At Schauhuette, the last part about the current excavation in the church has been posted. It's part four, though it will be less interesting for those of you who do not understand German, since it's mostly explanations, no more time-lapse excavation bits.

In completely other news, I have discovered a new programme that is quite useful for freelancers, or for anyone else who wants to track computer-use time. It's called ManicTime, the smaller version is free, and it tracks the applications that you open and how long you spend on them. No starting or stopping of a time-tracking tool needed, plus you can see how long you procrastinated by hanging out on facebook or reading webcomics or whatever.

And while I'm at it, here's another very useful tool: AntiTwin. It looks for file duplicates in one or more folders and has a really convenient possibilities to sort out files for deletion. Freeware for private users too - life is good.

You remember the post about the actual digging out of a skeleton? A second part of this has now been put online by Mattis Hensch of the Schauhuette:




And there's one more video of the anthropological examination of the skeleton as well - you find the link to the video here.

If you are interested in Vikings and Viking Archaeology, you probably know that there is L'Anse aux Meadows, a Norse or Viking settlement in Canada. This was the first, and up to now only, known proof for the arrival of the Norse in Vinland (that's how they seem to have called the fabled continent way, way over the sea).

Now I have stumbled over an article published in National Geographic, and there is a second settlement where finds very, very strongly indicate that it was not made by indigenous population. The finds are from Baffin Island, in Canada, far above the Arctic Circle and north of Hudson Bay. Archaeologist Patricia Sutherland looked at the finds, made in the 1980s by a missionary, in the archive of a museum in Quebec in 1999 - and found out that the yarn which was part of the finds is a match for thread finds from the Norse colony in Greenland. Since the indigenous people of Baffin Island did not spin, this is the first very strong hint it was a Norse colony.

Recent excavation in the place seem to corroborate this - they found whetstones. But isn't it nice that the yarn finds opened up the way?

My lovely colleague Mattis Hensch (who has the Schauhuette blog) has done it again and made a wonderful video-blog that is really worth watching. It's the first part of a time-lapse of how a skeleton is dug out.

The grave is in the choir of the previous church, a Romanesque building, of St. Vitus in Utzenhofen (Lkr. Amberg-Sulzbach). They have found a grave in the place where the altar would probably have been situated, and they are uncovering the skeleton now, hoping for some help in dating it.

The text is German, but you can watch it even if you don't understand the language - you will still see actual archaeological work. Click this link to see how it's done with trowel and vacuum cleaner!

There will be a second part of the excavation documentation coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

I'm back from two weeks full of exciting things to do and new things to learn and wonderful people to meet, and accordingly I spent most of yesterday asleep, catching up on the hours lost to discussions and work.

We had a small, but very intense and very successful Textile Forum in Mayen, with a dyeing experiment that surprised us all with the outcome. After the Forum, I got to spend some more time with friends that had come to the Forum from Netherlands, Germany, England and Sweden, visiting Maria Laach in lovely weather.

After this, I went to see the new abode of my friends from the Wollschmiede and helped them a little bit with their renovation. It's a lovely old house that now has a new roof and will soon be their home and workplace, with much better opportunities for both dyer and blacksmith than the old apartment could offer.

And to top off all of this, I then was part of the programme for the opening of LEA in Mayen this last weekend, demonstrating wool preparation and spinning techniques to a very interested public. We had immense luck with the weather - it rained on Friday evening and night, and it was a little cool on Saturday morning, but then the sun came out and we had a wonderful time both Saturday and Sunday.

And now I'm looking forward to a few days here to reorganise myself and catch my breath before going to the traditional season's end market - Tannenberg. This year, however, I'll have to go without the most patient of all husbands, who ruptured his Achilles tendon last Saturday and now moves around on crutches... and those are not very compatible to the uneven and possibly muddy Tannenberg grounds.

Archaeologists may be immensely interested in the past, and they are often also interested in old methods of doing stuff - but that does not mean they aren't using modern tools and modern methods. Futuristic-seeming methods, even.

So I was not surprised to read this BBC article about a laser scanning technology that allows to look through vegetation in use for archaeology. Even though this method is of course even more important in the far-off djungles than in tame Middle Europe, maybe we'll have similar laser-generated 3D maps here in the future?

Since a lot of you readers are involved in Living History or Archaeology in some way, this might be interesting for you: Roeland Paardekooper is looking for a discussion about food. Here's his request for submissions:
 

For a BBC program in 1954, Sir Mortimer Wheeler tasted a reconstruction of the Tollund Man’s last supper, which turned out to be a tasteless mush. This led him to announce: "I believe that the poor chap of Tollund committed suicide because he could stand his wife's cooking no longer!"

While archaeology inspired cookery is an important and attractive way of involving the public, it also has some drawbacks. How authentic can we be? What about health and safety? Should we only cook what the public will like? Please discuss the questions and issues with ancient cookery that often arise, either when cooking as demonstration or experiment. Send your reply, between 100 and 400 words to: Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein..

And if you like, post your reply in the comments to this post as well - then we can have a second discussion here as well!