AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
A nice bit of modern maritime archaeology…
CZECH REPUBLIC, Prague
The next meeting of the FORUM ARCHAEOLOGIAE POST-MEDIEVALIS will take place at Prague on 3rd and 4th of April 2012 and the main topic will be Social statut and its manifestations in the material culture of the Modern period.
The FAP meetings, which take place every second year, have turned out to be a valuable platform for exchange and discussions, imbedded within a inspiring surrounding (and a beautiful city). Working languages are Czech and English and simultaneous interpretation is provided during the conference. The papers of the conference will be published in the volume Studies in Post-Medieval Archaeology 5.
If you want to register or - even better - want to suggest a paper please contact Dr. Jaromír Zegklitz at Archaia Praha: zegklitz@archaia.cz
SLOVAKIA, Levice
The Tekov Museum at Levice is currently organizing a conference on the “History of pipe production and archaeological pipe finds in Slovakia” to be held on 22nd and 23rd of September 2011. The conference includes a trip to Banská Štiavnica, a pipe makers workshop and the Slovak Mining Museum.
Interested? Want to register, present a paper or more information? Then contact Margaréta Pölhös at the Tekov Musem: margareta.polhos@muzeumlevice.sk
NEW ZEALAND, Lyttleton
Update on work at the Lyttleton Timeball Station:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/5317426/Salvage-work-resumes-on-timeball-station
STARGARD, Poland
The museum of Stargard is currently organizing a conference on “Pipes and Tobacco in European Societies during the 15th to 20th centuries”. The meeting is planned to be held in 2014 and shall bring together papers from art history, archaeology, pharmacy and related disciplines. For those interested in the conference please contact Karol Kwiatkowski at the Stargard museum http://www.muzeum-stargard.pl/
WITTENBERG, Germany
The German Working Group for House Research (Arbeitskreis für Hausforschung) is currently organizing the next annual meeting to be held at Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt (9-13 October 2011). The topic is “building and living in the 16th century”. For more information and registration see http://www.arbeitskreisfuerhausforschung.de/index.html
AUSTRALIA, Sydney
University of Sydney gets lucky…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/m-bequest-a-lifeline-to-sydney-archeologists/story-e6frgcjx-1226083710762
SINGAPORE
The Adam Park Project (TAPP) is a fascinating project looking at Second World War remains in Singapore, led by the Singapore Heritage Society and the National University of Singapore. The link below is to information on the project hosted by the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Battlefield Archaeology.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/battlefieldarchaeology/centreprojects/singaporewwiiproject/
NEW ZEALAND, Christchurch
Following the recent earthquakes in the Christchurch/Canterbury region of New Zealand, Ross Becker has posted an album of before and after photographs showing damage to historic buildings, some already damaged by the earlier earthquakes.
https://picasaweb.google.com/RossBeckerNZ/ChristchurchTheImpactOfJune13Aftershocks#
For further information on earthquake damage to historic buildings in New Zealand, see http://nzarchaeology.blogspot.com/.
NEW ZEALAND
Website of the Department of Conservation in NZ’s Ministry for Culture and Heritage. A really useful and well put together spin around the iconic sites of the country’s history with further links to information on publications and heritage management.
AUSTRIA, Tyrol, Strad
In 2008, an extraordinary burial was found at Strad, Tyrol, with the help of a metal detector. The excavation took place the same year by a team of the University of Innsbruck under my leadership. The site is located in an alpine region which is part of a main traffic route from Roman times up to the beginning of the 20th century and there exist many finds ranging through all periods of time found to the right and left of the way.
We don’t have any burial grounds from the 17th century in the Tyrol, not taking into consideration graves in churches. Except for the northwestern part, with the looting of the city of Reutte by the Swedish troops in 1632, our country was not influenced by the Thirty Years War. There are only burials from excavations in churches, but in most cases only graves from priests (with typical finds like buttons, penitence laces, shoes etc.). Of course we have well preserved members of noble sovereign families from the 17th century like Claudia di Medici, her husband and children and others, but there exist only pictures of the bodies and their clothes and investigations have been only carried out on the pompous lead coffins.
The excavation uncovered a single burial, far away from a graveyard. The distance to the next church is nearly 2km. It is a female, 168 cm tall, and nearly 40 years old. Her teeth are in a bad condition with several abscesses. There is no evidence of a violent death on the skeleton. The burial itself is a face-down or prone burial, which is very seldom in the region. Also we have more than fifty non-organic finds in the burial including five iron keys, silver coins, ceramic beads, a pair of scissors, a thimble and an iron pan from the 17th century. We noticed two distinct assemblages: one around the skull and one around the hip. Among the finds are two elements of importance for our interpretation. At one hand were six cups – four of them you see on the picture- for cupping made of brass. Almost all of them wear scratched signs of unknown function on the bottom. Some cups were filled with uncoloured and coloured fine plucked cotton fibre to serve as cinder, it being an easy inflammable material for medical applications. On the other hand was a ‘magic necklace’ consisting of 18 different parts of glass, copper, ceramics, agate etc. It is this special equipment which led us to the interpretation of the woman having been a healer. The coins and the shape of the belt give us age determination to the 17th century.
Image courtesy Harald Stadler, University of Innsbruck (2009)
Submitted by Harald Stadler, University of Innsbruck
NEW ZEALAND
Two links here from UK newspapers covering France’s repatriation of Maori cultural remains.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8501747/Maori-head-finally-sent-home-to-New-Zealand-from-France.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/04/maori-heads-france-new-zealand
The Guardian article in particular prompts further debate on the French (and other) governmental discussions of human remains as artworks.
For further information, please contact the New Zealand Archaeological Association at http://nzarchaeology.org/cms/.
USA, Kentucky
The website of Kentucky Heritage Council:
Pretty much everything you will ever need to know about the provision of archaeology and heritage in the state of Kentucky, with regular updates and press releases, archived newsletters, excavation reports and easy access to a whole host of important strategy documents.
BERMUDA
New Post-Medieval Archaeology 45:1 special issue on Bermuda out now. Contents below. Visit www.spma.org.uk to become a member and receive your copy.
Bermuda’s archaeology in context (Brent Fortenberry and Marley Brown III), Archaeology in Bermuda (Richard Lowry), The Western Ledge Reef Wreck: continuing research on the late 16th-/early 17th-century Iberian shipwreck from Bermuda (Piotr Bojakowski), The Warwick: results of the survey of an early 17th-century Virginia Company ship (Piotr Bojakowski and Katie Custer Bojakowski), Bermuda’s ‘Domesday Book’: Richard Norwood’s surveys and the development of the Somers Islands, 1616–63 (Michael Jarvis), Ships, slaves and slipways: towards an archaeology of shipbuilding in Bermuda (Paul Belford), The Bermuda house (Edward A. Chappell), ‘A brave cedar house’: landscape archaeology at the Overplus House and Grove (John R. Triggs), A lost Bermuda Governor: George Bruere’s burial in context (Brent Fortenberry), Proclaiming respectability across the colour line: headstones of free blacks in St Peter’s churchyard, St George’s, Bermuda Bruce S. Elliott). Plus research notes from Richard Lowry, Jessie Hallett, Travis Parno, Deborah Atwood, Jonathan Heck and Megan Southern, Wolfgang Neubauer, Matthias Kucera, Erich Nau, Karolin Kastowsky and Klaus Löcker, and Andrew M. Baylay and Zoe Brady.
