace redraws London map

Time Traveller's Guide is a the sort of website where you could spend several happy hours. Begin by choosing a time period: Roman Empire, Medieval Britain, Tudor England, Stuart England or Napoleon's Empire. Then check out the links on the right side of each page for details about things like movers and shakers, class and customs, and the arts. Very nicely done, this.

In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson's Bay Company sent men to its furthest posts along the coast of North America's Pacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for those men followed them in the Company's supply ships. Sometimes, these letters missed their objects: the men had returned to Britain, or deserted their ships, or died. The Company returned the correspondence to its London office and over the years amassed a file of "undelivered letters." Many of these remained sealed for 150 years and until they were opened by archivist Judith Hudson Beattie, when the Company archives were moved to Canada.

These letters tell the fascinating stories of ordinary people whose lives are rarely recounted in traditional histories. Beattie and Helen M. Buss skilfully introduce us to both the lives of the letter writers and their would-be recipients. Their commentaries frame, for contemporary readers, the words of early nineteenth century working and middle class British folk as well as letters to "voyageurs" from Quebec. The stories of their lives - fathers struggling to support a family, widowed mothers yearning to see their sons, bereft sweethearts left behind, and wives raising their children alone - reach out over two centuries to offer rare insight into the varied worlds of men and women in the early nineteenth century, many of whom became settlers in Washington, Oregon, and the new British colony of Vancouver Island.

That's from a the UBC Press page about the book they've published, Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57, by Helen M. Buss Judith Hudson Beattie. One more for the reading list!

Related links:
Trading places - excellent article from scotsman.com
Explorers' manuscripts and dead letter office offer deeper peek into Canada's past -from University of Calgary
List of intended recipients - from Gordon Innes

Hudson's Bay Company Museum Collection - Manitoba Museum
Hudson's Bay Company Archives - from the Provincial Archives of Manitoba

Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57 - Amazon.com's page for this book

From Ananova, 'Plague outbreak' city streets reopened.

The entrance to a labyrinth of streets beneath Edinburgh has re-opened, more than 350 years after it was sealed off during an outbreak of plague.

Workmen have knocked through the floor of the city's council headquarters to expose the entrance to the redeveloped Mary King's Close.

Local folklore says the narrow 17th century staircase beneath the City Chambers is where the council closed off 400 plague victims to die in 1645. [continue]

The Mary King's Close website has historical information and a photo tour.

Related news articles:
Taking steps to shine light on city's history
Tourist plan for 'haunted' lane
Bubonic plague site to be given tourist makeover

Related links:
Mary King's Close Ghost Tour
Places to Visit in Scotland- Mary King's Close, Edinburgh
The Plague in Scotland and Ireland

From Douglas Bernon's article, Reveries on A Walk to Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu, Peru’s famous Lost City Of the Incas, is perched in a high mountain valley ringed by towering peaks. This ancient holy city is about the same distance south of the equator as Barbados is north. Depending on our altitude, we’ve been slipping up and down through a series of microclimates: cloud forest, grassy plains, high sierra, rain forest. Think orchids, jungles, and glaciers, all in the same picture. Once, much of Peru was laced with narrow Inca highways, wide enough only for a walker and his burdens. Many think the trail was a pilgrimage planned as a narrative experience, a complete work of art in which truths are revealed progressively in nature’s changing dramas, culminating with the mountaintop setting and elegantly crafted stone temples of Machu Picchu. Seems right to me. [continue]

From the Guardian, First Light.

At 1pm on January 29 1864, a little girl with cherubic features and scraggy, shoulder-length hair was buttoned into her winter coat, waiting patiently for her photograph to be taken. In front of her, a short, stocky, middle- aged woman fitted another glass plate into the back of her huge camera and begged the child to keep still. She was probably counting, too; it could take up to five minutes for the image to be fully exposed. If the girl was bored, she didn't show it. Her face, turned in half-profile to catch the light, was composed but alive, its curves heightened by the contrast between shadow and light. It was a happy result - we know, because the photographer wrote to the girl's father later that day: "My first perfect success in the complete Photograph owing greatly to the docility & sweetness of my best and fairest little sitter. This Photograph was taken by me at 1pm Friday Jan 29th Printed Toned - fixed and framed all by me & given as it now is by 8pm this same day Jan 29th 1864. Julia Margaret Cameron." [continue]

Related link:
Masters of Photography: Julia Margaret Cameron

From (where else?) How to host a Roman orgy:

As soon as your guests seat themselves, ask them to remove their shoes, and have your slaves wash their feet before hors d'oeuvres are served. A full banquet should consist of at least seven courses. For starters, try dormice rolled in honey and poppy seeds, a favorite of Trimalchio, the unfrugal gourmet of Petronius's Satyricon. As an entree, you might offer the "Shield of Minerva the Protectress," invented to tickle the gluttony-dulled palate of Emperor Vitellius: The recipe calls for pike livers, pheasant and peacock brains, flamingo tongues and lamprey milt. (You'd better hope none of your guests asks what "milt" is.) Sow udders were another popular Roman delicacy, especially when the sow had been fattened on figs. Next, dazzle your guests with a "Trojan pig": a roast pig stuffed as full of other creatures--live quail, in the case of Trimalchio's famous dinner--as the mythical horse was of Greeks.

Since the Romans ate mostly with their fingers, dinner will be pretty greasy. Good table manners called for diners to throw bones, shells and cores on the floor. You should, however, send servants around with ewers of perfumed water to wash guests' hands between courses; the very height of elegance was to use pretty slave boys from Asia Minor on whose long hair guests could dry their hands. [continue]

So now you know!

Related:
definition of milt from dictionary.com
Roman recipes at the Roman orgy page

From the Independent, Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago.

Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years.

Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to reduce Egyptian power in neighbouring Palestine and played a key part in creating biblical-era Israel. The invasion also led, in effect, to the invention of the concept of the international treaty.

The clay tablets – discovered at the site of the ancient city of Qatna, 200km north of Damascus – appear to tell the whole story of the Hittite conquest of the region. What seems to be one of the first letters in the sequence – probably from a diplomatic or intelligence officer in northern Syria – describes how the Hittites invaded with a large army and great numbers of chariots and destroyed many towns, including one 100km north of Qatna. The diplomat implores the King of Qatna – a ruler called Idanda – to reinforce his defences.

Another letter – from a fellow king, also somewhere in northern Syria – described to Idanda how the Hittite general was on the march again, laden with war booty, presumably from the sacked cities. [continue]

David Menzies believes that that the Chinese discovered America in 1421. His website has information about his theory, and the book he's written on this topic. Newspapers all around the world are printing articles about David's book; here's an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times' article, Did Chinese get here first?

Take a bite out of this apple: "I suggest that the first settlers of North America came not with Columbus nor any other European pioneer, but in the junks of Admiral Zhou Wen's fleet, landing around Christmas 1421. Perhaps New England should now be renamed New China."

Preposterous? Maybe. Maybe not. Once you've plowed through 1421: The Year China Discovered America, by Gavin Menzies (Morrow, $27.95), you may walk away muttering that maybe the fellow has something there, if only he weren't so credulous.

Menzies is no charlatan like Erich von Daniken, who peddled the now quaint notion that space aliens settled Earth and left behind mysterious artifacts. Rather, Menzies is a retired Royal Navy submarine captain and an amateur historian of the grandly (sometimes grandiosely) imaginative stripe only the British can produce. He believes that not only did the Chinese beat Columbus to America by 72 years, they also circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan, landed in Australia and sailed past Antarctica and into the Arctic Ocean. They did so, he says, in a fleet of more than 300 ships, some of them huge floating palaces longer than a football field, packed with treasure for trading, ambassadors for diplomacy, astronomers for navigation and concubines for pleasure.

So startling is his evidence that he lectured last March at the venerable British Royal Geographical Society--a venue not ordinarily allowed to crackpots or cranks. Adm. John Woodward, victor of the Falklands War and a former shipmate of Menzies, declared that he "is not some mad eccentric but a rational man, good at analysis." [continue]

Related articles:

Did Columbus discover Chinese food in America? - from csmonitor.com
Did the Chinese discover America? - from cnn.com
The Chinese discovered America "Or did they? A dubious new book offers an object lesson in amateurish research, slapdash editing and publishing greed." - salon.com
Experts hope to emulate Chinese Columbus - from BBC
Explorer from China who 'beat Columbus to America' - from the Telegraph
Re-writing the race to America - from theage.com.au

Update:
The Pinta, Santa Maria, and a Chinese junk? "A new book claims the Chinese discovered America in 1421, but historians refute thesis." - from csmonitor.com
Writer mocked for claim Chinese beat Columbus - from canoe.ca

The book:
1421: The Year China Discovered America

From the Iona Abbey website:

One of Scotland's most historic and venerated sites, lona Abbey is a celebrated Christian centre and the burial place of early Scottish kings. The Abbey and Nunnery grounds house one of the most comprehensive collections of Christian carved stones in Scotland, ranging in age from 600AD to the 1600s.

Eight hundred years later the island's significance was reaffirmed when the Abbey buildings were restored and an active community again took up residence. Visitors can tour the Abbey, including Torr an Aba - the site of St Columba's writing cell - which provides a view over the Abbey; St Columba's Shrine; the Abbey church and cloisters. To the north-east of the Abbey is the Michael Chapel and the Infirmary Museum where a magnificent collection of carved stones is on view.

The site includes 360° views of the nunnery, the abbey cloisters, and the inside of the abbey.

Another interesting page is the Iona Abbey section of Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide. There you'll find some photos, and a history of the island - everything from the Abbey's founding and Viking invasions to the recent restorations.

Related Links
Norsemen raid Abbey of Iona 795
Iona Abbey - 3 photos and short history
Isle of Iona - from Highlandtraveller.com
Andy's Iona photos
Iona photos by Michael Kennedy
Iona photos from the University of Edinburgh Chaplaincy
St Columba - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

From a canada.com article, U of C holds key to lost Mayan city.

Calgary archeologist Kathryn Reese-Taylor walked two days behind a mule in the Guatemalan jungle last summer to reach the tantalizing remains of a Mayan city.

The lost city of Naachtun -- mysteriously abandoned at the height of its powers -- beckoned Reese-Taylor, one of only a handful of archeologists in the past 80 years to visit the site.

"It was a huge building -- standing masonry architecture, half-shrouded in jungle vegetation," said Reese-Taylor, associate professor with the University of Calgary's archeology department. "It was one of the most impressive sites I've ever seen. It was incredible to see. I'd hardly ever seen anything like this. It was awe-inspiring."

Searching for more inspiration like the kind she found last July, Reese-Taylor will head back next month to seek approval from the Guatemalan government for a 10-year project that could start in February 2004. [continue]

From Times Online: Explosive evidence found in a 13th-century shipwreck off the coast of Japan.

Japanese underwater archaeologists have found evidence of the great invasion fleet sent by Kublai Khan in the 13th century, which tradition says was destroyed by a kamikaze or "divine wind" sent by the Emperor’s deified ancestors to save Japan from its enemies. Only a small proportion of the force was Mongol, the evidence shows: the majority was drawn from conquered China, and used advanced weaponry including shrapnel-filled projectile bombs.

The discovery, by Kenzo Hayashida of the Kyushu Okinawa Society for Underwater Archaeology, follows years of patient searching of the sea bottom off the north coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. The site, in Imari Bay, was initially found by fishermen, whose nets brought up artefacts including the personal seal of a Mongol commander, inscribed in both Chinese and the Phagspa script used to write the Mongolian language after the descendants of Genghis Khan conquered China and needed to administer their empire. [continue]

From the Charlotte Observer, Glacial melt turns up treasure:

Biologist Gerry Kuzyk was hiking with his wife in the remote reaches of the Yukon when he caught the putrid scent of caribou dung wafting through the chill air.

Then he saw it -- the biggest pile of animal droppings he had ever seen, 8 feet high and stretching over a half-mile of mountainside.

Kuzyk, a researcher with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, knew there weren't enough caribou in the entire territory to create such an epic mound. Odder yet, there hadn't been caribou in the area for nearly a century.

"It was like being in the `Twilight Zone,' " said Rick Farnell, a colleague who helped investigate the find. "You could see them from a distance -- big, black bands of feces. I'm talking tons of it."

The mystery was solved by lab analysis: The dung, the product of innumerable migrating caribou herds, had been frozen for thousands of years and only recently exposed by melting ice.

Along with the dung, the scientists soon discovered an arsenal of Stone Age darts, arrows and spears.

For most scientists, from ecologists to climate experts, the warming of the planet is a disturbing trend that could radically alter the environment. But for archaeologists, it has prompted a breathtaking treasure hunt.

Without doing any digging, the scientists are scooping up artifacts, mummies and fossils long hidden in the depths of monstrous glaciers.

"We walk right up and pull arrows and animals out of the ice," Farnell said. [continue]

Other pages about this story:
History Emerging from the Ice - from npr.org. Iincludes photo gallery.
Droppings are a storehouse of knowledge
Ancient secrets on ice
Scientific Gold Is Where You Find It
Treasures from Icy Tombs

Background info:
Yukon Mammal Series: Caribou
Historic caribou herd returns to Yukon
Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre: Ancient Caribou
Tour Yukon, Canada's True North

From Newsday, Ancient Ship Provides Evidence of Trade.

While classical Greece brings to mind great poets, architects and sculptors, the people had to eat, too. Now undersea explorers have found evidence of trade in one of the Greeks' most common foods, salted fish.

Ancient historians tell of the dried fish similar to salt cod, known as tarichos, being imported in great quantities.

In apparent confirmation of those tales, the oldest shipwreck yet found in the Black Sea is providing evidence of dried fish being shipped from as far away as the Crimea in what is now Ukraine.

The discovery, off the coast of Bulgaria, was announced this week by undersea explorer Robert Ballard of the Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn. Ballard is best known for finding the remains of the Titanic and other famed shipwrecks. [continue]

National Geographic has more about the shipwreck.

ABC News Online reports that archaeologists have unearthed Roman ruins in Jordan.

Archaelogists in Jordan have discovered a large Roman amphitheatre which they say is one of their most important finds for years.

The BBC reports the area where the amphitheatre was discovered was known to be the site of the ancient Roman city of Capitolias, but until now only a few remains had even been found.

The clue to the discovery was a small piece of wall that sparked the interest of archaelogists just over a year ago.

Months of digging beneath up to 20 metres of mud have now unearthed about 20 per cent of what antiquities officials say is an amphitheatre that could have seated around 6,000 people.

Archaeologists believe much more of the ancient city is still lying underground, beneath a carpet of olive trees.

From Ananova, Huge Bronze Age haul found in Austria.

Europe's biggest-ever discovery of Bronze Age weapons and jewellery has been made in Austria. Archaeologists believe the hoard could prove Bronze Age Europe rivaled Greece in terms of early society and technology.

The scientists from the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian National Memorial Office have so far found 360 pieces buried at the side of a crevice in Moosbruckschrofen am Piller in Tyrol.

It is thought they were laid there as part of a ritual offering sometime between 1550 and 1250 BC. [continue]

related link:
Major find of Bronze Age artifacts - canoe.ca

From an AP article on the Guardian website, Israeli Experts Examine Ancient Tablet.

Israeli geologists said Monday they have examined a stone tablet detailing repair plans for the Jewish Temple of King Solomon that, if authenticated, would be a rare piece of physical evidence confirming biblical narrative.

The find - whose origin is murky - is about the size of a legal pad, with a 15-line inscription in ancient Hebrew that strongly resembles descriptions in the Bible's Book of Kings. It could also strengthen Jewish claims to a disputed holy site in Jerusalem's Old City that is now home to two major mosques. [continue]

Related link:
There is nothing else like it - article from Ha'aretz Daily.

From an Archeological Odyssey article, Ancient Ships: An Iconographical Tale.

Nautical archaeology has taught us much about ancient seafaring, but some details do not survive in the archaeological record. To fill in the picture, we can turn to iconography, that is, ancient depictions of seagoing vessels though we must remember that depictions of ships are not the ships themselves. Here are some examples of what we can learn from iconography. [continue]

From Ananova: Rare cannon recovered from Cromwellian wreck.

Archaeologists have discovered what is believed to be one of the most significant underwater finds ever made.

They have found a 17th century iron cannon, thought to be the only one of its kind still in existence.

It was recovered from the wreck of the Swan, a small Cromwellian warship lost off Mull while attacking the royalist stronghold of Duart Castle in 1653. [continue]

I've had a weakness for antique toasters since I was six, when I saw the one my friend's grandma had. It was way cooler than any modern toaster, and certainly superior to the one my mom and dad had. An article at csmonitor.com, A burning passion for toasters, introduces a tempting idea.

As the owner of 800 antique toasters, Mr. Sheafe has one for practically every mood.

Feel like conserving electricity? Try the manual Bromwell pyramid-shaped toaster, so you can hold your bread over a flame just as your ancestors did at the turn of the 20th century.

Maybe one of these old toasters would like to live in my kitchen.

Related mirabilis.ca entry:
Toaster history

Discovery.com reports the opening of an ancient elephant graveyard near Rome.

A Pompeii for elephants, an Italian site packed with the remains of Middle Pleistocene stuck-in-the-mud pachyderms, has just opened to the public after a 17-year excavation.

Situated 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) northeast of Rome, La Polledrara di Cecanibbio is a sort of a fossilized prehistoric zoo. The bones — more than 10,000 of them — emerged from the hardened earth of a 900-square- meter area (ca. 9,700 square feet) belonging to an ancient riverbed.

The Cranky Professor is in Rome right now. (And posting the odd cranky blog entry, too.) I wonder if he'll have time to go see this and tell us what it's like.

Related link:
Excavating Ancient Elephants in Italy

From NewsOK.com: Translators unravel old scroll's secrets.

On a dry day 2,000 years ago, a worker charged with mummifying a body among the tombs of Egypt preserved what would become one of the largest ancient literary finds in history.

Experts, including Cincinnati professor Kathryn Gutzwiller, said the worker cut and molded a piece of papyrus -- what to him was a scrap of paper -- into a chest cover that resembled papier-mache. The cover formed a hard layer on the mummy before intricate decorations were added.

The mummy was entombed, along with the papyrus, until 1992, when the body was stolen from Egypt. Gutzwiller said the papyrus, an ancient paper made from a tall grassy sedge in the Nile Valley, made its way to the antiquities market, where it lingered until being discovered by two scholars at the University of Milan. [continue]

In Tudor winters the Thames froze solid, and fairs were held on the ice. This is local London has an article about London’s days of icy fairs.

The fairs all took place upstream from the Old London Bridge. Its 19 arches drastically calmed and slowed the flow of the river, making it more likely to freeze solid, although the Thames did freeze over at Greenwich on at least one occasion.

Nicholas Reed says: "There is not much recorded about it but the third wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, the mother of Edward, apparently crossed the river on the ice to Greenwich Palace on horseback with the King.

"The court attended them, so the river must have frozen solid from the Isle of Dogs to Greenwich for them to be able to do that.

"We don't hear about the river freezing at that point later on, which may have been because the river was shallower then, before regular dredging took place." [continue]

Related book:
Frost Fairs on Frozen Thames

From Time, What Lies Beneath

Just yesterday I read about how the Knights Templar plan to use ultrasound and thermal imaging technology to see what's underground at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. Now Time Asia reports that an Indian court is planning to use the same sort of techniques, this time to figure out if a disputed holy site should belong to Hindus or Muslims.

Hindus and Muslims continue to fight and die for a 1.1-hectare piece of real estate in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya. This struggle has gone on for centuries, with both sides claiming the site as sacred ground. But now an Indian court is trying to combine archaeology with technology to settle the dispute. Following a court order, government archaeologists last week began probing the dusty parcel with a ground- penetrating-radar magnometer capable of detecting a buried foundation and other subsurface ruins. Hindus hope the machine will bolster their claim that an ancient temple marking the birthplace of the god Ram once stood there—superseding the Muslim claim that dates back to the 16th century, when Mughal invaders erected a mosque on the site. [continue]

From the Independent: Knights Templar use technology to search for Grail.

For centuries the intricately carved stones of Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh have tantalised historians, archaeologists and devoted Christians.

A labyrinth of vaults beneath the 15th-century home of the Knights Templar is reputed to contain dozens of holy relics, including early gospels, the Ark of the Covenant, the fabled Holy Grail – and even the mummified head of Christ.

More than 550 years after the first foundation stones were laid, modern technology is about to put the legend to the test.

A group of Knights Templar, successors to the warrior monks who sought asylum from the Pope by fleeing to Scotland in the early 14th century and fought for Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, are to make a "non-invasive" survey of the land around the chapel. They will use the latest ultrasound and thermal imaging technology in the hope of finding evidence of the existence of the vaults.

"The plan is to investigate the land around the chapel to a depth of at least 20ft," said John Ritchie, Grand Herald and spokesman for the Knights Templar. [continue]

Related links:
The Knights Templars - from the Catholic Encyclopedia

From Scotland on Sunday, Which of these is Scotland's top treasure?

They were discovered by Victorian drain diggers, measure less than 30cms and don’t have a gem or scrap of precious metal between them.

But the cache of Neolithic stone axes has been named Scotland’s greatest archaeological treasure.

Last week, archaeologists revealed the top 10 treasures held at the British Museum in London. Only one - the Lewis Chessmen - was discovered in Scotland.

But two TV archaeologists have now compiled Scotland’s very own ancient top 10 and have put the axes - found at Smerrick, Banffshire, in 1881 - at the head of the list.

Other leading contenders were the oldest bow ever found in Britain, a Viking boat discovered in an Orkney sand dune, a carved stone Roman lioness which emerged from the muddy banks of a river after 1,700 years, an Iron Age wind instrument cast into a bog and a hoard of silver Roman coins. [continue]

From the Halifax Daily News, an article about the first settlement in Nova Scotia.

The snow is undisturbed on a frozen clearing in Debert, Colchester Co. It’s not marked on maps and there are no signs drawing cars off the main road. It’s a little known site. But historically, it has massive significance.

About 12,600 years ago this was a village, the first known settlement in Nova Scotia. And starting next spring, the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq will be encouraging people to see one of the oldest archaeological sites in North America. [continue]

An interesting historical tidbit appears in The Sentinal (Staffordshire, England) today: Plaque commemorates ancient plague stone.

A plaque is to be erected to commemorate an ancient plague stone which saved families from the Black Death.

The listed stone at Birchall, on the outskirts of Leek, marks the spot where provisions were left for the residents of the town during the 14th Century plague, which killed more than 50 million people.

This got me wondering about other plague stones. Were they common? I'm guessing they were; I found quite a few mentions of them on the web. A page from Cotgrave.com gives the story of Cotgrave's plague stone:

The Plague came to Cotgrave in 1637. This was not the notorious "Black Death" outbreak but it devastated Cotgrave; 93 people died, 46 of them children - an unimaginable tragedy in a community then of less than 500. During the outbreak, two men exiled themselves from their families, locked themselves into the church and used the building as the village food store. Food was placed on the church wall for people to collect, placing their money in a hollow Plague Stone filled with vinegar as disinfectant. The Plague Stone remains in the church today and still fulfils a useful purpose as a holy-water stoup.

Related Links:
The Plague Stone - 1507
definition of plague stone from EnglishHeritage.org.uk
page about Greystoke, Cumbria. Plague stone reference is about half way down the page.
photo of Ombersley's 14th century plague stone.

From the Herald newspaper in Glasgow: Lost castle found on the internet.

An archive of sixteenth-century maps published on the internet has led a historian to the forgotten site of a medieval castle on the Black Isle.

The marriage of modern technology with rudimentary mapmaking could help an army of amateur historians to fill in the gaps left by professional historians and archaeologists, according to David Alston, a museum curator, who made the discovery.

When the mapmakers of the Ordnance Survey surveyed the Black Isle in the early 1870s they recorded "Castledownie" as the name for vestiges of a fortification on the coastal cliffs, high above the spot where the Eathie Burn flows into the Moray Firth, opposite the site of the Ardersier fabrication yard.

However, the suggestion that it was the site of a medieval castle found little favour with archaeologists when they visited the site in the 19th century and again in the middle of the 20th. But within the last year, the late 16th-century maps of Timothy Pont have become available on the world-wide web through the National Library of Scotland. One of his maps shows a prominent tower house inside an enclosure at the Black Isle site. [continue]

From the People's Daily, Ancient Tablet on Ecological Protection Discovered in Shaanxi.

A stone tablet inscribed with a decree on ecological protection issued by Emperor Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) has been discovered near the imposing Great Wall in north China's Shaanxi province.

Found at the cross of Bachakou near Shuozhou city, the tablet, measuring 1.6 meters high and one meter wide, was erected in 1549 on a hillside several dozen kilometers from the Yanmen Pass on the ancient Great Wall, according to inscriptions on it.

The decree of about 700-character banned tree-felling and called for efforts to restore pastures or return farmland to woodlands. It also warned those in violation of the decree would be dealt with harshly and exiled to remote regions. [continue]

What once was a temple is now a puzzle of ancient stones:

Forty years ago, a team of French archaeologists decided that the best way to save the Baphuon temple was to destroy it.

They began to take apart the fragile temple block by block, keeping meticulous records of their work, planning to put it back together again as a more stable structure.

Then came war. As the Communist Khmer Rouge approached, the restorers fled the Angkor temple complex in 1972. In the chaos that followed, all their written records were destroyed.

When they returned in 1995, all they found was 300,000 heavy stone blocks strewn among the trees -- the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world.

It is a puzzle without a key, but it does have a solution. Block by block, layer by layer, the Baphuon temple is rising again as one of the towering monuments of Angkor.

This article is from the New York Times. Read the rest there, if you like, and see the photos as well, although you'll need to register first. The Seattle PI has reprinted the article, without photos. No registration nonsense if you go for that version.

BBC's Cambodia:Temples page has a bit of information about Baphuon Temple, and a photo.

Oh! Oh! A pool at England's ancient Bath Spa will re-open for swimming! The Guardian tells all about it, giving information about the renovation, and some of the site's history.

The earliest recorded visitors to Bath threw an offering of flint tools into the steaming spring 7,000 years ago.

Millennia later, according to Celtic legend, a chieftain called Bladud became a swineherd, when he was expelled from court because of his leprosy. He watched his scabby pigs wallowing in hot mud, admired their restored pink complexions, plunged in himself, and was healed.

The city's prosperity has since been built on torrents of hot water, reeking of bad eggs and pouring from the earth at the rate of 1.2m litres a day.

The Romans worshipped the goddess of the springs, and built opulent complexes of temples and bath houses. [continue]

Just look at this photo of an ancient swimming pool at Bath. Built by the Romans, even! Wouldn't you love to swim in something like that?

Today National Geographic posted an article about Scottish New Year's celebrations, Scots Mark New Year With Fiery Ancient Rites.

Residents of Scotland mark the arrival of the new year with particular passion in a holiday they call Hogmanay that draws on their history of Viking invasions, superstition, and ancient pagan rituals.

Hogmanay's origins date back to pagan rituals that marked the time of the winter solstice. Roman celebrations of the hedonistic winter festival of Saturnalia and Viking celebrations of Yule (the origin of the twelve days of Christmas) contributed to celebrations in Scotland around the new year.

The article goes on to mention first footing, bonfires, and this:

Even more extreme is the ritual known as Up Helly Aa, which is carried out in towns in the Shetland Islands on the last Tuesday in January. A custom dating only back to the early 1800s, Up Helly Aa involves entire towns dressing up as Vikings and ceremonially burning a replica of a Viking ship—followed by raucous celebrating. [continue]

So I'd like to know who invented that Up Helly Aa thing in the 1800s.

Ananova reports that Turkey is demanding the return of St Nick's bones.

The Turkish Santa Claus Foundation is demanding Italy to return the bones of the Christmas icon.

Chairman Muammer Karabulut says the remains of St Nicholas, from whom the myth of Santa Claus emerged, were stolen from Turkey by pirates in the 11th century.

St Nicholas was born and served as bishop of the Mediterranean town of Demre, in the 4th century AD. He was buried there, but his remains were later taken to the Italian town of Bari.

"We want them returned in 2003. We're starting a campaign this year for them to be given back," Mr Karabulut said.

"He belongs in Turkey," Mr Karabulut said. [continue]

Related links
CNN: Turkish group demands Santa's bones
St Nicholas day (mirabilis.ca entry from Dec 6th, 2002)
History of St Nicholas

Deutsche Welle reports that the Vatican will open archival files from the start of the Nazi period.

The Vatican is planning to open its archives relating to interactions with Nazi Germany in the years leading up to World War II.

The archives cover the period from 1922 to 1939, when Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, was the Vatican?s ambassador to Berlin.

Starting on Feb. 15, the church will open the archives to scholars who make a formal request to view them, according to an announcement released this weekend. [continue]

Recently we've had books like Hitler's Pope, claiming that Pope Pius XII didn't do enough to help the Jews during the war. On the other hand, there are stories like Miriam Zolli's, and comments from Rabbi David Dalin, who says "Pius XII saved more Jewish lives than any other person, including Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler."

Well. I suppose there will soon be more to read about Pius XII, once scholars wade through that archival material.

Related links:
Vatican to reveal Pope Pius papers
Vatican to open wartime archives
Debunking an Anti-Catholic Calumny

Update:
Vatican reveals wartime secrets - February, 2003

From the BBC, Medieval ship may have crossed Atlantic.

Campaigners who successfully fought to preserve a medieval ship discovered on the banks of the River Usk, claim it could have been among the first to cross the Atlantic.

The 15th Century craft was found buried in the riverbank, in Newport, south Wales, in June, when builders started hollowing out the orchestra pit of a new theatre and art centre.

At first it was feared that a lack of money would mean the boat, which is older than the Mary Rose, could not be saved.

But a campaign by local people and £3m in funding from the Welsh Assembly Government meant the ship could be preserved.

Archaeologists have finally finished excavating the remains and in the New Year will reconstruct the 65ft ocean-going vessel so that it can eventually be put on public display. [continue]

Related link:
Medieval ship excavated from river bank

From Building a Castle on the Radio Netherlands site:

Few people can boast that they helped build a 13th-century castle. But in a clearing in the woods of northern Burgundy some 40 enthusiasts are rediscovering medieval skills to do just that. Eschewing modern-day methods, they use natural, local building materials - earth, water, stone, clay, sand and wood - together with 13th- century tools and techniques.

"It was a mad idea that used to haunt me," says Michel Guyot, the visionary who created the Guédelon project in 1997. In some places the walls are between two and three metres high, but when the castle is finished in 2025 it will stand tall and proud, complete with five towers, a dungeon and a drawbridge.

"This project is crazy, this is lunatic," says Dr Athanassios Migos, a specialist in military architecture and editor of the journal Fort. "But it's an exciting project because it is challenging our knowledge of a medieval construction site." Guédelon provides much-needed work in an isolated part of Burgundy, far from the prestigious vineyards. "There are lots of unemployed people with skills which need to be cultivated and maintained,' adds Dr Migos. 'Guédelon is built on top of a stone quarry in the middle of a forest. What better place to have such an ambitious project?" [continue]

Here's the Guédelon site, where you can read about techniques, tools and materials, castle architecture, and a so forth. The visitor's guide even offers a 360° view, although that image loads quite slowly.

From Discovery News: 3-D Technology Preserves Ancient Treasures

Similar to how DNA banks are being created to store genetic data on endangered animals, archaeologists now are preserving archaeological treasures in the virtual world, for accuracy, ease of study, and in case real world problems, like erosion, lead to damage or destruction.

The new 3-D process, developed by a nonprofit organization called Insight, gradually is replacing old data-gathering techniques, which rely upon time-consuming single shot photography and hand- drawn images. This month the process is being used to record tomb KV 7, the final resting place of King Ramses II, in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in Thebes.

Insight's developers use a variety of technologies, combined with custom designed computer software, to digitally recreate buildings and objects. [continue]

Just the thing to use on one's medieval loos.

From Ananova, Ancient loos under threat:

Archaeologists have expressed surprise at finding a complex medieval toilet system during a dig at a shopping centre redevelopment site.

The find at the Sheridan Centre in Gaolgate Street, Stafford, has gone on show to the public, but will eventually be "destroyed" by work to construct a new retail development.

The stone-lined garderobe system, which can be seen from a special viewing platform, is thought to date back to 11th, 12th or 13th century and would have formed part of a substantial building, possibly a Royal castle.

This is so typical of modern Britain: find something old, and put a shopping centre on top of it. I suppose these things are bound to happen in a country where pretty much any sort of digging turns up ruins of one kind or another.

Related link:
Centre to be finished in September

There's a remarkable 10th century Armenian church on Akdamar Island in Turkey. Descriptions of the Akdamar church make it sound like just the sort of place you'd love to visit, and just the sort of place that should be protected and preserved.

From yesterday's Moscow Times article about the church:

Rainwater seeping through cracks in the dome is washing away biblical frescoes that adorn the interior. And as dirt and moss build up inside the cracks and force them open, the dome could collapse at any time, according to Mete Tozkoparan, an archeologist here in remote Van province in eastern Turkey.

"We must start restoration work immediately if the church is to be saved," he said.

As a government official in this predominantly Muslim nation and director of the state museum in Van, Tozkoparan is not permitted to comment on why the work has not begun, he said.

But Huseyin Celik, the minister of culture and a member of the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party, does not mince words: "What we are up against is an undeclared policy by certain narrow-minded individuals within the state of discrimination against Armenian monuments in Turkey."

Victims of that alleged policy include a cathedral in Ani, near Turkey's border with Armenia. Authorities have rejected funding from Western governments for the structure's restoration, saying they will carry out the work themselves.

"The fear of these policymakers is that if Christian sites are restored, this will prove that Armenians once lived here and revive Armenian claims on our land," Celik said during a recent interview in Van. Restoring the church on Akdamar, he said, will be a priority for the new government formed by his party, which won a majority of seats in parliament during the Nov. 3 election. [continue]

From an article in the Herald:

Archeologists have discovered the remains of a 9000-year-old community that shows Scotland's earliest settlers may have been of Nordic origins.

The site, halfway up the 4000ft Ben Lawers in Perthshire, has uncovered a range of flints and tools almost identical to those originally created in Norway. [continue]

From Roman Britons after 410 on the British Archeology magazine's website:

The Roman cultural legacy survived far more profoundly, more extensively and for much longer in Britain than is usually realised. [. . .]

That said, it is clear that some time in the 5th century the Britons broke away at last from Roman central authority. Zosimus declares that the Britons were at his time living under the rule of local kings.

But this breaking away did not mean that Britain had ceased to be culturally Roman. What had ended was an official connection of salaried officials and troops appointed from the centre, and with them the regular issues of coinage. As a general rule, no new coins were imported. This had serious consequences in that it was no longer easy to pay for buildings in stone, mosaics and luxury services. The lack of coins also means that it is hard to date 5th and 6th century activities in what used to be called the 'Dark Ages'.

But it is clear from documentary sources that such material considerations were not central to the way many Britons thought and behaved, or defined their identity. For example, St Patrick, writing in the 5th century, never mentions the lack of coinage. There were clearly other ways to continue economic life. The primary, defining features of Roman culture were not, after all, money but the Latin language coupled with Christianity; and it is clear from the work of the medieval Latinist David Howlett and others, using the evidence of both documents and inscriptions, that the élite preserved the language in a remarkably pure form (BA, April 1998). [continue]

From a discovery.com article:

An entire archaeological city may go up for sale in Italy, according to confidential government documents made public by a leading environmental group.

Alba Fucens, one of the most important ancient Roman outposts in central Italy, would be sold off along with hundreds of properties in the attempt to raise money, Legambiente, a pressure group opposed to the scheme, warned.

"The government is landing Italy with a massive mortgage to begin a frenetic season of useless public works. Every state-owned property, without exception, is now at risk," Legambiente said in a statement.

Nestling in a little valley at 1,000 meters (3,200 feet) above sea level, Alba Fucens was built to resemble Rome. Only partly excavated, the city hides treasures such as mosaics, frescoes, sculptures and bronzes, as the exhibition "Alba Fucens Effect," running in the near town of Avezzano, testifies.

The city, which flourished in the 4th century B.C., boasts remains of a well-preserved amphitheater, a basilica (town hall), a macellum (market), a spa complex and a great sanctuary dedicated to Hercules. All this is now on sale for only 40,615 euros (dollars). [continue]

Would the Italian government really sell such a thing? And, if so, what are they thinking?

From a GoNomad.com article, Welcome to Heaven: A 650-Year-Old Eritrean Monastery in the Clouds.

A 2,500-foot vertical ascent starts from the dusty town of Nefesit, halfway between Eritrea’s capital city of Asmara and the Red Sea port of Massawa. I bear an introduction from the monastery’s liaison in Asmara. As instructed, I also carry a bottle of Chianti, as well as corned beef, cheese, and bread. I am to ask for Brother Tefsamarian, the only monk allowed contact with visitors.

I am accompanied by Samuel Mehari, a bellboy in my hotel who wants to learn to guide in this tourism-friendly country. We huff our way through the switchbacks, looking in vain for shade. Here and there we stumble over shell casings from the 30-year Eritrean war of independence.

"Samuel," I ask, "what if we climb all the way just to be turned away at the top?"

"Don’t worry," he says with a smile. "Monks like wine more than they dislike visitors."

Debre Bizen’s library is famous for its over 1,000 illustrated manuscripts, which show how more than once in the monastery’s long history, the monks have had to defend it with their lives, so they have reason to fear unknown visitors. [continue]

The Nefasit - Debre Bizen page has a few photos, including one of the monastery.

From the Treasure in Kythnos sanctum article in Kathimerini:

On one of the least developed Cycladic islands, archaeologists have hit on one of the most coveted prizes of Greek archaeology — the unplundered inner sanctum of an ancient temple replete with offerings in precious metals and luxurious pottery items. [continue]

How news agencies can put stuff like this up on the web without adding some photos is completely beyond me. Anyway, here's a peek at the Cylcades islands, and here's a bit about Kithnos.

From Ancient Greek trick to memory feats, an article on the Sydney Morning Herald site.

Most people could improve their memories if they followed a trick first devised in ancient Greece, a new study of the brains of people who can perform extraordinary feats of memory shows.

British researchers carried out a range of tests on people who were highly ranked in the World Memory Championships, held annually in London.

...

Nine out of the 10 champions told the researchers they used a strategy called the "method of loci", in which the objects to be remembered were placed along an imaginary pathway that could be retraced when recalling the items in order.

The research team, led by Eleanor Maguire, of University College London, said this "mental walk" technique had been described by the Greek poet, Simonides of Ceos, in 477 BC. [continue]

Want more? Mappa Mundi's Memory Palaces page is worth a visit - it starts out with the story of Simonides of Ceos and his method of loci, and includes some other historical tidbits about the art of memory as well.

Related articles:
Master memories are made not born
Mental walks jog brain cells
'Mental walk' down memory lane

A British archaeologist has uncovered what is probably the unluckiest church in the world.

The church was wrecked by two earthquakes, a flood, and a landslide - all of which happened while it was still being built.

It later became an opium den and after it was abandoned most of the remains were washed into the sea.

St Phocas' Church was founded on what is now a clifftop at the Turkish city of Sinop, on the shores of the Black Sea, because this is where its patron saint was martyred.

The site was discovered when the Sinop museum found pieces of late Roman mosaic washed up at the coastal village of Chiftlik in the mid-1990s.

Dr Stephen Hill, from the University of Warwick, was asked to investigate by the museum and he found not just a mosaic, but the site of a large, previously unknown 4th century church. [rest of story and photo]

From Ananova, 'Unluckiest church in the world' is found

From the Times of London, Museum slaves over its Roman find:

A working model of the lifting machine that provided Roman London with its water was unveiled at the Museum of London yesterday, offering visitors the chance to experience the daily toil of an Ancient slave. The 12ft iron-and-wood structure is an exact copy of the slave-powered devices that delivered up to 72,000 litres of water a day to London.

Dozens of slaves would have walked up to 27 miles a day on its treadmills to lift water from the wells in wooden buckets.

Visitors to the museum will be able to operate the engine during regular demonstrations. Archaeologists and engineers designed their model from two well preserved water-lifting machines discovered at Gresham Street in the City of London last year.

The Museum of London has an article about this water lifting machine, complete with photos. They also explain how the machine was reconstructed.

In the eastern Shandong province of China, archeologists are busy digging up a terracotta army. There are soldiers, horses, and chariots, all dating from the Han dynasty.

At the excavation site at Weishan Hill in Shengjing town near the provincial capital, Jinan, archaeologists measured the newly-opened pit as 9.7 meters long, 1.9 meters wide and about 0.7 meters deep.

The terracotta warriors, whose size is yet to be determined, were assembled in three groups -- a total of some 30 cavalry men in five rows, chariots and about 80 infantry men, they said.

The warriors on horseback cut imposing and vivid figures, while the crimson-toned horses were sharply drawn and strongly sculpted.

As the excavation is expected to last two or three weeks, experts have yet to agree on who owned the pit.

From a People's Daily article, 1,700-year-old Terracotta Warriors Unearthed in E. China.

Related links:
Third terracotta army dug up in Shandong
196 terracotta warriors and horses in Han Dynasty excavated in Xuzhou

From National Geographic, Was Maya Pyramid Designed to Chirp Like a Bird?

Clap your hands in front of the 1,100-year-old Temple of Kukulcan, in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, and, to some researchers' ears, the pyramid answers in the voice of the sacred quetzal bird.

"Now I have heard echoes in my life, but this was really strange," says David Lubman, an acoustical engineer who runs his own firm in Westminster, California. The Maya, he believes, may have built their pyramids to create specific sound effects.

A handclap at the base of Kukulcan's staircase generates what Lubman calls a "chirped echo"—a "chir-roop" sound that first ascends and then falls, like the cry of the native quetzal.

To Lubman, the dimensions of Kukulcan's steps suggest that the builders intended just such an acoustical mimicry. The lower steps have a short tread length and high riser—tough to climb but perfect for producing a high-pitched "chir" sound. The steps higher up make a lower-pitched "roop." [continue]

Related links:
The call of the past - salon.com
An archaeological study of chirped echo from the Mayan pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza (has sound clip of the quetzal bird's call)
Singing Stairs
Resplendent Quetzal (sound files for comparing bird call to echo sound)

Wow. A store in the SF Bay area is selling Holy Land Antiquities. Just the thing for one's Christmas shopping list, yes?

The Mercury News wrote about this in an article entitled Ancient gifts recall heritage. An excerpt:

How about an oil lamp from before the time of Julius Caesar? An arrowhead from the time of the Jewish revolt in the first century? A coin minted and used on Masada, the mountaintop fortress in Palestine whose defenders committed suicide rather than surrender to the besieging Romans? [continue]

From today's Globe and Mail: Pre-Mayan written language found in Mexico.

Scientists believe they have found evidence of the earliest form of written communication in the New World, a pre-Mayan language that could shed light on the ancient peoples who populated what is now Mexico.

Several years of research in the Mexican state of Veracruz has turned up a number of finds suggesting that a people known as the Olmecs operated an organized state-level political system that included the use of a 260-day calendar.

The finds include a cyclindrical seal and handful of carved stone plaques; the former is thought to have been used to imprint clothing with symbols and the latter used as a form of jewelry. Both of them would have indicated rank or authority within a hierarchical society. [continue]

The New Scientist also has a story about this discovery, Earliest New World writing revealed. They say:

The discovery of a fist-sized ceramic cylinder and fragments of engraved plaques has pushed back the earliest evidence of writing in the Americas by at least 350 years to 650 BC.

Rolling the cylinder printed symbols indicating allegiance to a king - a striking difference from the Old World, where the oldest known writing was used for keeping records by the first accountants.[continue]

Related article:
Roots of Mesoamerican Writing

Although many Czechs might believe they invented beer--they didn't-- they did find who did. In 1913, Czech archeologist Bedrich Hrozny unscrambled 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, where Iraq is located today. He discovered that Saddam's ancestors knew how to make 19 different types of beer. Baghdad was clearly more fun in the old days.

From a Forbes article, The Best Czech Beers.

From newscientist.com: Eclipse brings claim of medieval African observatory.

Great Zimbabwe, built in about 1200 AD is a perplexing UN world heritage site. At its heart is the Great Enclosure - a wall comprised of over 5000 cubic metres of stone and marking a perimeter 240 metres in length. Archaeologists had assumed it was once a royal residence.

But on Wednesday, archaeologist-astronomer Richard Wade, of the Nkwe Ridge Observatory, South Africa, presented his new evidence. He claims Great Zimbabwe was similar in function to Stonehenge in England, though much younger.

"This is the culmination of nearly 30 years of research," Wade told New Scientist. Central to his conclusion is the location of stone monoliths on the eastern arc of the Great Enclosure.

According to Wade, they line up with the rising of the Sun, Moon and bright stars at certain, astronomically significant times of the year. One of the more striking alignments that Wade has observed is the rise of three bright stars in Orion over three of the monoliths, on the morning of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. [continue]

Related Links:
Mystery of Great Zimbabwe
Riddle of Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe - 4 photos
Great Zimbabwe - from Virtual Zimbabwe

The tomb of St. Peter is part of an ancient Roman necropolis buried 40 feet deep under St. Peter’s Basilica. Beyond a pilgrimage to Christian origins, though, this ancient cemetery is also part of a riveting detective story. Are Peter’s bones buried in the place long known as Peter’s tomb? Despite Paul VI’s unequivocal yes in 1968, questions have long lingered. Perhaps they always will.

After two years of cleaning, lighting, and reconstruction, this ancient cemetery is more than ever like it was when small bands of Christians furtively scratched their testimonies on its walls. Visitors can soak in the spiritual energy, muse over whether the bones preserved under Plexiglas are really St. Peter’s – and ponder how to reconcile this humble legacy of a persecuted sect with the massive baroque splendor of the 16th-century basilica that rises above it.

From The Bones of St. Peter, in which the author describes his visit to Peter's tomb.

Related book:
The Bones of St. Peter: A 1st Full Account of the Search for the Apostle's Body.

Related websites:
In search of St. Peter's Tomb

It's a big week for ostrich eggshell news. On Thursday I blogged about ancient ostrich eggshell water bottles. Now nature.com announces that a fifteenth-century ostrich egg has been found in Egypt:

Archaeologists have uncovered a 500-year-old ostrich egg covered in Arabic poetry. The verses mourn the death of a loved one.

The egg was found in the Red Sea port of Quseir, Egypt. In the fifteenth century, Quseir was a hub for trade between the Middle East and India, and a stop on the pilgrim route between North Africa and Mecca. [rest of story]

On the rugged northwest tip of Newfoundland, an important archeological site tells the story of the first known European settlement in North America. L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Viking explorers called this area Vinland. Remains of their presence, as much as one thousand years ago, were discovered in 1960. Today, full-scale replicas of Norse sod huts provide glimpses into life in a Viking colony in the New World.

From the virtual tours page of the Parks Canada L'Anse aux Meadows site. The website has more about the history of L'anse aux Meadows and a few photos as well. Some of these sites have better photos, though, and some more information, too:

Discovering Vikings at L'anse aux Meadows
Vinland Archeology
photo, Viking landing craft
L'anse Aux Meadows - panoramic view
some good photos of L'anse Aux Meadows, mixed in with some other stuff.

From a scotsman.com article, Wesley cracks ancient quest:

Wesley Bradd was in the middle of a Raleigh International trip to Africa when he discovered a clutch of rare and ancient ostrich eggs which could be tens of thousands of years old.

Archaeologists are astonished at the find by the 22-year-old from Dunbar because they have been hunting for similar prized items in vain for years.

Academics are particularly excited because the eggs carry engravings by bushmen and the shells have been expertly turned into water bottles.

Mr Bradd, who is a volunteer with youth development charity Raleigh International, was taking a break from working on environmental projects in the south-west of the country when he explored a crevasse under a rock overhang and found the three rare egg water bottles.

The bottles were used by San [bushmen] people - the original inhabitants of the area - who drilled a hole in one side of a fresh egg, cleaned it out and, once filled with water, plugged the holes with a mixture of beeswax and grass. [continue]

Now those water bottles would be so much more fun than the sort of water bottles we find in Vancouver. Anybody have a spare ostrich egg and some beeswax?

In England last winter I discovered all sorts of misericords like this one. For some reason misericords popped into my head today, and I set off to find some on the web.

A misericord is a little carved ledge on the underside of a flip-up seat. Monks had to stand for a long time during services, but they could at least rest a bit on the misericords. Decorative carvings on misericords are the fascinating part - some of them are very playful, and not at all religious in nature.

Dr. Eric Webb's page, The Misericords of Wells Cathedral, has a more detailed explanation. The misericords page at reep.org is good fun, and perhaps I could tempt you to the attractive and informative Misericords Lecture. Oh, and then there's the Misericord Tour at the Virtual Museum of Educational Iconics, too.

Related Links:
definition and etymology of misericord
Oak Apple Designs offers reproductions of medieval wood carvings. Good photos here.

Books:
A Little Book of Misericords
A guide to church woodcarvings: misericords and bench-ends
Medieval woodwork in Exeter Cathedral

Here's your chance to do a bit of reading up on ancient Egypt. Maybe you'd like to start with beautifully illustrated articles about tomb digging and cutting techniques, decorating the tombs, and funerary compositions.

It's all part of the Theban Mapping Project website, which is detailed and informative. There are more articles, resources, and the interactive atlas of the Valley of the Kings even has video clips. (You'll need Flash for that part.)

From the About the Theban Mapping Project page:

With its thousands of tombs and temples, Thebes is one of the world's most important archaeological zones. Sadly, however, it has not fared well over the years. Treasure-hunters and curio-seekers plundered it in the past; pollution, rising ground water, and mass-tourism threaten it in the present. Even early archaeologists destroyed valuable information in their search for museum-quality pieces.

Today, however, we realize that the monuments of Thebes are a finite resource. If we fail to protect and monitor them, they will vanish, and we and our descendants will all be the poorer. The Theban Mapping Project believes that the first and most essential step in preserving this heritage is a detailed map and database of every archaeological, geological, and ethnographic feature in Thebes. Only when these are available can sensible plans be made for tourism, conservation, and further study.

During the last decade, the Theban Mapping Project has concentrated on the Valley of the Kings. Modern surveying techniques were used to measure its tombs. From the data collected, the TMP is preparing 3-D computer models of the tombs. And of course, the TMP is continuing its excavation of KV 5. For the TMP staff, sharing their work with the interested public is just as important as what they do in the field. This has been done through a series of publications and this growing website.

From today's National Post article, Savages? Not to Jesuit missionaries they weren't.

In the movie Black Robe, 17th- century Jesuit missionaries are portrayed as viewing Canadian Indians as superstitious, pagan savages with no redeeming culture who can be saved only by baptism.

New academic research, however, suggests that the early Jesuits are simply victims of bad press. According to a fresh analysis of their Latin dispatches to Rome, the Jesuits regarded native people with admiration and respect.

"In Black Robe you get the stereotype of the almost rabid religious fanatic. There is the good savage and the rest are sort of cruel and horrifying and there is no middle ground," says Haijo Westra, a professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of Calgary.

After studying the Latin dispatches sent from Canada by French Jesuit missionaries, Dr. Westra concludes that the image of the "black robes" has been unfairly distorted by the English translations of their field reports, which he says missed sympathetic nuances derived from classic Latin texts the Jesuits studied.

Here's the rest of the article.

Related Links:
Black Robe page on the Internet Movie Database
Brief Sketches of the Jesuit Martyr-Saints from jesuits.ca
Jesuits of Upper Canada - history from jesuits.ca
The Holy North American Martyrs from magnificat.qc.ca
The Jesuit Relations (1632-1673)

The Sixth Century builders of Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral still standing in Istanbul, discovered cement with earthquake-resistant properties 1 300 years before anyone else, a research team revealed on Wednesday.

Hagia Sophia, built as a church and subsequently turned into a mosque, still stands only because its creators discovered the cement.

Many of the surrounding buildings have long since succumbed to the ravages of time, including earthquakes, according to a report in the New Scientist.

The structure has withstood quakes of up to 7,5 on the Richter scale, according to the team, headed by Antonia Moropoulou from Athens' National Technical University.

Here's the rest of the article, Quake-proof cement mixed '1 300 years ago' from the Independent Online in South Africa.

Meanwhile, Great Buildings Online has a page about Hagia Sophia, which includes photos (this interior shot is particularly nice) and information about the building. The site points out that "The church was built 532 to 537 and the dome replaced in 563 after an earthquake."

I guess Hagia Sophia's builders hadn't figured out how to earthquake-proof a dome.

Did the Chinese explore Africa a century before the Europeans did? Maybe. Researchers are studying an ancient Chinese map, called the Da Ming Hun Yi Tu. (Amalgamated Map of the Great Ming Empire.) It was created in 1389, and shows the shape of Africa, the Nile River, and the Drakensberg mountains.

A replica of the map was unveiled in South Africa's parlaiment yesterday. From iafrica.com's article, Ancient map of Africa poses questions:

The original of the map is housed in Beijing where it has remained wrapped up, sealed and stowed behind a locked door since the fall of China's last emperor in 1924. Fewer than 20 people have had access to it since then.

The digitised reproduction of the map on silk is almost four metres (around 12 feet) high and more than four metres across.

Place names are written mostly in Manchu, a now virtually extinct language, and still in need to be translated.

Related articles:
Africa's oldest map unveiled
Oldest Map of Africa On Display in Parliament
Chinese map showing Africa unrolled in Parliament

From a Technician Online article, Professor and team of students find evidence of oldest Christian church:

Since 1994, Thomas Parker, has worked in Aqaba, Jordan, to uncover the lost city of Aila. Recently, all that hard work paid off when Parker, a professor in history, and his team of students, specialists and Jordanians discovered an offering table that may confirm what could be the oldest purpose-built church.

The rest of the article has more details about the building's history. And here's part of a news release on the North Carolina State University website, New Artifacts Bolster Case for Oldest Purpose-Built Christian Church:

The sandstone table was found intact near the entrance of the building, Parker recounts. It measures about 3.3 feet long and 2.5 feet wide, and has two slots on one side that would allow it to be attached to a wall. Parker believes the most likely scenario is that, after an earthquake in A.D. 363 that led to the church's collapse and abandonment, looters may have detached the table from a wall and attempted to carry it out of the building.

But the heavy sandstone object, which took four able-bodied students to move, was likely dropped and left by the looters, only to be buried under shifting sand until its discovery this summer. "I'm more convinced than ever that we've found an early church, possibly the oldest purpose-built Christian church in history," Parker says. Due to its obvious historical significance, the table remains in Aqaba.

Other evidence supporting the hypothesis that the building is a church include its orientation toward the east, similar to later churches; the fact that the basic floor plan matches that of later churches; and the preponderance of artifacts inside the structure. For example, the glass oil lamps that would have illuminated the church - and which were used widely in later churches - are concentrated inside the building's walls and rare elsewhere at the Aila site.

Related links:
Roman Aqaba Project, Jordan
Dr. S. Thomas Parker, Professor

From the British Museum's Queen of Sheba: Treasures from ancient Yemen website:

This tour provides an introduction to the different myths of the Queen and to how she is portrayed in works of art from the Renaissance onwards. It also examines some of the artefacts in the British Museum's collection which illustrate the importance and splendour of the South Arabian kingdoms.

We visited this exhibit a couple of months ago, and would have taken some snapshots if photography had been allowed. Since it wasn't, I'm happy to have found that this site has at least a few photos. Here are some:

Funerary stela
Tsehai, The Sheba-Solomon narrative, oil on canvas
Painted limestone incense burner
Bronze incense burner with ibex figure

Here's a bit from an Independent article, As the threat of war grows, archaeologists make plea to spare Iraq's treasures.

The names evoke ancient kingdoms past, the empires of Babylon and Assyria from the times of Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander the Great.

Most of the palaces and temples and mosques of those ancient civilisations crumbled many centuries ago. But something between 10,000 and 100,000 archaeological sites hold the enduring remains.

They are, of course, in modern- day Iraq. And, as the United States prepares for war, an international band of curators and historians anxious not to repeat the damage inflicted on Iraqi treasures during the Gulf War 11 years ago are appealing to the American government to take the historic sites into account.

What a splendid idea. Very important.

Now, what international band of experts will appeal to the American government on behalf of the people in Iraq?

The reputation of the Romans for order has led some to believe that the road network demonstrates a grand geometric strategy, with roads imposed on the landscape in a series of regular, rectangular patterns. However, at many towns, such as Silchester, Verulamium, Leicester and Ilchester, roads which arrive at an oblique angle change direction at the town gate or boundary to match the street grid. This indicates that the grids predate the roads, and that roads were built to serve settlements, at least the larger ones, rather than being arbitrarily imposed across the landscape. At Lincoln, by contrast, the principal street does pass straight through, with the town lying almost directly in line with the approach alignment from each side, suggesting that the road and the town were part of the same overall design.

This and other tidbits about Roman road design feature in the Roads from Rome article at the British Archeology Magazine website.

Oh, excellent news! This from Restoring ancient Arabic manuscripts, an article in today's Arab News.

The Austrian National Library (ANL) has discovered more than 282 volumes of ancient Arabic manuscripts in its collections. The manuscripts are expected to add considerable amounts of information concerning the history and traditional heritage of the Arabian Peninsula to existing knowledge.

282 manuscripts- wow. Wouldn't you just love to browse through all of those?

Related link:
Die Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National Library)

The Vatican is planning to make lots of material available in electronic form. Plans include a website for the Secret Archives, and some CDs that will contain archival materials related to prisoners of war during the WW2.

Here are some details from a Catholic news service article:

Scholars currently have access to Vatican archival material through the reign of Pope Benedict XV, who died in 1922. Cardinal Mejia noted that beginning next year the Vatican will make available documents regarding relations with Germany in 1922-39, the period of Pius XI's pontificate. In 2005, all documents from that period will be made available.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the office that oversees the Vatican Web site, said the addition of sections dedicated to the library and archive demonstrated a shift in the Web site's focus from providing strictly documentary material to also offering "cultural projects."

He said the Vatican also was studying plans to launch a "great Catholic portal" to provide an "encounter with the Catholic Church" to Web surfers, but he provided no details. In the past, Vatican Internet officials have talked about creating a more interactive site to complement its current site, dedicated primarily to church texts.

Related Links:

Vatican Secret Archives - current site

Archeologists in Bern, Switzerland, are excavating the remains of a medieval monastery and a 16th- century town house. Sounds fascinating. Oh, and when they're done, the whole site will be destroyed in order to expand a parking lot. *sigh* At least they're taking photos first.

For decades, people have used computers to model present-day realities and fantasies. Engineers and scientists design cars and predict the weather with them, while video gamers have propelled the game The Sims, which allows the design of simulated human lives to play out on a screen, to become the best-selling computer game of the 21st century.

Now Tony Wilkinson, Research Associate and Associate Professor in the Oriental Institute and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, along with colleagues spanning the sciences and humanities, wants to apply this technology to ancient Mesopotamia. If the simulations work as desired, his team will be able to test how and why the first civilizations were born, lived and died.

Wilkinson is a Briton whose soft-spoken manner is belied by the ambition of his project. "It will be a bit like Sim City, but real," he said. The difference between the Oriental Institute project and a computer game lies not just in the sophistication of the model, but the fact that the database is history itself, and the results will be a new window into its causes. "We’ll run the model to see if we can grow Mesopotamian cities and test the results against archaeological data," Wilkinson noted.

This is from an article in the University of Chicago Chronicle, Simulation of cities to be applied to data on ancient Mesopotamia.

Two archaeologists from Manchester University have been busy excavating Roman forts in Scotland. A Sunday Times article, How we really loved the Romans, talks about their discoveries:

The enduring myth that the Romans left the 'barbarians' of Scotland untouched during their conquest of the rest of the British Isles has been shattered by a new archaeological find. Not only did they settle in Scotland for around 15 years in the first century AD ... they even got our ancestors to swap their beer and lard for wine and olive oil.

A few years ago, James Balme set out to find where the original settlement of Warburton (in Cheshire, England) had been. And so:

Using aerial photography and ancient maps along with field walking and metal detecting he has uncovered extremely rare artefacts from the early Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman periods of occupation as well as Saxon. Through his research and subsequent excavations in conjunction with the University of Manchester Archaeological Unit he has proved beyond all doubt that the settlement of Warburton existed as far back as c.2000BC.

That's from the Ancient Warburton website.

Now there's more in the news about Warburton. A Manchester Online article, Viking remains found in field, reports

During a new dig, he has now discovered a rare Viking buckle with a "wonderful runic design" dating back to the 10th century. As a bonus, James has also uncovered a 1st century bronze Roman military pendant from the uniform of a Roman soldier who once patrolled the fortlet at Warburton.

Well! I should go live in England and buy a metal detector and a bunch of old maps and stuff.

The Manchester Online article has more information about the site, and a photo of that Viking buckle.

Traditional Ethiopian artistic rules require that good persons be shown in full face (two eyes visible) while evil people are to be shown in profile, with one eye visible. Another major characteristic is that the paintings show no perspective. The usual technique is to sketch in charcoal, outline the picture in black ink, and then fill in with different colors.

That's from the Ethiopian Painting page on the Cultural and Religious Traditions in Ethiopia website. That website's a treasure trove. It's got sections on Ethiopian Manuscripts, Ethiopian processional crosses, The Queen of Sheba, missionaries in Ethiopia, and a few other topics as well.

Peek at the Dawit Psalter, or go look at the Sistrum, a rattle used in the Orthodox liturgy.

Oh, and remember I mentioned Assefa's coptic crosses in yesterday's entry? Here are some similar cross pendants.

A newly discovered ancient limestone box with a flowing Aramaic inscription could include the earliest mention of Jesus outside the Bible — and may turn out to be the most-dazzling archaeological discovery in decades.

The rough-hewn object — about the size of a big toolbox — appears to be a "bone box" used in 1st century burial rituals in Jerusalem. Letters etched into its side read, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

Whether it's truly from about A.D. 63 — and whether it really refers to three of history's most famous family members — is likely to be widely debated. But if so, it would be the first extraBiblical mention of Jesus or his relatives created shortly after their lifetimes.

If authentic, "it's high on the list — probably No. 1" of the most important Jesus related artifacts, says John Dominic Crossan, author of "Excavating Jesus." It is "the closest we come archeologically to Jesus."

This is from an article entitled Ancient 'bone box' may be earliest link to Jesus at csmonitor.com. The article has lots more information, and a photo of the lettering. Go take a look, and see why experts disagree about the ossuary's authenticity.

Related Links:
Scholar Touts Oldest Link to Jesus - article from newsday.com
Stunning New Evidence that Jesus Lived - article from Christianity Today
Possible Earliest Reference of Jesus Found - article from Washington Post
Oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus discovered: Expert - article from Times of India
Box may be evidence of Jesus -News Interactive article
Box may have first mention of Jesus - Guardian article
Burial box inscription could be oldest archaeological link to Jesus - article from Online Athens
Jesus Inscription Ripe for Debate - another article from the Guardian
Artifact found in Jerusalem could relate to Jesus - article from International Herald Tribune
'Jesus' Inscription on Stone May Be Earliest Ever Found - New York Times article (may require registration; it's free.)

Update:
Jesus' Brother's "Bone Box" Closer to Being Authenticated - National Geographic, April 19th, 2003.

Back in August I posted about the Roman villas and mosaic found under the playing field in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. Now archaeology.org has posted an article about this excavation, complete with a photo of the mosaic.

Here's part of what they say about this find:

The two 40-room villas are connected by a long hallway paved with a 16-by-30 foot mosaic featuring a vase flanked by dolphins. The high-quality mosaic is remarkably preserved because of the collapse of the original building and ceramic roof tiles on top of it, which protected the decoration for more than 1,500 years. Excavation director Mark Corney of Bristol University thinks that the mosaic, one of the largest and best-preserved ever found in Britain, was made in the top workshop of the day, based in the nearby town of Cirencester. Corney also thinks that the two villas were part of a large estate that included formal gardens with ornamental pools and flower beds, a family cemetery, and outlying buildings which appear on aerial photographs but have yet to be excavated.

Related Links:
Mark Corney's page on Department of Archaeology site, Bristol University.
Gilest.org has some photos of the mosaic.

Is the shroud of Turin really the burial cloth of Christ? A United Press article published in the Washington Times, Cloth expert calls shroud of Turin authentic, reports that:

A renowned textile historian has become the latest specialist to say that the Turin shroud bearing the features of a crucified man may well be the cloth that enveloped the body of Christ.

Disputing inconclusive carbon-dating tests suggesting the shroud hailed from medieval times, Swiss specialist Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said it could be almost 2,000 years old.

Perhaps even more important is what Mrs. Flury-Lemberg saw when she examined the back of the shroud, the first researcher ever to do so. While it bore bloodstains, there were no mysterious marks comparable to those on the front of the cloth.

These marks show an amazingly detailed picture of a bearded man who had been beaten about the body, crowned with thorns and pierced with nails through the wrists and the feet.

The Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin has more information about the shroud, including lots of photos.

Related Links:

Shroud of Turin Education Project
The Shroud of Turin Story - A Guide to the Facts
Turin Shroud Undergoes New Tests - discovery.com article
The Holy Shroud (of Turin) - from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Plants shed light on Turin Shroud - BBC article
Turin shroud 'probably was genuine' - Ananova article

From an article at ABC News website, Clues to Roman Illnesses in 2,000-Year-Old Cheese:

A tiny piece of cheese, carbonized in the volcanic eruption that killed the citizens of Pompeii, is yielding up secrets as to how ancient Romans ate, lived and died.

Using an electron microscope, anthropological researcher Dr. Luigi Capasso of the State University G. d'Annunzio in Chieti, Italy, has been able to pinpoint goats' milk cheese as a prime source of brucellosis--a debilitating joint disease that ravaged the ancient world.

"Roman cheese was an important and continuous source of possible infectious disease in the Roman world, including brucellosis," he told Reuters Health.

Here's the rest of the article.

I happened upon the Aquitaine sundial ring page at the Lee Valley website this afternoon. The blurb says:

In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine gave a sundial ring to Henry II so that he would know when to leave the hunt for their love trysts. Moved by her love, Henry ordered his jewellers to make a copy for Eleanor – inlaid with diamonds and engraved with the Latin words Carpe diem (seize the day).

This ring is an adaptation of the one that Eleanor gave to Henry II. Made of solid pewter and bronze, it is 1-1/4" in diameter and has a 30" long cord. On sunny days the time is displayed by suspending the ring by its cord. Through a tiny hole, a bright bead of light shines on the inner surface of the ring where the times of the day are engraved. The bronze outer band is adjustable to place the hole in the right position for each month.

Well, cool. Now I want to read up on Eleanor of Aquitaine, and see what references scholars and biographers make, if any, to the sundial ring.

Aquitaine sundial rings are also available through other websites. For example:
Wind and weather.com
Crafts Online
Mountaintop Trading
Village Craftsmen
Shepherds Watch wearable sundials and jewelry

Also of interest:
Sundial history and lore from shepherdswatch.com

This afternoon we visited the British Museum, mostly the Early Medieval Gallery and the Medieval Gallery. I could spend days there, or maybe weeks.

I particularly liked the pilgrim badges, the thuribles, and some of the gothic ivories... oh, and lots and lots of other stuff as well. (Expect a few photos later, if they turn out ok.)

Several reports have told of plans to search for St. Matthew's burial site at Issyk-Kul Lake, Kyrgyzstan. Last summer a news24.com article, Archaeologists to dig for apostle Matthew, explained that

Vladimir Ploskikh, a member of Kyrgyzstan's Academy of Sciences, said the expedition, inspired by old legends, will set out under his lead in the near future.

A manuscript of a long-ago archbishop known as Vladimir says the body "was kept in a monastery on the shore of the Issyk-Kul Lake and the whole Christian world knew about it," according to Ploskikh.

(Take a look at this map, apparently from the Bibliothèque National de France's collection. I'm guessing it's part of the manuscript mentioned in the article quoted above.)

Today a somewhat disjointed Pravda article reports that "IPV News USA Director Sergey Melnikoff is certain that he found the grave of one of the authors of the Gospel." Ah, but did he? The article also mentions that "Representatives of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences claimed that Sergey Melnikoff falsified his discoveries in his chase after a piece of sensation."

Meanwhile, others think that Matthew is buried at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Still others believe he's in Salerno, Italy or in Trier, Germany.

Related Links:

Introduction to Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan: Apostle Matthew's grave sought
Digging for apostle Matthew near Kyrgyz lake
History of the Catholic church in Kyrgyzstan
Looking for St. Matthew in Kyrgyzstan (scroll way down the page)
Lake Issyk-Kul Info from the Kyrgyz Embassy in India. Mentions archeological finds, including an underwater town.
The Issyk Kul Lake - info from the Kyrgyz Embassy in England.
The Issyk Kul Lake - photo page
Lake Issyk-Kul photos by Galen R Frysinger
Issyk-Kul - the sunken cities, and treasures: facts and legends
Lake Issyk-Kul -text and photos

I want to visit the ancient city of Patara. It has Roman ruins, some of which are now being excavated, the Church of St Nicholas, and a good beach. What more could a person want?

Here, go have a peek at the Lycean Turkey.com page about Patara, and at Maria Daniels' account of her visit to Patara in 2001. (Both pages have photos.) Either of those sites would be enough to send me scurrying off to the travel agent if I had a bit of extra cash.

Here are some more Patara-related links:

Turquoise delight, the Guardian's article about Patara,
maps of Lycea from LycianTurkey.com
Information about Patara's beach (ten miles of golden sand!)
About St Nicholas
Patara beach photos. Just two, but stunning.
Turkey - Land of St. Nicholas -article from christmas.com

The Deliberately Concealed Garments Project is about items of clothing which were hidden or burried in a building. "The evidence for this practice dates back to the Middle Ages", the site says. A background information page explains:

Typically the garments that have been found are clothes that have been worn and used before they have been hidden.

The tradition of concealing clothes can be related to the practice of concealing other objects such as dried cats, witch bottles and charms in buildings. These types of object have been discovered hidden in similar places. The concealing of these items including garments can be related to folklore and superstitious traditions relating to the ritual protection of a household and its inhabitants.

Concealed garments are most often found with other objects in a cache.

Concealedgarments.org has photos of some of the garments people have discovered hidden in their houses. There's also a guided tour of site caches, some interesting links, and an interview with Judy Maynard from Nether Wallop, who found a waistcoat, a stomacher, some paper patterns and a cat skeleton hidden in her home.

The STAR-RITE Reversible Toaster was made in the 20s. It's like the one grandma had, and that old fold-down design is way more fun than the silly pop-up toasters we have now. Go look, and see if you wouldn't rather have an old model.

If you woke up this morning wanting to know more about toasters, it's your lucky day. The Cyber Toaster Museum has documented lots of toaster history, and there's even more toaster stuff (like this, for example) at toaster.org.

Martin Schøyen has been collecting ancient manuscripts, tablets, pottery, and whatnot for years. Now his collection is extensive and wonderful. It spans 5000 years, and contains items of remarkable beauty, not to mention immense historical significance.

None of Martin's collection is in Vancouver, (alas!) so I'm pleased to have found the Shøyen Collection website. It features photographs of over 200 items, and information about them. Thumbnail photos, when clicked, lead to large, high-resolution images. The photos are gorgeous, and make super desktop wallpaper for one's computer.

Here are a few of the incredible things I found on the Shøyen website:

The Shepochkin Apostol
The Aurispa Cicero
New Testament from Sicilia, Italy, late 12th century
Missal: In die assumptionis Beate Marie Virginis. France, ca 1315-1325

If you like this kind of thing (and how could you not?), the Shøyen collection will keep you busy, and happy, for quite a while.

The Return to Aphek article in the Biblical Archeology Review begins with this:

"You can count the centuries as we go down the stairs. We're going from the 16th century A.D. to the 13th century B.C.," says excavator Moshe Kochavi as he leads me to some steps inside the remains of ancient Aphek, about 9 miles northeast of Tel Aviv.

Today a 16th-century Turkish fort, nearly a thousand-feet square, dominates the site; in ancient times Aphek sat astride a key trade route (the Via Maris, the "Way of the Sea," which ran along the Mediterranean coast).

So of course you want the rest of the article, yes? It's here.

I like visiting Wiltshire, and it's going to be even more fun in about five years. By then the excavation of two large Roman villas, hidden under a playing field at St Laurence's School, Bradford-on-Avon, will have been completed. An article in the Telegraph says that "the decision to excavate was taken after teachers noticed how, in the summer, the football pitch became scored with yellow lines of parched grass which corresponded with the Roman walls beneath."

Archeologists say the villas are a very significant discovery. There's a large and well-preserved mosaic, there are bath houses, and heaven knows what else. The article notes that "the villas are thought to have been part of an estate that stretched across about three miles and included a family cemetery. Flanking the houses are traces of formal gardens - possibly including ornamental pools - and the remains of raised structures that could have been flowerbeds."

Whatever happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Theories vary, but one of the most interesting claims is that the Ark is in Ethiopia. Graham Hancock's amazing The Sign and the Seal pages at One World magazine tell about his trip to Axum, Ethiopia, and to the chapel where Ethiopians say the Ark resides.

Related Links:
The Ark of the Covenant - Scriptural evidence points to Ethiopia
Keeper of the Ark - is the Ark of the Covenant in Axum, Ethiopia?
What happened to the Ark?
Sacred sites of Ethiopia
Does 'lost' Ark exist in Ethiopia?
The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant - Graham Hancock's book.

The University of Texas just happens to have 14 Mayan teapots. They've also got an archeologist, Terry Powis, who wanted to figure out whether the ancient teapots were used for chocolate drinks. Residue samples were analysed, and yup, chocolate it was. Based on the age of the teapots, this suggest that "the Maya, and their ancestors, may have been gobbling chocolate as far back as 2,600 years ago, pushing back the earliest evidence of cacao use more than 1,000 years."

I found these details at the National Geographic site today, in a fine article entitled Ancient Chocolate Found in Maya "Teapot". Part of the article convinced me that I would have liked the Mayan diet:

The Maya had a lifestyle many kids would envy—chocolate at every meal. "It was the beverage of everyday people and also the food of the rulers and gods," said Haas. In fact, the scientific name for the cacao tree is Theobroma cacao—"food of the gods." Hieroglyphs that depict chocolate being poured for rulers and gods are present on Maya murals and ceramics.

I thank the Italians for Nutella, and I was impressed when chocolate sprinkles arrived with my breakfast cereal in Amsterdam. But chocolate at every meal? Hard to beat those Mayans.

Related links:
Chocolate's frothy past
Early Mayas Were Chocoholics, Scientists Say
The Maya hand down a recipe for chocolate
Maya recipes, including a recipe for hot chocolate.
Maya Ruins
A virtual tour of Belize (That's where the teapots were found.)

A Reuters article reports that:

Archaeologists have unearthed a hoard of ancient "angel" coins -- treasured by the Tudors as a charm against evil and cure for disease -- on the site of a medieval hospital and priory.

The Museum of London said on Monday it believed the seven gold coins were buried some 500 years ago in the grounds of St Mary Spital shortly before King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries that cared for the sick.

The Museum of London's has put the coins on display. (Perfect timing, as I'll be in London in September. Yay!) Their website has an article about the angel coins, and a nice big photo, too.

Also see:
Tudor 'angel' coins found under priory

It's called Carlisle now, but the Romans named it Luguvalium. In recent years, archeologists have been digging up all sorts of interesting things the Romans left behind there, like armour, tombstones, writing tablets, jewellery, and so forth.

Todays news is full of reports about recent discoveries at Carlisle, including a broken pot of fish sauce found outside the praetorium (commanding officer's house). A Guardian article, Discovery of ancient tunny fish paste gives inkling of Roman taste, says that historians re-created the fish sauce recipe, and served it at Carlisle Castle.

"It looked frankly like something Baldrick would have served Blackadder. Actually it looked just like mud - lumpy mud," one sceptical diner said.

Martin Allfrey, English Heritage head of collections, said firmly: "It did look slightly off putting, but pesto, which everyone likes now, isn't exactly a picture of loveliness either. It tasted - well, perfectly all right. Quite interesting, really."

Other recent finds include jewelry, coins, and armour. I'm guessing that most of these items will wind up in the Human History Collections at the Tulley House Museum. I'm tempted to go take a look.

Related Links:
Roman Empire was into marketing
Archaeologists Reveal Roman Finds
As recommended by Julius Caesar
BBC Carlisle Castle page
Carlisle Archeological Unit
Roman armour and metalworking at Carlisle, Cumbria, England
History of Carlisle

I started off reading Viking English, which lists lots of English words and their Scandinavian sources. A bit of distraction led to other pages about Vikings in England, like ones about a study a UCL professor did on the Viking contribution to the English gene pool. Researchers wanted to identify just where in Britain the Vikings settled, so they recruited 2000 British men, and analysed their DNA.

From the BBC's Viking Genetics Survey Result page:

"The results were interesting. England (and most of mainland Scotland) were a mixture of Angles, Saxons, Danish Vikings and Ancient Britons. The highest percentage of DNA signatures from the invading groups (Angles, Saxons and Danish Vikings) was found in the North and East of England. Interestingly the place with the highest 'invader input' was York, a well-known Viking settlement site.

There was one result in the North and East of England which did not fit this pattern. In Penrith a significant proportion of the men tested had Norwegian DNA signatures on their Y chromosomes. It seems likely that the Norwegian Vikings who travelled along the sea road from Shetland down to the Isle of Man may well have stopped off in Cumbria. It may also have been a safe haven for Vikings expelled from Dublin at the beginning of the 10th century. This finding fits in remarkably well with archaeological finds of Viking burials, Norse-style place- names and stone sculpture. The input of the Angles and Saxons, who arrived in England in the 5th century AD, were represented by DNA samples from Schleswig-Holstein and Northern Saxony respectively."

How astonishing that analysing saliva can help to show what happened over a thousand years ago.

The Potala Palace is a massive and striking building in Lhasa, Tibet. It was the winter residence of the Dalai Lama for centuries, and it's where the current Dalai Lama spent his winters until he fled to India after China invaded Tibet. The palace has been allowed to deteriorate in recent years. The Dalai Lama's summer palace, Norbulingka, also needs repairs, as does the Sagya Lamasery.

China has now started major restoration work on these sites, according to an article on Xinhuanet and another article at southnexus.com.

Not as good as having China leave Tibet, but at least these beautiful and important buildings will be preserved.

Related Links:

Interior Tour of the Potala Palace
Potala page from Asia on the Matrix
Potala Palace Gallery from china-travel.com
The Potala Palace: the emblematic focus of Tibet's theocracy
Tibet to Renovate Three Key Lamaseries
Bay Area Friends of Tibet
Government of Tibet in Exile
World Tibet Day

If you've spent years wondering how the Romans dealt with the "supply and drainage of water," then this is your lucky day. An article at Alphagalileo provides some information from recent University of Nijmegen research. The article gives tidbits of information about Ostia, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. For example:

"The sewer in Ostia is particularly beautiful and has remained perfectly intact. It is so well preserved because it has always remained underground and that is still the case. The only disadvantage is that it is full of toads. This makes research in the sewer something of an Indiana Jones experience, especially as it is easy to get lost in it."

Related Links:

The History of Plumbing - Pompeii & Herculaneum

According to an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, scientists are interested in native stories about a great flood, like the tale Makah elder Helma Ward's grandfather passed on to her long ago.

Paleoseismological evidence indicates that Washington and BC coastal areas suffered a massive earthquake and tsunami around 1700; it seems that the native stories can help researchers learn more about that earthquake and resulting tidal wave. Today's Seattle Post article quotes Ruth Ludwin, a University of Washington earthquake scientist: "The tribal stories provide a line of evidence from the only people who were here to witness it."

Related Links:

When Thunderbird battled Whale, the earth shook
Native American Legends of Tsunamis in the Pacific Northwest
Cascadia quakes:Tricentennial exposition
Native American Lore Index Page (note: background sound, but it's lovely.)
Flood Stories from Around the World
The Makah Tribe: People of the Sea and the Forest
Washington Indian Tribes

In Tiberias, somebody digging a trench has discovered what seems to be a Roman stadium from the first century. (I'd dig ditches too, if I thought I might find something like this.) The Jerusalem Post reports that "Moshe Hartal, an archeologist with the Antiquities Authority, said it is possible the building is the stadium mentioned in the writings of Joseph Flavius."

news.com.au interviewed another archeologist, Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University, about this find. He agrees with Hartal about the stadium:

"The structure was also apparently the site where, according to Josephus' writings, 37,000 Jewish prisoners were held in AD 67 after they lost to the Romans in a naval battle on the nearby Sea of Galilee, Hartal said. The old and weak prisoners were executed and the stronger ones sold off as slaves, according to Josephus."

There's lots of Joseph Flavius stuff on the web, by the way: the Works of Joseph Flavius,
the Joseph Flavius game, and the Josephus problem.

Anyway, about that stadium. The Jerusalem post says that "The Antiquities Authority is working to preserve the site and integrate it with the hotel." That'll be some cool hotel, then.

Added later:

The Tiberias Excavation Project page from Hebrew University.

Over at the Portage blog, I learned about about two Norwegians who collect vintage vacuum cleaners. Photos of their collection are displayed in the CyberSpace Vintage Vacuum Cleaner Museum. Cool.

Then there's A Century of Sucking, which comes from the (UK) Science Museum site. They have some interesting tidbits ("In 1903 wealthy society ladies threw 'vacuum cleaner parties.' ") and a few good photos. I particularly like the 1901 model vacuum.

For a really mind-boggling photo, see Dr Klean's History of Vacuum Cleaners page. How did they get anybody to drive that Electrolux car?

The ancient city of Urkesh was an important religious centre, and capital of the Hurrian kingdom. It was buried under the desert sand in Syria for 4,000 years, then finally re-discovered. Now Urkesh has been excavated. Wouldn't you just love to prowl through the whole thing?

Urkesh trivia: Agatha Christie searched for Urkesh in the 1930s.

A Roman amitheatre was discovered in London in 1988, under the Guildhall yard.

Well, this is so exciting: the restorations are complete, and now this 2000 year old ampitheatre is open to the public. The Independent has a story about the ampitheatre, but the Museum of London's Gladiators at Guildhall page is even more interesting. One can even download a chapter from their Gladiators at Guildhall book.

I can hardly wait to visit the site when we go to London in the fall.

Here's a June 12th Guardian article about the ampitheatre:
Amphitheatre back in business after 1,600 year wait.

Oh my! The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is exhibiting Images of Salvation: Masterpieces from the Vatican and other Italian Collections. It opened yesterday and continues to August 11th.

"Images of Salvation: Masterpieces from the Vatican and other Italian Collections features magnificent art and artifacts inspired by the Christian faith, dating from the Medieval period to the 20th century. Ancient biblical manuscripts, psalm books, models and drawings illustrate the history of the Church, from the creation of the world, as narrated in the Old Testament, to the formation and historical development of the Vatican Basilica. Among the artistic masterpieces on display will be Michelangelo's early drawings for the Sistine Chapel, paintings by masters Guido Reni, Giambattista Tiepolo, and Luca Giordano, exquisite tapestries by Raphael and Rubens, and statues by Bernini and Donatello. " This from the media release.

Now if only this would come to Vancouver.