Give the God a Bone

According to icSurreyonline 25th April 2006 a bunch of archaeologists are in the village of Ewell recovering the secrets of lost Roman shrines.

The first finds were made there in the 1840's, in deep ritual shafts cut into the chalk, and today's archaeologists are hoping to uncover more of a stone building and a further deep shaft found in 1977.

The Surrey website says that "Shafts like these have been found containing pottery vessels, coins and the bones of many dogs," and quotes Bourne Hall Museum curator Jeremy Harte as saying "This is a very exciting opportunity."We are looking at one of the most mysterious aspects of life in Roman Ewell - the cult centres where offerings were made to native gods."

If the bones are from dogs that were put into the pit as votive offerings, it sort of makes you wonder what Roman god they were honouring. Pluto? Or maybe they were just dyslexic God worshippers? Whatever, send Tony Robinson's Time Team over post haste!

Select for the full story

update 28/04/05 more information on the This is Local London website

(The image by the way is of a statue of Augustus dressed as the Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) that is in the Palazzo Massimo of The National Museum of Rome. Sadly it isn't to be found in Ewell).

2,000 Year Old Murder?

The BBC reports on 26th April 2006 of a 2,000 year old possible murder (select for full news story) in the Orkney Islands at Mine Howe, Tankerness (select for map). Select for more information on the Orkney Heritage website.

Analysis of multiple cut-wounds to the skeleton suggest a high velocity spear or arrow injury to the man's left shoulder from behind, followed by slashes to his left-side ribs, shoulder, hand and arm. These seem to have been delivered by a sharp, metal weapon, probably a short sword or long dagger, wielded with some force. The cuts were probably the cause of the man’s death, the position of the marks on the bones implying damage to his thorax, left lung and left kidney. The emphasis of attacks on the left-side suggest that the man was right-handed and armed.

The body was then buried in a shallow grave that was barely large enough to contain his body. Indeed, his right toes were bent back and protruded out of the side of the pit, with a number of toe bones found behind his back.

Readers may remember that Channel 4's Time Team visited Mine Howe for a couple of Christmas specials in 1999 and 2000. It's a pity geophys didn't detect this skeleton or it might have resulted in an episode of Time Team when they actually found something interesting (only joking Tony, Mick and Phil, keep up the good work).

Mine Howe is certainly an enigmatic place. It seems to be a centre for iron-working on an island where Iron Age remains are very scarce. The main surviving structure is best described by the Time Team website:

"In a mound, which from its external appearance looks largely natural and no different from a scatter of similar mounds in the vicinity, an extraordinary underground structure was revealed. A flight of 17 stone steps descend to a half-landing where they turn back on themselves and a further 11 steps descend to a chamber.
This chamber is only about 1.3 metres in diameter but is over four metres high with a corbelled roof. The bottom step into this chamber is 0.9 metres high and gives it a cistern-like appearance. At the half-landing two subsidiary chambers/passages open out, one above the other . . . Most of the structure is lined with beautifully built dry-stone walling."

This reminds me of the many examples of Iron Age souterrain found across the Celtic world; a womb-like space deep within the earth. Are they ritualistic spaces? Or bolt-holes to hide from attackers? Or maybe they suited the acoustics for Iron Age musical gigs? Whatever, the fascination of altered perspectives from being deep underground is one that we can all feel to this day, and one still used by artists such as James Turrell, most recently with his Deer Shelter Skyspace at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

This is the second skeleton found at Mine Howe. The other one was by contrast formally interred, a female body buried in the floor of what appears (from the other extant artifacts) to have been a smithy. Two decorative bronze toe-rings were found on the feet, while a piece of deer skull/antler, drilled with six holes, lay on the chest. Why was she buried in the floor? One wonders about the 'magical' nature of iron-smiths in the Iron Age. Was she a sacrificial victim? A shaman who had the magical power of working metal? Was the speared male a less enthusiastic sacrifice? We can only speculate, but if you ask me it has all the makings of a Celtic who-dunnit. Ian Rankin, are you listening?! Enough with the Rebus already!

Hubble is Sweet Sixteen

Happy Birthday to the Hubble telescope!

It seems amazing to me that it was a whole sixteen years ago when it was launched into space on the back of the space shuttle Discovery. My, how our young ones grow up so fast. It caused us major trauma in its early years with its dicky mirror, but with some clever tweaking has gone on to stream us not just useful scientific data but some of the most breath-taking images of our universe yet.

To celebrate the occasion, NASA and the European Space Agency have released a stunning new image of the galaxy Messier 82 – the "Cigar Galaxy" – and its wing-like clouds of glowing hot gas (pictured, but select this link for a larger version).

Was it a tremendous waste of money? No, the futile war in Iraq is a tremendous waste of money - and lives. By way of contrast, Hubble if nothing else (and for astrophysicists it is a big other else) has posted snapshots of the cosmos back to us that have enriched our perception and place in the universe, brought joy to our eyes and hearts, filled us with awe and humbleness.

We've known for a couple of centuries now just how vast and full this expanding ball of space we inhabit is, but nothing surely has brought it home than the deep-space panoramas and the thousands of pictures of galaxies filled with zillions of stars.

Here's looking forward to its twenty-first birthday and beyond, which with a bit of servicing it should make. See this New Scientist article dated 24th April about its future prospects.

Pyramid Power

You'd think it would be difficult to overlook a pyramid and yet two previously unknown ones are reported this month. One is on the outskirts of Mexico City, the other in the Visoko valley in Bosnia.

The Mexico City pyramid measures about 500 feet (152 meters) on each side and stands 60 feet (18 meters) tall. It was discovered beneath a site used today for a popular reenactment of the Crucifixion of Christ during Christianity's Holy Week, the week before Easter, according to news reports: for example this National Geographic webpage dated April 6th 2006. It is believed that the same people who built the pyramid also constructed Teotihuacan, a long-abandoned (AD 800) settlement about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Mexico City.

"When they first saw us digging there, the local people just couldn't believe there was a pyramid," Jesus Sanchez, an archaeologist with the National Institute of Anthropology and History, told the Associated Press.
"It was only when the slopes and shapes of the pyramid, the floors with altars were found, that they finally believed us."

You can understand the local people's scepticism, but at least Latin America is well known for its magnificent and abundent step-pyramids.

Compare and contrast then the claims for a Bosnian step-pyramid, known as Visocica and reported here on the BBC website on 15th April 2006, and here on the National Geographic website on 20th April (and lots of other internet news-sites). Not only does amateur archaeologist Semir Osmanagic (pictured) claim that the step-pyramid could be a staggering 722-foot (220-meter) from base to apex (the pyramid of Kufa/Cheops at Giza originally stood half that height), but that it was constructed by unknown people some 12,000 years ago (that's about the time our ancestors were daubing paint onto cave walls in Western Europe).

Compare also the reaction of the locals who sound not so much sceptical as cynical; not only does the pyramid have its own website, www.bosnianpyramid.com, there is even an online Bosnian Pyramid Shop where you can buy such things as Visocica T-shirts and coffee mugs.

Nobody has claimed that Visocica was built by Atlanteans, but it is inevitable someone will. Actually, I could just get in there and be the first. Now does anyone have the Penguin editor's email address? I could have a lucrative book-deal for them . . .

Update 04/05/06: Seems like the locals are cashing in even more, whereas professional archaeologists think it is all a publicity stunt for the area. See this article on archaeologynews.org

Don't believe any of the following, we made it up

I Know What You Did Last Supper!

According to the BBC website:

"Catholic group Opus Dei has asked for a disclaimer to be placed on the film of The Da Vinci Code, released next month.

'Some media have written that Sony is examining the possibility of putting at the beginning of the film an announcement to clarify that it is a work of fantasy and that any similarity with reality is purely coincidental,' Opus Dei said in a statement."

Can somebody remind me, did Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of Christ' have a similar disclaimer?

Anyway, the full story is here (if you can believe it) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4913938.stm

Cracking Cheese, Gromitus!

According to a report on the BBC news website dated 13th April "a rare Roman cheese press has been found in a ditch near the home of the famous Stilton cheese." It has apparently been dated to the 3rd Century and:

"Archaeologists [un-named] said the press would have been used to make cheese from the milk of either goats or sheep."

No kidding? Not for Venezuelan beaver cheese then?

Of course the Roman cheese wouldn't have been anything like blue-veined Stilton cheese, which only started being produced in the eighteenth century. It would have more probably been a brine pickled cheese like feta. And anyway, according to EC 'protected designation of origin' regulations, even if a stilton-like cheese was ever produced near the village of Stilton in Cambridgeshire it couldn't be sold as blue Stilton cheese. It can only be called such if it is made from local milk at a dairy in Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire. We know it as blue Stilton thanks to the owner of the Bell Inn of Stilton village in 1730, Mr Cooper Thornhill. He took a liking to it whilst visiting a small farm in Leicestershire and began selling it from his pub.

Personally, I like a small slice of Hartington Blue Stilton, made in the Derbyshire Peak. Mmmm!

(Trivia of the week: a turophiliac is a cheese lover)

p.s. to be pedantic, it should be Gromite, in the vocative, not Gromitus.

Down With This Sort of Thing

It's Religious Correctness gone mad! Normally you see the headline 'School Bans Harry Potter' and you think that it originated in some place in the USA where opposable thumbs are considered a recent innovation, but no, blast my prejeudices, this is about the head teacher of a primary school in Chatham, Kent.

According to this BBC News item date-lined 29th March 2006, Carol Rockwood of St Mary's Island Church of England Aided school is "banning pupils from reading the best-selling Harry Potter children's books because she says they go against the Bible's teachings."

Now, I'm not a great Harry Potter fan by any means, but any book that encourages kids to read (and many adults too I believe) is okay by me. Alright, maybe if they were being fed Janet & John versions of Mein Kampf I might have an issue, I'm not that liberal. But what could possibly be harmful about an adventure romp that is Bunter's Greyfriars crossed with 'The Wickedest Witch'? If I could summon up any objection it would be from the disturbing fact that the application rate for boarding schools in England has gone up as children want to go to a Public School like Harry and Hermione. I'm sure they know that sports activities are more likely to be lacrosse than quidditch, but still.

Over to Ms Rookwood for an explanation of her ban:

"We are a Church of England aided primary school which means the church ethos is very important to what we do.

"The Bible is very clear and consistent in its teachings that wizards, devils and demons exist and are very real, powerful and dangerous, and God's people are told to have nothing to do with them."

Hmm, okay. So yes, the first five books of the Old Testament do have references to witches, soothsayers, wizards, necromancers and the like (e.g. Exodus 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"), but this was written in a very different age for a very different culture. For example, Exodus 21:2 & 7 tells us that if we "buy a Hebrew slave, he shall be your slave for six years, but in the seventh year he shall go free and pay nothing . . . When a man sells his daughter into slavery, she shall not go free as a male slave may." I don't think Ms Rockwood would advocate introducing slavery into the Home Counties because that's what the Bible 'teaches' us.

In the time since the Penteuch was written, we've had a few major culture shifts, not least The Reformation and The Enlightenment and The Age of Reason. We're all a bit less scared about the world now, and we know how to manipulate it using scientific principles rather than mumbo-jumbo. We've also had Romanticism in literature and art which introduced the aesthetic of thrilling the reader/viewer with supernatural folk-lore from our past. Surely JK Rowling is continuing the Romantic tradition of sorcery, of good and evil, of nature and wildness, that started with writers such as Goethe with his 'Faust', though perhaps with a nod to Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five'.

I just wish I could ask Ms Rookwood if she is also banning Barney the Purple Dinosaur on the basis that dinosaurs (of any colour) are not mentioned in the Bible. Or does she accept that Creationism is now superceded by Evolution, just as beliefs in magic and demon spirits have been superceded by the scientific method?

But is it Art?

BBC News reports the discovery of a 2000-year-old carving near Chesters Fort on Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland (pictured right).

Supposedly this 40cm carving depicts a figure holding a shield in one hand and spear or sword in the other. We can all see that, right? No, hang on, I think I've pasted the image upside-down or something.

Furthermore, it is thought to represent Cocidius, a Romano-British warrior god. This is at best a guess, I would suggest, based on the many DEO COCIDIO inscriptions on Roman altars along Hadrian's Wall; this Cocidius dude was obviously a popular deity amongst the rain-lashed Latino soldiers, so naturally any carved figures are likely to be of him. Hmm.

The BBC reports that "experts [which experts?] say the find is exciting as it helps shed light on how people used local idols for protection. " I'm not sure how it does myself, but then I'm no expert. I think the more practical way that the Romans protected themselves is by building a bloody great wall!

The BBC adds that "Rock art expert Tertia Barnett [at least she's named] said: "This is a completely unexpected discovery. " No it isn't Tertia; this is Hadrian's wall. You can't throw a cheese sandwich up there without it landing on an artifact from the Roman occupation. A completely unexpected discovery would be if you'd unearthed a Mayan codex, a didgeridoo, or Chairman Mao's flip-flops.

Still, "The carving was uncovered by a team of volunteers looking for prehistoric rock art" so that was lucky. Imagine the dissapointment if it had been uncovered by a team looking for Saxon gold hordes.

If you want to see this carving for yourself and make your own mind up, then I'll save you the train-fare. According to the BBC "The rock has now been covered again to protect it."

For the full story on the BBC website see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/4796736.stm