You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2014.
Hadrian’s Wall
Nick Clark, Arts Correspondent for The Independent, reports that the Hadrian’s Wall Trust is due to fold within six months due to lack of funding –
Hadrian’s Wall Trust revealed it is to close this week, with a series of organisations scrabbling to put funding in place to ensure one of Britain’s most famous monuments can be adequately maintained in the long term.
Linda Tuttiett, chief executive of the Trust, said: “We hope and pray resources can be found to keep the heritage site safe” after confirming that funding cuts had forced the trustees to close the seven-year-old organisation. “The future is uncertain. Everyone is committed to finding a solution, but it has still not been finalised and nobody has got any money.”
Full article here.
REMNANTS – 2k DCP – OFFICIAL TRAILER – 01 from GRANT WAKEFIELD
In one of the longest continuous cultural developments ever known, for nearly 3000 years the people of the Neolithic era constructed some of the most enduring monuments in the world – standing stones and stone circles. Having been dismissed for centuries by much of academia as the work of “illiterate barbarians,” research in the 20th and 21st centuries by a handful of persistent investigators has revealed these Megalithic sites to be not only amongst the oldest, but perhaps the most profound.
Little is known of this civilisation, and its people have all but vanished without trace. All that is left are their remnants, and they too, in the crush of ‘progress’ are disappearing.
Photographed throughout the UK and Ireland, and set to an original 5.1 music score by Thorsten Quaeschning (of Tangerine Dream and Picture Palace Music), REMNANTS captures the essence and austere beauty of these sites, suggests and reveals their purposes, and poses an important question to our own contemporary position.
History has proven repeatedly that no civilisation can last indefinitely. Is it not unlikely that we shall share the same fate?
Read more here. The film can be seen at the Palace Cinema in Devizes, Wiltshire England on Saturday, 19 April 2014. Doors open at 12:45pm and the screening will start promptly at 1pm. Director Grant Wakefield will answer questions about the film after the screening. For details and booking visit the Wiltshire Heritage Museum website here.
Every year the International Council on Monuments and Sites celebrates the International Day for Monuments and Sites, the establishment of which was approved by the 22nd UNESCO General Conference in 1983 –
The aim of the International Day for Monuments and Sites is to encourage local communities and individuals throughout the world to consider the importance of cultural heritage to their lives, identities and communities, and to promote awareness of its diversity and vulnerability and the efforts required to protect and conserve it.
The 18 April is celebrated all over the world by a wide range of organisations and many ICOMOS National and International Scientific Committees. Events include scientific conferences and symposia, exhibitions, photography competitions, excursions, press conferences, the awarding of prizes, releasing press releases, publishing magazine articles and projecting films, among others.
The theme for this year’s celebration is Heritage of Commemoration. More here.
The Staffordshire Hoard: Unveiling the story so far…
Video History West Midlands
The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found. In this film we find out about the first stage of conservation work on the artefacts …and what secrets have been revealed.
From History West Midlands. See also the Staffordshire Hoard website. Though not connected directly to the Staffordshire Hoard this may also be of interest (click on photo for details) –
An example of Anglo-Saxon folded (woven) sword steel in the Sutton Hoo Exhibition Hall at Sutton Hoo, Woodbridge (see LS’ comment above)
Image
The Heritage Trust
One of the ‘subsumed’ stones under the south-east buttress of St John the Baptist Church, Pewsey, Wiltshire England. Did this stone once form part of a stone circle?
©
The Heritage Trust
Solace in Stone
Seek them out, search out the Ancient Ones. Stones of Salutation. Solstice and Symmetry
Stones of Mystery. Millenniums and Magnetism. Stones of Ancients. Augurs and Alignments
Stones of Loneliness. Lunar and Leys. Stones of Ghosts. Gnomic and Geometry
Stones of Destiny. Druids and Direction. Stones of Elementals. Equinox and Equations
Stones of Ceremony. Celts and Chronology. Stones of Hypocrisy. Hedonists and Harmonics
Find their Sanctuary, find their Solace. Pitted with time, grey and ochre patched
Yet smooth as silk where hands have rubbed. In fields, woods, valleys, bog, bracken and bramble
Standing, fallen, broken, smashed by the Church. No matter their magic felt through centuries and time
For they have seen death, life and the stars. Sit in their majesty, turn and look back
See the horizons. Mothers, mapped out. Look on in wonder, best all alone
For then you will find Solace in Stone
T J Ackley
The ancient site of Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey
Video the Global Heritage Fund
The Global Heritage Fund reports that –
Göbekli Tepe is an Early Neolithic site of enormous significance, featuring 5-meter-high monolithic pillars carved in relief and dating to 10,000 or more years ago. Erected within circular “temple” structures, the latest excavations have revealed that these structures likely covered the entire hillside and could number as many as 20 in total. Göbekli Tepe has been interpreted as the oldest human-made place of worship yet discovered. Until excavations began, a complex on this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient. The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic. The oldest occupation layer (stratum III) contains monolithic pillars linked by coarsely built walls to form circular or oval structures. So far, four such buildings, with diameters between 10 and 30m have been uncovered. Geophysical surveys indicate the existence of 16 additional structures.
However, the site and its extant remains are threatened by looting, exposure and insufficient management of the site and its resources. GHF’s goals at Göbekli Tepe are to support the preparation of a comprehensive Site Management and Conservation Plan, construction of a shelter over the exposed archaeological features, training local community members in guiding and conservation and aiding Turkish authorities in securing World Heritage Site inscription.