The 10-acre (four-hectare) site in Cambridgeshire was excavated by Oxford Archaeology East in preparation for a housing development by Bellway Homes. “What makes this site really significant is we have evidence of early Saxon occupation mingled with the latest Roman remains,” said Mr Macaulay, deputy regional manager for Oxford Archaeology East. Other finds include Saxon pottery, beads,…
Viking age boat burials found in Sweden
According to the New York Times, two tenth century burials and their boat were found under a group of modern houses in in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden. One has been damaged. The other is intact. The remains of a man in the stern of the boat, burried with a horse and a dog in the bow…
Hooking Up: 12th Annual Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age
This year’s symposium explores the connections between historic and current approaches to data linkage in regard to manuscripts and manuscript research. Hooking Up addresses the topic from a variety of angles and considers how the manuscript book operates as a vehicle for information retrieval and dissemination from the technology of the page and the textual apparatus of a…
Saint Patrick, Saint Bridget, and the Brewing of Beer
Despite the idiocies of Saint Patrick’s Day in the U.S. (by which I mean the consumption of green beer rather than blessed Guinness, and the over-enthusiastic endorsement of imbibing while Irish, there is a genuine, and historical, connection between Ireland and beer, or cuirm, in Old Irish. For one thing, there’s a long and documented…
Irish MS. Fragment Translates Medical Text by Avicenna
A family in Cornwall with Irish connections discovered an early printed book printed in London in 1534/1536 that had been owned by the family the sixteenth century. The small pocket-sized book is Latin manual regarding administration. At some point in the past a 15th century Irish manuscript on parchment was cut up, and a section…
Merlin Tale MS. Fragments Discovered
Seven fragments of parchment written in Old French have been discovered inside an unrelated 15th century work, in the archives of the Bristol Central Library in the UK. The fragments seem to be from a version of the Estoire de Merlin, one that is slightly different from the standard text. The fragments are from a…
Ava A Woman from Scotland 4,250 Years Ago
In February of 1987 William and Graham Ganson were working in a quarry at Craig-na-Feich near Achavanich, in Caithness, Scotland. Their machinery dislodged the capstone of a prehistoric short cist , slightly damaging the stonework on the south corner and consequently exposing human remains and ceramic vessel known as a Beaker. The Gansons contacted the…
December from the Da Costa Hours
We often think of December as the entry to winter and to Christmas. In the middle ages, typically, winter featured much more dramatically than Christmas. The calendar pages in Books of Hours showing the labors of December most often feature an image of hog butchering, a boar roast, or a boar hunt (sometimes they feature…
Celtic Chariot Burial Discovered in Wales
This burial in Pembrokeshire is the first such discovered in Wales. Mike Smith was using metal detection equipment when he discovered the chariot. Smith, beginning in February, discovered several pieces of Iron Age Celtic metalwork, including parts of a horse harness, bronze bridle fittings, and a brooch. Several of the items still had bright red…
November from the Da Costa Hours
The traditional labors of November are knocking down acorns for swine to feed, or hog butchering. This November calendar image from The Morgan Library’s Da Costa Hours MS M.399, fol. 12v shows neither. Instead, it shows a farmyard and people preparing flax (though there are some pigs grazing in the background). Flax is a fiberus…