Silver, gold and stonework

Through different friends on Facebook I've been made aware of recent discoveries of Viking silver and Anglo-Saxon gold. Beautiful stuff.

Less in the news, but of interest here, is that Outlandish Knight has provided a link to his photographs of early Norman churches, fonts, and corbels.
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Fishlink

Just back from a four-day-weekend at the seaside (Ascension is a holiday here, and the Friday fell down the crack between that and the weekend proper), to find that one of the blogs I read has put up a link to a BBC report on an archaeologist opining as to when and why Europe's deep-sea fisheries got started (or is it just England's? - always hard to tell with the BBC, on whose website I once saw William Caxton described as an "inventor").
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Opening scene of Gladiator - for real

(Updating to embed CNN report, with actual opening scene of Gladiator)


It seems as though somebody has whipped out their history books and cottoned on that the Romans did send expeditions across the Rhine, most famously those led by third-century emperor Maximinus Thrax, who boasted about it by taking the name Germanicus Maximus.

Nevertheless, they're sticking to the earlier story that the battle site at Kalefeld is the "find of the century", tracing the progress of the battle through finds of arrow heads, ballista bolts, broken harness, horseshoes, sandal nails, and other odds and ends (including an army-issue axe), scattered over an area of one and a half kilometres by 500 metres (suggesting that a substantial column came under attack and fought off its ambushers). Gosh, exciting stuff. They also say that the 600 finds already turned up barely scratch the surface.
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Roman trouble-making in Germania libera

For those interested, a post on my more historical blog about Roman-German confrontations post-AD 9. From around 300 Roman weapons are to be found in Norway (says Sigrid Undset in Saga of Saints), so I'm a little surprised at the surprise that a century earlier there was now and then something of a Roman military presence in Germany beyond the imperial frontiers.

(Update here)
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Newman's grave

It seems that there will be no primary relics of the Blessed John Henry Newman to be venerated. I can't help thinking this is somehow appropriate. Makes one wonder how archaeologists ever manage to find anything at all, really.

In an earlier post I mentioned reading Joyce Sugg's anthology of Newman's letters. It's a very nicely produced, clothbound OUP edition, that I borrowed from the university library. Monday night, splatter from a vomiting child hit the cover. I think I've got it clean enough to return, as long as the librarian doesn't decide to hold it up at an angle to the light.

And in recent purchases: Roderick Strange's John Henry Newman. A Mind Alive, a very timely publication.
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*Sigh*

I'll get back to blogging soon; in the meantime, another link.
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