6 ms·
‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians
- thot_experiment 4y agohttps://archive.vn/isn0r https://archive.vn/isn0r
- unsupp0rted 4y ago> The necklace, believed to belong to a devout medieval woman, almost certainly an aristocrat, shines new light on the spread of early Christianity through medieval Europe and offers a glimpse into the role played by elite women in forging England’s Christian identity, experts say. This doesn’t sound dazzling, even to experts. Article titles like this always get my hopes up for “we have to change all the textbooks”, but it almost never happens.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> “This woman probably belonged to the first generation of English Christians in this part of England,” Francis Young, a historian of religion who was not involved in the excavation, told The Post. “This is people wanting to show off their newly acquired identity as Christians.” Artifact interpretation is always so tendentious. Lots of people wear necklaces with a cross pendant today. They are mostly not trying to show off their newly acquired identity as Christians.
- rhn_mk1 4y agoMost people wearing necklaces are not first generation Christians. After you eliminate those, why are the remaining necklace-wearing ones doing it?
- tommica 4y agoBecause its a pretty necklace?
- rhn_mk1 4y agoFor generic necklaces yes, but when we're talking about necklaces with a religious symbol on them, I'm not so sure.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoI'm pretty sure though; many people wear or use religious symbolism without being religious themselves or aware of it being a religious symbol. (not just physical items like jewelry, think behaviours or sayings as well).
- ceejayoz 4y agoWe should at least consider the possibility that a domain expert may have knowledge not included in that single sentence given to a reporter.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThis is exactly the idea that I'm pointing out is false. You should not consider that possibility; that is not the way interpretation of archaeological artifacts is done, particularly when talking to reporters.
- eckmLJE 4y agoI think you may be misreading this. This isn't about some person becoming a new Christian. It's about a member of high society wearing a cross during a turbulent period of competing peoples within Britain shifting from paganism to Christianity, at a time when religious symbolism was central to (synonymous with?) political symbolism.
- UncleMeat 4y agoExperts in all fields are dazzled by stuff that laypeople don’t find exciting. “We have to change all our textbooks” is a ridiculous bar.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoIt’s not a ridiculous bar for “once in a lifetime” “dazzling” discoveries. It’s hard to be impressed by “here’s a necklace that changes nothing”.
- JadeNB 4y ago> It’s not a ridiculous bar for “once in a lifetime” “dazzling” discoveries. As a mathematician, there are plenty of my discoveries in my field that are once in a lifetime and dazzling (to specialists) that would be meaningless to the average mathematics undergraduate student, much less changing textbooks.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoIs there an example in mathematics of a once in a lifetime dazzling discovery that doesn’t change anything?
- JadeNB 4y ago(Sorry for the long delay in responding—I was “posting too fast”.) > Is there an example in mathematics of a once in a lifetime dazzling discovery that doesn’t change anything? That doesn't change anything? No, probably not. But that doesn't change undergraduate textbooks? I'd imagine it's harder to find a once-in-a-lifetime, dazzling mathematical discovery that does change them. (RSA encryption, maybe, although that was famously at least twice in a lifetime, RSA being re-discoverers of classified work.) I think of Fermat's last theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Wiles's_general_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem#Wiles'... ) and the bounded-gaps results on primes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap#Upper_bounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_gap#Upper_bounds ), both of which will surely be mentioned in new editions of good textbooks, but neither of which is likely to change the actual mathematical content of those textbooks. And these are just the ‘popular’ ones! For a long list of others, one can look at Fields-Medal work. In my own area, there is the recent proof of the fundamental lemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_lemma_(Langlands_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_lemma_(Langlands_p... ), which is unlikely to be suitable even to be stated in any but the most advanced textbooks.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoIt seems strange that they're so sure it's from the seventh century given the Roman coins on it. Maybe they're what help date it? I'd be interested to know who's depicted on them, what they say and what language is used.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> It seems strange that they're so sure it's from the seventh century given the Roman coins on it. Maybe they're what help date it? I would guess the coins are much older than the necklace -- the alternative would be that they're from the Byzantine empire -- and the necklace is being dated based on the grave in which it was found.
- tokai 4y ago>alternative would be that they're from the Byzantine empire The alternative to the coins being Roman is that they are Roman?
- Altho00 4y agoI think that the point was that when most people refer to 'Romans' they usually mean western roman empire. But by the 8th century that wasn't a thing anymore so an alternative is that they could have been from the eastern roman empire. I guess that's really a non-question since identifying those coins would be trivial for the archeologists
- jaclaz 4y agoTo nitpick, cannot say if it comes from the journalist writing the article or from the archeologists, the jewel seems to sport a cross, not a crucifix.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tokai 4y agoTo nitpick - you are wrong. A crucifix is the cross of Christ. It can still be a symbol of Christ's crucifixion while "just" being a cross without any Christ handing on it. The whole value of finding of the pendant that it shows very early Christian iconography in England.
- joshuaissac 4y agoIt can refer to any cross used for crucifixion, but in the context of Christianity, a crucifix is understood to have a figure of Christ. Example usage on a Catholic site: https://www.catholic.com/qa/wrong-to-wear-a-bare-cross https://www.catholic.com/qa/wrong-to-wear-a-bare-cross https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Cross_and_Crucifix https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/...
- mbg721 4y agoHow to annoy Catholics: start a sentence with "It can still be a symbol while just..."
- hacknewslogin 4y agoTo nitpick - you're both wrong. It's a square made of four smaller squares. Or maybe we're all right and art is subjective, who knows.
- treis 4y agoTo further nitpick you're all wrong. The large ornate cross is not the necklace: >WHAT ELSE WAS FOUND? >The necklace is only part of this amazing burial and x-raying the soil blocks lifted from the site revealed further incredible finds. >Most excitingly, we found a large ornate cross with inset garnets and smaller crosses at the end of each arm. While it is still being micro-excavated, the x-ray clearly shows its incredible design. https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-lifetime%E2%80%99-1300-year-old-gold-and-gemstone-necklace-discovered-within-internationally https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-lifetime%E2%80%99...
- defrost 4y agoThe December 7th, 2022 MOLA blog post (the progenitor press release) here: https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-lifetime%E2%80%99-1300-year-old-gold-and-gemstone-necklace-discovered-within-internationally https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/%E2%80%98once-lifetime%E2%80%99... Twit release: https://twitter.com/MOLArchaeology/status/1600482150935134212 https://twitter.com/MOLArchaeology/status/160048215093513421... The earlier site geophysics and excavation field reports can be found (as an exercise for the reader) with a bit of searching.
- joshuaissac 4y agoThe excavation was part of the preparation to build a large number of new homes not far from where I live,[1] so I hope they find all of the artefacts before they build over it. 1. https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-and-gardens/more-than-400-homes-ready-to-be-built-as-part-of-new-housing-development-on-edge-of-northampton-3454848 https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/homes-and-garde...
- otikik 4y agoI hope this key piece of British history gets exhibited in a place where everyone can enjoy it, like the The Prado museum in Spain.
- AntoniusBlock 4y agoWhat's wrong with British museums?
- misnome 4y agoIt’s a joke based on the fact that British museums are full of looted foreign artefacts.
- davidwritesbugs 4y agoThink it's a jab at the British "stealing" other people's historical artifacts and displaying then in British museums.
- rajin444 4y agoI took it as a jab at modern Britain having a lot more people (% of population) who’s ancestors didn’t preserve much history, which implies a risk of the same pattern occurring.
- yboris 4y agoI wonder why you wrote "stealing" with quotes. Presumably this is exactly what they did in numerous (majority?) of cases.
- rsj_hn 4y agoI mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you can, but in most you can't. Say you have the necklace of some Pharaoh. OK, who is the rightful owner? The present day Arabs inhabiting Egypt, who conquered it? Or the Greeks who conquered it before then? Or the Romans? Or the "ancient Egyptians" (this refers to many people, as Egypt was conquered several times by many different groups). So then your fallback position is, "we don't know which 'people' the necklace should belong to, but we know which government it should belong to -- the present day government of Egypt, which is the current government occupying the geographic area where the necklace was made. It belongs to that government." We can call this the "occupying government" (OG) theory of ownership. It doesn't matter that that the present day Arabs were invaders number 50, but because they presently occupy the land, they own the necklace. Let's explore the consequences of this rule: When Britain controlled that territory, that meant that it was the rightful owner -- since by the OG logic the rightful owner is whatever government was in charge at the time -- and it moved the necklace to a museum in London, which the owner has a right to do with their property. But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to colonial governments - not to white people. Only legitimate governments can benefit from the OG rule", to which I would answer 1) "How were the Arab invasions legitimate? How were the Egyptian dynasties legitimate? They also ruled by force and enslaved their populations". 2) If your ownership rule is the OG but it's nullified if you believe (somehow) that a government can be illegitimate, then you create a situation in which the antiquities have no owner -- since the previous government doesn't exist, the original racial group is gone, so who is the owner if you are not going to follow the ownership laws of the government in charge? So really at the end of the day, these types of arguments boil down to not liking the behavior of the UK in Egypt, which is fine by me, but they are not objective arguments if you try to apply the same standards of property ownership across thousands of years to all governments that would remove antiquities -- which is basically every government in history, whenever they found something beautiful and shiny, from the Romans carrying back booty to the Pharaohs carrying back booty, some of which was turned into beautiful jewelry.
- slowhand09 4y agoSometimes taking something and preserving it is not a bad thing. Anyone recall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan? I'm pretty sure thousand or 10 of thousand of Egyptian artifacts were looted, probably quite often by Egyptians. Take at look at many regions of the African continent. When ethnic groups or even groups they perceived themselves different would wipe out tribes or societies, artifacts were taken or destroyed.