Teapot
A teapot is a vessel used for steeping tea leaves or an herbal mix in boiling or near-boiling water, and for serving the resulting infusion which is called tea. Teapots usually have an opening with a lid at their top, where the dry tea and hot water are added, a handle for holding by hand, some teapots have a strainer built-in on the inner edge of the spout. A small air hole in the lid is often created to stop the spout from dripping and splashing when tea is poured. In modern times, a cover called a tea cosy may be used to enhance the steeping process or to prevent the contents of the teapot from cooling too rapidly. The teapot was invented in China during the Yuan Dynasty and it was probably derived from ceramic kettles and wine pots, which were made of bronze and other metals and were a feature of Chinese life for thousands of years. Tea preparation during previous dynasties did not use a teapot, in the Tang Dynasty, a cauldron was used to boil ground tea, which was served in bowls. Song Dynasty tea was made by boiling water in a kettle pouring the water into a bowl with finely ground tea leaves, a brush was used to stir the tea.
Written evidence of a teapot appears in the Yuan Dynasty text Jiyuan Conghua, by the Ming Dynasty, teapots were widespread in China. The earliest example of a teapot that has survived to this day seems to be the one in the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware, it has been dated to 1513 and is attributed to Gongchun. Early teapots are small by western standards because they are designed for a single drinker. The size reflects the importance of serving single portions so that the flavours can be concentrated and controlled. From the end of the 17th century tea was shipped from China to Europe as part of the export of exotic spices, the ships that brought the tea carried porcelain teapots. The majority of these teapots were painted in blue and white underglaze, being completely vitrified, will withstand sea water without damage, so the teapots were packed below deck whilst the tea was stowed above deck to ensure that it remained dry. Tea drinking in Europe was initially the preserve of the upper classes, porcelain teapots were particularly desirable because porcelain could not be made in Europe at that time.
It wasnt until 1708 that Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus devised a way of making porcelain in Dresden, when European potteries began to make their own tea wares they were inspired by the Chinese designs. In colonial America, Boston became the epicenter for silver production, among the many artists in Boston there were four major families in the citys silver market, Revere and Hurd. Their works of art included silver teapots, to keep teapots hot after tea is first brewed, early English households employed the tea cosy, a padded fabric covering, much like a hat, that slips over the tea pot. Often decorated with lace or log cabin motifs in the early 1900s, a chocolate teapot is a teapot that would be made from chocolate
Columbidae
Pigeons and doves constitute the bird family Columbidae, which includes about 310 species. Pigeons and doves are stout-bodied birds with short necks, and short slender bills and they primarily feed on seeds and plants. This family occurs worldwide, but the greatest variety is in the Indomalaya, in general, the terms dove and pigeon are used somewhat interchangeably. Pigeon is a French word that derives from the Latin pipio, for a peeping chick, the species most commonly referred to as pigeon is the rock dove, one subspecies of which, the domestic pigeon, is common in many cities as the feral pigeon. Pigeons and doves are likely the most common birds in the world and pigeons build relatively flimsy nests – often using sticks and other debris – which may be placed in trees, on ledges, or on the ground, depending on species. They lay one or two eggs at a time, and both parents care for the young, which leave the nest after seven to 28 days. Unlike most birds, both sexes of doves and pigeons produce crop milk to feed to their young, secreted by a sloughing of fluid-filled cells from the lining of the crop, young doves and pigeons are called squabs.
The adjective columbine refers to pigeons and doves, recent phylogenomic studies support the grouping of these pigeons and sandgrouse together, along with mesites, forming the sister taxon to Mirandornithes. The Columbidae are usually divided into five subfamilies, probably inaccurately, for example, the American ground and quail doves, which are usually placed in the Columbinae, seem to be two distinct subfamilies. The order presented here follows Baptista et al. with some updates, osteology and DNA sequence analyses indicate the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire are better considered as a subfamily Raphinae in the Columbidae pending availability of further information. The dodo and Rodrigues solitaire are in all part of the Indo-Australian radiation that produced the three small subfamilies mentioned above, with the fruit-doves and pigeons. Therefore, they are included as a subfamily Raphinae, pending better material evidence of their exact relationships. Exacerbating these issues, columbids are not well represented in the fossil record, no truly primitive forms have been found to date.
The genus Gerandia has been described from Early Miocene deposits of France, apart from that, all other fossils belong to extant genera. For these, and for the number of more recently extinct prehistoric species. Phylogeny based on the work by John H. Boyd III, Pigeons and doves exhibit considerable variations in size. Overall, the Columbidae tend to have short bills and legs, the wings are large and have low wing loadings, pigeons have strong wing muscles and are among the strongest fliers of all birds. They are highly manoeuvrable in flight, the plumage of the family is variable
Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne was an English polymath and author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine and the esoteric. Brownes writings display a deep curiosity towards the world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry. Brownes literary works are permeated by references to Classical and Biblical sources as well as the idiosyncrasies of his own personality, the son of a silk merchant from Upton, Cheshire, he was born in the parish of St Michael, Cheapside, in London on 19 October 1605. His father died while he was young and he was sent to school at Winchester College. In 1623 Browne went to Oxford University and he settled in Norwich in 1637 and practiced medicine there until his death in 1682. Brownes first literary work was Religio Medici and this work was circulated as a manuscript among his friends. It surprised him when an edition appeared in 1642, since the work included several unorthodox religious speculations. An authorised text appeared in 1643, with some of the controversial views removed.
The book is significant in the history of science because it promoted an awareness of up-to-date scientific journalism, Brownes last publication during his lifetime were two philosophical Discourses which are closely related to each other in concept. The other discourse in the diptych is antithetical in style, subject-matter, in Religio Medici, Browne confirmed his belief, in accordance with the vast majority of seventeenth century European society, in the existence of angels and witchcraft. He attended the 1662 Bury St, in 1671 King Charles II, accompanied by the Court, visited Norwich. During his visit, Charles visited Brownes home, a banquet was held in the Civic Hall St. Andrews for the Royal visit. Obliged to honour a local, the name of the Mayor of Norwich was proposed to the King for knighthood. The Mayor, declined the honour and proposed Brownes name instead, Sir Thomas Browne died on his 77th birthday,19 October 1682. His Library was held in the care of his eldest son Edward until 1708, the auction of Browne and his son Edwards libraries in January 1711 was attended by Hans Sloane.
Editions from Sir Thomas Brownes Library subsequently became included in the collection of the British Library. His skull became the subject of dispute when it was removed from his lead coffin when accidentally re-opened by workmen in 1840. It was not re-interred until 4 July 1922 when it was registered in the church of Saint Peter Mancroft as aged 317 years
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems.
The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC.
Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
Cremation
Cremation is the combustion and oxidation of cadavers to basic chemical compounds, such as gases and mineral fragments retaining the appearance of dry bone. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite as an alternative to the interment of a dead body in a coffin. Cremated remains, which do not constitute a risk, may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be retained by relatives. Cremation is not an alternative to a funeral, but rather an alternative to burial or other forms of disposal, some families prefer to have the deceased present at the funeral with cremation to follow, others prefer that the cremation occur prior to the funeral or memorial service. In many countries, cremation is usually done in a crematorium, some countries, such as India and Nepal, prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation. Cremation dates from at least 20,000 years ago in the record, with the Mungo Lady. Alternative death rituals emphasizing one method of disposal of a body—inhumation, cremation, in the Middle East and Europe, both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic era.
Cultural groups had their own preferences and prohibitions, the ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration of soul theology, which prohibited cremation. This was widely adopted used by Semitic peoples, the Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Early Persians practiced cremation, but this became prohibited during the Zoroastrian Period, phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. From the Cycladic civilisation in 3000 BCE until the Sub-Mycenaean era in 1200–1100 BCE, Cremation appeared around the 12th century BCE, constituting a new practice of burial, probably influenced by Anatolia. Until the Christian era, when inhumation again became the burial practice. Romans practiced both, with cremation generally associated with military honors, in Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom became dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture, in the Iron Age, inhumation again becomes more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere.
Homers account of Patroclus burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus, similar to Urnfield burials, criticism of burial rites is a common form of aspersion by competing religions and cultures, including the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice. Hinduism and Jainism are notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation, Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture, considered the formative stage of Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the practice, in RV10.15.14. Cremation remained common, but not universal, in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome, according to Cicero, in Rome, inhumation was considered the more archaic rite, while the most honoured citizens were most typically cremated—especially upper classes and members of imperial families
Urnfield culture
The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were buried in fields. The Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture, linguistic evidence and continuity with the following Hallstatt culture suggests that the people of this area spoke an early form of Celtic, perhaps originally proto-Celtic. It is believed that in areas, such as in southwestern Germany, it was in existence around 1200 BC. As the transition from the middle Bronze Age to the Urnfield culture was gradual, the Urnfield culture covers the phases Hallstatt A and B in Paul Reineckes chronological system, not to be confused with the Hallstatt culture of the following Iron Age. This corresponds to the Phases Montelius III-IV of the Northern Bronze Age, whether Reineckes Bronze D is included varies according to author and region. The Urnfield culture is divided into the following sub-phases, The existence of the Ha B3-phase is contested, as can be seen by the arbitrary 100-year ranges, the dating of the phases is highly schematic.
The phases are based on changes, which means that they do not have to be strictly contemporaneous across the whole distribution. All in all, more radiocarbon and dendro-dates would be highly desirable, the Urnfield culture grew from the preceding tumulus culture. The transition is gradual, in the pottery as well as the burial rites, in some parts of Germany and inhumation existed simultaneously. Some graves contain a combination of tumulus-culture pottery and Urnfield swords or tumulus culture incised pottery together with early Urnfield types, in the North, the Urnfield culture was only adopted in the HaA2 period. 16 pins deposited in a swamp in Ellmoosen cover the whole range from Bronze B to the early Urnfield period. This demonstrates a considerable ritual continuity, in the Loire, Seine and Rhône, certain fords contain deposits from the late Neolithic onwards up to the Urnfield period. The origins of the rite are commonly believed to be in Hungary. The neolithic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of modern-day northeastern Romania and Ukraine were practicing cremation rituals as early as approximately 5500 BC, some cremations begin to be found in the Proto-Lusatian and Trzciniec culture.
The Urnfield culture was located in an area stretching from western Hungary to eastern France, metalwork is commonly of a much more widespread distribution than pottery and does not conform to these borders. It may have produced at specialised workshops catering for the elite of a large area. Important French cemeteries include Châtenay and Lingolsheim, an unusual earthwork was constructed at Goloring near Koblenz in Germany
Grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a type of votive deposit, most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools but organic objects that have since decayed were placed in ancient tombs. Funerary art is a term but generally means artworks made specifically to decorate a burial place. Where grave goods appear, grave robbery is a potential problem, etruscans would scratch the word śuθina, Etruscan for from a tomb, on grave goods buried with the dead to discourage their reuse by the living. The tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun is famous because it was one of the few Egyptian tombs that was not thoroughly looted in ancient times, Grave goods can be regarded as a sacrifice intended for the benefit of the deceased in the afterlife. Closely related are customs of worship and offerings to the dead, in modern western culture related to All Souls Day, in East Asia the hell bank note.
Also closely related is the custom of retainer sacrifice, where servants or wives of a deceased chieftain are interred with the body, evidence for intentional burial is found in Neanderthal sites from 130,000 years ago or earlier. In Homo sapiens burials beginning about 100,000 years ago, the body of the deceased was sprinkled with red ochre, and offerings of food and fresh flowers may have been deposited in the grave. Beads made of basalt deposited in graves in the Fertile Crescent date to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, the distribution of grave goods are a potential indicator of the social stratification of a society. It is possible that burial goods indicate a level of concern and consciousness in regard to an afterlife, the expression of social status in rich graves is taken to extremes in the royal graves of the Bronze Age. In the Theban Necropolis in Ancient Egypt, the pyramids and the graves in the Valley of the Kings are among the most elaborate burials in human history. This trend is continued into the Iron Age, an example of an extremely rich royal grave of the Iron Age is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.
In the sphere of the Roman Empire, early Christian graves lack grave goods, in the Christian Middle Ages, high-status graves are marked on the exterior, with tomb effigies or expensive tomb stones rather than by the presence of grave goods. The importance of goods, from the simple behavioural and technical to the metaphysical. However, care must be taken to avoid naive interpretation of grave goods as a sample of artefacts in use in a culture. Because of their context, grave goods may represent a special class of artifacts. Burial Grave field Necropolis Mingqi, the traditional Chinese burial goods The Earliest Beads, Treasures From the Ancient World, Museum of Ancient and Modern Art, at muma. org
Yangshao culture
The Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the Yellow River in China. It is dated from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC, the culture is named after Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, which was discovered in 1921 in Henan Province by the Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson. The culture flourished mainly in the provinces of Henan and Shanxi, the main food of the Yangshao people was millet, with some sites using foxtail millet and others broom-corn millet, though some evidence of rice has been found. The exact nature of Yangshao agriculture, small-scale slash-and-burn cultivation versus intensive agriculture in permanent fields, is currently a matter of debate, once the soil was exhausted, residents picked up their belongings, moved to new lands, and constructed new villages. However, Middle Yangshao settlements such as Jiangzhi contain raised-floor buildings that may have used for the storage of surplus grains. Grinding stones for making flour were found, the Yangshao people kept pigs and dogs.
Sheep and cattle are found more rarely. Much of their meat came from hunting and fishing and their stone tools were polished and highly specialized. They may have practiced a form of silkworm cultivation. Yangshao artisans created fine white and black painted pottery with human facial, unlike the Longshan culture, the Yangshao culture did not use pottery wheels in pottery-making. Excavations found that children were buried in painted pottery jars, the Yangshao culture produced silk to a small degree and wove hemp. Men wore loin cloths and tied their hair in a top knot, women wrapped a length of cloth around themselves and tied their hair in a bun. Houses were built by digging a rectangular pit a few feet deep. Then they were rammed, and a lattice of wattle was woven over it, it was plastered with mud. The floor was rammed down, next, a few short wattle poles would be placed around the top of the pit, and more wattle would be woven to it. It was plastered with mud, and a framework of poles would be placed to make a shape for the roof.
Poles would be added to support the roof and it was thatched with millet stalks. There was little furniture, a fireplace in the middle with a stool, a bench along the wall
Dining room
A dining room is a room for consuming food. In modern times it is adjacent to the kitchen for convenience in serving. In the Middle Ages, upper class Britons and other European nobility in castles or large manor houses dined in the great hall and this was a large multi-function room capable of seating the bulk of the population of the house. The family would sit at the table on a raised dais. Tables in the hall would tend to be long trestle tables with benches. The sheer number of people in a Great Hall meant it would probably have had a busy, suggestions that it would have been quite smelly and smoky are probably, by the standards of the time, unfounded. These rooms had large chimneys and high ceilings and there would have been a flow of air through the numerous door. In the first instance, the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the 14th Century caused a shortage of labour, the religious persecutions following the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII made it unwise to talk freely in front of large numbers of people.
Over time, the nobility took more of their meals in the parlour, and the parlour became, functionally and it migrated farther from the Great Hall, often accessed via grand ceremonial staircases from the dais in the Great Hall. Eventually dining in the Great Hall became something that was primarily on special occasions. Toward the beginning of the 18th Century, a pattern emerged where the ladies of the house would withdraw after dinner from the room to the drawing room. The gentlemen would remain in the room having drinks. The dining room tended to take on a more masculine tenor as a result, a typical North American dining room will contain a table with chairs arranged along the sides and ends of the table, as well as other pieces of furniture, as space permits. Often tables in modern dining rooms will have a leaf to allow for the larger number of people present on those special occasions without taking up extra space when not in use. Although the typical family dining experience is at a table or some sort of kitchen area.
In modern American and Canadian homes, the room is typically adjacent to the living room. Smaller houses and condos may have a breakfast bar instead, often of a different height than the kitchen counter. If a home lacks a dinette, breakfast nook, or breakfast bar and this was traditionally the case in Britain, where the dining room would for many families be used only on Sundays, other meals being eaten in the kitchen
Typology of Greek vase shapes
The pottery of ancient Greece has a long history and the form of Greek vase shapes has had a continuous evolution from Minoan pottery down to the Hellenistic era. The task of naming Greek vase shapes is by no means a straightforward one, a few surviving vases were labelled with their names in antiquity, these included a hydria depicted on the François Vase and a kylix that declares, “I am the decorated kylix of lovely Phito”. Vases in use are depicted in paintings on vases, which can help scholars interpret written descriptions. With those caveats, the names of Greek vases are well settled. The following vases are mostly Attic, from the 5th and 6th centuries, many shapes derive from metal vessels, especially in silver, which survive in far smaller numbers. Some pottery vases were intended as cheaper substitutes for these. Some terms, especially among the types of kylix or drinking cup, combine a shape, some terms are defined by function as much as shape, such as the aryballos, which potters turned into all sorts of fancy novelty shapes.
In addition various standard types might be used as external grave-markers, funerary urns containing ashes, several types of vase, especially the taller ones, could be made in plastic forms where the body was shaped sculpturally, typically to form a human head. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dovecote
A dovecote or dovecot /ˈdʌvkɒt/ is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn and they generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in Western Europe and were kept for their eggs, flesh, in some cultures, particularly Medieval Europe, the possession of a dovecote was a symbol of status and power and was consequently regulated by law. Only nobles had this special privilege known as droit de colombier, many ancient manors in France and the United Kingdom have a dovecote in one section of the manorial enclosure or in nearby fields. Examples include Château de Kerjean in Brittany, Houchin, Bodysgallen Hall in Wales, the oldest dovecotes are thought to have been the fortified dovecotes of Upper Egypt, and the domed dovecotes of Iran. In dry regions, the droppings were prized by farmers and were collected for fertilizing their arid fields.
The presence of dovecotes is not noted in France before the Roman invasion of Gaul by Caesar, the pigeon farm was a passion in Rome, the Roman, generally round, columbarium had its interior covered with a white coating of marble powder. Varro and Pliny the Elder wrote about pigeon farms, the French word for dovecote is pigeonnier or colombier. In some French provinces, especially Normandy, the dovecotes were built of wood in a stylized way. Stone was the popular building material for these old dovecotes. These stone structures were built in circular and occasionally octagonal form. Some of the medieval French abbeys had very large stone dovecotes on their grounds, in Brittany, the dovecote was sometimes built directly into the upper walls of the farmhouse or manor-house. In rare cases, it was built into the gallery of the lookout tower. Dovecotes of this type are called tour-fuie in French, even some of the larger château-forts, such as the Château de Suscinio in Morbihan, still have a complete dovecote standing on the grounds, outside the moat and walls of the castle.
In France, it was called a colombier or fuie from the 13th century onwards, the dovecote interior, the space granted to the pigeons, is divided into a number of boulins. Each boulin is the lodging of a pair of pigeons and these boulins can be in rock, brick or cob and installed at the time of the construction of the dovecote or be in pottery, in braided wicker in the form of a basket or of a nest. It is the number of boulins that indicates the capacity of the dovecote, the one at the chateau dAulnay with its 2,000 boulins and the one at Port-dEnvaux with its 2,400 boulins of baked earth are among the largest ones in France. In the Middle Ages, particularly in France, the possession of a colombier à pied, constructed separately from the corps de logis of the manor-house, was a privilege of the seigneurial lord
Lekythos
A lekythos is a type of Ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil, especially olive oil. It has a body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel, and is thus a narrow type of jug, with no pouring lip. However, there are a number of varieties, and the word seems to have used even more widely in ancient times than by modern archeologists. They are normally in pottery, but there are carved stone examples. Lekythoi were especially associated with rites, and with the white ground technique of vase painting. Because of their handle they were only decorated with one image, on the other side from the handle, they are often photographed with the handle hidden. The lekythos was used for anointing dead bodies of unmarried women, the images on lekythoi were often depictions of daily activities or rituals. Because they are so used in funerary situations, they may depict funerary rites. These drawings are usually outline drawings that are quite expressionless and somber in appearance, the decoration of these ceramic vessels consists of a dull red and black paint.
These colors may have derived from the Bronze Age, but were not used until 530 BC in Athens. Many artists of these attempted to add more color to the figures, but abandoned the idea. These vessels were very popular during the 5th century BC, however there are many that have been dating all the way back to 700 BC. They contained an oil which was offered either to the dead person or to the gods of the underworld. Some lekythoi were fitted with a small, inner chamber so that they appear full. The Lekythos was used to smear perfumed oil on a womans skin before getting married and were placed in tombs to allow the woman to prepare for a wedding in the afterlife. There are plastic lekythoi, with bodies formed in the shape of a head, animal, or other form
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