Europe

Florida Sunken Treasure Discovery From 1715 Shipwreck Valued at Over $1 Million

“Florida Sunken Treasure Discovery From 1715 Shipwreck Valued at Over $1 Million”

by Kaylee Heck via “Yahoo News!“

Florida treasure hunters hit the sunken treasure jackpot.

Brent Brisben — a co-founder of 1715 Fleet-Queens Jewels LLC, which has the rights to dive at the wreckage site where the gold was ultimately discovered — told ABC News that the 60 gold artifacts on the bottom of the ocean floor are valued at over $1 million.

The artifacts include 51 gold coins and 40 feet of gold chains with hand-crafted links, he said.

The centerpiece of the discovery is a single coin, given the nickname the “Tricentennial Royal,” which was destined to be delivered straight to Spanish King Phillip V, Brisben said.

This coin constitutes about half of the discovery’s expected value, with a price tag of more than $500,000, Brisben said.

The valuable find comes right before the 300-year anniversary of the 11-ship fleet sinking during a hurricane on July 31, 1715, off the Florida coast. The fleet had left from Havana, Cuba, on July 24, 1715.

Brisben said the discovery was made about a month ago, but he wanted to keep everything under wraps until the anniversary got closer.

“The work that goes on out there is not typical of what you see here today. I don’t want to call it an abrogation, but it’s what the dreams of every one of the people doing this are made of,” Brisben said at a news conference today. . . .

The World Bodypainting Festival in Austria, in pictures

“The World Bodypainting Festival in Austria, in pictures”

via “The Telegraph“

The World Bodypainting Festival 2015 in Poertschach am Woerthersee, Austria

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Coming Exhibition: Bharti Kher~ Not All Who Wander Are Lost

“Bharti Kher:

Not All Who Wander Are Lost“

Who:

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

When: July 1, 2015 – January 31, 2016 (Hours Vary)

Where:

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way
Boston, MA 02115

More Information: Here.

Bharti Kher is the sixth artist-in-residence invited to create a temporary site-specific work for the Museum’s façade. Kher’s project reflects on maritime travel, highlighted by her interest in mapping and typography and references the migration of people in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Kher uses bindis, a popular forehead decoration worn by women in India, and a signature element in her work, to map demographic movement in an abstract way.

Bharti Kher’s (b. 1969, England) is an art of dislocation and transience, reflecting her own, largely itinerant life. Born and raised in England, the artist moved to New Delhi in the early 1990s after her formal training in the field. Consequently, the concept of home as the location of identity and culture is constantly challenged in her body of work. In addition to an autobiographical examination of identity, Kher’s unique perspective also facilitates an outsider’s ethnographic observation of contemporary life, class and consumerism in urban India.

Presently, Kher uses the bindi, a dot indicative of the third eye worn by the Indian women on their foreheads, as a central motif in her work. Bharti Kher often refers to her mixed media works with bindis, the mass-produced, yet traditional ornaments, as “action paintings.” Painstakingly placed on the surface one-by-one to form a design, the multi-colored bindis represent custom, often inflexible, as well as the dynamic ways in which it is produced and consumed today. The artist is also known for her collection of wild and unusual resin-cast sculptures and her digital photography.

“Terrified mother and child’s final moments preserved in ash after Pompeii volcano blast 1,900 years ago”

by Kirstie McCrum via “The Mirror“

A terrified mother and child’s final moments after the devastating Pompeii volcano have been unearthed for the first time in 1,900 years.

Restoration work on the bodies of those who died when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius engulfed Pompeii in Italy in AD79 have brought out some shocking finds like this scene.

One of the most catastrophic and damaging volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen, it claimed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killed unknown thousands of Romans.

Excavations of Pompeii — History at work: A restorer works on petrified victim with arms reaching out in the laboratory of the Pompeii excavation site

The pieces are soon to be shown at a Pompeii and Europe Exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy.

Molten rock rained down on the surrounding landscape at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second in an eruption thought to have released 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima bombing.

In recent years, archaeologists used hollows in the volcanic ash where victims’ bodies fell and decayed. They have filled these cavities with plaster to see the outline of their final resting places.

There has been much excavation work of the area, with more than 1,000 casts of bodies being made in Pompeii alone.

In 2010, studies showed that a surge reached temperatures of 300°C in Pompeii.

Volcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, who led the study said: “(It was) enough to kill hundreds of people in a fraction of a second”.

In reference as to why the bodies were frozen in suspended action, Giuseppe explained: “The contorted postures are not the effects of a long agony, but of the cadaveric spasm, a consequence of heat shock on corpses.”

The eruption was foreshadowed at the time by smaller earthquakes in the preceding days, but nothing was done by authorities.

A Roman poet Pliny the Younger, who was 17 at the time, recorded much of what happened during the eruption, but it is thought that a horrific cloud of ash, volcanic gas and stones spewed from the volcano to a height of around 21 miles. . . . .

Highest stone circle in southern England found on Dartmoor

“Highest stone circle in southern England found on Dartmoor”

Via “The Guardian“

The highest stone circle in southern England has been found on a weather-battered slice of moorland in Devon.

Situated 525 metres (1,722ft) above sea level, the ancient site is the first stone circle to be found on Dartmoor for more than a century.

The circle is the second largest on the moor and archaeologists believe it was probably part of a “sacred arc” of circles around the north-eastern edge.

Its discovery adds weight to the theory that there was some kind of planning and liaison between the communities living on Dartmoor in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Many stone circles were prodded and probed in Victorian times and before, so the opportunity to apply modern scientific methods to a previously unexamined one is particularly exciting.

Archaelogists say the stone circle provides an exciting opportunity to apply modern scientific methods to a previously unexamined circle. Photograph: Dartmoor National Park

Jane Marchand, senior archaeologist at Dartmoor national park, said: “The discovery is providing an opportunity for investigation using the very latest archaeological scientific methods to provide long-awaited insights into the chronology, construction and the purpose of these most elusive and iconic of Dartmoor’s prehistoric monuments.”

With a diameter of 34 metres (112ft), the circle consists of 30 recumbent stones, plus one more lying in a gap just outside the circle and now incorporated into an unfinished enclosure wall.

The stones probably came from the nearby Sittaford Tor itself and are of a fairly uniform size, suggesting they were carefully chosen. Packing stones visible around the bases of some of these indicate that they were originally upright. . . . .