Here is the video of an interesting archaeological discovery on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue near Guernsey. Earlier this week Phil de Jersey, working for Guernsey Archaeology, posted news of finding the skull of a juvenile porpoise in the graveyard of a small monastic site.
The porpoise is believed to date from the fourteenth-century, and de Jersey adds that it looks to have been buried deliberately, based on the way the grave was cut.
He tells the Guernsey Press, “That is what puzzles me. If they had eaten it or killed it for the blubber, why take the trouble to bury it?”
In another interview with The Guardian, he suggests one possibility deals with religious observation: “The dolphin has a strong significance in Christianity but I’ve not come across anything like this before. It’s the slightly wacky kind of thing that you might get in the iron age but not in medieval times.”
Via Medievalists.
The Wave. William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
Loneliness, William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
A shipwreck from the medieval period, of a type known from literature but never previously seen, was discovered during an underwater survey of the Black Sea this past summer. UConn researcher Kroum Batchvarov says seeing it for the first time was ‘a truly thrilling moment.’ (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).
While conducting their mapping in late summer using the most advanced underwater survey equipment in the world, Batchvarov and his colleagues discovered a total of 43 shipwrecks. The team had expected to see sunken ships, but were surprised at just what they found.
An Ottoman period shipwreck with well preserved wood carvings. The images, which show the shipwrecks in three dimensions, were produced by a process known as photogrammetry. It combines photographs and videos taken by cameras mounted on remotely operated vehicles with distance measurements produced by sonars. (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).
Batchvarov first spotted the well preserved medieval shipwreck on a screen in the control room of the expedition ship after nearly 48 hours of monitoring images from the high remote survey vehicle moving along the floor of the Black Sea.
“That was a truly thrilling moment. We spent the next six hours looking at the wreck. No one had ever seen anything like it,” he says. “We had known of it. There have been descriptions in Venetian manuscripts that survived from the 15th century describing earlier vessels. But this was the first time that we were seeing it.”
The ship was complete, according to Batchvarov: “The masts were still standing. You could see the spars [wooden poles], the yards on deck. Everything was there.”
[…]
The vessels the Black Sea MAP team discovered date over the course of a millennium, from the 9th to the 19th centuries. Many were merchant ships from the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries, mostly from the 18th century. But the medieval ship – dating from the 13th to the mid-14th century and probably of Mediterranean origin – provides the first view of a ship type known from historical sources but never before seen.
[…]
While analysis of the shipwrecks is ongoing, the team continues with its intended purpose, investigating the area for evidence of how humans reacted to changes in the environment in previous eras.
“We are answering an archaeological question: At what stage did the level of the Black Sea change and what once would have been marshy coastal land become inhabitable and then become inundated?” Batchvarov says, noting that the team’s findings could add to previous studies on catastrophic flooding in the Black Sea region.
La Rue Des Petits-Toits, William T. Horton, A Book of Images. Look carefully, else you’ll miss the people dancing in the street.
Trees Walking, William T. Horton, A Book of Images. (My favourite!)
Notre Dame De Paris. William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
The Old Pier, William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
Château Ultime, William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
Click for full size.
By The Canal, William T. Horton, A Book of Images.
Click for full size.
Here’s a fun thing to do on a Wednesday evening if you’re in the area:
When the area now known as Lincoln Park was City Cemetery during the 1840s to 1860s, it was a regular smorgasbord for grave robbers — medical schools tended to have a “no questions asked” policy, and a fresh cadaver could pay as much as a month in the coal mines.
Author and tour guide Adam Selzer leads “pupils” on a walking tour of Lincoln Park, showing relics of the old cemetery, a tomb snooping demonstration, and repeating stories and quotes from the archives about all of the body snatching that took place on the grounds — featuring enough tricks of the trade to launch your very own career. Humorous, entertaining, and educational as all get out.
Tickets are $20.00, and all the details are at Atlas Obscura.
Violette (Violet). J.J. Grandville, Les fleurs animées. This is the last! Tomorrow begins William T. Horton.
