Bricks and Mortar and Water – Part 2

This is Part 2 (Part 1 here), which may or may not extend into Part 3 (spoiler: it will! (spoiler: most likely but no promises)).

Anyway, I arrived at the aqueduct, and was duly impressed:

Here’s an attempt to get the full length in one photo.
© rq, All rights reserved.

Getting closer to the brick texture here.
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View from the other end – it was definitely a shifting light kind of day.
© rq, All rights reserved.

Of course, where possible, I have to climb onto things, so here’s a view back towards the mountains. I walked quite a distance across the top, but not all the way – some few metres along, the arches seemed slightly too damaged to risk (that mossy-grassy patch in the photo, actually), and my formerly brick-laying Lithuanian colleague agreed.
© rq, All rights reserved.

There were also figs.
© rq, All rights reserved.

Now I don’t actually remember what I was going for in this photo…
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… but my Lithuanian colleague was kind enough to take a photo of what I looked like taking it.
© rq’s Lithuanian colleague, All rights reserved.

A window into the world.
© rq, All rights reserved.

That’s all for Part 2, then – Part 3 will take a closer look at the decrepit brickwork and the arches, because there’s a few interesting things, if you like that sort of thing. :)

Bricks and Mortar and Water – Part 1

It’s been a while since I put up some pictures of Macedonia – I did promise the aqueduct, and I’d hoped to pull myself together before my final trip to Skopje in June, but alas! It is July and here is the aqueduct.

First, a short background:

The Aqueduct is located in the village of Vizbegovo in the northwestern part of Skopje, about 2.5 km to the right of the Skopje-Kachanik road. It is a part of a water-supply system with a length of about 10.0-10.5km from the piping at the Lavovac spring, between the villages Gluovo and Brazda, all the way to the Upper Town of Skopje Fortress-Kale.The Skopje Aqueduct is the only aqueduct in Macedonia, and one of three largest and well preserved in the former Yugoslavia along with Diocletianus Aqueduct near Split, Croatia and Bar Aqueduct in Montenegro.

What’s interesting is that nobody seems entirely sure on when it was constructed:

Considering the period of its construction there are several hypotheses:

-during the reign of Rome (1st century), according to this theory Aqueduct has led the water to Legionary settlement Scupi

-during the reign of Byzantine Empire (reign of Emperor Justinian I), according to this theory, Aqueduct shipping water to new settlement Justiniana Prima.

-during the reign of Ottoman Empire, according to this theory Aqueduct is built in 16th century for a large number of Turkish public hamams.

Wikipedia concurs (for what it’s worth), while other sites push the Roman angle.

In numbers, we get:

The Aqueduct has 2 access ramparts, 53 pillars, 54 base vaults and 42 smaller vaults on the closed and open discharging openings above the pillars. The overall length of the Aqueduct is 387.98m, at an elevation of 279.46m of the southern rampart and 280.48m of the northern rampart, or a delevelling of 1,025m.

… which all sounds impressive enough, and the minimum of info was enough to get me interested (also considering it is reasonably close to Skopje itself, and my Lithuanian colleague and I were up for the walk – 5km in early March is quite nice).

Well, it was an interesting walk, as the straightest route goes through a military facility and thus was closed to members of the interested public, and the circuitous route has… no sidewalks along heavily trafficked roads.

This is actually on the way back, we took a slightly different route, but looking across the river Vardar, you can see the road along which we walked – up top is the militarized territory, and yeah, that road has no sidewalks. It looks quite a bit more daunting from here.
© rq, all rights reserved.

Towards the end of the walk, we got some traffic relief, as there was an older parallel road for a few hundred metres.
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The aqueduct curves to the left, the gated road is the exit we would have taken had we walked straight through the militarized territory. At this point of the walk, I was quite angry with Google Maps, though I can only blame myself for searching “shortest route”.
© rq, all rights reserved.

The final piece of our route took us through one of the poorer areas in or near Skopje. Afterwards the locals told us this is not an area foreigners should walk through, but besides some rather suspicious stares and wondering faces, I didn’t feel too bothered.
© rq, all rights reserved.

And there it is in the distance, the first real glimpse of the aqueduct!
© rq, all rights reserved.

I’m going to stop there for now, because the rest is the actual bricks and mortar (very little water) and I still have to decide if the number of photos I took counts as over-abundant or not. The risk of going somewhere interesting, I suppose. :)

Archaeological Museum of Macedonia – Part 2: Other Shiny Things

Coins is nice, but the Museum has a few other exhibits – it’s not a large museum or particularly stunning in its collection, but I liked the feel of it. I do have some commentary about the art depicting life in the Stone Ages, though. About half the population seemed to be missing in most paintings, and you can probably guess which half.

But the exhibit design was, as with the coins, quite interesting:

© rq, all rights reserved.

I did not take photos of everything, as it was mostly different kinds of pottery and metalwork, but allow me to present a few of my favourites:

Looking altogether too happy, if you ask me! © rq, all rights reserved.

An absolutely stunning piece of glasswork. © rq, all rights reserved.

The design of these cloakpins seemed oddly familiar. © rq, all rights reserved.

© rq, all rights reserved.

And this! Was a piece of musical notation from a few hundred years ago. Religious music, if I recall correctly, and I find it fascinating. And I’m curious as to how it should be interpreted. © rq, all rights reserved.

You can read more about the museum itself here.

Surrounded by Rocks: An Exploration Series, Chapter 3

It’s time for the next Chapter in Nightjar’s series.

Chapter 3 – East Hill: Fauna of the Past

Fossil hunting!

I’ve had more luck in other trips, but it’s always easy to find some fossils, especially of ammonites. These are Early Jurassic sediments, laid nearly 200 million years ago. In primary school, I remember participating in a few school trips to this hill. I either imagined or saw a classmate discover a fish fossil, but the rock was too big to carry with us. We went to call the teacher and the rest of the group but when we came back, we couldn’t find the rock we had seen. At least that’s how we told the story afterwards and it still occasionally comes up in get-together dinners. Did that really happen or was it the result of the fertile imagination of a group of 7-year-olds? I’m afraid we’ll never know, but I always remember this story when I visit this place and I’m still secretly searching for that mysterious fish fossil. Sadly, I didn’t find it this time either.

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[Read more…]

Youtube Video: Pictish Crossbow – discussion and shooting

I would love to someday to build a crossbow. It definitively is on my ever growing to-do list.

Not that I feel particular inclination to be armed, but the simple yet not easy to make mechanism of a crossbow (or even a bow) intrigues me.

Tod Todeschini not only makes crossbows, he also likes to share his extensive knowledge about them. Here he uses that knowledge to speculate a bit about how pictish crossbows could look like.

Amsterdam: Below The Surface.

Peter N. sent this amazing project to me, and it’s absolutely fascinating!

In Amsterdam there’s a public works project going on which has involved draining a river. Archaeologists have been able to search through many feet of sediment for artifacts – which date back 800 years. There’s a wonderful website which describes the project in detail here: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/pagina/de-opgravingen-index

… and one of the pages is a catalog of over 11,000 finds, with beautiful photos and descriptions, arranged in chronological order: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondsten

It just thrills me to think that every single one of those objects comes with a story, which, unfortunately, is lost forever – a lovers’ quarrel, a picnic, a flood, a missed arrow shot…

I feel the same way  as Peter. Seeing small pieces of history always makes me wonder about all the people and their lives. Peter chose one particular piece for me, and was spot on, I love it!

I’m going to be spending some time gawking at all the amazing things found in this streambed archaeology!

Neanderthals Have Done It Again.

Panel 78 in La Pasiega cave, which includes red horizontal and vertical lines that date to more than 64,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens arrived in the area (photo by C.D Standish, A.W.G. Pike and D.L. Hoffmann used with permission).

Panel 78 in La Pasiega cave, which includes red horizontal and vertical lines that date to more than 64,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens arrived in the area (photo by C.D Standish, A.W.G. Pike and D.L. Hoffmann used with permission).

Neanderthals have done it again. They’ve reminded us Homo sapiens that we’re not as creative, original, or special as we’ve thought for the past 150 years. Last week, archaeologists published two astonishing reports that provide the most compelling evidence to date that our evolutionary cousins not only had the cognitive wherewithal to create art — specifically cave paintings — but they also did so well before modern humans entered the European Pleistocene.

In the journal Science, an international team of archaeologists reported that three caves in southeastern Spain — La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales — contain cave art that’s at least 64,800 years old. These sites are not new or unknown to archaeologists. But pinning down exactly when the cave art was painted has been a problem for decades. (The La Pasiega panel was originally sketched by researchers in 1913.) Dating experts, working in conjunction with archaeologists, developed a new set of techniques, carefully sampling geological material near the art in order to pin down the most likely time of painting.

The results have rocked the archaeological world, because the paintings appear to predate the arrival of modern humans in Europe by 20,000 years. In other words, the art comes from a time when the area was only occupied by Neanderthals.

Exciting! You can read and see much more, and there’s video at Hyperallergic.

Bronze Age Insight.

Due to the seal’s small size and veining on the stone, many of the miniature details are only clearly visible via photomicroscopy. (all images Courtesy of The Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, and used with permission).

Due to the seal’s small size and veining on the stone, many of the miniature details are only clearly visible via photomicroscopy. (all images Courtesy of The Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, and used with permission).

Drawing of the detailed combat scene captured on an agate sealstone discovered by the University of Cincinnati’s Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis. (images Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati).

Drawing of the detailed combat scene captured on an agate sealstone discovered by the University of Cincinnati’s Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis. (images Courtesy Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati).

The piece of stone may only be a little over 1.4 inches long (~3.5cm), but the meticulous detail of the carved scene featuring three warriors in hand-to-hand combat is a stunning display of ancient artistic skill and it may challenge our perceptions of naturalism in the Ancient Aegean era.

[…]

Jack Davis, who is one of the excavation’s co-leaders, suggests the find is unprecedented. “What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” Davis explained to UC Magazine. “It’s a spectacular find. … Some of the details on this are only a half-millimeter big,” he said. “It seems that the Minoans were producing art of the sort that no one ever imagined they were capable of producing. … It shows that their ability and interest in representational art, particularly movement and human anatomy, is beyond what it was imagined to be. Combined with the stylized features, that itself is just extraordinary.”

The source for the battle scene may not be clear, but researchers believe that the miniature battle must reflect a legend that was well known to the people of the region. The tomb also held an intact skeleton, which UC researchers have labeled the “Griffin Warrior” for the discovery of an ivory plaque depicting a mythical griffin. The 3,500-year-old shaft grave also includes more than 3,000 objects, including four solid gold rings, silver cups, precious stone beads, fine-toothed ivory combs, and an intricately built sword.

You can read more at Hyperallergic, and definitely check out the Griffin Warrior.

A Medieval Porpoise.

Here is the video of an interesting archaeological discovery on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue near Guernsey. Earlier this week Phil de Jersey, working for Guernsey Archaeology, posted news of finding the skull of a juvenile porpoise in the graveyard of a small monastic site.

The porpoise is believed to date from the fourteenth-century, and de Jersey adds that it looks to have been buried deliberately, based on the way the grave was cut.

He tells the Guernsey Press, “That is what puzzles me. If they had eaten it or killed it for the blubber, why take the trouble to bury it?”

In another interview with The Guardian, he suggests one possibility deals with religious observation: “The dolphin has a strong significance in Christianity but I’ve not come across anything like this before. It’s the slightly wacky kind of thing that you might get in the iron age but not in medieval times.”

Via Medievalists.

Medieval Shipwrecks in the Black Sea.

A shipwreck from the medieval period, of a type known from literature but never previously seen, was discovered during an underwater survey of the Black Sea this past summer. UConn researcher Kroum Batchvarov says seeing it for the first time was ‘a truly thrilling moment.’ (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).

While conducting their mapping in late summer using the most advanced underwater survey equipment in the world, Batchvarov and his colleagues discovered a total of 43 shipwrecks. The team had expected to see sunken ships, but were surprised at just what they found.

An Ottoman period shipwreck with well preserved wood carvings. The images, which show the shipwrecks in three dimensions, were produced by a process known as photogrammetry. It combines photographs and videos taken by cameras mounted on remotely operated vehicles with distance measurements produced by sonars. (Courtesy of Kroum Batchvarov).

Batchvarov first spotted the well preserved medieval shipwreck on a screen in the control room of the expedition ship after nearly 48 hours of monitoring images from the high remote survey vehicle moving along the floor of the Black Sea.

“That was a truly thrilling moment. We spent the next six hours looking at the wreck. No one had ever seen anything like it,” he says. “We had known of it. There have been descriptions in Venetian manuscripts that survived from the 15th century describing earlier vessels. But this was the first time that we were seeing it.”

The ship was complete, according to Batchvarov: “The masts were still standing. You could see the spars [wooden poles], the yards on deck. Everything was there.”

[…]

The vessels the Black Sea MAP team discovered date over the course of a millennium, from the 9th to the 19th centuries. Many were merchant ships from the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries, mostly from the 18th century. But the medieval ship – dating from the 13th to the mid-14th century and probably of Mediterranean origin – provides the first view of a ship type known from historical sources but never before seen.

[…]

While analysis of the shipwrecks is ongoing, the team continues with its intended purpose, investigating the area for evidence of how humans reacted to changes in the environment in previous eras.

“We are answering an archaeological question: At what stage did the level of the Black Sea change and what once would have been marshy coastal land become inhabitable and then become inundated?” Batchvarov says, noting that the team’s findings could add to previous studies on catastrophic flooding in the Black Sea region.

You can read and see more here.

Perfectly Preserved: 400 Year Old Sac of Fluke Eggs.

Jing Lee, a 17th-century Korean mummy. D. H. Shin, Y.-S. Kim, D. S. Yoo.

Jing Lee was born in 1580, during Korea’s long-lasting Joseon dynasty, and died in 1642, at the age of 63. At some point in his long life, he ate a raw, freshwater crustacean, in one form or another. Most likely, he was indulging in a fresh, seasonal treat—raw crabs with soy sauces—or was trying to rid himself of disease, with a dose of crayfish juice, thought to help treat the measles. (Joseon food culture was not to be trifled with.) However, as it happened, his crustacean meal left a lasting legacy in his body: a sac of liver fluke eggs growing happily in his liver, as Haaretz reports.

Four hundred years later, as part of a parasitology study of pre-modern Korean societies, a team of scientists found that egg sac mummified on Jing Lee’s liver. They report their findings in a new study in the Journal of Parasitology.

You can read all about this fascinating find at Atlas Obscura.