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Garnet-inlaid metalwork was an emblem of elite culture in the early medieval North Sea world. This study compares three Anglo-Saxon garnet-inlaid brooches that are exceptionally similar in design and appearance. All three date to the seventh century, a period that saw the emergence of leading families that used such deluxe dress items to enhance their political position. The central hypothesis explored here is that the brooches were produced by the same, or by closely linked, goldsmiths working under the patronage of such a family. Integrated analysis was conducted using microscopy, CT scans, XRF and XRD, in part to establish whether the garnets used came from the same or different sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seventh-century ship burial at Sutton Hoo Mound 1, excavated in 1939, contained an impressive display of gold, silver and bronze objects, weapons and other offerings. Organic materials such as wood, textiles and leather were also present. The leather items were studied, and the results published in 1983, when two pairs of shoes were identified from the extremely fragmented remains that survived. Recently, a reassessment of the leather fragments revised the identification to two bags and a single pair of shoes. Multiple reconstruction techniques, developed over the last twenty years, were used to examine the leather fragments and associated metal fittings to provide a new understanding of the leather items and how they had been placed in the burial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poetry, it is often said, is what gets lost in translation. In reply it is sometimes pointed out that what is greatest--the Bible, Shakespeare--'goes over' in translation and powerfully affects [...]

Excavations were undertaken in 2016 in advance of development at Chesil Street car park, Winchester, to the east of the Roman and medieval city defences, in a part of the eastern suburb that has seen little previous investigation. The work revealed four Romano-British pits - at least one possibly a lime kiln, extensive areas of chalk quarrying and several medieval features including a chalk-lined cess pit that contained well-preserved environmental evidence. Post-medieval remains comprised five wells in addition to wall foundations alongside Chesil Street, while the east side of the site had been truncated by construction of a railway opened in 1895. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marilyn Hacker, Squares and Courtyards, W. W. Norton Marilyn Hacker's ninth collection is written under the aspect of transiency. Reflected in the poems are the realities of a breast cancer [...]

This article addresses the question how art, especially poetry, should be regarded and practiced in a Jewish milieu. In the Western tradition, which has also influenced modern Hebrew poetry, art has been associated with quasi-idolatrous and amoral tendencies, and as a result is often regarded as "unsanctified." On the other hand, art, especially poetry, has also served to keep people in touch with their inwardness, and the declining readership of poetry is one of the symptoms of modern man's self-alienation. The ambiguous role of poetry is rooted in the dual nature of poetic inspiration, which corresponds to the duality of the divine and the animal soul as described in the Tanya. But tshuvah (repentance) subordinates the animal soul to the Divine soul, and a poetry of tshuvah was envisioned by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook as part of the Jewish national revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noah was a good man and could follow directions, but Avraham was more than that: he knew that righteousness is not a static perfection but an improvisation that stays true. [...]

VAYYERA (GENESIS 18-22) He had been taken out beyond the world, He had looked down on the heavens from above; That a new life might blossom from the old He [...]

'BO' (EXODUS 10:1-13:16) Water, earth, air, and flesh of man and beast, And green of leaf, and light of moon and sun Were all corrupted, withered, dimmed, laid waste, As [...]