The remains of dozens of young men found in mass graves at the site of a defunct medieval castle moat in Vianen, central Netherlands, have been identified as British soldiers from the late 18th century.

The graves were discovered in November 2020 during drainage work to separate rainwater from sewage in the historic center of Vianen. To extend the city’s canal, municipal authorities chose the site of the former Batestein Castle (built in 1370 and abandoned after a fire in 1696) which had once had a moat on the south side of the grounds. Bones were found during the moat dig. At first it was just a few bones from one or two skeletons at most, but as they dug, they just kept finding more. Two weeks after the excavation began, the team had unearthed the skeletal remains of 44 individuals. By the end of January, the tally had risen to 81. In total, 82 skeletons were found in three mass grave pits.

Some of the bodies had been stacked, and the presence of hand-forged nails suggested a few had been interred in coffins, perhaps shared coffins. Preliminary osteological examination found the remains belonged to young males in their teens and early 20s. There were some indications of sharp-force trauma on two skeletons, suggesting the young men may have fallen in battle.

To date the remains, identify any additional traces of violence and their possible national origin, the bones were recovered and transferred to specialized laboratories in the UK. Forensic anthropologists discovered that the sharp-force trauma was not from a violent battle, but rather from a bone saw, likely deployed during an autopsy. What was endemic among the skeletons was not evidence of violence, but evidence of one or more infections, including meningitis, pneumonia, sinus infections and a non-specific whole-body inflammation. The bones also showed consistent signs of poverty in childhood marked by malnutrition and hard labor.

Radiocarbon dating found the bodies were buried later than initially hypothesized, the late 18th century rather than the 15th or 16th. Archival research confirmed that a field hospital was set up in the ruins of Batestein Castle during the First Coalition War (1792-1797) when European forces (allied English, Dutch, Spanish, Austrian and Prussian troops) fought against the army of Revolutionary France.

Samples were taken from six of the skeletons and isotope analysis of their bones concluded that one came from southern England, possibly Cornwall, another from southern Cornwall and a third from an urban English environment. Two more may have been from the Netherlands but of possible English descent while the other was from Germany.

The men would have been treated at a field hospital at Batestein Castle in Vianen. As it was a mass grave and they all died under the same circumstances, a sample of six was sufficient, archaeologist Hans Veenstra told the BBC. […]

From late 1794-95, British soldiers were treated a short distance from the mass grave, and the researchers believe that the poor and cramped conditions of army life led to reduced resistance to bacterial infection.

The average age of the adult victims was about 26 although some of those who died were just teenagers. Around 60% showed traces of one or more infections which all had one cause – pneumococcal bacteria.

Librarians at the Leeds Central Library took advantage of the lockdowns to thoroughly survey and catalogue the rare book and special collections. In the process, they documented more than 3,000 items that had fallen through the cracks, including a Bible so small that you need a magnifying glass to read it.

The tiny tome is just 1.9 by 1.3 inches in dimension but contains the entire Old and New Testaments printed on 876 pages of India paper. It was printed in 1911 as a replica of the 1539 Great Bible, a choice so ironic it had to have been intentional, because the Great Bible was printed in 1539 by order of Thomas Cromwell who issued an directive that all churches place a copy of “the largest volume in English” in an accessible location so that all parishioners could read it at will. The Bibles would be chained to the lecterns and pulpits to keep them secure, earning the Great Bible the nickname “Chained Bible.”

When the tiny copy was printed, it was billed as the smallest Bible in the world, which it probably was not, but it was certainly in the running. (My great-grandmother gave me a tiny Bible about this size when I was a child, and it only contained the New Testament and Psalms.)

[Rhian Isaac, special collections senior librarian at Leeds City Library,] said its origins are a mystery as it only resurfaced when the library decided to do a comprehensive survey during lockdown closures.

Asked where it came from, she said: “We don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery, really. A lot of items in our collection were either bought over time or they might have been donated.

Another notable new find in the collection is a fake: Oliver Twiss, a shameless knock-off of Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist. It was one of many novels plagiarized from Dickens published by future Penny Dreadful press magnate Edward Lloyd who claimed he was just giving people on a budget the chance to enjoy a popular book since Dickens’ publishers refused to offer any low-cost options. He certainly leaned into the “misunderstanding,” though, claiming his versions were written/edited by one ‘Bos,’ itself a rip-off of Dickens’ pen name, Boz. Other titles by “Bos” Lloyd published with intent to deceive were Martin Guzzlewit, The Penny Pickwick and Nickelas Nickelbery.

Dickens was enraged by Lloyd’s theft and his publishers sued on the grounds that The Penny Pickwick was a “fraudulent imitation” of The Pickwick Papers, its cheap covers meant to deceive the unwary into buying the fake thinking it was the real thing. The judge ruled that no reasonable person could confuse so crappy a counterfeit for the real thing, and the publishers made no copyright argument to protect the integrity of the book’s content, so the floodgates opened and everyone and their mother started cranking out fake Dickens stories. The characters were rough cognates with variant names and coarser behaviors tailored to appeal to the perceived tastes of the penny buyer, and the would-be Dickenses took all kinds of liberties with the stories. Oliver Twiss, for example, is punished at the workhouse for fighting off bullies, not for asking for more delicious gruel, and he ends up earning a degree at Oxford.

Rhian Isaac encourages everyone to come and see these curious volumes in person. They’ll even supply the magnifying glass.

She added: “We ask people to get in touch and we can bring them out for people to see.

“You don’t have to be an academic or an researcher. If you’re just interested, we can get them out for you and you can come and read them in our beautiful grade II-listed building, which is a wonderful place to come and do some studying.

“We would rather these books were used and read. That’s what they were made for and that’s what we encourage people to come in and do, instead of locking them away.”

Here’s an intriguing case of unintended consequences in cultural heritage law.  Meet the Everlöv Hoard:

The Everlöv Hoard is a large group of more than 950 silver objects –912 coins, 40 pieces of jewelry — from the Viking Age discovered in southern Sweden’s Skåne province in the 1980s. The oldest coin dates to the 9th century, the youngest to 1018, indicating the hoard was assembled in the late Viking era. The composition of the objects mark them as a single deposition, but the original find site is unknown.

Many of coins are from Bavaria, which is unusual in Swedish hoards. The hoard also contains an unusually high number of Anglo-Scandinavian coins, ie, coins struck by Scandinavian kings in imitation of the ones struck by the king of England. Among the objects are several extremely rare pieces: a buckle with intricately enlaced zoomorphic figures decorated with filigree and granulation, a Slavic lunula and an oversized jewelry bracteate minted by Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, aka Saint Henry the Exuberant.

The discovery was not made in the usual way; nobody found it by metal detecting or in a happy ploughing accident. It was not dug up at all, in fact. The current owner found it in a chiffonier that had been passed down through generations of the family. (Side note: finding a Viking silver hoard in an old piece furniture has to be in my top 3 greatest lifetime fantasies.)

The hoard was catalogued and briefly exhibited in 1986 at Lund University’s Historical Museum. The museum didn’t get to keep it, however. They didn’t even get to study it. The hoard remained in private hands and was never exhibited again nor made available to researchers.

According to the Swedish Historic Environment Law, any archaeological finds are property of the state and must be reported to county officials. The state can then choose whether to redeem them for a fee. A version of this law has been on the books for centuries, so whoever found this hoard and stashed it in the chiffonier was breaking the law, but that person has been dead a long time. If an ancient artifact qualifies as an inheritance — like, say, if it was found inside heirloom furniture — then ownership goes to the individual who found it.

The state tried to redeem the hoard anyway when it emerged in the 1980s, but the atypical circumstances made it a thorny legal issue and a court ruled that the hoard was owned by the person who found it in the chiffonier. As the law is currently written, there is no mechanism for the state to claim an archaeological object on the grounds of its cultural importance regardless of how or when it was discovered, so that was that. The hoard all but disappeared.

Earlier this month, news broke that the Everlöv Hoard would be sold at auction on April 29th. Even worse, it was being offered in individual lots, so the whole hoard could have been scattered to the four winds. An uproar ensued as archaeologists and researchers protested the sale. The hoard as a whole is far more significant than the sum of its parts, especially the Bavarian through-line which might indicate a previously unknown trade route linking Sweden and southern Germany. Besides, the case could create a dangerous precedent wherein bad actors could claim a fresh find was a surprise legacy.

Literally the day before the scheduled auction, the Everlöv Hoard was saved from dispersal by the Gunnar Ekström Foundation for Numismatic Research and the Sven Svensson Foundation for Numismatic Research who pooled their resources and bought the whole kit and kaboodle behind the scenes. The auction is off and the hoard will now enter the collection of the Royal Coin Cabinet at Stockholm’s Economy Museum where it can and will be studied to the nerdiest heart’s content.

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse off the north coast of Oregon is perched on a storm-tossed rocky island that can only be reached by helicopter. It is covered in bird guano and sea lion excrement and the windows are all boarded up. The sea lions have knocked down the door. The interior is being used as a columbarium, a depository for human cinerary remains, including those of the parents of the current owner. It is a National Wildlife Refuge and cannot be visited during nesting season from April to September. And all of this can be yours for $6.5 million.

Terrible Tilly, so dubbed for its terrible storms and dangerous navigation conditions, was commissioned by Congress in 1878. Construction on the remote basalt stack in the middle of stormy seas was challenging, and the lighthouse took a year and a half to build. One man, a surveyor, was swept out to sea and drowned in the planning stage, cementing Tilly’s Terrible reputation before the first brick was laid.

The first-order fresnel lens was first lit on January 21st, 1881. By the time it was decommissioned in 1957, it had become the most expensive lighthouse in the United States to operate. Tilly then passed into private ownership, changing hands several times. It was acquired by the Eternity at Sea Columbarium in 1980, but they lost their license in 1999 for violations including proper storage.

Legal difficulties notwithstanding, the columbarium is still the crux of the sales pitch.

The plan is for the lighthouse to appeal as an alternative to scattering cremated remains at sea, by encasing them in titanium urns in a bank of niches.

David Adams, a funeral business consultant with the Johnson Consulting Group in Scottsdale, Arizona, who is brokering the sale, is aiming for an official pitch by Memorial Day.

“It’s going to have to take somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit,” he said.

The cremation rate in the United States was low when Morissette, a 77-year-old Oregon resident with a background in real estate development, purchased the lighthouse over four decades ago. The rate reached 56% in 2020 and is rising, the Cremation Association of North America said.

“I find it intriguing some people still like the romance of scattering ashes at sea: ‘Dad’s out in the ocean and Mom’s still floating with sharks,'” Adams said.

“Although romantic in many regards, it is somewhat final. There is no real place to focus on, to go back and memorialize,” he said.

The lighthouse, he added, “gives them a specific focal point.”

Well yes, but a specific focal point that can only accessed half the year and then only by chartering a helicopter. On the other hand, what a view: