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Archeology, Page 2

Vikings!

I went to see the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum last weekend. Having very much enjoyed Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum last year, I had high hopes for this visit. I was disappointed. First of all, I don’t like the space. The Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery is at the back of the Great Court, and feels like a long narrow shape, that isn’t helped by the partitioning in the introductory section. Continue reading →

Sitting in Southampton, imagining Ightham Mote (and Petworth)

I spent an interesting half-hour yesterday, listening to somebody repeatedly telling me that we were in the Great Hall at Ightham Mote. But we were not. I was in a sound engineering lab in Southampton, and “she” was a recording, or rather one of thirty recordings. There was also a slightly more random gentleman, repeatedly excited about how so many words could be made out of such a small alphabet.  I put the headphones on, listened and answered questions. Continue reading →

Holiday Reamde

Last week, for my holiday in Cornwall, I took some “hard” reading with me, but I was determined to have some holiday reading too. Having mentioned Neal Stephenson in a previous post, I was reminded that I hadn’t ever picked up one of his more recent books, Reamde. Shopping around, it was pretty cheap on Kindle so I downloaded it, and took it with me. Continue reading →

Mary Rose

I took a trip with work colleagues yesterday to check out the new Mary Rose museum. For those international readers who may be unfamiliar with “Britain’s Pompeii” Mary Rose is a Tudor warship that sank in Portsmouth Harbour during a battle with the French. Half the hull, and an amazing number of objects were preserved in the silt, and the site has been a marine archaeological “dig” for decades. Continue reading →

Centre for Digital Heritage #CDH2013

Last Saturday I went to the inaugural conference of the Centre for Digital Heritage at the University of York. The first speaker was Professor Andrew Prescott, who gave us a salutatory reminder that the so-called Industrial Revolution wasn’t quite as revolutionary to those living through it, and that some of what we now realize were world changing developments, were not seen as such at the time. Continue reading →

Petworth Big Dig

A quick note for my archeaology chums. My work colleagues at Petworth are very excited about the Big Dig, which will run from the 13th to the 21st July. Led by archaeologist Tom Dommett, this is a major volunteer excavation looking for evidence of the lost history of Petworth House and Park. It’s all part of the national Festival of British Archaeology – Tom will be tweeting, hooting, Facebooking and YouTubing like mad during the week-long project. Continue reading →