Archaeology · Art · Ethnography

Bronze Gallic bracelet of the 3rd or 2nd century BC from the Bucquoy necropolis

This bronze bracelet, discovered in the Celtic necropolis of Bucquoy in the department of Val-d'Oise, is an outstanding example of Gallic jewellery-making. The ornament dates from the 3rd or 2nd century BC and belongs to the heyday of the La Tène culture. The piece is distinguished

The Golden Age · NB! · Archive · Books · Mores · Ethnography

Invitation to a 1893 betrothal ball and the betrothal rite in nineteenth-century Russia

An invitation to a ball and evening supper on the occasion of a betrothal, 10 January 1893. In nineteenth-century Russia the sgovor, or betrothal, was the rite at which the parents of the bride and groom finally agreed upon the marriage of their children. It followed the matchmaking, that

The East · Archaeology · Faith · Observations · Ethnography

Petroglyph at Misida in northern Sudan possibly depicting a ruler of Kush

A Case in Which the Image of an Ancient Nubian Ruler Could Be Mistaken for a Figure of Christ. The petroglyph from Misida (2) in northern Sudan, near the Third Cataract of the Nile, consists of a male figure about two and a half metres tall and two goats. The

Archaeology · Science · Ethnography

Analysis of Greek skeletons shows young people migrated more often in the Bronze Age

In the Bronze Age, it was chiefly the young who moved house in Greece. Researchers have analysed the skeletons of 199 people, found by archaeologists at six sites in central and southern Greece, and concluded that in the Bronze Age it was young people who moved between communities most often.

Archive · Geography · Art · Observations · Ethnography

Drawing of the 1845 clash at Sherburne sheep station in Victoria

I got lost in reading about Australia today and came across a drawing entitled "Conflict witnessed in 1845 at the Sherburn sheep station, at the confluence of the Goulburn River". The author is tentatively identified as a certain J. Phillips. The piece belongs to the collection of the

Archaeology · Science · Society · Ethnography

Model estimates Australia's Indigenous population at 2.22 million in 1788

A new estimate of the Indigenous population of Australia before the arrival of Europeans has been published. Modelling based on archaeological, genetic, ethnographic and ecological data has produced a median estimate of 2.22 million people by 1788, that is, by the arrival of the First Fleet. Earlier estimates ranged

London · Museums · Heritage · Ethnography

The Bayeux Tapestry Is Now on Show at the British Museum, but Photography Is Forbidden

The seventy-metre eleventh-century embroidery of the Norman conquest of England has arrived in London for the first time in almost a thousand years. France has lent it to the British Museum under an intergovernmental agreement for the period from September 2026 to July 2027, while the museum in

Books · People · Ethnography

Leo Tolstoy on the calm of ordinary people in the face of suffering and death

Whereas the cleverer we become, the less we understand the meaning of life and the more we see some wicked mockery in the fact that we suffer and die, these people live, suffer and draw near to death with calm, and more often than not with joy. Whereas a calm

Art · Moscow · Observations · Ethnography

One of the more unusual and memorable art objects at Cosmoscow turned out, to my surprise, to be connected with Russian folk style: a panel of wooden Khokhloma spoons entitled “Rhythm of Generations”

One of the more unusual and memorable art objects at Cosmoscow turned out, to my surprise, to be connected with Russian folk style: a panel of wooden Khokhloma spoons entitled “Rhythm of Generations”. The result is a rather arresting appeal to folk crafts, and entirely without cranberry-sauce kitsch, even

NB! · Archive · Faith · Ethnography

This is not what you might think, but a cross in a circle marking the great Christian feasts in the margins of an Old Believer manuscript menologion

NB! · Archive · Faith · Ethnography

Mordvin Pilgrim Women at the Ponetayevka Convent for Women in 1904

Art · Observations · Heritage · Ethnography

I have read two items in the official information bulletin of the Haida people, who live on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada, devoted to the return of totem poles

One article tells how the village of Sgaang Gwaay Llnagaay, which was emptied in the 1880s by epidemics, still has more than thirty ceremonial poles with figures of bears and killer whales, carved from cedar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The poles marked families and served as memorials to