Pieces of bone were turned into ornaments, and may have been placed on display
Bronze age Britons remembered the dead by keeping and curating bits of their bodies, and even turning them into instruments and ornaments, according to new research on the remains.
Archaeologists found that pieces of bone buried with the dead were often from people who had died decades earlier, suggesting their remains had been kept for future generations, as keepsakes or perhaps for home display.
Continue reading...They are beacons of western civilisation. But, says an explosive new book, the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world – twin towers, rose windows, vaulted ceilings and all
As Notre-Dame cathedral was engulfed by flames last year, thousands bewailed the loss of this great beacon of western civilisation. The ultimate symbol of French cultural identity, the very heart of the nation, was going up in smoke. But Middle East expert Diana Darke was having different thoughts. She knew that the origins of this majestic gothic pile lay not in the pure annals of European Christian history, as many have always assumed, but in the mountainous deserts of Syria, in a village just west of Aleppo to be precise.
“Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church,” Darke tweeted on the morning of 16 April, as the dust was still settling in Paris. “Crusaders brought the ‘twin tower flanking the rose window’ concept back to Europe in the 12th century.”
Continue reading...Proposals to install low-energy devices in seven coastal beacons in the north and the republic have angered campaigners, who say the enchanting ‘loom’ of the beams will be lost
The “loom of the light” is a phenomenon that lets you see the glow of a lighthouse from over the horizon. Particles of water vapour in the atmosphere scatter the light upwards so it can be glimpsed further than the line of sight. It is an optical wonder that has delighted – and guided – mariners for centuries.
But now some fear an environmental push towards low energy will extinguish a loom that stretches across the Irish Sea, draining beauty from the nocturnal landscape.
Continue reading...The 39-year-old who closed the cathedral for the night had previously been questioned and released by police
A volunteer assistant suspected of setting a French cathedral on fire has been rearrested, then indicted and detained in pre-trial custody by prosecutors.
The man, already held and released by police last week, was indicted on Saturday night “on charges of destruction and damage by fire” of the gothic cathedral of Nantes, the public prosecutor for the western city said.
Continue reading...Turkish president recites Qur’an at monument as Greece declares day of mourning
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has led worshippers in the first prayers in Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia since his controversial declaration that the monument, which over the centuries has served as a cathedral, mosque and museum, would be turned back into a Muslim house of worship.
The Turkish leader and an entourage of senior ministers arrived for the service in the heart of Istanbul’s historic district on Friday afternoon, kneeling on new turquoise carpets while sail-like curtains covered the original Byzantine mosaics of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
Continue reading...Justice secretary, Kate Forbes, among those asking for language to be prioritised
Senior politicians in Scotland’s Gaelic-speaking areas have called for the language to be given much greater priority in civil and public life to stop it dying out.
Kate Forbes, the Scottish justice secretary, and Alasdair Allan, a former minister, said Gaelic had to be given precedence or parity in all areas of public life and the economy across Gaelic areas of the Highlands and islands.
Continue reading...As another religious painting restoration goes horribly wrong, we take a look at some of the finest examples of butchered statues, art installations and frescoes
In the latest instalment of the greatest genre of art news – and I write that as a lover of art – another restoration has gone awry. The word “awry” is being generous.
This is the revelation that a private collector, based in Valencia, paid €1,200 (£1,070) for a restoration job on baroque painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables. It is no longer immaculate. It now looks like an e-fit issued by a local police force, with those thin eyebrows popular in the 90s. What’s more, the restorer (who it turns out was a furniture restorer by trade) made two attempts – the second significantly worse than the first. That one, the e-fit one, has the Virgin Mary staring straight ahead, which isn’t even the same position as the original, which has Mary looking to the heavens.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Discovery of prehistoric structure is another reason to give up ‘disastrous, white elephant’ scheme
Leading archaeologists say a £1.6bn scheme to build a road tunnel through the historic Stonehenge landscape should be scrapped altogether after the sensational nearby discovery of the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.
Mike Parker Pearson, professor of British later prehistory at University College London, said: “This is just another reason to give up this disastrous, white elephant of a scheme.”
Continue reading...Nine acres in Exmoor includes buildings, rivers and moorland linked to 19th-century tale
It is a place of wooded valleys, tumbling rivers and rugged moorland that was immortalised in the 19th-century novel Lorna Doone, a twisty tale of romance, murder and outlaws by RD Blackmore.
The National Trust announced on Tuesday it had bought nine acres of land in Doone country, including farmhouses and cottages, and is hoping to encourage more visitors to explore this tucked-away area of Exmoor.
Continue reading...Four antiquities pulled from auction after claims they came from illicit excavations
Christie’s has quietly withdrawn four Greek and Roman antiquities from auction this month amid allegations that they had been looted from illicit excavations.
The items were in the original brochure catalogue but later removed from the online site with no explanation.
Continue reading...Location of the Red Lion, which predated the Globe, has been subject of debate for years
Archaeologists believe they have found remains of one of the most elusive of all known Elizabethan structures – the earliest purpose-built playhouse in Britain and a prototype for a theatre that staged plays by a young William Shakespeare.
The Red Lion is thought to have been built around 1567 and probably played host to travelling groups of players. Its precise location has been the subject of conjecture and debate for a number of years, but archaeologists are as certain as they can be that they have found its remains at a site in the East End of London where a self-storage facility once stood.
Continue reading...Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names
Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscriptions on memorials and sculptures, in the nomenclature of grand public buildings. Forming the backdrop of lived lives, these omnipresent clues are rarely fully decoded. The most monumental of sculptures has a habit of fading away to near invisibility if it is sufficiently familiar.
At times, though, such associations are activated and become urgent. So it has been in the case of the long-running affair of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the 17th century from the enslavement of thousands of Africans.
Continue reading...National Library of Israel is digitising collection of manuscripts and books dating back to ninth century
More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.
The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.
Continue reading...Anyone who digs up valuable treasure is supposed to report the find, not hang on to it or sell it to the highest bidder. But even under lockdown, crime continues
If you had seen them, you might have thought they were ramblers or dog walkers – locals snatching some fresh air as the nation hunkered indoors during lockdown. Only their equipment would have given them away: metal detectors, a shovel and a spade, that they humped uncomfortably up a vertiginous path.
They turned off the main road and drove a quarter of a mile down a single track dark with trees, past the occasional house and fields of rolling countryside. It was probably early morning when the car pulled up at a wooden fence, on which were carved the words “GRAY HILL, COMPTON”. From here, it is a stiff, scrambling climb up Gray Hill, towards a cluster of ancient standing stones that loom out of scrubland like broken teeth. Here, if the weather is clear, you can look out towards the Severn estuary.
Continue reading...Conflict between mining and Aboriginal heritage in WA has spawned a system of suffocating bureaucracy and lopsided agreement-making
A 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site destroyed by Rio Tinto this month is one of more than 463 sites that mining companies operating in Western Australia have applied for permission to destroy or disturb since 2010.
None of those applications have been refused. And under the state’s 48-year-old Aboriginal heritage laws, only the land or lease holder has the right to appeal – traditional owners do not.
Continue reading...Foundation seeks to convert part of historic building into mosque and community centre
A plan to convert part of the famous Trocadero building in Piccadilly Circus in London into a mosque has sparked objections from people who say a place of worship in an area noted for its bars and nightlife is inappropriate.
The Aziz Foundation, a charity that offers educational grants and scholarships to Muslims, has applied to Westminster city council for permission to convert the basement and ground floor of the Trocadero into a place of worship and a community centre.
Continue reading...Campaigners call for return of 1930s wording to Twentieth Century Fox Film Co former offices
Disney, titan of the media and entertainment world, has enraged a group of Londoners attempting to preserve one of Soho’s best-known squares. And the battle is over one word: “Fox”.
In the south-west corner of Soho Square stands Twentieth Century House, a grand emblem of the American film industry’s key role in this part of the city since 1937. It is now in the hands of Disney.
Continue reading...Excavations reveal that rubbish left outside the city walls wasn’t just dumped. It was being collected, sorted and resold
They were expert engineers, way ahead of the curve on underfloor heating, aqueducts and the use of concrete as a building material. Now it turns out that the Romans were also masters at recycling their rubbish.
Researchers at Pompeii, the city buried under a thick carpet of volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, have found that huge mounds of refuse apparently dumped outside the city walls were in fact “staging grounds for cycles of use and reuse”.
Continue reading...MPs and peers told to come up with a clear plan after previous business case was rejected
MPs and peers in charge of parliament’s restoration have been told by Whitehall’s spending watchdog that they must ensure that costs do not slip amid deepening concerns about public finances in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has called on the group tasked with the Palace of Westminster’s multibillion-pound overhaul to take a firm grip on the process. The budget for Big Ben’s construction works alone rose by 176%, auditors said.
Continue reading...Experts reexamine eggs – some dating back to bronze age – to understand origins and designs
They are about the same size as a standard Easter egg, but are rather older – with some specimens dating back five millennia to the early bronze age.
A collection of decorated ostrich eggs belonging to the British Museum in London has been reexamined by experts in an effort to understand where they originated, and how their often elaborately painted or engraved designs were created.
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