New survey of Roman occupation in Derbyshire

A four-year study of archeological sites in and around Peak District National Park illustrates the extent of Roman settlement from the 1st through the 5th centuries AD:

Of the 140 or so, around 70 were settlements ranging from single buildings to hamlets, complete with evidence of yards and walls or hedges.
Examples of traditional round buildings being replaced by Roman-style square ones were unearthed, alongside pottery plates and bowls.
"We found most sites in areas which had not been intensively farmed, which means many more settlements have either been destroyed or are still buried under existing buildings. The 140 sites we found are just the tip of the iceberg."

James ossuary on display: why a faked inscription may prove its authenticity

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto has announced that the cracks in the celebrated ossuary have been repaired.

Officials also discovered an incised star-circle and minute flecks of red paint on the back of the box, common decorations on ossuaries dating between 50-70 A.D.
"We did get to see it up close and personal and we're delighted that
everything we see is consistent to both the antiquity of the object and
the antiquity of the inscription," said director of collections Dan
Rahimi.

Yet while the inscription may be ancient, that does not mean that it is entirely contemporary with the ossuary itself. In fact, the sharpest attack on the inscription's authenticity fully accepts that the first part is original, but states that the second part is later ("a couple, three hundred years" is the ballpark figure provided).

In fact, after initial skepticism, I am now rather strongly inclined to believe that the ossuary did indeed belong to the biblical James. Were the inscription all of one piece, it could well have marked the bones of some other James. But if the words, "brother of Jesus" were added a few hundred years later, there can be no doubt about which James was intended (note, too, that Jewish use of the name "Jesus" was almost entirely abandoned once Christianity began to spread).
If the second part of the inscription postdates the first by a few hundred years, could it not have been part of the Constantinian program of embellishment of the Christian sites of the Holy Land? Many of the places over which Constantine erected shrines and basilicas had long been venerated, if not so elaborately marked. In any case, it seems unlikely that the inscription would have been modified as it was, when it was, if the intent had been to deceive. James' burial place must have been well known to the local Christian community, leaving little motive for placing such an inscription anywhere else.

Why others have not come to this conclusion, I do not know. But as an ABD whose area of specialization was late antiquity, I can safely assert that many if not most scholars of this period bring some pretty strong biases to the table. The study of early Rabbinic Judaism and the study of early Christianity sometimes seem like oil and water, even though the actual subjects of study were inextricably interrelated.

So it is hardly surprising that Rochelle Altman's observation that the ossuary inscription consisted of two very different parts led her to dismiss the attribution of the ossuary to the biblical James. And it is hardly surprising that those who study early Christianity would reject this dismissal, for by and large, they want to believe. It is ironic, then, that in rejecting Altman's argument, they appear to have overlooked the most conclusive evidence yet presented in favor of the ossuary being a genuine Christian artifact of the greatest importance.

NOTE: Roger Viklund has pointed out that only the "brother of Jesus" portion of the inscription has been attacked as a later addition, and not the "son of Joseph". The text above has been corrected accordingly. For more on the controversy, see this update.

Mickey Mouse is 700 years old

A fresco has been uncovered during restoration of a south Austrian church. The Mouse appears next to a figure of St. Christopher.

"The fresco dates from around 1300," said conservator and art historian Eduard Mahlknecht. However he said he was not certain the medieval mouse was a mouse at all. "It could just as well be a painting of the weasel legend," he said. According to legend, the weasel was fertilised through its mouth and gave birth through its ears, which is why the ears of the fresco creature may have been sketched large, Mahlknecht said.

Something Disney never told us about. . . .

Great Wall may be older than commonly believed

Archeologists working on a 497-mile-long section of the Great Wall running through central China have announced that it dates to c. 688 BC. This would be over 400 years earlier than the usual estimate, attributed to the Qin Dynasty emperor Shi Huangdi (221-206 BC).

More on the Shroud of Turin

A Russian team has released a rebuttal of the claim that 16th-century contamination with vegetable oil invalidates the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud to the 13th or 14th century.

Mountain lions in NJ? Just wait. . .

With plenty of deer and little to fear, mountain lions are moving East.

There may now be more mountain lions in the West than there were before European settlement, said Dr. Maurice Hornocker, a senior scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Boulder is at the forefront of this feline invasion.

"In Boulder, lions are learning that humans are nothing to be afraid of," Mr. Taylor, the city park ranger, said.
While he added that the city's policy was "to give the cats a negative experience — we carry rubber buckshot to teach them that humans are nothing to mess with" — many residents refuse to report lions because they do not want to get the animals in trouble.

One local who was mauled in his backyard when trying to rescue the family pet did not report the incident.

"I deserved every piece of what happened to me," he said. "We choose to live in their backyard, so we got to put up with them."

With no one to chase her off, that lion continued to hang out in the neighborhood. Two days after wrestling Mr. McCoy, it killed a mule deer behind a house across the street.

Shortly thereafter, it began to stalk a neighbor but was frightened off when she sounded her car horn.

Restoration of medieval London church gutted by IRA bomb

The restoration of St. Ethelburga's, one of the few medieval churches to survive in the City, is due to be unveiled today. The little church was shattered by an IRA bomb in 1993, and for some time there had been doubts whether it could or would be salvaged.

"Hate crime" raids in London

The BBC is reporting sweeping dawn raids this morning across London. Apparently some 150 addresses have been targeted and at least 60 arrests have been made.

The raids signal the start of a day of police action against "hate crime" - offences against people on the grounds of their race, faith, religion, disability, or sexuality.
Posters in newspapers and on the Tube and trains urging victims of hate crime to come forward are running as part of a two-week campaign by the Metropolitan Police.
Commander Cressida Dick, director of the Diversity Directorate, denied the operation was simply a publicity stunt.

The BBC story is headed by a picture of a Muslim family with "RACISM" superimposed in white block letters.

Meanwhile, the Queen has just presented the British government's plans for new legislation against crime and "antisocial behavior". Among other provisions, it will allow judges and juries to hear defendants' "relevant previous convictions"; new restrictions on airguns also seem to be on the horizon.

Great balls o' fire

Some more links that are finally being transferred from the old site:

Shipwreck cannonballs glowed red-hot when exposed to air, nearly setting a conservator's desk on fire.

17th-century Swedish warship Vasa's sulphur-soaked timbers are reacting to produce sulphuric acid -- potentially 5 tons' worth in total.

"Guy Fawkes" gunpowder found in basement of British Library: The "two solid bars and numerous small paper packages. . . found packed into an early 20th-century stationery box" may be the earliest European gunpowder preserved.

Roman armory found at Carlisle castle. Finds include various spear and dart heads, balls and bolts for catapults and ballistas, and most remarkably, armor fragments including undergarments and scale armor with its articulation largely intact.

Silk Road archive online

In a joint project of the British Library and the National Library of China, the contents of the Dunhuang cave will be reunited online. Hundreds of paintings and thousands of manuscripts were cached in the cave around AD 1000, only to be dispersed shortly after their discovery 100 years ago. The more than 50,000 artifacts may be seen here and here.

Out, out, damn'd. . . .

Looks like it didn't end with MacBeth: the 7th Earl (and 25th Thane) of Cawdor has just been handed an eviction notice from a Scottish judge. The Earl and his stepmother are feuding over the family's 14th-century castle.

Talking rot

Frederick Crews takes aim at fashionable literary theory:

The essays that the graduating BAs would submit with their applications were often brilliant. After five or six years of PhD work, the same people would write incomprehensible crap. Where did they learn it? They learned it from us.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

It is now 84 years since the guns fell silent that morning on the Western Front. How many witnesses remain? They were my grandparents' generation, as real to me as my grandparents themselves. It is strange to think that the First World War will be as remote to my children as the American Civil War is to me.

When I was a boy we took a family trip through France. It was the summer of 1967. You travel around Europe nowadays and you still see seats on buses and trains reserved for the casualties of war, but back then those seats were really needed. Elderly amputees were as ubiquitous as the war memorials at the center of every village and town. We visited the Normandy beaches and the vast military cemeteries, the great ossuary of Verdun, the destroyed town of Fleury, where the woods were fenced off with signs warning of unexploded munitions beyond. In many cities there were still empty, rubble-strewn lots, 22 years on.

Pretty much everything in Europe has been rebuilt now, excepting the odd gutted monument left alone as a memorial (but even some of them are now being reconstructed, the time for remembrance apparently having run its course). In Flanders the land has been replanted and is once again under the plow; preservation of battlefields that were sacred soil a generation ago is now a rearguard action, fought largely by foreign veterans' groups.

I wonder what my grandmother would think. She lost her beloved brother on the Western Front, yet was never one to favor the dead over the living. Those of us who were born later need our reminders, however. When my children are a bit older, I too will take them to France, and to Flanders fields.

Nautical archeology notes

Here are a few interesting odds and ends:

An old water mill in southern England was built using timbers from the USS Chesapeake, captured off Boston in 1813; the timbers still bear the marks of shot and shell.

Graves of Nelson's men from Battle of the Nile recently unearthed in Egypt.

After 270 years, Robert Drury's fantastic tale of shipwreck, enslavement, and escape turns out to be fact, not fiction. Was it really written up by Defoe? Will there now be a movie?

Recent research indicates that there may be as many as 59 wrecked galleons off the coasts of Panama.

Diving in the harbor of Alexandria, amidst the wreckage of the fabled lighthouse.

Poole Harbor is the oldest in Britain: two large jetties believed to have been Roman have been found to date to c. 250 BC instead.

Underwater treasure hunt in Bavaria after Nazi gold found in alpine lake.

IRA fundraising in the USA going strong

Hard to believe, but Gerry Adams has just been making the rounds once again -- in New York City and New Jersey, no less.