What we know after the big Grand Theft Auto 6 preview

The official look at the blockbuster video game leaves fans and critics impressed.

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A biopic, a coffee brand and dog treats among Dolly Parton's business projects still to come

"Dolly worked up until the day she died," her manager says, as her upcoming projects are revealed.

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A biopic, a coffee brand and dog treats among Dolly Parton's business projects still to come

"Dolly worked up until the day she died," her manager says, as her upcoming projects are revealed.

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Viking woman’s grave with rare surviving textiles found in Western Jutland

The tomb of a young woman from the Viking Age with rare surviving remnants of her clothing has been discovered near Varde, Western Jutland, Denmark. The burial dates to the 8th century.

Skeletal remains rarely survive the highly acidic soil of Jutland, let alone fragile organic textiles. In this case, it was the young woman’s jewelry responsible for the unusual preservation. She was buried wearing two concave oval fibulae known as skålspænder (scoop brooches), typically used to fasten an apron dress at the shoulders. The corrosion of the bronze or silver in the brooches produced metallic salts that acted as preservatives and kept the garment’s fibers from decomposing.

Both of the skålspænder have remnants of fabric on both sides, giving archaeologists a unique opportunity to study two layers of Viking-era clothing: the undergarments in contact with the skin, and the outer visible layer. The area of the tomb with the jewelry and organic remains was removed in a soil block for excavation in laboratory conditions that will ensure even the smallest traces of the textile can be recovered.

The study of these fragments will reveal new information about the textiles, how they were sewn and perhaps even the structure of the entire garment. The material will undergo chromatic analysis to identify the dyes used on the fibers, and hopefully determine the color of the clothing she was wearing. The color of a garment had social significance in the Viking era, so figuring out the colors she was buried in will also illuminate her position in the community.

The Vejle Conservation Center (Konserveringscenter Vejle) has taken on the delicate task of exhuming the funerary assemblage practically grain by grain, safeguarding the integrity of the fabrics and their contextual association with the bones and the ornaments. Meanwhile, ancient textile expert Lise Ræder Knudsen has been appointed to conduct a detailed analysis of the recovered fibers, aiming to identify the weaving techniques, patterns, and spinning quality that characterized this Viking Jutland garment. […]

However, dating the clothing presents an additional challenge that archaeologists hope to solve through cutting-edge science. Samples are planned to be taken for radiocarbon (C14) testing to obtain an absolute and precise dating of the textile assemblage. This dating is essential not only to chronologically place the garment but also to resolve a question that has sparked special interest among researchers: one of the scoop brooches shows clear signs of having been repaired in the past.

This feature suggests the possibility that the piece was not contemporary with the making of the dress but instead an heirloom passed down from a previous generation, an object with its own history that ultimately became part of the young woman’s grave goods. Comparing the dates obtained from the textile and the metal will be key to confirming whether both elements belong to the same era or if, on the contrary, the young woman wore a new dress with old jewelry.

The skeletal remains will also be studied further. Her dental enamel will give information on nutritional stress she may have experienced as a child, and stable isotope analysis will provide information on whether she was raised locally or came from elsewhere.

* This article was originally published here

How Dolly Parton became a fashion icon

Culture correspondent Noor Nanji explores how the country legend's signature style helped her take over the world.

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How Dolly Parton became a fashion icon

Culture correspondent Noor Nanji explores how the country legend's signature style helped her take over the world.

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11,000-year-old sculpture of man riding a leopard found in Turkey

A unique statue depicting a human sitting on the back of a leopard has been unearthed from the Neolithic site of Karahan Tepe near Şanlıurfa, southern Turkey. The figure is 70 cm (27.6 inches) high and was discovered in what archaeologists believe was its original location: on a stone platform along the wall of a circular structure about 10 feet in diameter paved with flat stones.

Karahan Tepe is approximately 30 miles east of Göbekli Tepe, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic monumental complex. The two sites both share structures in common, characteristic T-shaped pillars, more than 250 of which have been found at Karahan Tepe, and similar animal iconography representations that suggest they were related. Karahan Tepe has its own distinctive features, however, especially in the preponderance of rock-cut spaces and human figures carved in three dimensions.

Since systematic excavations began in 2019, a number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figural sculptures have been found at Karahan Tepe, often in unusual combinations. Several examples of a human carrying a leopard on his back. The leopards in these sculptures are not slung on the man’s back as if he had killed them in the hunt or tamed them enough to carry them, but rather are depicted snarling, with teeth bared, very much alive and very much unfriendly.

The newly announced sculpture appears to reverse that visual formula. Instead of the human carrying the leopard, the human is seated on the animal. Whether that reversal conveyed a different narrative, status or symbolic relationship cannot yet be determined, but the composition gives archaeologists another piece of evidence for examining how Karahantepe’s inhabitants imagined the boundary between humans and powerful wild animals.

Leopards feature prominently in the iconography of Karahan Tepe, both in combination with humans and on their own. Leopard heads and figurines have been unearthed, as have leopards incised on the megalithic standing stones of the site. Less than 12 miles away from Karahan Tepe, a high relief of a man gripping his phallus flanked by two roaring/biting leopards carved into the stone is the earliest narrative scene ever discovered.

The location of the sculpture on the platform against the wall suggests it was meant to be visible and accessible, although there’s no evidence yet to indicate whether the the man-on-leopard was located there from the beginning or moved there when the space was deliberately closed.

* This article was originally published here

Charity? Acting? The Cotswolds? What will Harry and Meghan's UK life look like?

The couple's return to the UK is imminent - and what they'll be focusing on here is gradually becoming clearer.

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Medieval ship’s hull reused as ceiling in Constance

An investigation of a 13th century cellar in Constance on the German side of the border with Switzlerand has discovered sections of a ship used to construct the ceiling. The find gives archaeologists a unique opportunity to examine medieval shipbuilding techniques in a fully accessible environment instead of having to explore the few wrecks from this period under the waters of Lake Constance.

The cellar dates to 1244, a time when ships that were no longer in navigation were recycled, their planks reused as timbers for building projects on land. Timber planks in general were often recycled from earlier construction, so while the team from the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments (LAD) in the Stuttgart Regional Council immediately recognized them as reused materials, it was only upon closer examination that their maritime origin was identified.

Since the State Archaeology Office (LAD) is currently searching for shipwrecks in Lake Constance as part of the “Wrecks and Deep Sea” project, it is well-positioned in the field of maritime archaeology. “It is known that decommissioned ships were reused as building timber in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the find in Constance is something very special: Here, not just individual fragments, but an almost completely intact ship’s hull was used,” reports Alexandra Ulisch, a staff member in the “Wrecks and Deep Sea” project. The ceiling spans an area of ​​more than 25 square meters and consists of at least 19 planks, which could be identified as parts of a medieval ship by characteristic wooden pegs, rows of pegs, and typical plank shapes.

The planks came from a flat-bottomed sailing vessel of a type that was common on Lake Constance in the Middle Ages. LAD archaeologists spotted repairs to the planks from when they were part of the ship’s hull, expertly fitted and cut patches where a damaged section had to be removed. At least four such repairs are present, and one of them, a dovetail inlay, has no comparable example known in the area’s medieval shipwrecks.

Another special feature is the visible connection between some planks: “They are precisely cut to fit one another and, just as they were installed in the ship, are attached to the ceiling. As a result, the caulking, the sealant between the planks, has also been preserved in some places,” reports Ulisch. This sealant is of particular interest to maritime archaeology and was therefore also analyzed.

The ceiling/hull has been scanned in 3D using “structure-from-motion” (SfM) technology which stitches together hundreds of high-resolution photographs to create a composite. Samples have been taken for dendrochronological analysis to narrow down the date the timbers were harvested.

* This article was originally published here

Drugs at their fingertips, intense pressure: Why child stars fall into addiction

Experts told the BBC the pressures of childhood stardom can put actors at an unusually higher risk of substance abuse issues.

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Norfolk Bronze Age axe hoard includes rare button

A small Bronze Age axe hoard with a rare button has been discovered near Barton Turf in Norfolk. It is one of only 19 Bronze Age buttons ever reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Britain, and only the third found in Norfolk.

The hoard was discovered by metal detectorists in two stages. One socketed axe was found in March 2021. The second socketed axe and the button were found in 2023. The objects date to between 1000 B.C. and 700 B.C.

The button is circular with a central boss set in a deep concave circle that rises to a thick outer rim. The boss is conical and originally came to a tip, but that is now gone, probably from corrosion rather than breakage. This is the only of the 19 recorded Bronze Age buttons to have a central conical boss. While the known buttons are all different, they generally follow this design of a central boss surrounded by concentric rings or mouldings. On the back of the button a short rectangular loop from which it was attached.

Archaeologists are not certain how (or if) they were worn in Bronze Age Britain. There’s no explanatory context in a hoard and while a couple of comparable buttons have been found in graves in northwestern Europe, it was not clear if they were fasteners or even mounted to garments as opposed to, say, a horse harness.

According to Oxfordshire’s finds liaison officer and Bronze Age small finds specialist Dr Ed Caswell:

“This type of button is only found in the late Bronze Age, and to find it with axe heads, when they are all perfectly usable, does suggest it was intentionally deposited in the ground.”

Experts are still debating whether people did that to recycle the objects for use later, or because there was some sort of ritual behind it.

“The exciting thing is when we see it, we call it a button, but in UK context we have never found it showing how it was attached,” Caswell added. “It does give us a hint about how people want to decorate themselves, but buttons do seem to go out of fashion from the Iron Age onwards (from about 750BC), replaced by brooches.”

* This article was originally published here

Prince Harry and six others face privacy case legal bill of up to £34.5m

The seven claimants, who include Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, have to pay the Daily Mail publisher an initial £9.54m in the next seven days after losing a privacy case.

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Prince Harry and six others face privacy case legal bill of up to £34.5m

The seven claimants, who include Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, have to pay the Daily Mail publisher an initial £9.54m in the next seven days after losing a privacy case.

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