The Hove Amber Cup for #FindsFriday.

A beautiful and rare Bronze Age amber cup which glows when it catches the light.

Carved from a single piece of Baltic amber about 3,500 years ago.
Found in 1856 inside Hove Barrow, a large Bronze Age burial mound in Sussex. Brighton Museum and Art Gallery

brightonmuseums.org.uk/discove… 📷 by @AlisonFisk
#Archaeology

Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day, but why is that?

From math symbolism to Tarot cards (the death card is numbered 13) to the Last Supper (where 13 people dined), there are lots of interesting possibilities for why this day is regarded as slightly spooky.

blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2024/12…
@librarycongress #Friday13 #Fridaythirteenth

It’s Fossil Friday!

🦕 Snapped in 1916, this image depicts Museum curators assembling a Diplodocus forelimb. This Jurassic sauropod used its pencil-shaped teeth to strip leaves.

Fun fact: the Museum’s first dinosaur fossil, a Diplodocus, was found in 1897 at Como Bluff, Wyoming!

American Museum of Natural History
@AMNH #dinosaurs #museums #fossils

The long-running Fedi server mstdn.social (not to be confused with mastodon.social 🙂 ) has just received a takedown request from the Russian government for hosting @Bellingcat, a news site which has long been critical of Putin:

mstdn.social/@stux/11365246164…

Thankfully mstdn.social isn't in Russia so Putin has no power over it.

If anyone wants to turn this into a Streisand Effect kind of thing, you might want to follow @Bellingcat and slip a donation to @stux at mstdn.social/@stux/11362379158…

Mixtec Skull returns to Mexico | The skull was in the collection of the Wereldmuseum in Leiden and was purchased in the 1960s. The skull is probably of Mixtec origin and is inlaid with mosaic stones.

Although both the skull and the stones are of an older date, research shows that the glue used is from the 20th century. This makes the skull and the mosaic stones a recent composition
rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuw… #Mixtec #skull #museums #Mexico #repatriation

f you’re a fan of podcasts, there are over a dozen of them dedicated to Jane Austen and the Brontës! If I’m missing any, let me know so I can update the list! #BookThreads

excessivelydiverting.substack.…

😄😄😄

#archaeohistories

Fountain of Artemis (Diana) of Ephesus at gardens of Villa d'Este, Tivoli, near Rome, Italy.

It was built in 1568 CE; symbolizing unstoppable flow of life, this statue by Giglio della Vellita, is not your standard nymph in the garden.

Diana is universal mother, supplying substance to all, and evidence of her influence occurs in 7th Century BC. Her sacred temple at Ephesus, a Greek city built in 10th Century BC and now in modern Türkiye, was rebuilt many times.

#archaeohistories

The 'Old Gentleman of Raahe' - the oldest surviving diving suits in the world, made in the early 18th Century CE.

The suit was donated during the 1860s to the Raahe Museum in Finland by a Finnish shipowner and a mariner named Captain Johan Leufstadius (1795-1867 CE). The museum is the oldest local museum in Finland, and during the 18th Century CE, Raahe was a busy shipping and shipbuilding center on the Gulf of Bothnia.

#archaeohistories

Rock crystal, silver-gilt and enamel ewer and basin, Karl Bank, late 19th Century AD, Vienna - Austria 🇦🇹

The basin sections divided by caryatid figures, the body of the ewer carved with oval bosses and engraved with delicate scrollwork, the handle in the form of a panther with lizard tongue.

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

#archaeohistories

Golden Bull Bowl from the Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, found in 1799 CE, near Nagyszentmiklós, then in the Kingdom of Hungary, now in Romania.

This piece is known in Hungary as the 'Attila's Cup'. The animal depicted is actually a hybrid of a bull and a lion. The cup is one from the matching pair, dated 6th-8th Century CE.

#archaeohistories

Iran was a very different country, pre-1979, to what it is now, both economically and socially. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ruled as Shah, having been given strengthened monarchical powers by the US-UK backed 1953 coup, and he introduced wide-spread social changes, particularly after the 1963 White Revolution. These included radical reforms of the social system, secularism and a re-distribution of wealth.

#archaeohistories

Ruins of Saint Andrews Cathedral, Fife, Scotland.

Built in 1158, it fell into disuse and ruin after Catholic mass was outlawed during the 16th Century Scottish Reformation. Once it was the biggest cathedral ever built in Scotland.

#archaeohistories