santiago's dead wasp (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
Haven't had one of these in a little while. Purely deleted words from a section of notebook. This post is also kind of a placeholder since I'm about to have the internet forcibly prised from my grip while I spend a couple of days in Lancaster. When I get back - more recent poetry acquisitions, some comments on this man's ongoing poem The Hard Shoulder (which I thoroughly approve of), November's CD-R...
Unstable Euphony (Free subscription) | yesterday
Here's a list of texts I'll be studying for my comprehensive exams. Rhetoric is one of my two secondary areas of study. Isocrates. Against the Sophists . Plato. Republic Book X. Aristotle. Rhetoric Books 1-2. Cicero. De Oratore . Augustine. On Christian Doctrine . Erasmus, Desiderius. Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style. Ecclesiastes . De Pizan, Christine. The Book of the City of Ladies . Vico,...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate" imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus. Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said "I think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth."...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
A race of intelligent, diminutive hominids co-existing alongside humanity in South-East Asia? In the year 2003, a creature from mythology stepped out of the shadows and into the cold, hard light of science when an archaeological dig revealed what appeared to be a new species of hominid that matched closely with local myths of a creature known as the Ebu Gogo. Read the rest of this article...
tangledwing (Free subscription) | yesterday
Little Waterfall and Autumn Leaves wallpaper Scuba diving to the depths of human history The field of underwater archaeology is perhaps best known for unearthing relics from more recent history, like Henry VIII’s ship the Mary Rose, yet the seabed is stuffed with clues to prehistory too – especially a murky period 11,500 years ago, at the [...]
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
SCOTLAND already has more identified Roman camps than any other European country – reflecting Rome's repeated attempts to stamp its rule on the troublesome north. Now the number is set to increase. The first comprehensive survey of Roman remains for 30 years will boost the total of officially recognised sites and give them greater legal protection, officials said yesterday. Traces of at least...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
Mammoth dung has proved to be a source of prehistoric information, helping scientists unravel the mystery of what caused the great mammals to die out. An examination of a fungus that is found in the ancient dung and preserved in lake sediments has helped build a picture of what happened to the beasts. The study sheds light on the ecological consequences of the extinction and the role that humans may...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
Remains of a burial site on Skye thought to date back to Neolithic times and uncovered during house building work look set to be relocated. Flint tools and urns along with damaged skeletal remains were found at Armadale on the Sleat peninsula. The artefacts along with stone slabs used in creating the graves have been removed. Read the rest of this article...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say. The prehistoric giants began their precipitous decline nearly 2,000 years before our ancestors turned stone fragments into sophisticated spearpoints at the end of the last ice age. The animals, which included mammoths, elephant-sized mastodons and beavers...
Archaeology in Europe (Free subscription) | yesterday
A SUFFOLK farmer is leading calls for a new law to punish unscrupulous metal detector enthusiasts who he claims are “ripping apart” England's heritage for their own personal gain. John Browning, who owns farmland covering a former Roman settlement in Icklingham, has been targeted by illegal treasure hunters - known as Nighthawkers - countless times during the past 30 years. His frustration...
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | yesterday
“Every Sunday afternoon of my childhood, once the tediousness of Sunday school and the appalling boredom of church were over with, corrosions of the spirit easily salved by the roast beef, macaroni pie, and peach cobbler that followed them, my father loaded us all into the Essex, later the Packard, and headed out to look for Indian arrows. That was the phrase, `to look for Indian arrows.’...
Japan Times (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
A makeup kit containing a pair of 17-cm iron scissors and iron tweezers 8.5 cm long has been discovered in the tomb of a woman who lived at the end of the Heian Period (794-1192), archaeologists said recently. Also found inside the tomb, in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture, were a clay pot 6 cm in diameter and a 5.7-cm porcelain pot as well as a 9-cm bronze mirror made in China, according to officials of...
Egyptology News (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
Heritage Key (Malcolm Jack) Quarries, often ignored, were a crucial part of Egypt. It was from these sites that the precious raw materials and minerals used in the construction of decorative monuments such as sculptures and obelisks was hewn thousands of years ago. Among the most prolific were the Quarries of Aswan, which yielded the red granite of Cleopatra’s Needles and many of the quality...
Egyptology News (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
Los Angeles Times (Thomas H. Maugh II) With photos. CT scans of Egyptian mummies, some as much as 3,500 years old, shows evidence of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries, which is normally thought of as a disease caused by modern lifestyles, researchers said today. "Atherosclerosis is ubiquitous among modern-day humans and, despite differences in ancient and modern lifestyles, we found...
Egyptology News (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
New York Times (John Tierney) I rather like the picture of the Egyptian statue with suitcases. Zahi Hawass regards the Rosetta Stone, like so much else, as stolen property languishing in exile. “We own that stone,” he told Al Jazeera, speaking as the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. The British Museum does not agree — at least not yet. But never underestimate...
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