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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Earliest dragon and phoenix combination found in northern China

The earliest known clearly identifiable figures of the dragon and phoenix combination in northern China have been discovered in a tomb at the Zhaizita Stone City site in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. It dates to around 2300 B.C., the middle-to-late Longshan Culture period.

Tomb M38 is a rectangular pit and shaft tomb. The skeletal remains of the deceased were found in supine position head facing northeast, with legs extended and arms straight at his sides. A circular jade bi inlaid in the center with a turquoise stone was placed to the right of his neck. Large clay figurines almost the length of his full body were placed on each side of his body. The dragon figure is on the deceased’s right side, its head facing northeast like the tomb’s occupant. The phoenix is on his left, facing the opposite direction, captured in the moment of rising in flight.

Stable isotope analysis of the deceased’s tooth enamel revealed that he consumed a diet based on millet, but with more animal protein than most people of the period would have had access to. This confirms that the person was of high status and had significant wealth during his life.

The Neolithic Longshan culture occupied the Yellow River valley of northern and central China between 3000 and 1900 B.C. It is notable for its advanced pottery making techniques, and the thin-walled black in intricate shapes they created on pottery wheels is so characteristic that it was also known as the Black Pottery Culture. Their skill in pottery in evident in the large scale and high quality of the dragon and phoenix figures.

Sun Jinsong said that the ‘dragon and phoenix’ clay figurines at the Zhaizita Stone City site are the earliest and most clearly modeled physical combination of dragon and phoenix discovered so far in northern China, pushing the appearance of figurative ‘dragon and phoenix’ back to the Longshan period. This provides valuable material for studying the spiritual beliefs and burial concepts of the ancestors of the Longshan period. In addition, this discovery shows that the Hetao region made a unique contribution to the creation of early spiritual culture in China, providing evidence for the pluralistic and unified structure of Chinese civilization.

* This article was originally published here

Brandon Flowers: Is fame worth it? I'm not sure anymore

The Killers frontman asks big questions on his third solo album, which takes a detour into country.

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Bronze Age “enigmatic tablet” found in northern Italy

A new 4,000-year-old clay tablet with markings whose symbolism has yet to be deciphered has been unearthed at the prehistoric pile dwelling site of Lucone di Polpenazze in Lombardy, northern Italy. This is the third so-called enigmatic tablet found in the Lucone D sector, the 21st tablet to be discovered at the overall Lucone site.

The tablets, usually made of clay but sometimes of stone, feature incised lines and impressions of geometric shapes including triangles, squares and circles. The oldest of the tablets are predominately characterized by impressed dots.

They have been interpreted as possible calendars, counting tools, or forms of proto-writing. A ritual function has not been ruled out either, extending to the hypothesis that they might have been used as a sort of sacred amulet. One of the most intriguing interpretations today, however, links them to the management of trade, suggesting a function comparable, in some respects, to modern shipping documents used to identify specific goods (perhaps metal).

In addition to northern Italy, enigmatic tablets have been found in Switzerland, Germany and the Danube-Carpathian Basin area in southeastern Central Europe. The largest single concentration of them has been discovered at the Lucone di Polpenazze site.

Located close to Lake Garda, the Lucone di Polpenazze site is now a shallow basin, but in prehistory was a small lake housing at least five distinct pile dwelling settlements occupied from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. The Lucone D sector is a small pile-dwelling village from the early Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dating of the oak logs used to build the houses on stilts dates the village to 2034 B.C. The distribution of the houses indicates they were built over the full lake, not when the water was low, attesting to the engineering prowess of the community. Archaeologists also discovered that household waste was ejected off the platforms the houses were perched on creating a layer cake of organic remains

What makes Lucone D exceptional among the other pile dwellings at the site is that the village was struck by a catastrophic fire which destroyed the homes but carbonized and preserved many materials that would normally have decomposed. Wooden sickles, loom weights, linen fragments, seeds and the remains of food in a ceramic bowl have survived in carbonized form. The conflagration even preserved some of the sun-dried clay of the dwellings, firing it as it were in a kiln.

* This article was originally published here

What happened to Harry and Meghan's American dream?

Harry and Meghan enjoyed some showbusiness success, but their Hollywood reign proved short-lived.

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What happened to Harry and Meghan's American dream?

Harry and Meghan enjoyed some showbusiness success, but their Hollywood reign proved short-lived.

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Rare intact 17th century drawing book donated to Rijksmuseum

An exceptionally rare drawing book from the early 17th century has been donated to the Rijksmuseum by the family who has owned it for more than 300 years. Very few drawing books from the period have survived intact because individual drawings were more saleable so the pages made much more money when sold piecemeal. The books were taken apart, bindings destroyed, and the pages scattered.

The Van Eeghen Drawing Book contains about 30 full-page drawings of biblical scenes, some on blue paper, and smaller studies of figures and animals. They are in exceptional condition, because unlike drawings that were cut out of their bindings, the pages inside the book were almost never exposed to light.

The book is named after the Van Eeghen family who treasured the intact book, handing it down through the generations for more than three centuries without selling a single drawing, even though neither they nor anybody else knew who the artist was. It was only very recently, about 20 years ago, that C.P. van Eeghen (1921-2014) saw a drawing by Rombout Uylenburgh in the Rijksmuseum collection and connected it to one in the book.

Rombout Uylenburgh (1580/85–1627/28) was born in Leeuwarden, in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. His family moved to Kraków when he was still a boy and he grew up to become painter at the court of Polish King Sigismund III. He moved to Danzig in 1612 where his career continued to thrive. He specialized in grisailles, monochrome paintings in shades of grey.

After Rombout Uylenburgh’s death, he quickly fell into obscurity, even as his family became ever more prominent on the business side. His brother Hendrick, who had worked for Sigismund III as a commercial agent acquiring art works for the king, moved to Amsterdam and became Rembrandt’s art dealer. Rembrandt’s wife Saskia was one of Rombout and Hendrick’s cousins.

There is no documentation of how the Van Eeghen family acquired the book, but there’s a hint on the binding: an inscription in gold lettering reading “Konstboeck voor Reyer Claessoon” (“Art book for Reyer Claessoon”). Reyer Claessoon was a prominent member of the Dutch community in Danzig when Rombout Uylenburgh lived there. He and Uylenburgh were both Mennonites, so almost certainly knew each other personally. The Van Eeghen family were also part of the Danzig Mennonite community. This is likely the path the book took.

Only two drawings by Uylenburgh are known to survive, one of which is in the Rijksmuseum collection, plus a handful of his paintings, so the Van Eeghen Drawing Book is now one of the stand-out treasures of the Rijksmuseum Print Room Collection. With a loan from the Rembrandt House Museum, the Rijksmuseum has brought together most of the surviving works by Uylenburgh for a special exhibition introducing the drawing book and the little known artist to the public.

* This article was originally published here

'This star is for Africa' - Angélique Kidjo on making Hollywood Walk of Fame history

The musical icon from Benin tells the BBC about why Africa and Africans are so important to music.

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