THE TRIANGULAR BULL - Plastic Metamorphosis Art

Reblogged from balkancelts:

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One of the most interesting Celtic artifacts to have ‘wandered’ into the Varna Museum in northeastern Bulgaria is a bronze zoomorphic head. Recently published by Vincent ‘Disney’ Megaw and the Thracologists Mircheva and Anasstassov, this bronze mount is executed in the Celtic ‘Plastic Metamorphosis’ style common across Europe in the La Têne B1 – C2 period. The plastic metamorphosis style in Celtic art is characterized by the blending of human, animal, plant, and abstract forms; complex compositions incorporating various forms of symmetry, resulting in stylized, often grotesque, images.

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Mystery Photograph

Mystery Seaside Town

Some of the old photographs and glass plate negatives in our archive have no labels and we are having trouble working out where they were taken. Do you recognize this British seaside town? The glass plate photograph was taken in about 1910. Was the photographer standing on a pier to take the picture? How much has the seafront changed since this picture was taken?

The Congregational Meeting House, Witney c. 1930. Photo: Stuart Piggott

Another mystery – solved. We knew that this photograph, taken by archaeologist Stuart Piggott in c.1930, was of a building in Witney, Oxfordshire, but where? One of our volunteers did some sleuthing, and discovered that it is the old Congregational Church, built in 1828, and demolished in 1976 to make way for a supermarket. Thanks, Roelie!

 

The Second Paul Jacobsthal Public Speaking Competition

Congratulations to the team from Oxford Spires Academy! They won the second Paul Jacobsthal Public Speaking Competition held at Christ Church College, Oxford last week. A big congratulations, too, to everyone who took part. The standard was, once more, incredibly high.

Special thanks to the students from Chenderit School who worked s0 hard to organise the event – great job! – and to Christ Church for looking after the teams. Extra thanks to  inspirational teacher Johnathan Briggs, and to everyone who contributed to the workshops.

The Chenderit organisers introducing the competition. Photo: Megan Price.

Thank you!

A big thank you to Dr Brendan O’Connor for his generous gift. We look forward to using the donation for conserving and cataloguing part of our Christopher Hawkes archive relating to his work in Bronze Age archaeology. Professor Christopher Hawkes (1905-1992), who founded the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford, was an eminent prehistorian and was also instrumental in gathering material for the archives at the Institute. Keep an eye out for further information on the Hawkes project in the New Year.

Thank you also to all our volunteers and everyone who has helped us in the archives in 2012 – we appreciate your help!

 

Martyn Jope and the history of archaeological science

Front and back cover of Programme and Abstracts from the first International Symposium on C-14 and Archaeology held at Groningen in 1981, with Martyn Jope’s pencilled notes.

Professor Martyn Jope of the Queen’s University, Belfast was active in the promotion of archaeological science. He was one of a group of scholars who developed and promoted research in radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis, collagen and molecular archaeology. Our small archive of Jope’s reserach notes, correspondence, offprints and other material relating to archaeological science has now been catalogued by our fieldwork student, Charlotte Robinson, and the outline of the archive is available at http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/files/institute/Martyn%20Jope%20Archive.pdf. This archive is the history of archaeology in the making….

Movember diggers

We came across this photograph in our lantern slide collection and thought of Movember! There are some excellent beards here too.

We think this picture was taken round about 1900, but we have no more information about it at all. Who are the people? Where are they digging? What were they digging? Who took the photograph?

If you can shed any light on this picture, we would be grateful.

Tracking the future of the past

We want to find out what has happened to the places pictured in our lantern slide collection. How have they changed over time? Have buildings been restored, damaged or destroyed? How have the landscapes around them changed? Have roads been added, or walls taken away?

For example, this is the Pyramid Tomb of Cestius at Rome. Do you know what it looks like now? We think the photograph was taken in about 1910 – do you know differently? How much in this photograph has changed over time, and when did the changes take place? Let us know if you have answers – help us to build up a heritage timescape of ‘then’ to ‘now’ by sending us pictures or information.