WAC-6 3rd Day

Since I was talking of ancient musical instruments yesterday, I thought I post a photo of a spring in Dublin featuring a modern vision of trumpa players:

Today was the mid-conference excursion into the Boyne valley. Our first stop was the Neolithic Passage Tomb cemetery of Knowth:

These are two of the beautifully decorated kerb stones of the main tomb:

Next stop was the monastery Monasterboice, an early Christian centre of great importance in the area. Founded by St. Buite in AD 521 it is most famous for it's 10th century high crosses. This is the Muirdach high Cross from 923 with scenes from the Old and New Testament:

But there were also comical scenes, like the two men pulling at each other's beard:

This is the tallest high cross from all of Ireland. It is 7 m tall but unfortunatley much more weathered than the Muiredach cross. In the background you can see the 35 m tall round tower, which served as bell tower, a storage room, or a refuge:

After lunch we visited the valley where the battle of the Boyne took place. The Battle of the Boyne between King William III and his father-in-law, King James II, was fought on 1 July 1690. It is the best known battle in English and Irish history or so I was informed. Well, at least I learned the differnce between a matchlock and a flintlock gun.

Next was the famous passage tomb of Newgrange where we could go through the very narrow passage into the small main chamber. Most of the decoration in this tomb is on the inside and not so much on the outside as at Knowth. However, the entrance block is a wonderful piece of art.

WAC-6 2nd Day

First some photos of Dublin, because it is really beautiful. This is one of its colourful pubs in the Temple Bar District:

Viking conscience in the pavement of Essex Street, a spear tip, combs, and a strike-a-light:

But now back to the WAC conference. The day began too early as usual, but was nevertheless very interesting. The first session was about trackways, their role in daily and ritual life and so on. Some pretty interesting finds came up in the last years, including the earliest Bronze Age block wheel in Ireland. Which is interesting in itself, because wheels found near trackways are a kind of conundrum since most trackways were not suitable for wheels. A second exciting find has been made in Ballycahill where a surface made of huge stoneboulders, filled in with cobbles, has been excavated. The sheer size of the boulders and the platform (164 x 27 m excavated so far) is awesome. It is tentatively dated to the Neolithic, however, no absolute dates exist so far. But the ritual´Neolithic mound of Tullahedy, a Neolithic flint mine, and the love for stone monuments in this period makes it probable that the platform is somehow related to this important Neolithic centre, too. The only object discovered on this huge site so far is a stone phallus.

http://www.nra.ie/Archaeology/WAC-6/Tuesday1stJuly/LisaDoyle/

During lunchbreak Simon O'Dwyer presented replicas of Irish musical instruments from the late Neolithic (Wicklow pipes) to the late Iron Age (Loughnashade trumpa):

He then played the instruments to make us 'die of joy' like in the Tain Bo (Leinster cycle): Then they played, sweet and sad was the playing, twelve of Ailill's men died, as they heard... but none of us died, so maybe he still has to practise a little bit. Here you can see him performing on a middle Bronze Age horn:


Have a look at his webpage with soundsamples http://www.prehistoricmusic.com/
I even had time to go to my favourite artisan, Iain, the potter:


Although he is specialising in replicas of Irish Late Stone Age and Bronze Age pottery, he also does a variety of prehistorically inspired artwork. Here is one of his little druids:

If you happen to come to Dublin. His Bronze Age pots are available at Whichcraft Gallery, Cow's Lane, Dublin 2.

The afternoon session was about deposits in bogs and lakes and included everything from the bodies on crannogs over the medieval Fadden More Psalter to deposits in a volcanoe lake in Mexico.

An interesting but exhausting day is over. Yaaaaaahwn............

Dublinia and UCD

Yesterday I also went to the very touristy Dublinia Viking exhibition:

Nothing special here, the usual grim Viking wax figures and a couple of replicas, including this Viking Wodan; weeell......

Next to Dublinia is Dublin Cathedral which I couldn't visit since there was a mass. I definitly have to return next week.

This is the UCD (Universtiy College Dublin) lake in the middle of the campus. Quite nice to have lunch there when the sun is shining. You know the weather changes here every 10 minutes but in general it is very nice and there was no rain at all today.

The conference is on a very tight schedule. 4500 participents in four or more parallell sessions. Sometimes its hard to choose because a lot of interesting topics are covered. This morning I went to a session about agency and ontology theory in archaeology and the afternoon was reserved for all things rock art. The lectures about excavation near rock art sites was especially interesting and a lot of parallels emerged on sites from all over the world.

During lunch break there was a memorial lecture for the late Peter Ucko which I had to attend, since he was the head of department at the UCL when I spend my third undergraduate year in London.

Not even the breaks give you any time to relax because outside are performances from potters, bronze casters, flint knappers, musicians and so on. The potter promised to put on his Viking gar tomorrow, so I will be back to have a nice photo from him.

Dublin

Yesterday night I arrived at Dublin and this morning I hurried to Dockland to see the Sea Stallion (a fully functional Viking ship replica) being launched for its trip to Denmark. Sadly I didn't make it in time, I missed it by an hour. This is the place where it anchored, nice anyway:








After my first dissapointment I used my time to do some sightseeing, since I wont have the time during the conference (WAC-6). This is the Record Tower from Dublin Castle:



and this is City Hall Square:

This is Dublin City Civic crest, three castles in flames:

And here we have the sorry excuse of a Viking market. I was a bit disappointed, or even more than a bit. Dublin is such a famous Viking town, so I expected something sensational. But a couple of stands with some weaving demonstrations was all

At least some people in garb fought more or less authentic. After I visited York's Viking Festival once, I must say this couldn't compete at all. What a pity.

"Nothing On"

Last Friday we thought we should improve our minds a little bit by going to the theatre. Can't hurt once in a while. So off to Mannheim we went. The university theatre from the 'English language and literature' seminar performed a very entertaining piece by Robin Housemonger: "Nothing On". But this is actually just the play in the play. The title should be 'Noises Off' rather. Anyway, it was very well done and really funny. Have a look at their webpage, it is not too late yet:

http://www.atg-mannheim.de/noises/index.php

Photo by Gareth Tynan

It has the additional advantage that the theatre is set in a wonderful location, the Mannheimer Schloss:

Honey, HMF and Discounters

Now that the new honey season soon begins, I would like to share some thought about food quality and why it is important to not always buy the cheapest things in your life. We have only one body and we shouldn't think of it as a furnace which will burn everything down to trash.

HMF (HydroxyMethylFurfuraldehyde) is used as an indicator of heat and storage changes in honey.

HMF levels over 40mg/kg in honey (which show heat treatment or bad storage at high temperatures, the quality is thought of as unsuitable. Many sugar type products (e.g. Golden Syrup, Molasses etc.) have levels of HMF that are 10-100 times that of honey. Many food items sweetened with high fructose corn syrups, e.g. carbonated soft drinks, can have levels of HMF between 100 and 1,000 mg/kg.

Although this is played down as harmless, a journal of the European Food Safety Authority sees this differently:

In addition to the above mentioned pathways, 5-hydroxymethylfurfuraldehyde can

be bioactivated to 5-[(sulfoxy)methyl] furfural, through sulfonation of its allylic hydroxyl functional group, catalyzed by sulfotransferases. The resulting ester has been demonstrated to induce genotoxic effects.

The EFSA Journal (2005) 215

Therefore heat treated honey, most common in super cheap discounter quality, but also products containing corn syrup or glucose syrup (most evident in all highly processed baked goods, sweets, and soft drinks) don't do your health any good. Therefore, buy less of these things, save your money and buy real good quality as a treat now and then. And it also helps keeping you in shape :)

Frost Saints or Eisheilige?

In Germany its pretty cold at the moment, well, there is no frost that would justify to call these days 'Eisheilige', but still, it's way too cold for May. And it must be even worse in England, so I'm lucky I'm in Germany at the moment. Last week when it was still warm and sunny, we went to Schwetzingen, which is not too far from Heidelberg and enjoyed the castle and the park surrounding it.




It has been a while since I was there and I didn't remember how lovely the park is (kitchy, yes, but still...)


Swans, ducks, and geese already walked around with their offspring.....

And I couldn't remember at all that there is a mosque in castle park:

Three tiger-babies killed in Magdeburg Zoo

Three tiger-babies were put down in a zoo in Germany because their father wasn't purebred. The statement from the zoo says:

Im Februar erhielten wir eine Email aus dem Londoner Zoo und dem neuen zuständigen EEP Koordinator Malcolm Fitzpatrick, dass neue genetische Untersuchungen ergeben haben, dass unser Kater kein reinerbiger „Sibirier“ ist, sondern einer seiner Vorfahren ein Sumatra-Tiger war. Sumatra-Tiger werden als eigene Art geführt. Insgesamt sind 31 weitere Tiger in Europäischen Zoos von dieser Hiobsbotschaft betroffen. Der Magdeburger Kater wurde mit dieser Meldung mit sofortiger Wirkung von jeglicher Zucht ausgeschlossen. Die Katze war zu
diesem Zeitpunkt jedoch bereits trächtig. Die Zucht reinerbiger Tiere, vor allem auch sehr seltener, hoch bedrohter Arten ist eine der obersten Ziele der nationalen und internationalen Zoogemeinschaft. Mischlinge (Hybride) sind in jedem Fall zu vermeiden.

Basically, London Zoo found out in a genetic research that the father of the tiger-babies, Taskan, was not purebred. Whereupon he not only was immediatly sterilized, but also his babies were killed, since the main task of a zoo were breeding of purebred animals, which are endangered.


Well, I always thought we should breed pure Indians in the zoo, because they are an endangered species, too. Had we had zoos in prehistory we would still be able to admire Neanderthals, because we would have bred them in the zoo, too. Purebred of course, that goes without saying.

A trip to London

Sometimes I just can't help going to one of my most favourite cities in the world, after all it's just half an hour by train away. A must is a visit to my new favourite health food shop in Kensington High, Whole Foods Market. Check out their webpage for recipes:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/UK/kensington/index.html
Their salad bar and hot meals are so yummie......

A second must go in terms of food is my favourite (again) sushi-to-go shop, the Wasabi in Oxford Street. Vegetarian sushi and o-nigiri galore and there is a nice little park at the end of Marlybone Street where everyone is sitting around and having lunch (if it's not raining). A perfect spot to enjoy your sushi. But check out their website, too, because it has funny little videos about sushi-etiquette.
http://www.wasabi.uk.com/

But today I didn't go this little park, instead I went all big and went to Hyde Park:

I even found modern 'megalithic art' in Hyde Park:

After some tiring shopping (spring finally came to Southern Britain and demanded for lighter summer clothes) I had a stop-over at St. Pauls, but there was a BBC thing going on and most of the area around the cathedral was roped off , therefore only a really bad photo of the not roped-off part:

And last but not least a nice pub sign:

You see, London is always worth a visit.....

Vaisakh Festival in Reading

Today I was untimely disrupted in my sleep by noisy drumming and chanting. Well it was nearly 12 o'clock so I can't really complain. The reason was the annual Vaisakh Festival. Vaisakh is the most important festival in the Sikh community and therefore they might be forgiven for disturbing my sleep. After all I would still be unaware of this important festival in our Indian coummunity here in Reading. Originally it signified the end of the harvesting, in case you are wondering they celebrate the end of the harvest in Punjab and this all over the word, hence the ill-timed period of spring in the Northern hemisphere.

It also celebrates the birth of Guru Arjan Dev, which was on the 15th of April 1563, and therefore a huge procession will be just fine.

I didn't even had to leave my house for watching the really long procession. Here are some shots from my bedroom window:

After a group of drummers a couple of people swept the street with brooms, so the following bare-footed and praying priests wouldn't crush any life-form crawling on the street. After that two waggons followed and after those a huge crowd of Sikh people. Believe me it took a while until they all passed. The last part of the procession was a waggon that picked up elderly people who couldn't walk any further and they climbed up on the wagon with a ladder.

Much Admired campus of my former University in Heidelberg

Even if University of Heidelberg is not among Germany's so-called elite universities, at least the French seem to love our science campus in the Neuenheimer Feld; have a look at this video:

http://videos.tf1.fr/video/news/0,,3837766,00-visite-campus-modele-heidelberg-.html

Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers in Reading

Yesterday I went to Taiko concert in Reading.The Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers consist mostly of Scottish players and although they really knew how to play the drum and their choreography was flawless it just wasnt the same as a real Japanese Taiko Drumming Band. They turned the concert in a kind of théâtre nouveau with mummed groupies gesticulating in a wild manner and playing brass cymbels and chime bells until they crossed the pain barrier. Well, it just wasn't the real thing.

(c) www.taiko.co.uk

But the most frightening experience was the audience with children runnning around and shouting, babies crying, and a couple of mentally disabled people grunting and screaming during the performance. Before I go to a Taiko concert again, please remind me of NOT going to Reading's Hexagon and to absolutely avoid non-Japanese people playing Taiko.

Back in Reading

It's exam time in Reading! I am lucky I am not in that lot anymore :)

Here is a crowd of students in front of our Dolce Vite café on the campus. Happy to have finished at least one exam.

Oldest animation is 5200 years old

In southeastern Irania a bowl with a jumping goat has been discovered in a 5200 year old burial in the 1970s. Several years later, Iranian archaeologist Mansur Sajjadi, discovered that the pictures formed a related series. Now an animation has been reconstructed from the 5 depictions of the goat. This would be the oldest cartoon in the world :)

Source: http://www.cais-soas.com/News/2008/March2008/04-03.htm

Magic Loaf Designer

Today, I came across a nice webpage to create a vegetarian loaf with your own fav ingredients. It's from 'Vegan Lunch Box' blog and it looks very tempting. I guess I will have a celery-bean loaf this weekend LOL.


Try it out for yourself:


http://www.veganlunchbox.com/loaf_studio.html