World History

Forgive the scepticism, a claim is made on a yearly basis, but there is a story in today's Herald that the site of the Battle of Mons Graupius, the first recorded battle in Scottish history, between the Romans under Agricola and the native tribes under Calgacus in AD83/84, has been found. Despite stringent efforts by experts, the site of the battle between the Romans and the Caledonians – in either 83AD or 84AD – has never been conclusively identified. However, Mr Haseler believes his research strongly points to the battle taking place near Elgin, at Quarrelwood Hill to the north-west of the town. He is now asking that experts pay closer attention to the site and examine what he believes to be a possible Roman fort a short distance away. From his research and examining the formation of aerial crop circles, Mr Haseler believes he has discovered the fort just south of Elgin. "I knew the site was a really good candidate from looking at old maps, but I never thought I would find what appeared to be the ditches of a Roman fort staring out at me from the computer screen," he said. "I have looked and looked at the evidence, and everything fits. "I have been to the site, and it is just as described by the Roman writer Tacitus and, barring going up with a metal detector, which is clearly illegal, there is nothing else I can do but present the evidence I have for the public to decide." Hmmm. Anyway, full story here. More about the battle here.

On this date in 1891, U.S. President Benjamin Harrison settled a death penalty case from the remote Navassa Island by granting a commutation. Back in the 19th century, islands stacked high with guano were worth their weight in bird crap. The phosphate-rich dung piled meters-deep in some places, and could be mined for agricultural fertilization and for use in gunpowder and explosives. In 1856, Congress even passed a Guano Islands Act empowering skippers to plant the stars and stripes on any of these lucrative little turd reefs they happened to run across. That’s how the U.S. came to possess, for instance, Midway Island … and more than 100 other islands as well. Most of these claims have long since been ceded, but a few remain today. One of them is (still!) Navassa, a three-square-mile speck off the coast of Haiti, 100 miles south of Guantanamo Bay. Today, Navassa is uninhabited and administered by the Department of the Interior on somewhat disputable footing. (Haiti, just two miles away, also claims Navassa.) But in the late 19th century, its sweet, sweet guano was being extracted by a Baltimore-based firm known as the Navassa Phosphate Company. This operation employed 137 African-American laborers, moving groaning shitloads of product by raw muscle power under a blistering tropical sun … and under 11 white overseers. The nature of the assignment — an island very far from the nearest American settlement, with no other industry, community or settlement to repair to — made taking a job on Navassa almost like hitching on somewhere as a sailor: you were off to a little floating dictatorship, with no way out until the end of the contract. Navassa’s overseers turned out to have a taste for the cat o’nine tails, and worse. “The conditions surrounding the prisoners and their fellows were of a most peculiar character,” Harrison noted in his eventual commutation order. They were American citizens, under contracts to perform labor upon specified terms, within American territory, removed from any opportunity to appeal to any court or public officer for redress of any injury or the enforcement of any civil right. Their employers were, in fact, their masters. The bosses placed over them imposed fines and penalties without any semblance of trial. These penalties extended to imprisonment, and even to the cruel practice of tricing men up for a refusal to work. Escape was impossible, and the state of things generally such as might make men reckless and dangerous. Or, as a naval inspection judged it, Navassa resembled “a convict establishment without its comforts and cleanliness”: people being worked brutally to the bone during their contract, eating rancid rations and living in filth. Not surprisingly, Navassa’s “convict” laboring population rebelled in 1889, and in a vicious hour-long riot slew five overseers while maiming several others. Warships calling on the island shipped 18 back to face murder charges; ultimately, three black guano-miners were sentenced to death for the affair.* However, a huge clemency push spearheaded by the Baltimore-based black fraternal organization the Grand United Order of Galilean Fishermen raised the cry to spare the condemned men. Guano harvesting resumed after the riot, but was aborted in 1898 by the Spanish-American War; the Navassa Phosphate Company fell into bankruptcy, and although the U.S. later threw up a lighthouse on Navassa to aid Panama Canal-bound vessels, it’s been effectively uninhabited ever since. * The appeals arising from the Navassa conviction generated the 1890 Supreme Court case Jones v. United States, affirming Navassa’s American territoriality, and establishing Congressional jurisdiction over violations of U.S. law that didn’t take place in any particular state. This bit of jurisprudence has turned up all over the place in the century-plus since it was issued.

Washington, D.C., circa 1943. "Potomac Electric Power Co. substations. Brightwood station car barn." Photo by Theodor Horydczak. View full size.

July 1941. "Street scene in Chicago Black Belt." Old-school fixie. 35mm negative by Edwin Rosskam for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

One of my favorite posts last year was about a model of a guillotine made out of animals bones by a Napoleonic prisoner of war in England. Britain had a surfeit of prisoners from France and other countries who fought on Napoleon’s side during the late 18th, early 19th century. An estimated 100,000 Napoleonic prisoners were in British hands between 1793 and 1815 because of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic policies against the ransom or exchange of prisoners. Prison hulks had nothing like that capacity, so a number of prisoner of war camps were built in England, the first permanent POW camps of their kind. These camps weren’t the extreme hellholes that prison hulks were, but they were still overcrowded, wet and subject to epidemics like Typhus. British authorities allowed the prisoners to make crafts and sell them to supplement their miserable existence. Since many of the prisoners were conscripts rather than professional soldiers, they had work skills from their civilian lives and were able to create rather exceptional pieces. The working model of a guillotine carved from discarded bones is one of them. Beautifully appointed model ships were also popular. Two of those ships are coming up for sale at Bonham’s Fine Maritime Paintings and Decorative Arts auction on June 5th in New York. One is a model of a 76-gun French ship-of-the-line made out of bone. The other is a boxwood model of a British 76-gun ship-of-the-line. Both were carved around 1800 and are amazingly elaborate. The boxwood model is valued at least $2,000 higher than the bone one because of how crazy fancy it is: in a diorama format with the hull built up from the waterline, a painted green bottom, the topsides painted in alternating bands of black, pink and white, and black topsides fitted with a figure head of a Roman warrior, at the stern the quarter galleries and transom are modeled with windows, cut and pierced and decorated with a geometric pattern. The decks are of veneer with the planking lines drawn in and detailed with: anchor, cannons on carriages, pin and fife rails, capstan, railings, ladders, belfry, hatches, deck eyes. At anchor, one anchor rode is run out into the sea as if the ship were anchored. Rigged with three masts, bowsprit, standing and running rigging, turning blocks, cross spars, tops and trees, and dead-eyes and other rigging details. Displayed on a carved and painted sea, framed by an ornately decorated and drawn acanthus base, within a mahogany and glass case with carved front columns and a foliate frieze over the top. The bone ship is slightly less fancy, but no less amazing: possibly Le Maroc [name on transom barely legible], the hull built up from the solid and planked in bone, between the gun decks are raised bone strakes which were painted black, brass guns fitted to the topsides and decks, chain plates and dead-eyes, polychromed figurehead of a warrior, carved and pierced stern and quarter galleries with verdigris copper details, head rails, pin and fife rails, scored planking for the decks, open well deck, guns on carriages, taff rail, and other details. Rigged with masts, yards, standing and running rigging, spars, stun’sail booms, and other details [rigging in need of attention]. Set into a bone and wood base with a painted sea [distressed] giving the impression of a waterline model. I’m partial to the bone one both because I’m just a fan of bone art in general and because you can really see that it was made out of bits of carved bone. On the other hand, it does not have a Roman legionary figurehead so the boxwood model clearly wins on that score.

An earlier GeoCurrents post on Chechnya mentioned that the Chechens were deported from their homeland in the North Caucasus to Central Asia in February 1944. However, the Chechen nation was not the only one to suffer such a fate under Stalin’s regime. He took to gerrymandering the country’s ethnic map by moving whole nationalities around like chess pieces on the board.This post is from GeoCurrents

1948. "Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus." Color transparency for Look magazine by the future film director Stanley Kubrick, who manages to make this look like an avant-garde Coke ad. View full size.

As in other years, the New Acropolis Museum is going to have free admission & various special events to celebrate International Museums Day on May 18th. From: Kathimerini (English Edition) Friday May 17, 2013 Celebrating International Museum Day around Greece Museums around the country celebrate their past, present and future this weekend as a number of local cultural institutions take part in festivities marking this year’s International Museum Day. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) established International Museum Day back in 1977 in an effort to raise public awareness with regard to the key role played by cultural organizations in societies. The annual celebration usually takes place around May 18. According to an ICOM estimate, 32,000 museums in 129 countries took part in last year’s festivities. This year participating institutions will be exploring the theme of “Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change,” tracing the evolution of institutions as they combine their rich heritage with innovation. In Athens, the Acropolis Museum (www.theacropolismuseum.gr) celebrates International Museum Day on Saturday, May 18, with the museum’s doors opening at 8 a.m. until midnight and free admission for all. On the day, archaeologists will acquaint visitors with the fighting cock, the competitive ideal for athletes and fighters in ancient times and the motif behind the museum’s 2013 commemorative medal. During the tours conducted by the archaeologists, visitors will learn more about how as early as the beginning of the 5th century BC, “alektryonon agones” (cockfights) took place annually at the Theater of Dionysus. The 20-minute tours are limited to 25 visitors per session and will take place on a first-come, first-served basis. Those interested in participating are invited to visit the museum’s information desk. Talks are scheduled to take place in Greek at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. noon, 1 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. They will be in English at 10.30 a.m., 12.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. A French tour has been scheduled for 4 p.m. Festivities will conclude in the museum’s entance courtyard with the Orchestra of the Center of Arts and Culture of Dion performing Greek and foreign works starting at 9 p.m. In the northern port of Thessaloniki, the city’s archaeological museum (www.amth.gr) is hosting an opera evening on Friday, May 17, followed by a series of guided tours of its temporary exhibition “Trafficking of Antiquities: Stop It,” on May 18 and 19. Events marking International Museum Day are also taking place at the city’s State Museum of Contemporary Art (www.greekstatemuseum.com) and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (www.mmca.org.gr). At the Benaki Museum (www.benaki.gr), International Museum Day will be celebrated from May 17 to May 19. On Friday, May 17, the museum pays tribute to the Crete University Press, as part of a series of events highlighting the efforts carried out by organizations promoting culture outside major urban centers. The event will feature talks by National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation president Dionysis Kapsalis and Benaki Museum director Angelos Delivorrias, among others. Inspired by International Museum Day’s 2013 theme, the Benaki Museum celebrates 35 years of creativity at the institution’s shop and invites visitors on a behind-the-scenes journey tracing design from antiquity to the present on Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19. The tribute includes a series of workshops complemented by an exhibition which runs to July 28. Lectures, guided tours, live music and free admission (until 11.30 p.m.) are on the agenda at the Archaeological Museum of Delphi on Saturday, May 18. The institution was selected by the Hellenic Committee of the International Council of Museums as this year’s honored museum. Museum-goers are also invited to join a guided tour of the area’s celebrated archaeological site on Sunday, May 19, starting at 9.30 a.m. At the Byzantine & Christi

My Friday likes today:Eagle Fibula: gold, enamel and sapphire circa 1000A favourite artefacts website this one, belonging to photographer Genevra Kornbluth. There are so many interesting and beautiful things to browse.Genevra Kornbluth The terms of use for the photographs are set out in the website.2. When I'm writing, I will either chew gum or indulge myself with the occasional Yorkshire Mixture. These are small boiled sweets that come in a variety of flavours - raspberry, blackcurrant, orange, lemon, lime, barley sugar, pear drop, aniseed, cough sweet, mint, pineapple. There's something for everyone! Yorkshire Mixtures3. Sookie Stackhouse. I'm just in the middle of reading the last book in the series Dead Ever After. They were recommended to me by a reader friend in the USA well ahead of the TV series hype. Although I write historical fiction, or perhaps because I do and need a break, I often tend to read outside my own genre, and I've thoroughly enjoyed this series by Charlaine Harris. It's pure entertainment. I'm not even going to call it a guilty pleasure because it's not. I've loved the journey. I really enjoyed Wolf Hall; it's a five star read, but even so, I preferred Sookie! Not keen on the covers, but that doesn't matter!

Archaeologists at Bonn University are looking for a Roman harbour near Bonn using sonar. Story in the General-Anzeiger: Mit einem speziellen Flachwasser-Sonar suchen die Wissenschaftler nach Spuren von Häfen aus der Römerzeit bis hinein in das erste Jahrtausend. "Wir vermuten, dass sich Anlandestellen unterhalb des Drachenfels in Königswinter und im Bereich des früheren Legionslagers in Bonn befunden haben" sagt Archäologin Heike Kennecke. "Man darf sich das so vorstellen, dass es große Häfen gegeben habe, aber auch kleine Anleger, ähnlich dem des Bonner Rudervereins", erklärt Jan Bemmann, Direktor des Instituts für Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie. Full story here. It sounds likely. Not only does it fit the pattern of where Roman harbours in the area were situated, the Roman camp at Bonn was massive - around 62 acres.