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Medieval boat found on Suffolk coast 25 June 2008 | 08:00 MARK LORD Rob Atfield of Suffolk County Council Archaeology department works on one of the pieces THE unearthing of a medieval boat on the north Suffolk coast is of “great national importance”, the archaeological team behind the discovery said last night. As reported in yesterday's EADT the remains were found during excavations at Sizewell in advance of the onshore works for the Greater Gabbard Wind Farm. The vessel, which was probably a small inshore fishing boat, was broken up sometime between the 12th and 14th Centuries and parts of...

Medicinal mercury in Medieval bones [June 1, 2008] The Middle Ages, often referred to as Medieval times, spanned a long period in history from the 5th to the 16th Centuries. During this time, European society and culture enjoyed many advances and it could be argued that the quality of life improved beyond recognition. One area which progressed steadily was medicine and the treatment of disease, although these days we would not touch some of the medicinal compounds with a bargepole, let alone administer them to patients. One substance in popular use was mercury, used variously in gilding of jewellery and...

Boy, 9, and grandfather find medieval silver treasure in Sweden Posted : Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:36:04 GMT Author : DPA Stockholm - A 9-year-old boy's search for shrapnel on an old battlefield resulted in a huge find of medieval silver coins near the Lund in southern Sweden, local media reported Monday. Alexander Granhof, 9, and his grandfather made the recent discovery, dubbed "silverado" by archaeologists. "We went out on the field looking for cannonballs," Alexander Granhof told the online edition of the Sydsvenskan newspaper. "I found a piece of metal and thought at first it was shrapnel from a...

Trading across medieval Europe revealed in cod bones Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent The catastrophic decline of North Sea cod as the result of over fishing has had an impact on all our menus, from the poshest restaurants to the corner chippie: the fish left are few and small, compared with those of less than a century ago. Cod more than a metre in length are rare these days, whereas archaeological remains show that fish several times that size were common. A new study shows that cod were exploited in the Middle Ages from many, often distant, fishing grounds, with an...

Medieval calculator up for grabsUK museum seeks cash to keep a rare astrolabe in public hands. Philip Ball The British Museum needs £350,000 to secure this astrolabe. The fate of a fourteenth-century pocket calculator is hanging in the balance between museum ownership and private sale. The device is a brass astrolabe quadrant that opens a new window on the mathematical and astronomical literacy of the Middle Ages, experts say. It can tell the time from the position of the Sun, calculate the heights of tall objects, and work out the date of Easter. Found in 2005, the instrument has captivated...

Medieval belt buckle discovered The medieval belt buckle Archaeologists unearthed a medieval belt buckle in Perth following work to repair a collapsed sewer. The group were allowed to examine the area in the Kirkgate as Scottish Water repaired the network. The copper alloy buckle is believed to date back to the 12th Century and was found along with animal bones, shells and pottery. A panel of experts will decide where the buckle should be housed, but it is hoped it will end up in Perth Museum. Catherine Smith from SUAT archaeological consultants told the BBC Scotland news website how they...

Gutefar - The Bronze Age Sheep of Gotland This article claims sheep of the British Isles descended from sheep from Gotland, an Island in the Baltic "...arriving in Britain between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, doubtless traveling along with the same Viking raiders that brought sheep originally to Gotland." She also claims Vikings are the ANCESTORS of the Visigoths. Only problems is that the Visigoths preceded the Vikings by about 400 years. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 451 AD and the first recorded Viking raid on the British Isles happened around 800 AD with the raid on the monastery at...

Norwich: the second largest medieval city Norwich was the second largest city in Medieval Britain: why? In recent years a number of major sites covering more than 20 acres in all have been excavated in medieval Norwich, which between them have revolutionised our knowledge of this crucial medieval city. Let us take a look at these excavations in order to throw new light on this question of why medieval Norwich was so big, and so successful. The origins of Norwich Norwich was not a Roman settlement, nor does it owe its origins to the early Anglo-Saxon invaders. Settlement along the...

Medieval DNA, Modern Medicine Volume 60 Number 6, November/December 2007 by Heather Pringle Will a cemetery excavation establish a link between the Black Death and resistance to AIDS? Beneath Eindhoven's modern skin of brick and asphalt lie the bones of its medieval townspeople. Studying their DNA may reveal the origin of the genetic resistance to AIDS. (Courtesy Laurens Mulkens) From the start, Nico Arts sensed that the frail remains of a child buried in front of a medieval church altar had an important story to tell. Arts is the municipal archaeologist in Eindhoven, a prosperous industrial city in the southern...

Medieval women 'had girl power' Books, songs and legal documents were studied A new study by an academic says that "girl power" was alive and kicking around 600 years ago. Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at Bangor university said medieval women enjoyed a golden era with a greater life expectancy than men. "We found women running priories, commissioning books, taking early package tours to visit the Holy Land," she said. She added women were also defending their property and property rights. Dr Niebrzydowski's research involving middle aged women in the middle ages will be discussed at a conference at the university on...

A study into the mysterious changing skull shape of medieval man casts serious doubt on current theories. The peculiar shift from long narrow heads to those of a rounder shape, and back again, which took place between the 11th and 13th centuries, has been noted at sites throughout western Europe. But a study of skulls found at the deserted village of Wharram Percy, near Malton, North Yorkshire, suggests that the anatomical blip was not down to an influx of Norman immigrants, or climate change, English Heritage has said. It examined nearly 700 skeletons recovered from the village. Unlike other...

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican sought to calm Jewish anger yesterday over the pope's meeting with a prominent Polish priest accused of anti-Semitism, declaring the encounter did not imply any change in the Church's desire for good relations with Jews. The Vatican issued the assurances after Pope Benedict XVI's brief meeting Sunday with the Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk, which drew protests from worldwide Jewish organizations. Photos showing the pope at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo with Rydzyk, along with two other Polish priests, were published in Polish newspapers on Tuesday. Rydzyk, who runs a conservative media empire that includes the...

Archaeologist uncover possible medieval mosque in Sicily The Normans are believed to have built the medieval castle of Salemi. It fell into ruin during the mid-20th century and was closed after a devastating earthquake in 1968. The castle is shown here prior to recent exterior renovations. Photo by Michael Kolb" Earlier this summer, while standing in an archaeological pit adjacent to an ancient hilltop castle in west-central Sicily, Northern Illinois University graduate student Bill Balco could literally reach out and touch the centuries—even the millennia. The dig site, about 7-by-10 meters near the castle entrance, reveals a crossroads of cultures...

A maze is designed to puzzle, but whoever dreamt up the intricate earth and grass labyrinth that is Julian's Bower can be especially pleased –it remains a mystery after hundreds of years. The medieval maze in Alkborough, near Scunthorpe, has been reopened to the public after a major returfing project, but experts are no closer to solving the riddle of why or when it was made. The 44ft relic cut into the landscape has many interlocking rings, and the theories surrounding its origins are just as complex. Some have observed how Alkborough's maze is strikingly similar to a floor design...

The Moment a Teenage Girl was Stoned to Death for Loving the Wrong Boy Last updated at 18:28pm on 3rd May 2007 A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion. As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice. Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now...

RIYADH: A Pakistani man was beheaded on Tuesday for stabbing to death a Saudi national after an argument, the Saudi Interior Ministry said. It identified the Pakistani man as Khalid bin Mahmoud bin Abdel-Ghafour and his victim as Wasfi bin Said bin Abdullah al-Marhoun. It did not say when the killing took place or say what the two men had argued about. Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery face the death sentence. Tuesday’s execution took to 25 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom so...

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI's attack on Islam has stirred anger in India with the head of the National Commission for Minorities saying he sounded like a medieval crusader. Pope Benedict provoked worldwide outcry with comments Tuesday during a visit to his native Germany in which he talked about the "issue of jihad, holy war", a term used by Islamic extremists to justify acts of terror. "The language used by the pope sounds like that of his 12th-century counterpart who ordered the crusades," said Hamid Ansari, chairman of the influential National Commission for Minorities. The commission's role includes...

All of us know that historical revisionism is a favored tool of the liar and those who like to play the blame game. Right after 9/11, this was on display for the whole world to see when Bin Laden and the Left decided to blame the Middle East’s hatred of the West on, of all things, the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of wars that were fought nearly a thousand years before anyone on this Earth was born, yet the extremists hang on to it today like it’s some kind of personal injustice. I find it inconceivable that one...

1410 Grunwald Battle re-enacted 15.07.2006 The Battle of Grunwald of 15 July 1410, one of the biggest armed clashes of Medieval Europe, is being re-enacted in mid-northern Poland this afternoon. The event began with a holy mass and the Grunwald roll call. Taking part are 1,500 amateur troops from Poland and abroad, who will recreate the battle in which allied Polish and Lithuanian troops defeated the forces of the Teutonic Knights, thus sparking off the collapse of that medieval military order.

X-rays of the sword, which predates the Vikings, revealed its blade is made up of six individual strands of carbonised iron bonded together to form the blade, a practice which has rarely been seen before... The sword was discovered in the first-ever excavation at Bamburgh Castle by the late Dr Brian Hope-Taylor in 1960. Following his death in 2001, the sword was found in a suitcase during a clearance of his house along with a rare pattern-welded sword and an axe also from Bamburgh... A replica sword is being reconstructed which will be displayed at Bamburgh Castle with the original...

A MEDIEVAL cemetery regarded as one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been destroyed in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. The Jugha cemetery was a unique collection of several thousand carved stone crosses on Azerbaijan's southern border with Iran. But after 18 years of conflict between Azerbaijan and its western neighbour, Armenia, it has been confirmed that the cemetery has vanished. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based non-government organisation that supports independent journalism, said one of its staff had recently been to the...

Lucky coin found in medieval ship The coin is inscribed in Latin and has a cross on one face A French silver coin has been found embedded in the keel of a medieval ship uncovered on the banks of the river Usk in Newport three years ago. The discovery of the 15th Century coin is being interpreted as a sign that the ship came originally from France. Experts believe the coin was new and was intended to be a good luck charm. Project leader Kate Hunter said a colleague was shaking when she found the coin. She said: "We all...

September 19, 2005 Notebook: Archeology Medieval ancestors measured up to our height standards By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent OUR ANCESTORS were as tall as we are, contrary to popular belief. Over the past five millennia the average height of men in Britain has remained stable at about 170cm (5ft 7in), and that of women at 160cm (5ft 3in). We may be surprised at how small the armour worn by the Black Prince or King Henry V was, but such giants on the battlefield were not physically large and were towered over by contemporaries of all classes. “The enduring myth that...

The medical world of medieval monks By Jane Elliott BBC News All that remains of the hospital Anaesthetics and disinfectants are thought to be a modern medical invention but evidence is coming to light that medieval doctors knew of them too. Evidence found at the ancient Soutra Hospital site, in Scotland, suggests the medieval Augustine monks also knew how to amputate limbs, fashion surgical instruments, induce birth, stop scurvy and even create hangover cures. The excavations at Soutra have also unearthed fragments of pottery vessels that were once used for storing medicines such as an analgesic salve made from opium...

Syrian President Bashar Assad is scheduled to arrive in Tehran today for an official visit to Iran in order to hold discussions on Tehran-Damascus bilateral cooperation in all political, economic, and cultural spheres. Due to their common anti-Zionist stance and their resistance to Zionist expansionism in the region, both Syria and Iran have been targets of U.S. propaganda campaigns for the past 25 years. Syria, which is located in the heart of the Middle East, has always played a significant role in regional political developments since the late Hafez Assad assumed the presidency in 1970. Syria’s active role in the...

Medieval sword, mallet, armor no match for ye olde Taser Meet Robert McClain. The Michigan man, 42, was arrested last week after he attempted to literally go medieval on cops. According to the below Royal Oak Police Department report, officers were dispatched to McClain's home after a motorist called 911 to report that McClain had fled the scene of an auto accident. When they arrived at his crib, McClain allegedly tried to strike a cop with a four-foot sword. After missing, McClain retreated to his basement, where he donned a chainmail armored vest and leather gauntlets to protect his arms....

Christopher Hitchens is one of America's and the English speaking world's leading public intellectuals. He is the author of more than ten books, including, most recently, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq (2003), Why Orwell Matters (2002), The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), and Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001). He writes for leading American and British publications, including The London Review of Books, The New Left Review, Slate, The New York Review of Books, Newsweek International, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Washington Post. He is also a regular television and radio commentator. For many years,...

PORTUGAL: MEDIEVAL MUSLIM BURIAL GROUND UNEARTHED Lisbon, 12 May (AKI) - Skeletons belonging to some 35 corpses have surfaced from a Portuguese excavation site which archaelogists believe could be one of the the largest medieval Muslim burial grounds in Europe. The corpses, found in vaults carved out of the rockface were buried facing due west in the direction of the Muslim holy city, Mecca. The remains were unearthed at the Largo de Candido Dos Reis park, near the northern Portuguese city of Santarem. Local authorities believe the burial ground, discovered by Portuguese archaeologist, Antonio Matias, could extend over an area...

"Jump the Shark" is a semi-known phrase meaning "lose all credibility" or "it's all downhill from here." The phrase comes from www.jumptheshark.com - which catalogs and debates the (paraphrase) "defining moment when you know you're favorite TV Show has reached its peak and its all downhill from here." The phrase "jump the shark" comes from a Happy Days episode - late in the series - where Fonzie went on a vacation with the Cunninghams. In that episode of the sitcom, Fonzie jumped over a jaws-like shark while waterskiing on the ocean. Fans generally thought this moment was so absurd, that...

Medieval Houses of God, or Ancient Fortresses? Volume 57 Number 6, November/December 2004 by David Keys Cambridge archaeologist has redated the church of the archangel Gabriel, previously believed to have been carved from the rock at Lalibela, Ethiopia, around A.D. 1200, to between A.D. 600 and 800. The church may originally have been built as a fortress. (Courtesy Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, Cambridge) Investigations in Lalibela, Ethiopia, are revealing that Africa's most important historical Christian site is much older than previously thought. Up until now, scholars have regarded the spectacular complex of 11 rock-cut churches as dating from around...

DNA study to settle ancient mystery about mingling of Inuit, Vikings By BOB WEBER (CP) - A centuries-old Arctic mystery may be weeks away from resolution as an Icelandic anthropologist prepares to release his findings on the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of the Canadian North. "It's an old story," says Gisli Palsson of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "We want to try to throw new light on the history of the Inuit." Stories about Inuit with distinct European features - blue eyes, fair hair, beards - living in the central Arctic have their roots in ancient tales of Norse settlements...

Mesopotamian climate change Geoscientists are increasingly exploring an interesting trend: Climate change has been affecting human society for thousands of years. At the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in December, one archaeologist presented research that suggests that climate change affected the way cultures developed and collapsed in the cradle of civilization — ancient Mesopotamia — more than 8,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence for a mass migration from the more temperate northern Mesopotamia to the arid southern region around 6400 B.C. For the previous 1,000 years, people had been cultivating the arable land in northern Mesopotamia, using natural rainwater...

Did Asteroids and Comets Turn the Tides of Civilization? By Mike Baillie The heart of humanity seems at times to have lost its cadence, the rhythmic beat of history collapsing into impotent chaos. Wars raged. Pestilence spread. Famine reigned. Death came early and hard. Dynasties died, and civilization flickered. Such a time came in the sixth century A.D. The Dark Ages settled heavily over Europe. Rome had been beaten back from its empire. Art and science stagnated. Even the sun turned its back. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigor of...

The Dark Ages : Were They Darker Than We Imagined? By Greg Bryant Published in the September 1999 issue of Universe As we approach the end of the Second Millennium, a review of ancient history is not what you would normally expect to read in the pages of Universe. Indeed, except for reflecting on the AD 837 apparition of Halley's Comet (when it should have been as bright as Venus and would have moved through 60 degrees of sky in one day as it passed just 0.03 AU from Earth - three times closer than Hyakutake in 1996), you may...

LONG before the broomstick became popular with witches in medieval Europe, the flying carpet was being used by thieves and madmen in the Orient. Factual evidence for what was a long-standing myth has now been found by a French explorer, Henri Baq, in Iran. Baq has discovered scrolls of well-preserved manuscripts in underground cellars of an old Assassin castle at Alamut, near the Caspian Sea. Written in the early thirteenth century by a Jewish scholar named Isaac Ben Sherira,' these manuscripts shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights. The discovery of these...

Medieval sea chart was in line with current thinking (Filed: 04/05/2004) The 16th-century Carta Marina, complete with sea monsters, gives an accurate location for dangerous eddies. Roger Highfield reports A satellite image of the north-east Atlantic has revealed that medieval cartographers knew much more about ocean currents than was thought. The ornate Carta Marina, published in 1539, appears crude by today's standards, depicting sea monsters off the coast of Scotland, sinking galleons, sea snakes, and wolves urinating against trees. But when oceanographers examined a large group of swirls and whorls drawn off the south-east of Iceland, complete with ships, a...

Experts hail rare find of medieval logboat Well-preserved remains may reveal secrets of ancient environment A thousand years ago it split asunder and could no longer be used to work the marshy waterways of East Yorkshire.Alexandra Wood But rather than let it go to waste forever, workers built part of the medieval logboat into the side of the trackway over the soft ground – and there it remained until a few days ago. Archaeologists discovered the stern of a boat, made out of a single hollowed oak trunk, while construction work was being carried out at Welham Bridge on the...

Medieval ruins found off Atami? The Asahi Shimbun These steps, archaeologists believe, may be signs of a city from the Kamakura Period. ATAMI, Shizuoka Prefecture-Archaeologists say they may have found ruins of a submerged city from the Kamakura Period (1192-1333) off the coast of Shizuoka Prefecture. They say numerous stone structures at depths of 20 to 50 meters unlikely occurred naturally and appear to have been made deliberately. Archaeologists pinpointed about 20 sites of interest covering a 1-square-kilometer area. While no one is certain, historical evidence points to an ancient city having existed in this part of Sagami Bay. Hyakurensho,...

Rescue for medieval salt ship Nantwich was an important place for the medieval salt trade Archaeologists are preparing to rescue a medieval salt ship that has been buried beneath mud in Cheshire for nearly 700 years. The 26ft-long ship was carved out of a single oak tree and experts say it is of national importance. The vessel, which was discovered during work on a building site, was originally used to store brine as part of a medieval salt works in the centre of Nantwich. The brine would have then been boiled to extract the salt, which was a highly prized...

Source: University Of Arizona Date: 2003-10-20 Medieval Climate Not So Hot The idea that there's no need to worry about human-induced global warming because the world's climate in medieval time was at least as warm as today's is flawed, according to a recent analysis. There's not enough evidence to conclude that the Medieval Warm Period was global, or that regional warm spells between 500 and 1500 A.D. occurred simultaneously, leading paleoclimatologists report in the Oct. 17 issue of Science. "The balance of evidence does not point to a High Medieval period (1100 to 1200 A.D.) that was as warm or...

Reference Paulsen, D.E., Li, H.-C. and Ku, T.-L. 2003. Climate variability in central China over the last 1270 years revealed by high-resolution stalagmite records. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 691-701. What was done In the words of the authors, "high-resolution records of ð13C and ð18O in stalagmite SF-1 from Buddha Cave [33°40'N, 109°05'E] are used to infer changes in climate in central China for the last 1270 years in terms of warmer, colder, wetter and drier conditions." What was learned Among the climatic episodes evident in the authors' data were "those corresponding to the Medieval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and...

I am seeking some good sources on the role of The Church in the Middle Ages. In particular, I am looking for material that assesses how it furthered and/or retarded scientific and related inquiry, and how much blame can be put at its feet for the "darkness," and/or how much credit for mitigating the night and offering a light at the end of the tunnel. I am aware of the William Manchester book A World Lit Only by Fire. I am seeking additional material. Thanks.

Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/04/2003) Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages. From the outset of the global warming debate in the late 1980s, environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising higher and faster than ever before, leading some scientists to conclude that greenhouse gases from cars and power stations are causing these "record-breaking" global temperatures. Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said that global temperatures...

<p>In what passes for criticism among what passes for an intellectual elite in America these days, the concept of Western culture's lingering guilt for the Crusades is being trotted out once again as a sort of one-size-fits-all explanation for the problems of the modern-day Mideast.</p>

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 March 30 Beijing Ancient Observatory Credit & Copyright: Judy Tobin Explanation: Did observatories exist before telescopes? One example that still stands today is the Beijing Ancient Observatory in China. Starting in the 1400s astronomers erected large instruments here to enable them to measure star and planet positions with increasing accuracy. Pre-telescopic observatories throughout the world date back to before recorded history, providing measurements that helped to determine...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 March 17 SN 1006: History's Brightest Supernova Credit: Frank Winkler (Middlebury College et al., AURA, NOAO, NSF Explanation: Suddenly, in the year 1006 AD, a new star appeared in the sky. Over the course of just a few days, the rogue star became brighter than the planet Venus. The star, likely the talk of everyone who could see it, was recorded by people who lived in areas...

<p>How did our ancestors eat in the days before there were supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, refrigerators or temperature-controlled stoves and ovens? And what did the dinner table look like before the discovery of the New World brought back to Europe staple foods ranging from turkey to tomatoes and the humble potato?</p>