Month: September 2008

A little chunk of Elgian marble returns home

Ancient, Museums, Treasures

It’s not any of the major pieces of the Parthenon frieze controversially housed in the British Museum. Lord Elgin gave this fragment to the British consul-general of Sicily when he was passing through with his ill-gotten gain in 1816.

It’s been in Sicily ever since, and now it’s finally home, personally transported to Athens by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

The sculpted fragment of the ancient Greek hunt goddess Artemis, part of the eastern Parthenon frieze depicting the twelve gods of Olympus, had been in the collection of the Antonio Salinas Archaeological Museum of Palermo.

Greece had sought to secure its return for 13 years, the Greek culture minister said.

The fragment depicts the goddess’ right foot and part of her long robe.

“For the first time in nearly two centuries, a valuable fragment of the Parthenon’s sculpted decoration returns to be embodied where it belongs,” Culture Minister Michalis Liapis told reporters.

Hint, hint. Ever since the New Acropolis Museum opened, Greece has been putting serious pressure on the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles.

The BM hasn’t been receptive to Greek entreaties, needless to say. Collecting fragments of the frieze scattered about is a great way to keep the situation in the papers and to make the British Museum look like a dick for not being willing to even consider what other countries are doing.

Edit for clarification: The piece is on loan to Greece. It will return to the Palermo museum at the end of the year.

:hattip: commenter Mark Watson

Early results from the Stonehenge dig

Ancient

The recent Stonehenge dig is already revising historical assumptions. Radiocarbon dating of bluestone fragments indicates that the first ring of stones was erected 300 years later than previously thought.

Until now, the consensus view for the date of the first stone circle was anywhere between 2600BC and 2400BC. […]

The dig unearthed about 100 pieces of organic material from the original bluestone sockets, now buried under the monument. Of these, 14 were selected to be sent for modern carbon dating, at Oxford University.

The result – 2300BC – is the most reliable date yet for the erection of the first bluestones.

The professors in charge of the excavation, Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright, think this dating supports their theory of Stonehenge as temple of health, a “Neolithic Lourdes”. I’m not sure why, exactly.

The article mentions the “Amesbury Archer” dates to this same time frame. The profs think he dragged his cookies to Stonehenge to get a cure, but even if it we knew for sure he was buried after the bluestones went up (which we don’t, and most likely won’t be able to find out until dating technology gets a lot more specific), I don’t see how we could know his reasons.

Other theories fit the data as well, like the burial ground theory.

The dying art of pub signs

Medieval, Modern(ish), Social policy

Britain’s pubs are in decline. Many of them are owned by large corporations offering franchise fare and mass-market details. The smallholders are collapsing at a precipitous rate. Fifty-seven pubs close every month.

Their hand painted signs disintegrate with them.

Only the 30 independent pub chains and breweries in Britain are still ordering individually painted signs. The St Austell Brewery in Cornwall has a full-time sign painter and the Donnington Brewery at Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire is hanging painted signs at its 16 tied pubs. Whitbread ran a sign-painting studio in Cheltenham until 1991, but has given up brewing and now runs pub restaurant chains such as Brewers Fayre.

God knows what stamped polymer crap is swinging outside places where once hand-painted lambs and archbishops cavorted on wood and iron. Googling “antique pub signs” turns up a horror show of groomsman gifts and “what to get the frat house that has everything” tat.

The pub or inn sign tradition goes back to Roman times, when a vine around a pole signaled there were victuals to be had inside. Richard II made pub signs compulsory so the official Ale Taster could easily spot his charges, so there must have been an explosion of awesome after 1393.

New Mozart!

Modern(ish), Multimedia, Treasures

A previously unknown piece of music written by Mozart in his hand has turned up in a small library in Nantes. It’s unsigned, but the handwriting has been authenticated by the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg.

Some of the first part of the fragment is in D minor, while the second is in D major and marked “Credo” — a major clue that the work is a sketch for a Mass, which typically includes such a movement, said Robert D. Levin, a professor at Harvard University who is well-known for completing unfinished works by Mozart. […]

For anyone who wants to try sight-reading the fragment, a bit of detective work is required. Musicians must work out the key signature and clef based on other clues in the music. The tempo is also mysterious. And there is no orchestration.

“It’s a melody sketch, so what’s missing is the harmony and the instrumentation, but you can make sense out of it,” Leisinger said. “The tune is complete.”

This find is also significant because it indicates Mozart had a personal interest in writing church music towards the end of his life. This wasn’t a commissioned work like the Requiem.

The first performance is already expected for January.

Fake comes for the Archbishop

Ancient, Modern(ish), Treasures

In 1990, excavators found a Chi-Ro amulet in a Roman grave in Shepton Mallet in Somerset. The find was explosive: the amulet marked the grave as the earliest Christian burial in Europe, which would redraw the map of the spread of Christianity.

The city of Shepton Mallet named a street and a theater after the amulet. The Archbishop of Canterbury wore a reproduction of it around his neck.

Then people started to actually, you know, study it. The British Museum’s tests at the time were inconclusive. Now the University of Liverpool has tested the amulet with the latest and greatest technology, and declared it a fake. The amulet is not Roman at all.

It’s barely even old. Hell, it looks like a Coke bottle cap someone took a finishing nail and some craft store beads to, although at least one theory suggests actual silversmiths and actual Roman silver were involved.

The amulet is now thought to be a modification of a Roman brooch dug up in Sussex 100 years ago. New technology has allowed experts to analyse the composition of the amulet in more detail than was previously possible. Samples of metal taken from the amulet were analysed by the university which found them to be consistent with silver produced in the 19th century or later.

So it’s a blend of the old and the new, it seems, put together by fakers with nebulous motives.