Hallstatt culture
The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Western and Central European culture of Late Bronze Age from the 12th to 8th centuries BC and Early Iron Age Europe from the 8th to 6th centuries BC, developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of its area by the La Tène culture. It is associated with Proto-Celtic and Celtic populations in the Western Hallstatt zone and with Illyrians in the eastern Hallstatt zone, it is named for its type site, Hallstatt, a lakeside village in the Austrian Salzkammergut southeast of Salzburg, where there was a rich salt mine, some 1,300 burials are known, many with fine artefacts. Material from Hallstatt has been classed into 4 periods, numbered "Hallstatt A" to "D". Hallstatt A and B are regarded as Late Bronze Age and the terms used for wider areas, such as "Hallstatt culture", or "period", "style" and so on, relate to the Iron Age Hallstatt C and D. By the 6th century BC, it had expanded to include wide territories, falling into two zones and west, between them covering much of western and central Europe down to the Alps, extending into northern Italy.
Parts of Britain and Iberia are included in the ultimate expansion of the culture. The culture was based on farming, but metal-working was advanced, by the end of the period long-range trade within the area and with Mediterranean cultures was economically significant. Social distinctions became important, with emerging elite classes of chieftains and warriors, those with other skills. Society was organized on a tribal basis, though little is known about this. Only a few of the largest settlements, like Heuneburg in the south of Germany, were towns rather than villages by modern standards. In 1846, Johann Georg Ramsauer discovered a large prehistoric cemetery near Hallstatt, which he excavated during the second half of the 19th century; the excavation would yield 1,045 burials, although no settlement has yet been found. This may be covered by the village, which has long occupied the whole narrow strip between the steep hillsides and the lake; some 1,300 burials have been found, including around 2,000 individuals, with women and children but few infants.
Nor is there a "princely" burial, as found near large settlements. Instead, there are a large number of burials varying in the number and richness of the grave goods, but with a high proportion containing goods suggesting a life well above subsistence level; the community at Hallstatt was untypical of the wider agricultural, culture, as its booming economy exploited the salt mines in the area. These had been worked from time to time since the Neolithic period, in this period were extensively mined with a peak from the 8th to 5th centuries BC; the style and decoration of the grave goods found in the cemetery are distinctive, artifacts made in this style are widespread in Europe. In the mine workings themselves, the salt has preserved many organic materials such as textiles and leather, many abandoned artefacts such as shoes, pieces of cloth, tools including miner's backpacks, have survived in good condition. Finds at Hallstatt extend from about 1200 BC until around 500 BC, are divided by archaeologists into four phases: Hallstatt A–B are part of the Bronze Age Urnfield culture.
In this period, people were buried in simple graves. In phase B, tumulus burial becomes common, cremation predominates; the "Hallstatt period" proper is restricted to HaC and HaD, corresponding to the early European Iron Age. Hallstatt lies in the area where the western and eastern zones of the Hallstatt culture meet, reflected in the finds from there. Hallstatt D is succeeded by the La Tène culture. Hallstatt C is characterized by the first appearance of iron swords mixed amongst the bronze ones. Inhumation and cremation co-occur. For the final phase, Hallstatt D, daggers to the exclusion of swords, are found in western zone graves ranging from c. 600–500 BC. There are differences in the pottery and brooches. Burials were inhumations. Halstatt D has been further divided into the sub-phases D1–D3, relating only to the western zone, based on the form of brooches. Major activity at the site appears to have finished for reasons that are unclear. Many Hallstatt graves were robbed at this time. There was widespread disruption throughout the western Hallstatt zone, the salt workings had by become deep.
By the focus of salt mining had shifted to the nearby Hallein Salt Mine, with graves at Dürrnberg nearby where there are significant finds from the late Hallstatt and early La Tène periods, until the mid-4th century BC, when a major landslide destroyed the mineshafts and ended mining activity. Much of the material from early excavations was dispersed, is now found in many collections German and Austrian museums, but the Hallstatt Museum in the town has the largest collection. Finds from the Hallstatt site It is probable that some if not all of this diffusion took place in a Celtic-speaking context. In northern Italy the Golasecca culture developed with continuity from the Canegrate culture. Canegrate represented a new cultural dynamic to the area expressed in pottery and bronzework making it a typical western example of the western Hallstatt culture; the Lepontic Celtic language inscriptions of the area show the language of the Golasecca culture was Celtic making it probable that the 13th-century BC precursor language of at least the western Hallstatt was Celtic or a precursor to it.
Lepontic inscrip
Coral
Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They live in compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Corals species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton. A coral "group" is a colony of myriad genetically identical polyps; each polyp is a sac-like animal only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in length. A set of tentacles surround a central mouth opening. An exoskeleton is excreted near the base. Over many generations, the colony thus creates a large skeleton characteristic of the species. Individual heads grow by asexual reproduction of polyps. Corals breed sexually by spawning: polyps of the same species release gametes over a period of one to several nights around a full moon. Although some corals are able to catch small fish and plankton using stinging cells on their tentacles, most corals obtain the majority of their energy and nutrients from photosynthetic unicellular dinoflagellates in the genus Symbiodinium that live within their tissues.
These are known as zooxanthellae. Such corals require sunlight and grow in clear, shallow water at depths less than 60 metres. Corals are major contributors to the physical structure of the coral reefs that develop in tropical and subtropical waters, such as the enormous Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Other corals do not rely on zooxanthellae and can live in much deeper water, with the cold-water genus Lophelia surviving as deep as 3,300 metres; some have been found on the Darwin Mounds, northwest of Cape Wrath and others as far north as off the coast of Washington State and the Aleutian Islands. Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus described the red coral, korallion, in his book on stones, implying it was a mineral, but he described it as a deep-sea plant in his Enquiries on Plants, where he mentions large stony plants that reveal bright flowers when under water in the Gulf of Heroes. Pliny the Elder stated boldly that several sea creatures including sea nettles and sponges "are neither animals nor plants, but are possessed of a third nature".
Petrus Gyllius copied Pliny, introducing the term zoophyta for this third group in his 1535 book On the French and Latin Names of the Fishes of the Marseilles Region. Gyllius further noted, following Aristotle, how hard it was to define what was a plant and what was an animal; the Persian polymath Al-Biruni classified sponges and corals as animals, arguing that they respond to touch. People believed corals to be plants until the eighteenth century, when William Herschel used a microscope to establish that coral had the characteristic thin cell membranes of an animal. Presently, corals are classified as certain species of animals within the sub-classes Hexacorallia and Octocorallia of the class Anthozoa in the phylum Cnidaria. Hexacorallia includes the stony corals and these groups have polyps that have a 6-fold symmetry. Octocorallia includes blue coral and soft corals and species of Octocorallia have polyps with an eightfold symmetry, each polyp having eight tentacles and eight mesenteries.
Fire corals are not true corals. Corals are sessile animals and differ from most other cnidarians in not having a medusa stage in their life cycle; the body unit of the animal is a polyp. Most corals are colonial, the initial polyp budding to produce another and the colony developing from this small start. In stony corals known as hard corals, the polyps produce a skeleton composed of calcium carbonate to strengthen and protect the organism; this is deposited by the coenosarc, the living tissue that connects them. The polyps sit in cup-shaped depressions in the skeleton known as corallites. Colonies of stony coral are variable in appearance. In soft corals, there is no stony skeleton but the tissues are toughened by the presence of tiny skeletal elements known as sclerites, which are made from calcium carbonate. Soft corals are variable in form and most are colonial. A few soft corals are stolonate. In some species this is thick and the polyps are embedded; some soft corals are form lobes. Others have a central axial skeleton embedded in the tissue matrix.
This is composed either of a fibrous protein called gorgonin or of a calcified material. In both stony and soft corals, the polyps can be retracted, with stony corals relying on their hard skeleton and cnidocytes for defence against predators, soft corals relying on chemical defences in the form of toxic substances present in the tissues known as terpenoids; the polyps of stony corals have six-fold symmetry. The mouth of each polyp is surrounded by a ring of tentacles. In stony corals these are cylindrical and taper to a point, but in soft corals they are pinnate with side branches known as pinnules. In some tropical species these are reduced to mere stubs and in some they are fused to give a paddle-like appearance. In most corals, the tentacles are retracted by day and spread out at night to catch plankton and other small organisms. Shallow water species of both stony and soft corals can be zooxanthellate, the corals supplementing their plankton diet with t
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin, appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used in jewelry, it has been used as a healing agent in folk medicine. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents; because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is called resinite, the term ambrite is applied to that found within New Zealand coal seams; the English word amber derives from Arabic ʿanbar عنبر via Middle Latin ambar and Middle French ambre. The word was adopted in Middle English in the 14th century as referring to what is now known as ambergris, a solid waxy substance derived from the sperm whale. In the Romance languages, the sense of the word had come to be extended to Baltic amber from as early as the late 13th century. At first called white or yellow amber, this meaning was adopted in English by the early 15th century.
As the use of ambergris waned, this became the main sense of the word. The two substances conceivably became associated or confused because they both were found washed up on beaches. Ambergris is less dense than water and floats, whereas amber is too dense to float, though less dense than stone; the classical names for amber, Latin electrum and Ancient Greek ἤλεκτρον, are connected to a term ἠλέκτωρ meaning "beaming Sun". According to myth, when Phaëton son of Helios was killed, his mourning sisters became poplar trees, their tears became elektron, amber; the word elektron gave rise to the words electric and their relatives because of amber's ability to bear a static electricity charge. Theophrastus discussed amber in the 4th century BC, as did Pytheas, whose work "On the Ocean" is lost, but was referenced by Pliny the Elder, according to whose The Natural History: Pytheas says that the Gutones, a people of Germany, inhabit the shores of an estuary of the Ocean called Mentonomon, their territory extending a distance of six thousand stadia.
Earlier Pliny says that Pytheas refers to a large island - three days' sail from the Scythian coast and called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus - as Basilia - a name equated with Abalus. Given the presence of amber, the island could have been Heligoland, the shores of Bay of Gdansk, the Sambia Peninsula or the Curonian Lagoon, which were the richest sources of amber in northern Europe, it is assumed that there were well-established trade routes for amber connecting the Baltic with the Mediterranean. Pliny states explicitly that the Germans exported amber to Pannonia, from where the Veneti distributed it onwards; the ancient Italic peoples of southern Italy used to work amber. Amber used in antiquity as at Mycenae and in the prehistory of the Mediterranean comes from deposits of Sicily. Pliny cites the opinion of Nicias, according to whom amberis a liquid produced by the rays of the sun. Besides the fanciful explanations according to which amber is "produced by the Sun", Pliny cites opinions that are well aware of its origin in tree resin, citing the native Latin name of succinum.
In Book 37, section XI of Natural History, Pliny wrote: Amber is produced from a marrow discharged by trees belonging to the pine genus, like gum from the cherry, resin from the ordinary pine. It is a liquid at first, which issues forth in considerable quantities, is hardened Our forefathers, were of opinion that it is the juice of a tree, for this reason gave it the name of "succinum" and one great proof that it is the produce of a tree of the pine genus, is the fact that it emits a pine-like smell when rubbed, that it burns, when ignited, with the odour and appearance of torch-pine wood, he states that amber is found in Egypt and in India, he refers to the electrostatic properties of amber, by saying that "in Syria the women make the whorls of their spindles of this substance, give it the name of harpax from the circumstance that it attracts leaves towards it, the light fringe of tissues". Pliny says that the German name of amber was glæsum, "for which reason the Romans, when Germanicus Caesar commanded the fleet in those parts, gave to one of these islands the name of Glæsaria, which by the barbarians was known as Austeravia".
This is confirmed by the recorded Old High German word glas and by the Old English word glær for "amber". In Middle Low German, amber was known as berne-, barn-, börnstēn; the Low German term became dominant in High Germ
Black-figure pottery
Black-figure pottery painting known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was common between the 7th and 5th centuries BC, although there are specimens dating as late as the 2nd century BC. Stylistically it can be distinguished from the preceding orientalizing period and the subsequent red-figure pottery style. Figures and ornaments were painted on the body of the vessel using shapes and colors reminiscent of silhouettes. Delicate contours were incised into the paint before firing, details could be reinforced and highlighted with opaque colors white and red; the principal centers for this style were the commercial hub Corinth, Athens. Other important production sites are known to have been in Laconia, eastern Greece, Italy. In Italy individual styles developed which were at least in part intended for the Etruscan market. Greek black-figure vases were popular with the Etruscans, as is evident from frequent imports. Greek artists created customized goods for the Etruscan market which differed in form and decor from their normal products.
The Etruscans developed their own black-figure ceramic industry oriented on Greek models. Black-figure painting on vases was the first art style to give rise to a significant number of identifiable artists; some are known by their true names, others only by the pragmatic names they were given in the scientific literature. Attica was the home of well-known artists; some potters introduced a variety of innovations which influenced the work of the painters. Red- as well as black-figure vases are one of the most important sources of mythology and iconography, sometimes for researching day-to-day ancient Greek life. Since the 19th century at the latest, these vases have been the subject of intensive investigation; the foundation for pottery painting is the image carrier, in other words the vase onto which an image is painted. Popular shapes alternated with passing fashions. Whereas many recurred after intervals, others were replaced over time, but they all had a common method of manufacture: after the vase was made, it was first dried before being painted.
The workshops were under the control of the potters, who as owners of businesses had an elevated social position. The extent to which potters and painters were identical is uncertain, it is that many master potters themselves made their main contribution in the production process as vase painters, while employing additional painters. It is, not easy to reconstruct links between potters and painters. In many cases, such as Tleson and the Tleson Painter and the Amasis Painter or Nikosthenes and Painter N, it is impossible to make unambiguous attributions, although in much of the scientific literature these painters and potters are assumed to be the same person, but such attributions can only be made with confidence if the signatures of potter and painter are at hand. The painters, who were either slaves or craftsmen paid as pottery painters, worked on unfired, leather-dry vases. In the case of black-figure production the subject was painted on the vase with a clay slurry which turned black and glossy after firing.
This was not "paint" in the usual sense, since this surface slip was made from the same clay material as the vase itself, only differing in the size of the component particles, achieved during refining the clay before potting began. The area for the figures was first painted with a brush-like implement; the internal outlines and structural details were incised into the slip so that the underlying clay could be seen through the scratches. Two other earth-based pigments giving red and white were used to add details such as ornaments, clothing or parts of clothing, animal manes, parts of weapons and other equipment. White was frequently used to represent women’s skin; the success of all this effort could only be judged after a complicated, three-phase firing process which generated the red color of the body clay and the black of the applied slip. The vessel was fired in a kiln at a temperature of about 800 °C, with the resultant oxidization turning the vase a reddish-orange color; the temperature was raised to about 950 °C with the kiln's vents closed and green wood added to remove the oxygen.
The vessel turned an overall black. The final stage required the vents to be re-opened to allow oxygen into the kiln, allowed to cool down; the vessel returned to its reddish-orange colour due to renewed oxidization, while the now-sintered painted layer remained the glossy black color, created in the second stage. Although scoring is one of the main stylistic indicators, some pieces do without. For these, the form is technically similar to the orientalizing style, but the image repertoire no longer reflects orientalizing practice; the evolution of black-figure pottery painting is traditionally described in terms of various regional styles and schools. Using Corinth as the hub, there were basic differences in the productions of the individual regions if they did influence each other. In Attica, although not there, the best and most influential artists of their time characterized classical Greek pottery painting; the further development and quality of the vessels as image carrier are the subjects of this section.
The black-figure technique was developed around 700 BC in Corinth and used for the first time in the early 7th century BC by Proto-Corinthian pottery painters, who were still painting in the orientalizing style. The new technique was reminiscent
Attic
An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. Because attics fill the space between the ceiling of the top floor of a building and the slanted roof, they are known for being awkwardly shaped spaces with exposed rafters and difficult-to-reach corners. While some attics are converted into bedrooms, home offices, or attic apartments complete with windows and staircases, most remain difficult to access. Attics are used for storage, though they can help control temperatures in a house by providing a large mass of moving air; the hot air rising from the lower floors of a building is retained in attics, further compounding their reputation as inhospitable environments. However, in recent years attics have been insulated to help decrease heating costs, since, on average, uninsulated attics account for 15 percent of the total energy loss in average houses. A loft is the uppermost space in a building but is distinguished from an attic in that an attic constitutes an entire floor of the building, while a loft covers only a few rooms, leaving one or more sides open to the lower floor.
The word "attic" is derived from the Attica region of Greece and comes from Attic style architecture. The term referred to "a low decorative facade above the main story of a building" and, as used in the phrase "attic order", had indicated a small decorative column above a building's main facade. Modern building codes permit both vented and unvented attics in all climates, if a building is otherwise constructed. However, unoccupied attics should be ventilated to reduce the accumulation of heat and moisture that contribute to mold growth and decay of wood rafters and ceiling joists. In cold climates ventilation helps to prevent ice-dams on the roof and leaks that they cause. In hot climates, ventilation reduces cooling loads. Sometimes an insulated roof with an internal vapor barrier is preferable to a ventilated attic. In areas with wildfire hazards, sparks can enter attic vents, so houses are safer without vents. Areas with wind-driven rain, fog or sea-spray might prefer houses with insulated roofs instead of vents.
A habitable attic, or a habitable room without an attic may use an insulated roof so that moist air from the habitable area cannot condense on the roofing materials. A building with a complex roof or many piercings between the conditioned area and the attic might control condensation better or more cheaply with an insulated roof and a vapor barrier. One common code requirement is that the total area of attic vents be equal to or greater than 1/150 of the floor area of the attic, with 50 percent or more of the vent area located in the upper portion of the attic. Vents and louvers should face away from prevailing winds to keep out driven rain. Soffit vents under the eaves provide the low vents. Louvered vents in gables can provide the high vents in short gables. If a ridge is open, some metal roofing systems can install ridge vents along the entire ridge line of the roof. Various types of turbine ventilators and exhaust fans can assist with attic ventilation and decrease the required area of passive ventilators.
Attic ladder Basement Hayloft Loft Penthouse apartment Media related to Attics at Wikimedia Commons Attic Space Ideas
Apse
In architecture, an apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome known as an exedra. In Byzantine and Gothic Christian church architecture, the term is applied to a semi-circular or polygonal termination of the main building at the liturgical east end, regardless of the shape of the roof, which may be flat, domed, or hemispherical. Smaller apses may be in other locations shrines. An apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault; the apse of a church, cathedral or basilica is the semicircular or polygonal termination to the choir or sanctuary, or sometimes at the end of an aisle. In relation to church architecture it is the name given to where the altar is placed or where the clergy are seated. An apse is found in a synagogue, e.g. Maoz Haim Synagogue; the apse is separated from the main part of the church by the transept. Smaller apses are sometimes built in locations other than the east end for reliquaries or shrines of saints; the domed apse became a standard part of the church plan in the early Christian era.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church tradition, the south apse is known as diaconicon and the north apse as prothesis. Various ecclesiastical features of which the apse may form part are drawn together here: The chancel, directly to the east beyond the choir contains the High Altar, where there is one; this area is reserved for the clergy, was therefore called the "presbytery," from the Greek presbuteros meaning "elder", or in older and Catholic usage, "priest". Hemi-cyclic choirs, first developed in the East, came to use in France in 470. By the onset of the 13th century, they had been augmented with radiating apse chapels outside the choir aisle, the entire structure of Apse and radiating chapels coming to be known as the chevet. Famous northern French examples of chevets are in the Gothic cathedrals of Amiens and Reims; such radiating chapels are found in England in Norwich and Canterbury cathedrals, but the developed feature is French, though the Francophile connoisseur Henry III introduced it into Westminster Abbey.
The word "ambulatory" refers to a curving aisle in the apse that passes behind the altar and choir, giving access to chapels in the chevet. An "ambulatory" may refer to the arcade passages that enclose a cloister in a monastery, or to other types of aisles round the edge of a church building, for example in circular churches. Architectural development of the eastern end of cathedrals in England and France Byzantine architecture Cathedral architecture Church architecture Narthex Joseph Nechvatal, "Immersive Excess in the Apse of Lascaux", Technonoetic Arts 3, no. 3, 2005. Spiers, Richard Phené. "Apse". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 231–232. This has a detailed description of examples in the early church
Murus Gallicus
Murus Gallicus or Gallic Wall is a method of construction of defensive walls used to protect Iron Age hillforts and oppida of the La Tene period in Western Europe. The distinctive features are: earth or rubble fill transverse cross beams at 2 ft intervals longitudinal timbers laid on the cross beams and attached with mortice joints, nails, or iron spikes through augered holes outer stone facing cross beams protruding through the stone facingThe technique was described by Julius Caesar in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars: But this is the form of all the Gallic walls. Straight beams, connected lengthwise and two feet distant from each other at equal intervals, are placed together on the ground, but the intervals which we have mentioned, are closed up in front by large stones. These being thus laid and cemented together, another row is added above, in such a manner, that the same interval may be observed, that the beams may not touch one another, but equal spaces intervening, each row of beams is kept in its place by a row of stones.
In this manner the whole wall is consolidated, until the regular height of the wall be completed.... It possesses the defence of cities. About 30 structures of this type have been excavated in Gaul, but extending to the upper reaches of the Rhine and Danube; the example at the sea promontory fort of Le Camp d'Artus, at Huelgoat, was excavated and reported by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. The murus Gallicus contrasts with other construction styles: Pfostenschlitzmauer – characterised by upright wooden posts in the outer wall, typical in Central Europe. Dacian Wall – inner and outer stone walls reinforced with inner horizontal timber tie beams. At Manching an earlier murus gallicus. Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar, 7.23 The Ancient Celts, Barry Cunliffe ISBN 0-14-025422-6Contains the cross-section of Huelgoat drawn by Mortimer Wheeler. Celtic Fortifications, Ian Ralston ISBN 0-7524-2500-5The definitive modern reference on hillfort construction, with extensive descriptions, comparative analysis, photographs of modern reconstructions, results of experiments burning reconstructed walls.
Murus Dacicus pfostenschlitzmauer Kelheim Titelberg
