A fragment of gold runic inscription
I have been asked if images of my wee find can be used in the latest edition of Wiðowinde, which is the journal of Ða Engliscan Gesiðas (The English Companions).
Their website is here Ða Engliscan Gesiðas
This runic fragment is of great interest to a society of Anglo-Saxonists and the images will be used in a short report in this journal.
Look forward to seeing the magazine!
The Dome of the Rock
I found this clip when surfing the web this morning beforing cycling into work. This is some rare footage obtained by an Israeli from inside the Mosque. I went to Al-Aqsa back in 1996 whilst working for the Combined Caesarea Expeditions, but ran out of money after dancing all night in the Underground Nightclub. So I missed out……. So anyway, “Ynetnews presents rare, exclusive video of holy site, currently closed to Jews, after Israeli able to sneak camcorder into Mount. Ynetnews – News – Exclusive: Temple Mount tour”
Enjoy, if you like that sort of thing.
The Scheme has also been featured in the Express with a story about Roman Gladiators in G strings. These all appear with dodgy pictures of men who should know better about wearing thongs.
A basic overview:
“A fragment of Roman pottery [Nene valley with barbotine decoration] depicting a gladiator wearing nothing but a g string and carrying a whip was reported to PJ Walton by two divers diving in the River Tees at Piercebridge. “
It then made it onto ITV’s “This Morning” and has caused much mirth whereever it appears. So PJ has now been associated with socks and thongs and Romans. Anything else to declare PJ?
media/thismorning2.jpg
And the offending pottery fragment:
The Scheme was mentioned in today’s Daily Telegraph regarding a Papal Seal otherwise known as a “bulla” dating to AD 1224. This isn’t a rare find to say the least, and it is surprising it has made a broadsheet.
This object can be found on our database as DENO-954E42.
The Scheme has recorded 48 Bullae, details of which can be obtained from our database.
The PNDS website
MLA, our administering organisation launched their new online services from England’s public libraries yesterday, entitled the People’s Network. This is quite a colourful aggregator for information from disparate sources. Sort of an HEIRNET type idea, or online portals.
I’ve found a few critical comments from Paul Miller today about this resource and I can see where a lot of these are going. For example: Thinking about the Future.
This facility is largely based on OAI techology, not something I am a great fan of. Our data was meant to be included, but I am not sure if this actually happened in the end, as their developers were having problems with their syntax for searching our database. The Scheme is actually missing from their links for archaeology, which is surprising.
MLA’s press office released their take on events here and we’ll no doubt here more in the future. I’ll add some pictures to this thread later on after I get access to the press area.
Coin of Domitianus
One of the Scheme’s objects has just been featured in the American Institute of Archaeology’s magazine, aptly titled “Archaeology”. This documents the discovery of the Domitianus coin, which you may hear more of come November 9th! I’ll let you wait for that!
Finding a Lost Emperor in a Clay Pot
The article does mention the Treasure Act, but probably points to the wrong place for it, the CBA pages. Instead they would have been better off sending them to our treasure pages which explain it for the layman.
I think Ian Leins will be amused that the numismatist or conservator has been called an archaeologist, as he is adamant that he is not and will never be an archaeologist. The BM’s department of Coins & Medals webpages have their take on this coin here.
I just saw this story in my home town’s paper when looking at the rugby results for the University. Not terribly interesting I’m sure you will say.
“An archaeologist who dug up his patio when it began to sink made an astonishing discovery.
Simon Timberlake, 49, noticed the subsidence in the back garden of his house in High Street, Fen Ditton, and out of professional curiosity, as much as concern for the safety of his home, began excavations.
Digging deep: Simon in the shaft
Now he has unveiled a mine shaft plunging at least 5m into a chalk bed beneath the patio, which opens up into a cavernous space below.”
The Scheme, ALGAO and the NCMD have been locked in discussion with each other for the last couple of years over the publication of findspots on the internet. This was recently resolved and the transfer of data is due to happen shortly when the XML schema download functionality is finally installed by OAD.
I have created a webpage detailing which HERs have signed up to this agreement and this can be found at http://www.finds.org.uk/research/datatransfer/hers
I’ve just upgraded the gallery system on our main website to Gallery version 2.0. This is another open-source product developed over the last 2 years by some really talented chaps. It is an exceptionally good product and really easy to use and install. You can even use plugins to integrate with WordPress. I might do that next!
If you want to get hold of the software, head over to http://gallery.menalto.com/ and download version 2.0
Pretty straight forward once you get going, you will need the following though to get it to work:
Platform – UNIX (BSD, Linux, …) or Windows
Webserver – Apache, IIS, Zeus, …
PHP – PHP version 4.1.0 or greater, PHP safe_mode must be turned off
Image Processing Library – In order to automatically generate thumbnails and resized versions of your photos, Gallery requires either ImageMagick or NetPBM. Gallery 2 additionally supports GD and GraphicsMagick
Database (Gallery 2 only) – MySQL 3.x or 4.x, PostgreSQL 7.x, Oracle 9i or 10g (Gallery 1.x does NOT require a database)
I’ve now been using zoomify on this website for about 9 months, and it is proving to be extremely useful for looking at high resolution images of artefacts. The best examples of how I have used it can be found within the Roman coins and Medieval and Early-Medieval coins sections of the finds.org.uk website.
Michael Shanks has now started to make use of this tool as well, and I noticed a test example for this last night. It will be interesting to see how he uses it.
There’s some big institutions making use of the fully commercialised version (I just go for the free one as we’re strapped for cash!). For example:
We’ve also developed an application that also allows for zoom and pan technology to be used in our database! I think it has been quite successful, with a database of over 76000 images with this capability.
The content contained within the Blog's pages do not represent an official position from any of the organisations associated with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. They are solely those of the post's author.
