[Steppes] Period Week in Review 08-20-2006 through 08-26-2006

[Mike]

Heilsa,


Hope the reader will enjoy this look at History
within Period - both from the past and the present
as it affects the history that is known today.

Week in Review 08-20  through 08-26:

August 20th:
Modern Day
Scotland  Time Period  0501 - 0600
Archaeologists believe they may have discovered one of the oldest
churches in Scotland during an excavation in Aberdeen. They are
awaiting test results which will confirm whether they have uncovered
a religious burial site dating back to the 6th Century.
    The find was made during Scotland's biggest archaeological dig
in the east kirk of St. Nicholas Church. So far 300 skeletons have
been unearthed, far more than expected. Aberdeen City Council's
assistant archaeologist Alison Cameron said the excavation was
providing invaluable insight into ancient burial practices.
     She said: "There are very few church excavations of this type
which have been able to reveal parts of churches or burials of that
date and also the number of burials that we're getting of this early
date. Some of them are in stone-lined coffins and some of them in
split wooden logs, and so it is extremely important."
      A dedicated team of archaeologists, students and some
members of the church congregation have been working on the site
since January. Egyptologist Abeer Ralston said: "We've found a lot
of burials here which have to be recorded. We take photographs and
take every measurement."
      Rev Stephen Taylor, a minister of the Kirk of St. Nicholas, said
there would be a service at the end of the project and all the bodies
would be reinterred under the church floor.

August 21st:
1101 - 1200
On August 21st, 1129   The warrior Yoritomo was made Shogun
without equal in Japan. Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai
Sho-gun (Sei-I-Tai-Shogun, i.e., "Barbarian-quelling Great General")
and the de facto ruler of Japan. (Traditional Japanese date:
July 12, 1192).
    Yoritomo was defeated at Ishibashiyama in his first major battle,
but in the end he triumphed over his rival cousins, who sought to
steal from him control of the clan, and over the Taira, who suffered
a terrible defeat at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185. Yoritomo thus
established the supremacy of the warrior samurai caste and the
first bakufu (shogunate) at Kamakura, beginning the feudal age in
Japan which lasted until the mid 19th century.

August 22nd:
Modern Day
England  Time Period  1501 - 1600
Drought holds key to centuries-old mystery. Archaeologists puzzling
over a 500-year-old architectural enigma in a drought-bleached
suburban park believe they have finally solved the mystery of its
identity - and that the key lies with the Tudors' struggles to cope with
water shortages similar to those we face today. The mysterious
structure in the heart of Bruce Castle Park in Tottenham, north
London, has in the past been variously explained as a garden
folly, or a platform for flying hawks. But it is now believed to be a
unique surviving Tudor water tower. Archaeologists uncovered, to
their astonishment, picturesque cruciform windows buried meters
below the present ground level and not seen for centuries, and
walls that continue still deeper into the bone-dry clay.
   Roy Stevenson, who is supervising the excavation for the Museum
of London archaeology service, said: "Without any hype I have never
come across anything like it in my life. I can't prove it without
re-excavating every brick built Tudor tower in the country, but I feel I
would have heard if there was another one out there. We may indeed
now have to go back and re-examine the excavation records of lost
towers and see if they could also be water towers."
   The Grade I-listed tower and the handsome manor house beside it,
now a local history museum, were built in open countryside, but have
survived into London suburbia startlingly unaltered. An exceptionally
rare painting, found in fragments in the attics of the museum and
restored with a lottery grant, now back over the fireplace in the main
hall, shows both the house and tower in the 17th century, and though
the details of the tower are hard to make out, it seems to continue
well below the level of the garden wall.
    The tower probably dates from around 1505, and is even older
than the mansion, though both stand on the site of a medieval manor.
The estate has rich royal connections. Queen Elizabeth visited and
Henry VIII met his sister Margaret of Scotland there when it was
owned by his powerful courtier, Sir William Compton. The manor
was also once owned by Robert the Bruce, though he probably
never stayed there, so the cherished local legend that it was there
he saw the spider and resolved to launch a further onslaught on the
English in Scotland cannot be true.
     The dig began as a community excavation by the Museum of
London, involving amateurs and swarming with school groups,
looking for the medieval foundations. The dig should have
finished at the end of national archaeology week, but
archaeologists persisted. They stuck a camera and a light in
through the rediscovered windows, and revealed no treasure
except a dimly visible vaulted chamber.
      Full exploration may have to wait for next year. They believe the
tower stored water from an encircling pond, fed by channels
controlled by sluice gates, from the nearby Moselle River -
variously spelled Mosse Hill and Mouse Hill in older documents,
and the origin of the Muswell Hill place name. The tower, variously
explained as a vantage point for watching hunting or jousting, or
holding doves for the Tudor stewpot, has been baffling antiquarians
for centuries.
      In 1705 the then owner, the second Lord Colerane, wrote that he
 kept the tower, most awkwardly sited a few metres from his front
door, in good repair "in respect to its great antiquity more
than conveniency... although I am not able to discover the
founder thereof".

August 22nd:
Modern Day
Northern France  Medieval Heavy Metal Pollution Still An Issue
Scientists have tracked down the source of heavy metal pollution on
a site in Northern France to the remains of medieval metallurgical
workshops. The residue of lead, antimony, arsenic, copper, and zinc
are still an issue 800 years after the cessassion of production on the
site.
    Mont-Lozère Massif, the site of medieval workshop remnants that
they studied, is in the Cévennes National Park, where people fish,
hunt, farm, and camp. Heavy metals are distributed in the
environment because of natural and anthropogenic mechanisms.
The trick for Baron's team was to figure out to what extent each
mechanism contributed. While it's not surprising that large
quantities of heavy metals have staying power in soil and rocks,
this study is one of the first to systematically attribute present-day
pollution levels to an ancient source of man-made pollution. The
study "certifies the responsibilities of the polluters and the origin of
the toxicity," Baron points out. The team examined leftover slag--
the by-product of smelting ore to purify mined metals--and the
background content of the metals in surrounding soil and granite.
By comparing the lead-isotope ratios found in the slag to those
found in rock and soil, Baron's team illustrated that binary mixing
between slag and granite was the primary method of dispersion
and verified that the medieval pollution contributed at least 40%
of the lead found in the granite.
    "Studies of old metallurgical pollution allow the understanding of
modern pollution because we can observe the long-term effect of
heavy metals in the environment," Baron says. She hopes that this
research will continue to elucidate historical anthropogenic
pollution by examining what she calls environmental archives,
such as peat bog cores and lake sediments. She stresses that
further studies will require an interdisciplinary approach, with
collaboration between geochemists, archaeologists, historians
of science, and toxicologists.


August 23rd:
Modern Day
England  Time Period  1501 - 1600
Reported on August 23rd    Mary Queen of Scots Portrait Found
Only one portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, is known to exist, and that
painting has been brought forth from thirty years of storage for
exhibition in London. The painting, which scientific tests have shown
was painted within or shortly after Queen Mary's lifetime, was stored
at the National Portrait Gallery for thirty years until its recent
identification as a work of great import. The exhibition will be in
the Tudor Galleries.
    It had been relegated to a drawer after being dismissed as an
18th-century copy. However, dendrochronology, or tree ring analysis,
has established that the panel on which it was painted was felled in
the 16th century and it can be dated between 1560 and 1592. After
sparking rebellion among the Scottish nobles with her marital and
political actions, Queen Mary was forced to flee to England where
she was beheaded in 1587 as a Roman Catholic threat to the
English throne. After her execution she would not have been a
popular figure to have on display, but, according to Tarnya Cooper,
curator of 16th-century paintings at the National Portrait Gallery,
she would still have been a curiosity.
    The portrait, which measures 250mm by 190mm
(about 10in by 7½in) , is in oil and is by an unknown artist. Dr Cooper
said that the restoration had revealed an exquisite painting.
"The costume is beautifully done, the eyes and face delicately
painted." She believes that it could have been painted for one of
Mary's supporters. The portrait depicts the red-haired Queen of
Scots (1542-87) after her return to Scotland following the death
of her husband, King Francis II of France, in 1560. This was a
period in which she married Lord Darnley and gave birth to her
only child, later James I of England. After Darnley's murder in 1567,
Mary was forced to abdicate and escaped to England only to be
imprisoned for the remaining years of her life. While in France as
a child and as a young woman, Mary was drawn several times by
the court artist François Clouet. But from the turbulent period of her
life in Scotland, only images on coins and one miniature appeared
to have survived. She later sat for a portrait miniature by Nicholas
Hilliard, whose original is in the Royal Collection. All later images
of her are based on that. In the rediscovered portrait she is
wearing a cap that would have been unusual for women. Dr Cooper
said: "It's possibly a man's. The portrait shows her as an
independent character."

August 23rd:
SCA  Kingdom of Lochac
According to the official SCA geography page, "parts of Antarctica"
are now officially part of the Kingdom of Lochac. In the past, SCA
members in residence in Antarctica were considered part of Trimaris.

August 24th:
Germany  1401 - 1500
On August 24th, 1456   The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is
completed. The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible,
and as the Mazarin Bible) is a print of the Latin Vulgate translation
of the Bible that was printed by its namesake, Johann Gutenberg, in
Mainz, Germany. The print run started on February 23, 1455, using
moveable type. This Bible is the most famous book that was ever
printed and not handwritten and its production marked the beginning
of the mass production of books in the West. It was printed in what
would become known as Textura and Schwabacher. A very
complete copy comprises 1282 pages; most were bound in two
volumes. It is believed that about 180 copies of the Bible were
produced, 45 on vellum and 135 on paper, a number which
boggled minds in societies which, from time immemorial, had to
produce copies of written works laboriously by hand. Gutenberg
produced these Bibles (which were printed, then rubricated and
illuminated by hand), over a period of three years, the time it would
have taken to produce one copy in a Scriptorium. Because of the
hand illumination, each copy is unique. Two-color printing
techniques, which would have eliminated the need for rubrication,
were developed later. As of 2003, the number of known extant
Gutenberg Bibles includes eleven complete copies on vellum, one
copy of the New Testament only on vellum, and 48 substantially
complete integral copies on paper, with another divided copy on
paper. The country with the most copies is Germany, which has
twelve. Four cities have two copies: Paris, Moscow, Mainz and
Vatican City; London has three copies plus the Bagford Fragment;
New York has four copies.

August 25th:
Modern Day
New World  Quebec  Time Period  1501 -1600
The Government of Quebec is to spend CDN$8 million on excavating
a site believed to be the site of a fort built by Jacques Cartier built
during his third and final voyage to the French colony. It is believed
to have been built between 1541 and 1543, making it the oldest
European settlement to be discovered north of Mexico. Archeologists
discovered the site accidentally when preliminary work for a planned
lookout point turned up artefacts which carbon dating later proved
to be from the 16th century. Although the dig won't be finished by the
time Quebec City celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2008, parts of
the site will be open to the public in time for the celebrations.

August 25th:
Modern Day
Medieval Punhishments "Sensible and Humane.
Think you know everything about the cruelty of medieval justice?
An article by Heather Whipps of LiveScience may surprise you.
A new view is that justice in the Middle Ages was quite progressive.
"The common view of the medieval justice system as cruel and
based around torture and execution is often unfair and inaccurate,"
said University of Cambridge historian Helen Mary Carrel.
   Most criminals received gentle sentences merely meant to shame
them, Carrel said, "with the punishments often carried out in the
open so townspeople could bring them charity."
    Labeling idleness a crime may have been a bit strict, but the
justice system in medieval England should never be considered
backwards. Punishments for offenses in those days were perhaps
even more sensible and humane than they are now, say some
historians.


August 26th:
Modern Day
England  Time Period  1501 - 1600
Archaeologists have unearthed a medieval hostelry beneath a
gastro-pub on the edge of the North York Moors. The ancient
stone walls at Byland Abbey near Coxwold were uncovered
during work to install water and electricity to the Abbey's
museum, opposite the Abbey Inn. The remains include roof
tiles, pottery and stonework and are believed to be part of a
monastic guesthouse. Under the rule of St. Benedict,
monasteries were expected to provide food and lodgings with
a guesthouse for distinguished visitors. King Edward II was
among the guests who enjoyed Byland's hospitality, which
was said to be the best in northern England, but little is
known of the building's history after 1538. English Heritage
spokesman John Lax said 18th Century engravings had
always shown ruins in the area. The Abbey Inn was built as a
farmhouse on the site in 1845 but later became a hostelry.
English Heritage acquired the pub in 2005 with the aim of
protecting the ancient setting and using its profits to maintain
historic monuments.


YIS,
 Lord Michael Kettering