A 73-year-old man who vandalised a 5,000-year-old stone monument in Somerset (England) between April and October 2011 has been ordered to pay £10,000. Roger Penny, of Chewton Mendip, appeared before...
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Priddy stone circles vandal ordered to pay £10,000
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Wimpole Hall and the buggy disinfection unit
One side benefit of having young kids is that you sometimes have to do something else other than work at the weekend. That may be a rather rosy-tinted view of time management with toddlers and a job -- but there is something to be said for being forced to load the nippers into a car at the weekend and take them out to see something improving/fun (for a start, it means that you get to see it too).
Once that stage has gone, for me at any rate, weekends get entirely taken up with work just like any other day of the week -- unless you have someone to stay. And then you can go out to see "something improving/fun" again. Which is what we have just done, with our South Sudanese friend Samuel, who is here to stay.
In fact we have gone to the local stately home, Wimpole, which has a Home Farm and Rare Breeds Centre where we often used to go with the kids 20 years or so ago.
Now the last time I went to a local National Trust stately home (Ickworth...I'm not including Roman Chedworth here), I was pretty incandescent; and said so pretty frankly on the blog (I couldnt stand the faked up kitchens). So credit where credit is due, let me say that Wimpole Hall was almost faultless in touristic terms.
It's a great house, partly done over by John Soane in the late eighteenth century -- and he put in the most wonderful plunge bath (above, the view from the bath!) and a stunning "Yellow Drawing Room". They'd be worth the trip on their own (built for the filthy rich or not, they are ace).
But more than that, the whole display got it just right. These I reckon were the touristic/heritage plus points:
1) There weren't any "dont sit on the chair" signs. When they didn't want you to sit down on something, they had just put a bit of pot pourri (vel sim) on the chair, and you got the message.
2) In the great Yellow Drawing Room -- the Soane bit -- the ceiling and dome are fantastic, but you do need to look up. So there were some rough old cushions on the floor, and you could lie down and do just that. No messing, no signs saying "lie down here".. again, you saw the cushions and got the point.
3) In the Long Gallery -- used as a ballroom -- there was music. You heard it as you approached, and rather assumed it was piped. Actually when you arrived there was someone playing the piano, real live.
4) The volunteers in the rooms were all spot on, by which I mean they knew their stuff and quckly recognised when you knew yours. I cant bear going to those places (and the National Trust can be bad at this) where you ask about some image of (say) Artemis on the wall, and you get treated to the pre-prepared lecture on ancient gods and goddesses being different from "our" God. You can't be nasty and say "Look sunshine, this is what I did my PhD on", so you shut up and get to feel crosser and crosser. At Wimpole, none of the volunteers treated us to a lecture on what we knew about, and all were helpful on what we didnt.
5) When we got upstairs to a room about the history of the house, they had printed out, and bound, some of the key articles on the place from Apollo and the Burlington Magazine etc, so you could sit down and read. OK, someone might in theory have walked off with them -- but in practice who would (and so what)?
6) Most of the stuff in the now regulation "downstairs" area also appeared to be from the house itself. As I said, the thing that really riled me about Ickworth was that most of the kitchen stuff on display to reconstruct the authentic atmosphere seemed to have been bought off ebay. That was true of some of the kitchen display at Wimpole (I dont believe that the last occupants left the packet of Lux flakes behind). But there were some surprising bona fide items. We looked suspiciously at a large pile of suitcases, but indeed they did carry the label of Elsie Bambridge (the last, pre National Trust owner).
Pretty much full marks I thought. The attached Home Farm was a bit of a different story, however -- but also with its definite plus points.
When we went, often, with the kids a couple of decades ago, it was rather like a zoo. In fact they had a number of compliant animals apparently roaming free (I always assumed heavily sedated) which the under fives were encouraged to pat and fondle. Those have gone, to be replaced with a different version (positive in some parts, negative in others) of public engagement.
On the minus side, I have never seen more notices telling you to wash your hands (after handling the animals).For someone as counter suggestible as me, it was a positive invitation to put my hands on the rear end of a shire horse and then to go off and eat my sandwiches, entirely unsanitised.
But the reductio ad absurdum was the hygiene regime at the end, where families were asked to wheel their buggies through a disinfectant carpet (which looked as if it had been left over from the last foot and mouth outbreak)-- presumably to remove any trace of the germs of the shit, before getting back
home.
On the plus side, they were gratifyingly frank about the destination of most farm animals. Gone were the days of the zoo and in had come the days of "This Little Piggy Went to Market". These, many signs insisted, are the animals we are going to eat, and there were convenient diagrams to show you which bit of the animal ended up where.
And in case you didn't quite believe it, the shop sold sausages made from the mums and dads of the pigs you had just seen. And beefs from those amazing bulls. A nice dose of realism, I thought, as I bought the beef.
But I did wonder what the narrative of the vegetarian visitor would have looked like.
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Velsen
There’s no particular reason to put online this drawing by Graham Sumner, except for the best reason of all: that I like it. What you see is the Roman naval base at Velsen, just west of Amsterdam, which was in use during the reign of the emperor Tiberius. It is almost certainly identical to the fort named Flevum mentioned by Tacitus. You can read more about it here, or in Edge of Empire.
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Blogosphere ~ Rome Sweet Rome
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Blogosphere ~ Give us this day our daily grain
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Blogosphere ~ Cato’s Roman Bread
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Blogosphere ~ Moretum
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Blogosphere ~ What happens in Sicily… Segesta
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Blogosphere ~ Battle at the Milvian Bridge
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Blogosphere ~ Ant or Camel
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Blogosphere ~ MURK, MISERY and MITHRAS
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Nazi buddha from space might be fake
The narrative was, perhaps, just a little too good to be true. When news broke last month of the so-called “buddha from space” – a swastika-emblazoned statue, apparently 1,000 years old, that had been carved out of a meteorite and looted by a Nazi ethnologist – the world was enthralled.
There were only, it turns out, a few slight catches. According to two experts who have since given their verdict on the mysterious Iron Man, it may have been a European counterfeit; it was probably made at some point in the 20th century; and it may well not have been looted by the Nazis. The bit about the meteorite, though, still stands.
According to Buddhism specialist Achim Bayer, the statue bears 13 features which are easily identifiable by experts as “pseudo-Tibetan” – and which sit uneasily with speculation by researchers last month that it was probably made in the 11th-century pre-Buddhist Bon culture.
These include the 24cm-high statue’s shoes, trousers and hand positioning, as well as the fact that the Buddha has a full beard rather than the “rather thin” facial hair usually given to a deity in Tibetan and Mongolian art. In his report, Bayer says he believes the statue to be a European counterfeit made sometime between 1910 and 1970.
“I would like to briefly address readers from outside our field and clarify that there is not any controversy among experts about the authenticity of the statue, the ‘lama wearing trousers’, as I would like to call it,” writes the University of Seoul academic. “Up to date, no acknowledged authority in the field of Tibetan or Mongolian art has publicly deemed the statue authentic and the issue has to be considered uncontroversial.”
The statue’s Asian provenance is not the only aspect of the story to have been questioned. In September, the man leading a team of German and Austrian researchers, University of Stuttgart geologist Elmar Buchner, said its previous owner had claimed it had been brought to Europe in the late 1930s by Ernst Schäfer, a Nazi ethnologist who led an SS expedition to Tibet.
But German historian Isrun Engelhardt, who has studied Schäfer’s trip to Tibet in depth, has cast doubt on this suggestion, questioning the statue’s absence on the long list of items brought back. “There is an extremely precise list of the purchased objects, including date, place and value,” she told Spiegel.
Buchner says he had no reason to doubt the account of the previous owner, and stresses that his team was only looking into what the statue was made of – a rare form of iron with a high content of nickel – not where it had come from. While they felt able to say the material most likely came from the Chinga meteorite, which crashed to earth 15,000 years ago, the researchers admitted that “the ethnological and art historical details … as well as the time of sculpturing, currently remain speculative”.
Moreover, Buchner’s statements about the origins were qualified. He told the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science: “If we are right that it was made in the Bon culture in the 11th century, it is absolutely priceless and absolutely unique worldwide.”
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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This Day in Ancient History: ante diem vi kalendas novembres
ante diem vi kalendas novembres
- 97 A.D. – The emperor Nerva adopts the future emperor Trajan
- 312 A.D – Battle of the Milvian Bridge; Constantine I has a vision and defeats Maxentius to become sole emperor
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Classical Words of the Day
ad hominem (Merriam-Webster)
Latinitweets:
verb 4: venio , venire, veni => come bit.ly/IKAclf #Latin #Vocab #LatinVocab—
(@LatinVocab) October 28, 2012
https://twitter.com/latinlanguage/status/262344346391691264
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New Open Access Article- OHIO— “THE HEART OF IT ALL” FOR OVER...
New Open Access Article- OHIO— “THE HEART OF IT ALL” FOR OVER 15,000 YEARS
http://www.ohioarchaeology.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=10&id=51&Itemid=54
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FUN: Pyramid scheme 2
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Focus on UK Metal Detecting: Paid me Tenner, Want the Lot
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There's an interesting discussion on Detectorist Forum that is not insignificant. Obviously all non-Treasure artefacts found on a landowner's property are precisely that, their property. It seems not all metal detector users in the UK agree with that principle. On a recent paid - for dig, £10 per head via a digging club, one member found a sestertius The father of the farmer turned up saw it and said I would like that and took it from the bemused finder. was it not for the paid for aspect obviously it would be for the landowner to decide but I believe the limit before anything is split is if its treasure or worth over £2000 with that club's agreement.Responses so far have been pretty unanimous:
- He took my money, I keep what I find on his landLet us note that the name of the hobby metal detecting is a misnomer, suggesting the fun is in the finding - when in fact this example shows very well that for every one of those commenting, finding is not the lure, it is getting to keep what is "detected" that is the real aim. This is not "metal detecting" but "artefact hunting" and is a form of antiquity collection. The farmer presumably thought that metal "detecting" is exactly what the name implies - but it is a name deliberately employed to mislead.
- Seems like there was no written agreement which was down to the organiser
- No written agreement (Regardless of what verbal may have been agreed) all finds belong to the landowner. Answer= Always use a written agreement (After the fiasco of the lantern I always do)
- On mine that I organise it is always the finder unless treasure under the Treasure Act.
- Did he get his tenner back ? Sounds like a funny old carry on if you ask me
- i bet hes gutted, makes you wonder how many will just be sliding stuff in their pockets and keeping their mouth shut from now on?.......sad carry on
As anyone who's looked at how these things go in sales will know, a "tenner" is pretty cheap for any decent looking sestertius, so the tekkie thought he was doing quite well until he found out it was not his to keep.
Nevertheless, since clearly they were hoiking stuff from a field with at least Roman activity, maybe a Roman site, the "deprived finder" will probably have found other things, may have filled his finds pouch with them, and their total value, without the coin, would almost certainly be more than ten pounds.
Note the lack of detail, where, when, what kind of site, name of club etc.
Hat tip to anonymous HA member for the heads-up.
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Silent Welshman Ducks
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Gruffydd (obviously not his full name) - "a resident of mid-Wales" just your average bloke: "who is not a metal detectorist, who does not know Mr Simmons, and who does not have any formal association with CPAT" has remained quiet for the last three months.
Was he a member of PAS staff? We may never know. But then, if he is and like the others of his ilk he has absolutely nothing to say for himself except a bit of occasional sniping to annoy rather than inform, who actually cares? Wales will not have a PAS for much longer, then when that prop has gone, we'll see what the Gruffydds of the UK will do to explain themselves.
Gruffydd (obviously not his full name) - "a resident of mid-Wales" just your average bloke: "who is not a metal detectorist, who does not know Mr Simmons, and who does not have any formal association with CPAT" has remained quiet for the last three months.
Was he a member of PAS staff? We may never know. But then, if he is and like the others of his ilk he has absolutely nothing to say for himself except a bit of occasional sniping to annoy rather than inform, who actually cares? Wales will not have a PAS for much longer, then when that prop has gone, we'll see what the Gruffydds of the UK will do to explain themselves.
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ISAW Closed Monday, 29 October 2012
Because of expected weather conditions and public transportation shutdowns, ISAW will be closed Monday 29 October 2012. All seminars and public events that day are canceled.
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Eruv and Sectarianism in Ancient Judaism: Introduction
Building Complex at Qumran
The purpose of the presentation that follows is to argue that the Qumran sectarians, usually identified as the Essenes described by Josephus and other Greek-writing authors, prohibited carrying from domain to domain on the Sabbath, basing themselves on certain biblical passages, and that these ancient Jewish sectarians did not have an institution such as the eruv to mitigate the difficulties caused by this prohibition. Further, we will argue that the combination of this prohibition with the absence of an institution to ease the difficulties that it presents characterizes the exegetical trend of the priestly, Zadokite-Sadducee form of Jewish law, as opposed to that of the Pharisaic-rabbinic trend that developed the laws of the eruv. In making this argument, we do not intend to deny the wider ramifications of the institution of the eruv in terms of the nature of the Jewish community and its patterns of residence. Rather, our main argument is intended to show that the eruv is a Pharisaic-rabbinic device in its origins and function. While much of the research to be discussed here was already put forward in my 1975 volume, The Halakhah at Qumran, more recently published texts have confirmed a variety of readings and indicated that the prohibition on carrying was widely documented in Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts. More recent studies, some published by this author, have indicated that there are essentially two trends in Second Temple Jewish law, and the presence of the sectarian view in the book of Jubilees and its preservation among the Samaritans, Karaites and Falashas is further confirmation that this is the approach of the Zadokite-Sadducee legal system.
Before entering into the main body of our study, it is necessary to indicate that the eruv we are discussing here is the eruv hatzerot, the mingling of courtyards, that is, residence areas, intended to permit carrying from one private domain to the next or into what may appear to be public domains until the eruv is instituted. Technically, the rabbinic eruv is being used to permit carrying in areas that after enclosure, are no longer public domains or rather constitute the intermediate domain, termed by the rabbis karmelit. In Talmudic law there are two other eruvin that will not be discussed in this presentation. One is the eruv tavshilin which allows cooking on a festival for a Sabbath that follows. Another is the eruv tehumin, “the mingling of boundaries,” the eruv that allows one to carry more than 2000 cubits beyond the limits of a settled area. While we will not be discussing this eruv either, it is worth noting that evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls points to rejection of this rabbinic innovation as well.
Stay tuned for the continuation of this series.
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