Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Rule, Britannia! makes people uncomfortable

Sheku Kanneh-Mason believes the song should no longer be included in Last Night of the Proms.

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Women buried with elaborate neck rings found in Ukraine

The remains of women buried with thick twisted bronze neck rings have been discovered in an 11th century cemetery near the village of Ostriv south of Kyiv, Ukraine.

The 11th-century cemetery is located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Kyiv. Of its 107 graves, “most of the identified burials were deposed in wooden coffins,” Vsevolod Ivakin and Vyacheslav Baranov, both archaeologists at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, wrote in a paper they presented at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, which was held Jan. 4-7 in Chicago.

The cemetery’s dead include both men and women. Some of the men were buried with weapons, such as axes, spearheads and swords, Ivakin and Baranov wrote. A few of the women were buried with elaborate neck rings, which “are found only on necks in female burials and were apparently a kind of social marker,” in this region at the time, Baranov told Live Science in an email.

An expedition by the Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine discovered the Ostriv graveyard in 2017. Between 2017 and 2022, excavations unearthed the 107 inhumation burials dating from the late 10th and 11th centuries. The unique nature of the graves was quickly apparent. Unlike the unusual funerary practices in the Kyivan Rus during this period, the graves were oriented south and west instead of north.

The deceased were laid in supine position (on their backs), with outstretched limbs. Traces of wooden coffins were found in most of the graves. The remains of funerary food offerings (chicken bones, eggshells) were found in the graves and in wooden buckets at the feet of some of the deceased. Some individuals were laid to rest with extremely rich goods: slate spindle whorls, jewelry, including the bronze neck rings and bracelets, pennanular brooches, cast bronze belt rings, cowrie shell bead necklaces, and weapons including battles axes, knives and spearheads.

The orientation and funerary furnishings were very similar to the practices of Western Baltic tribes, but the comparison was not exact. Most notably, the Western Baltic peoples typically cremated their dead, and none of the Ostriv graves were cremation burials. Buckets are also not typical of Baltic funerary traditions. Archaeologists hypothesize that these key differences may be attributed to restrictions placed on traditional funerary practices by the Christian dukes of Kyiv, primarily Volodymyr the Great (r. 980-1015) and Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019-1054), and by the process of Christianization of the Baltic settlers of the region during the 11th century. A stone altar found in the cemetery could have been used for Christian or pagan rituals, or a mixture of the two.

Excavations at Ostriv (and everywhere else in Ukraine) are on pause for now due to the Russian invasion.

* This article was originally published here

Alec Baldwin faces fresh manslaughter charge over 'Rust' shooting

A New Mexico grand jury has charged the actor anew over the on-set shooting death of Halyna Hutchins.

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Alec Baldwin faces fresh manslaughter charge over 'Rust' shooting

A New Mexico grand jury has charged the actor anew over the on-set shooting death of Halyna Hutchins.

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Charmian Abrahams: Crossroads actress, 96, killed by delivery van

Charmian Abrahams's family say they are devastated she died "so suddenly and tragically".

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Charmian Abrahams: Crossroads actress, 96, killed by delivery van

Charmian Abrahams's family say they are devastated she died "so suddenly and tragically".

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Lost 4,000-year-old tomb rediscovered in Ireland

A local folklorist has discovered the remnants of a Bronze Age tomb that was believed to have been destroyed in the mid-19th century. The megalithic structure known as Altóir na Gréine (the altar of the sun) was built on top of a hill outside the village of Ballyferriter, County Kerry, about 4,000 years ago. It was a wedge tomb, a funerary monument containing the cinerary remains of a family or community group but may also have been used for other ceremonial purposes. This style of tomb is typically oriented to the west or southwest and may have had a cosmological connection to the setting sun, hence its traditional appellation.

It was still intact in 1838 when it was visited as a local attraction by Victorian writer and world traveler Lady Georgiana Chatterton. She recounted her visit, complete with a sketch of the “sun altar,” in her best-selling travel memoir Rambles in the South of Ireland.

On the top of the hill were the remains of a very curious piece of antiquity, once an altar, supposed to have been used for offering sacrifices to the sun. We heartily wished we could have had an opportunity of telling the sun, before hand, of our intention of visiting his altar; for a more thick, penetrating rain I think never was experiences, than fell to our lot while poking over the remains of the old stones, and taking the sketch which is here given.

Inspired by Lady Chatterton’s record of her ramble, Kerry antiquarian Richard Hitchcock visited the hill site in 1852 seeking what he called the cromleac (literally “bent stone” meaning a megalithic tomb with two standing stones topped by a capstone) that she had sketched.

I regret to say that this cromleac, or, as Lady Chatterton calls it, “sun altar,” does not now exist, the stones which composed it having been broken and carried away for building purposes, as if there were no others in the neighbourhood! It is, however, fortunate that we have even a small engraving of the monument preserved to us.

That last line proved prescient. The location of the lost tomb disappeared from collective memory and nobody had ever noted its coordinates when it was still apparent on the landscape. It was Lady Chatterton’s sketch that bore mute witness to its presence 185 years later when folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn came across megalithic stones on a tomb-mapping project on the Dingle peninsula run by Sacred Heart University. He was very familiar with the drawing and specifically had it in mind when he climbed the hill looking for the long-lost Altóir na Gréine and filmed the stones he saw there.

When converting the video into a 3D scan he noticed that a stone in the undergrowth resembled one from Lady Chatterton’s Victorian-era sketch.

He sent the material to the National Monuments Service in Dublin, which dispatched archaeologist Caimin O’Brien, who confirmed it belonged to a so-called wedge tomb dating from the early bronze age between 2500BC and 2000 BC.

There is a capstone and several large upright stones called orthostats, comprising about a quarter of the original tomb, Mag Fhloinn said on Thursday. “People had assumed it was all destroyed.”

* This article was originally published here

Strictly tour offers new adventures for celebrities

The live show begins on Friday in Birmingham before visiting a host of other UK venues.

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Strictly tour offers new adventures for celebrities

The live show begins on Friday in Birmingham before visiting a host of other UK venues.

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Ulfberht Viking sword dredged out of Vistula river

A Viking-era sword bearing an Ulfberht inscription was discovered last week during dredging works on the Wisła river in Włocławek, central Poland. The sword is more than a thousand years old. Even heavily encrusted and blackened by years spent at the bottom of a silty river, the three lobes of the pommel are clearly discernible, categorizing it as a Petersen Type S sword which typically date to the 10th century.

The sword was found by workers removing the alluvial sediment that had built up on the floor of the marina basin. An oblong metal object was spotted in the pile of extracted sediment and a quick rinse revealed it to be a sword. An X-ray of the sword found the inscription “+VLFBERHT+” on the blade.

There are about 170 Ulfberht swords known. Characterized by the inscription +VLFBERHT+ or +VLFBERH+T on the blade, because “Ulfberht” is a Frankish name, the swords are believed to be of Frankish origin, likely from the Rhineland region. They were manufactured from the 9th to the 11th centuries using a variety of metalworking techniques. Most of them have been found in Northern Europe, Russia and the Baltic states. Only eight of them have been found in Poland

Petersen Type S swords were often covered in organic materials like leather or rope at the hilt, materials that could very well have survived the centuries in the anaerobic conditions of the river sediment. The Provincial Office for the Protection of Monuments has delivered the sword to researchers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University who will study, clean and conserve it. Once it has been conserved, it will become a permanent addition to the collections of the Museum of the Kuyavian and Dobrzyń Lands, and will go on display at the Włocławek History Museum

* This article was originally published here

Anger and sadness over Pitchfork merger with GQ

Senior staff have lost their jobs as the music website merges with the men's magazine.

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'Renaissance figure' Lesley Lokko awarded architecture's Royal Gold Medal

Ghanaian-Scottish architect and educator Lesley Lokko receives the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture.

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What is behind the TikTok thirst for Stanley water cups?

People are camping outside supermarkets in the US to try to buy the latest internet on-trend item.

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