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Feasting and fighting: The long-lost secrets of Beowulf

David Keys
The Independent, UK
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 18:49 UTC
Beowulf
© The Independent, UK
The dark secrets of the legend of Beowulf, England's oldest work of epic literature, are gradually emerging from under a field in eastern Denmark.

Archaeologists in the country's earliest royal 'capital' - Lejre, 23 miles west of modern Copenhagen - are investigating the joys of elite Dark Age life in and around what was probably the great royal feasting hall at the violent epicentre of the Beowulf story.

The archaeologists - led by Tom Christensen, director of the Lejre investigation - have so far managed not only to find, excavate and date the late 5 or early 6 century building most likely to have been Lejre's first royal hall (described in Beowulf as 'the greatest hall under heaven'), but have also succeeded in reconstructing what was on the menu at the great feasts held there.

Scientific study this year of the bones of literally hundreds of animals found near the hall, shows that they feasted on suckling pig, beef, mutton, goat meat, venison, goose, duck, chicken and fish.
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Books

New JD Salinger books coming, according to new biography

Hillel Italie
The Huffington Post
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 15:46 UTC
Salinger
© Associated Press/Amy SancettaIn this Jan. 28, 2010 file photo, copies of J.D. Salinger's classic novel "The Catcher in the Rye" as well as his volume of short stories called "Nine Stories" are seen at the Orange Public Library in Orange Village, Ohio. Salinger, died Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, in Cornish, N.H., at the age of 91. At left is a 1951 photo of the author.
The authors of a new J.D. Salinger biography are claiming they have cracked one of publishing's greatest mysteries: What The Catcher in the Rye novelist was working on during the last half century of his life.

Starting between 2015 and 2020, a series of posthumous Salinger releases are planned, according to "Salinger," co-written by David Shields and Shane Salerno and scheduled to be published Sept. 3. The Associated Press obtained an early copy. Salerno's documentary on the author opens Sept. 6. In January, it will air on PBS as an installment of American Masters.

Providing by far the most detailed report of previously unreleased material, the book's authors cite "two independent and separate sources" who they say have "documented and verified" the information.
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Cow Skull

Artifacts in northern Quebec, Canada, could be 7,000 years old


CBCNews.ca
Sun, 25 Aug 2013 14:45 UTC
quebec archaeology
© Waskaganish Cultural Institute/FacebookArchaeologists believe the stone relics were made using a grinding technique, different than later techniques of chipping.
Archaeologists start dig after finding rare arrowheads on Waskaganish territory

A Quebec archaeological team will begin its work at an extraordinary site this week, as it explores a settlement that could be as old as the invention of the wheel.

The Saunders Goose Pond discovery, which could date back 7,000 years, was found last summer on Waskaganish territory in northern Quebec.

The James Bay community, located near Fort Rupert, is known as the birthplace of the Hudson's Bay Company and has historical significance for the local Cree as a traditional fishing site.

When archaeological crews were digging near the Smokey Hill rapids last summer, they expected to find relics and pottery dating back about 150 years.
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Blackbox

Ancient priestess unearthed in Peru; Tomb suggests women ruled mysterious, brutal culture

Meredith Bennett-Smith
The Huffington Post
Sat, 24 Aug 2013 09:27 UTC
Image
© Duaglas Suarez/AFP/Getty ImagesView of one of two skeletons found in a burial chamber of the Moche culture, in the Cao religious compound in northern Peru.
Talk about ancient girl power!

Archaeologists working in Peru have uncovered the skeleton of a woman believed to have been a high priestess of a mysterious culture that existed around 1,200 years ago. The pre-Hispanic remains were found in late July in an impressive burial chamber located in the country's northern Chepan province, according to the Agence France-Presse.

The priestess seems to have been a leader of an ancient culture known as the Moche, or Mochia. Around 2,000 years ago, the Moche dominated the cultural landscape of what is now northern Peru, building large pyramids from mud bricks before disappearing without explanation. The name Moche comes from the site of Moche, an ancient capital city.
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Colosseum

Best of the Web: JFK's death marked the end of the American Republic

Lars Schall
larsschall.com
Tue, 20 Aug 2013 02:17 UTC
Image
© Unknown
On occasion of the publication of his latest book, German author Mathias Broeckers talks about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, which he sees as a coup d'etat that was never rolled back.

Lars Schall: Mr. Broeckers, a writer who authors a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy that does not follow the verdict of official history faces the problem of being condemned on an instant basis as a "conspiracy theorist" who engages in "conspiracy theories." May I ask you at the beginning of this interview to explain to our readers that those critics - consciously or unconsciously - are acting exactly according to the "playbook" of the CIA?

Mathias Broeckers: In January 1967, shortly after Jim Garrison in New Orleans had started his prosecution of the CIA backgrounds of the murder, the CIA published a memo to all its stations, suggesting the use of the term "conspiracy theorists" for everyone criticizing the Warren Report findings. Until then the press and the public mostly used the term "assassination theories" when it came to alternative views of the "lone nut" Lee Harvey Oswald. But with this memo this changed and very soon "conspiracy theories" became what it is until today: a term to smear, denounce and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services. Before Edward Snowden anyone claiming a kind of total surveillance of internet and phone traffic would have been named a conspiracy nut; today everyone knows better.
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Ancient mound in Greece fuels heady speculation


The Marietta Times
Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:13 UTC
Alexander the Great
© historyofmacedonia.org
Athens - Greece's Culture Ministry has warned against "overbold" speculation that an ancient artificial mound being excavated could contain a royal Macedonian grave or even Alexander the Great.

Site archaeologist Aikaterini Peristeri has voiced hopes of finding "a significant individual or individuals" within.

Greek websites enthused that it could hold the long-sought grave of 4th-century B.C. warrior-king Alexander the Great - thought to lie in Egypt.

A Culture Ministry statement Thursday said the partly-excavated mound has yielded a "very remarkable" marble-faced wall from the late 4th century B.C.

It is an impressive 500 meters (yards) long and three meters high.

But the ministry warned it would be "overbold" to link the site near ancient Amphipolis, 370 miles (600 kilometers) north of Athens, with "historic personages" before the excavation is completed.

Source: Associated Press
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Info

Archaeologists uncover first use of spices in European cuisine

Sid Perkins
ScienceNow
Wed, 21 Aug 2013 22:03 UTC
Spice
© (left) Sannse/Creative Commons; (top right): Saul et al., PLoS ONE (2013); (bottom right): Hardyplants/ Wikimedia CommonsOld spice. Discovery of tiny bits of plant-produced silica called phytoliths (upper right) from the seeds (right) of the garlic mustard plant (Alliaria petiolata, left) suggest that Stone Age cooks were using spices up to 6100 years ago.
Bits of silica stuck in charred residues scraped from pots reveal that chefs in northern Europe were cooking with spices at least 6 millennia ago. Although researchers have previously noted the use of strong-flavored ingredients such as onions by cooks in this region during the same era, the new find is the first to report the use of an ingredient that didn't also have nutritional value - which means that the spice, ground seeds from a plant called garlic mustard, was almost certainly used solely for its flavor.

The clues researchers used in the new study are microscopic bits of silica called phytoliths (from Greek, meaning "plant stones"). Plants produce these rugged structures from dissolved minerals in ground water that is pulled into their roots and then distributed throughout the organism, says Hayley Saul, a bioarchaeologist at the University of York in the United Kingdom. While some phytoliths are deposited inside a plant's cells, others are created in spaces between cells or in special tissues. In many cases, phytoliths are characteristic of certain species, and can, due to their minerallike nature, persist long after a plant's soft tissues have decomposed.
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Cow Skull

First colonisers of the Faroe Islands were not the Vikings


University of Durham
Tue, 20 Aug 2013 08:37 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The Faroe Islands were colonised much earlier than previously believed, and it wasn't by the Vikings, according to new research.

New archaeological evidence places human colonisation in the 4th to 6th centuries AD, at least 300-500 years earlier than previously demonstrated.

The research, directed by Dr Mike J Church from Durham University and Símun V Arge from the National Museum of the Faroe Islands as part of the multidisciplinary project "Heart of the Atlantic", is published in the Quaternary Science Reviews.

The research challenges the nature, scale and timing of human settlement of the wider North Atlantic region and has implications for the colonisation of similar island groups across the world.

The Faroes were the first stepping stone beyond Shetland for the dispersal of European people across the North Atlantic that culminated on the shores of continental North America in the 11th century AD, about 500 years before Columbus made his famous voyage.
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Map

Oldest globe to depict the New World may have been discovered

Meeri Kim
The Washington Post
Mon, 19 Aug 2013 17:49 UTC
Engraved Globe
© The Washington Map SocietyEurope, North Africa and the Middle East on the meticulously engraved globe.
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An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.

The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe's lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is "Hic Sunt Dracones."

" 'Here be dragons,' a very interesting sentence," said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal published a comprehensive analysis of the globe Monday by collector Stefaan Missinne. "In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there's bad stuff out there."

The only other map or globe on which this specific phrase appears is what can arguably be called the egg's twin: the copper Hunt-Lenox Globe, dated around 1510 and housed by the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library. Before the egg, the copper globe had been the oldest one known to show the New World. The two contain remarkable similarities.

After comparing the two globes, Missinne concluded that the Hunt-Lenox Globe is a cast of the engraved ostrich egg. Many minute details, such as the lines and contours of the egg's territories, oceans and script, match those on the well-studied Hunt-Lenox Globe.

The egg's shape is slightly irregular, while the copper globe is a perfect sphere. Also, the markings around the equator of the egg, where the two halves are joined, appear quite muddled.
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Info

Oldest 'bog body' found with skin intact in Ireland

Laura Poppick
LiveScience
Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:27 UTC
Bog Body
© Ossory, Laois, and LeinsterCashel Man, discovered in central Ireland, is thought to have been a young king who was ritualistically sacrificed.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,000-year-old man preserved in an Irish peat bog, marking the oldest European body ever found with skin still intact.

The cool, waterlogged conditions of Northern European bogs (a type of wetland) create low-oxygen, highly acidic environments ideal for body preservation. As a result, hundreds of "bog bodies" dating back thousands of years have been uncovered in the region, but many have shriveled down to mostly skeletons and tend to be closer to 2,000 years old.

A resident of central Ireland's County Laois came across the well-preserved "Cashel Man" - named for the bog he was found in - while milling for peat moss, which is used for a variety of farm purposes, including animal-bedding and field conditioning.

Having realized that he had come across a human body, the resident notified archaeologists at the National Museum of Ireland, who later conducted a formal excavation of the site. A summary of the dig appeared in the latest edition of the Irish journal Ossory, Laois, and Leinster.

"All that was visible to start with was a pair of legs below the knees, and a torso," Eamonn Kelly, an archaeologist at the National Museum and lead excavator of the project, wrote in the report. "The body appeared to be naked. Later, it was possible to work out that the torso had been damaged by the milling machine, which also removed the head, neck and left arm."
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