Archaeology · Museums · Observations · Pop Culture
Found an absolutely brilliant show, Abandoned Mine Explorers: a group of enthusiasts roams North America in search of old mines condemned to destruction, levelling and oblivion. The explorers descend to the very bottom of forgotten tunnels and shafts and hunt for objects left behind by miners a hundred years ago.
NB! · Archaeology · The East · Art · Humour
What is high diplomacy? Here, for example, a Persian courtier tenderly holds the hand of a Greek envoy as he escorts him to the royal throne. Detail of a sculpted frieze from Persepolis, Iran, photograph by Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
NB! · Archaeology · Museums · Observations · Humour
I suppose it is very silly that the sight of this dead boy on the lid of a 3rd-century AD sarcophagus brings to mind the warning not to lie on one's side, though in this particular case, of course, any wolf would break its teeth. Maffei Lapidary
Archaeology · Observations · Heritage
A view over Taman Bay and medieval foundations from the height of the cultural layer at the Hermonassa-Tmutarakan site. At present work is under way on only a small part of the monument; in places it has been lost to landslips, elsewhere it has gone under water, and here
Archaeology · The East · Art · Observations
We have long known that the distant past was far more colourful than its ruins. Here is an attempt to restore colour to the artefacts of ancient Persia, using the example of Achaemenid stone reliefs, on the basis of chemical analysis of microscopic pigment residues in the stone. It is
Archaeology · Faith · Museums · Ethnography
The Taman Archaeological Museum holds many such Jewish gravestones of the Khazars, dating from the second half of the 1st millennium AD. On the spread of Judaism in the Khazar Khaganate there is, in general, no consensus: not on whether it was Rabbinic or Karaite Judaism, nor on how it
Archaeology · Observations · Rome · Humour
How should one speak of one's good deeds? A fellow a couple of thousand years ago, for instance, had his name cut into stone on the main square of the resort town of Terracina, on the approaches to Rome along the Appian Way, in huge bronze letters. Made
NB! · Archaeology · Art · Observations · Humour
Archaeology · The East · Observations · Mores
My grandmother collected household textiles, and whenever I heard about wonderful Egyptian cotton, it seemed like yet another Soviet marketing prejudice, in the manner of unique Czechoslovak crystal and inimitable Chinese camel-hair blankets. After all, excellent crystal was also made in the Vladimir region, camel wool is the pride
Archaeology · Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · People
Architect Alexey Ginzburg speaks of noble plans for the scientific restoration of buildings on Kolpachny Lane. He adds that he, too, would like the district not to lose its identity. Over the awkward matters, such as the eighteen-metre piles that will reach the cultural layer of the eighth century,
Archaeology · The East · Museums · Observations
I propose a comparison of expensive footwear from two different eras: a pair of velvet men's shoes with gold trim from Italy in the 1730s, in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a woman's boot from a Scythian burial in the
Archaeology · Museums · Heritage
Speaking of underwater finds, Greece has very recently opened an underwater museum of ancient antiquities, the "Parthenon of Shipwrecks". The exhibition can be viewed if you have diving skills, until 2 October, while the diving season lasts.