archaeologicalnews:

CLEAR evidence of a Roman road has been found during an archaeological dig close to the home of a Welsh Prince.

A section of a metalled road on the line of the Roman road from Caerhun to Segontium (Caernarfon) was found during excavations at Cae Celyn, a field near  Garth Celyn at Abergwyngregyn.

 During a three-day dig locals joined volunteers from the Caer Alyn Archaeological Project and Wirral Archaeology to open up evaluation trenches to expose features at an important river crossing.

 Archaeologist Phil Cox, from the Caer Alyn Archaeological Project, who led the weekend investigation, said: “The area is already well known for its rich diversity of monuments and history and the excavations will only add to this. Read more.

(via classicalcivilisation)

archaeologicalnews:

Twenty ancient tombs have been discovered near the Three Gorges Reservoir in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, archaeologists said Saturday.

The tombs, which date back to the Han Dynasty (202 BC - AD 220), were discovered at the Ma’anshan Tomb Site on the bank of the Yangtze River in Fengdu County, according to the municipal cultural relics and archaeology institute.

Archaeologists have found more than 430 artifacts in the tombs, including pottery, bronze and iron ware.

The tombs and artifacts will help archaeologists gain greater insight into local funeral customs, as well as social and economic conditions during the Han Dynasty, the institute said.

The Three Gorges Reservoir is on the upper-middle reaches of the Yangtze, China’s longest river. (source)

thinkmexican:

5,000 Cave Paintings Uncovered in Tamaulipas

INAH, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History), recently revealed the discovery of 4,926 cave paintings located in the Sierra de San Carlos, near Burgos, Tamaulipas.

The prolific number of cave paintings include images of stars and planets, people and tipi-like structures; and, local flora and fauna, like lizards, deer and centipedes. A painting of an atlatl, a spear throwing tool used to hunt, was also found.

Researchers believe the paintings were made by groups of Indigenous Peoples who fled Spanish missionaries in the early 18th century.

Images via INAH

(via scaredystark)

ladytudorrose:

theoddmentemporium:

The Last New England Vampire

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries there was a widespread belief in vampires throughout New England. The vampiric condition became associated with the deadly Tuberculosis, a disease misunderstood at the time and therefore the cause of much superstition.

It was believed to cause nightly visitations from previously deceased victims, as well as bringing general sickness and multiple deaths to the family. As a result, there are various accounts of families having their deceased disinterred for the purpose of removing their hearts and bringing to an end their reign of terror, and the most famous of these cases is that of Mercy Brown.

There had been numerous deaths as a result of TB within the Brown family. Mercy’s mother and sister had died within a few years of one another, then, in 1892, Mercy herself succumbed to the illness.

Mercy’s brother Edwin was also ill and, in accordance with the aforementioned folklore, Mercy’s father was persuaded to exhume the bodies of his dead relatives in an attempt to cure his son. The mother and sister’s body were found to have undergone significant decomposition, however, Mercy’s body remained relatively unchanged*: a clear sign that she was undead and the agent of Edwin’s condition. 

As a result, her heart was removed, burnt, mixed with water and fed to Edwin. He died two months later.

* A cold New England winter likely caused this.

[Sources: Image | Mercy Brown Vampire Incident | Vampire]

Wait… hold up… people were still doing this shit in 1892?

(via blueandbluer)

ancientpeoples:

Terracotta Vase in the Form of a Lobster Claw

ca. 460 BC

Greek, Classical

Because so many aspects of Greek life depended on the sea, a vase in the shape of a lobster claw is not surprising. It is, however, exceptional and may be a variant of the askos—a bag-shaped oil container provided with a vertical mouth and strap handle. The Dionysiac iconography of the lobster claw suggests that it was a novelty item used at symposia (drinking parties).

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

(via zomganthro)

bardowlatry:

shredsandpatches:

copperbadge:

stuckinabucket:

Oh my god, you beautiful bastards.  Somebody made a lego diorama of the First Defenestration of Prague.

Above: Half a town council being hurled out windows by the power of Hussite rage.

(via eimearkuopio)

You’re totally not helping your “I’m not a defenestration blog” defence, btw. :D

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen.

This seems relevant to bbc’s interests

(via aka14kgold)

coolchicksfromhistory:

Sophia Brahe (1556-1643)

Art by Carolyn Bernhard (website, tumblr)

Tycho Brahe was one of the most important astronomers of the sixteenth century.  The last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope, Tycho built his own instruments to track the movements of celestial bodies.  His work paved the way for Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Tycho’s younger sister Sophia assisted him in his scientific observations.  Their family was part of Denmark’s high nobility and although the Brahe children were well educated, their parents did not consider science an appropriate field for people of rank.  Nevertheless, Sophia taught herself astronomy and as a teenager helped her brother observe a lunar eclipse.  Throughout their lives, Tycho and Sophia maintained a close correspondence. 

Sophia also studied alchemy, horticulture, and chemistry, but her most lasting individual work is her genealogy of Danish noble families.  Published in 1626, it remains an important source for Danish historians today.  

ancientpeoples:

Roman Bathroom Habits

The Romans were not shy when it came to doing their “business”. Something that we today regard as an act that demands a certain level of privacy, in ancient Rome, bathroom habits were much more open and, to a great extent, totally lacking in privacy. In a city of over one-million people, ninety-five percent of them did not have access to a private bathroom. Only wealthy Romans could afford the luxury of having a private bathroom by tapping directly into the public aqueducts, which brought running water into their homes. However, for the majority of Romans lacking their own bathroom, there were two options available.

The first option was to go in any ordinary pot that you kept in your home or place of business; moreover, in the city of Rome itself, large urinal pots stood at several street corners. These “piss pots” actually had a very significant role in everyday life. The pots were collected by fullers because the urine functioned as an ancient form of bleach. Stale urine, known as wash, was a source of ammonium salts and assisted in cleansing and whitening cloth; urine made your whites white! In addition, tanners soaked animal skins in urine in order to remove hair fibers before tanning. Oddly enough these pots were eventually taxed by the emperor Vespasian which resulted in the piss pots being nicknamed after him. Flying waste was also a very common problem in Ancient Rome. Ancient writers mention anecdotes involving citizens emptying their pots from third or fourth-story windows on to whoever was walking in the street. There were laws enacted solely for the purpose of protecting those who had been hit by flying waste, “Damages to be paid by throwers of waste into the street if the person hit was injured, no damages paid for clothing or if hit outside of daylight hours.” Nevertheless, the simplest way of disposing of your waste was to throw it into the street, because the streets of Rome were naturally angled towards the center allowing waste to roll into the gutters. Some Insulae,(multi-story apartment buildings), however, could be linked by gravity-fed pipes that led to a main cesspit. Farmers would collect “night-soil” from these cesspits in order to fertilize their fields.

The second option available to the inhabitants of Rome was to head to a public bathroom. Ancient Roman public bathrooms were made out of long rows of massive stone with a hole cut into the stone every few feet. Located in front of the seating area is a channel or elongated basin where your sponge sticks are located. Sponge sticks you say, what the devil for? The Romans obviously did not use toilet paper, but used sponges soaked in water. You would grab a sponge attached to a stick and clean yourself, if you need more cleaning you could plunge the sponge stick back into the little stream and clean some more. Once you are finished with the sponge stick, you scrape the sponge against the side of the stone hole you are seated on and let it fall into the flowing water; quite a logical system reminiscent of modern day bidets. Underneath those Roman derrières flowed a system of plumbing that rivaled modern day cities like New York City. Constant running water flushes away the waste into an enormous sewage systems that runs under the streets of Rome, the Cloaca Maxima (Great Drain). This system is made possible by several aqueducts that flow into the city keeping it supplied with fresh flowing water. The Roman’s effective sewage system was not in place in order to combat the possibility of disease, but more so to combat smell; the role of impure water in causing disease seemed to be little understood by the Romans.

In some ancient bathrooms there is space for one-hundred people at a time. The bathrooms are open to all genders and all ages, so imagine men, women, and children all standing or sitting, doing their business next to one another in an open space. People are discussing business or gossiping to one another while going to the bathroom. Since for most Romans privacy is a unheard of aspect of life, why would it be different in this situation? However, the public bathrooms are not only visited by the common citizen, the wealthy also frequent them. Every location in ancient Rome where large crowds gather is an opportunity for wealthy Romans to pander to their constituents. Most upper-class Romans were running for some sort of political office, so the public bathrooms were a great location for mingling with the Roman people. Therefore, if you wished to hear the local gossip, chat with a friend or stranger, or simply do your business, the public bathrooms are always a good choice. Roman bathroom habits were communal, lacking in privacy, and surprisingly efficient, and they also allowed one to say, “I had a lovely conversation with a few people while sitting on the toilet the other day.”

(via thatlittleegyptologist)

theoddmentemporium:

Human Head Encased in an Iron Cage

It’s been a while since I posted anything quite so macabre as this but the image of a group of boys making this grim discovery as they played in the sands at Hempstead, L.I., in the mid-1930s, had a grim allure for some reason. Perhaps because of its links with the golden age of piracy. 

According to Corbis Images the cage is ‘evidence of an early pirates’ torture device,’ namely, gibbeting. In the earliest recorded examples of gibbeting from the 17th century, the criminal would be bound in the metal cage and hung from a scaffold until they died of starvation, and it was a popular method of execution for piracy, highwaymen, murderers, and… sheep stealers. The positioning of such a structure next to public roads served as a warning to other potential criminals that they too might suffer the same fate.

historical-nonfiction:

The unbroken seal on King Tut’s tomb.

discardingimages:

flying penis monster 

Decretum Gratiani with the commentary of Bartolomeo da Brescia, Italy 1340-1345.

Lyon, BM, Ms 5128, fol. 100r

archaeologicalnews:

A HOARD of almost 900 metal-detected objects dug up by a treasure hunter have been handed over to the National Museum of Ireland.

Gardai from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation uncovered the collection of archaeological objects with the aid of police in the UK.

The items were collected by a British national, now deceased, who was operating in the Co Tipperary area with the  aid of another man living in the UK.

The collection emerged following a tip-off from the British Museum to the National Museum of Ireland that an important hoard of medieval silver coins from Ireland had been exported illegally to the UK. Read more.

trowelblazers:

“Painting of Mary Anning made after her death, at the Geological Society/NHMPL, based on a portrait from 1842”.  Painted in 1847 by B.J. Donne. Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Party like it’s 1799, because that’s the year this trowelblazing woman-the “greatest fossil hunter ever known”-was born. 

Mary Anning came from a poor family of religious dissenters, which was partly the reason why she began to look for fossils-in the early 1800s, visitors to the Dorset coast loved to buy fossils as curiosities.

Not only did she discover the first specimens of what would later be recognized as Ichthyosaurus, but also a complete Plesiosaurus, along with specimens of Pterodactylus and Squaloraja (a fossil fish).  

We could go on listing her discoveries all day-she also was the first to realize that ink could be made from belemnite fossils and that coprolites (then called bezoar stones) were actually fossilized feces.

Dickens wrote about her in 1865. Though we disagree with his assertion that she was a dull child until being hit by lightening at a young age, thus somewhat dismissing her innate intelligence (and in fact, she would have been only 1 year old with the date he provides) but we liked that he also had this to say: 

“The inscription under her memorial window commemorates her “usefulness in furthering the science of geology” (it was not a science when she began to discover, and so helped make it one), “and also her benevolence of heart and integrity of life” (Dickens 1865: 63).

So thank you Mary Anning, for all you did for geology, paleontology, and science. We raise our trowels to you!

 

Written and posted by Suzie

 

(via lostbeasts)

barbreyryswells:

Being a member of the Les Mis fandom, I’ve encountered a startling amount of sentiment that there were no people of color in nineteenth century France, that it’s unrealistic to racebend or headcanon characters as people of color and that they can only be written as such in modern alternate universe fic. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for historical veracity and become slightly miffed at colorblind attempts to integrate people of color without considering the racial implications of their involvement in the narrative, but the idea that they didn’t exist in historical Europe is bullshit. People of color are part of the world and have always been part of it, and attempts to ignore that do not come from historical accuracy, but Eurocentrism, erasure, and a flagrant absenceof research.

So what people of color existed in nineteenth century France then? I’ve researched historical minority communities and am posting about them in parts, one post per community. This post will focus on the African French diaspora. It is part one of a series on ethnic minorities in nineteenth century France. This does not include the African American diaspora and African American immigration to France or North African and Moorish communities already settled in France and the French Mediterranean, which will be the subjects of separate posts.

Below the cut are facts relevant to the African French community, which ideally will assist fandom in producing art, fan fiction, and meta incorporative of people of color.

CW for slavery, racial violence, and racial slurs

Read More

(via historythings)

archaeologicalnews:

EDISTO ISLAND, S.C. — The floors creaked. The walls swayed in a strong breeze. Rot and termites had destroyed parts of the rickety structure built before the Civil War.

But when curators from the Smithsonian’s new African-American history museum in Washington visited this marshy island last year, they found exactly what they were looking for: an antebellum slave cabin that captured the stark life of plantation workers before emancipation.

Edisto Island is home to two of the nation’s oldest slave cabins, dating to the 1850s — vestiges of what was once an entire village for field workers at the Point of Pines Plantation. Black families lived in the wood-sided, two-room houses, without electricity or heating, until the 1980s. Read more.