Friday 20 June 2014

Did you know...

... that castrated sheep were prized for their wool growth? I didn't, until very recently, when I found this blog post at ossamenta. I stumbled across that blog through the Blogging Archaeology Carnival, by the way.

Also, you may or may not have heard about the treasure found in Vienna Wiener Neustadt (south of Vienna) - it has now been published, and you can take a peek into the book (in Geman) and order it here. For those of you who don't read German but are curious, there are several pictures of pieces from the treasure on that page (listed under "Bilder"). The treasure is a spectacular find from the Late Middle Ages, found by chance in Vienna Wiener Neustadt (the ground's owner was digging a pond in his garden), and it's been analysed and researched and published by a team of experts for three years - among them one study colleague of mine.

(Ahem, I didn't realise it was not Vienna in my original post. I now know better. Also thanks to Michaela, I now know that the treasure is on display until November 2014 at Asparn an der Zaya.)

2 comments:

Lena said...

Thanks for telling us about the Vienna treasure. As far as I know no news about it crossed the English Channel :-( . The pictures are fabulous, and I would dearly love a little replica or two (or four, even...)

Glad you found the sheep post interesting. I hope I can continue to develop my research idea so I can find out more things and post more about it.

a stitch in time said...

Thank you Michaela - and sorry for that, I did mistakenly believe that W.Neustadt was something like a suburb of Vienna. Blame my geography skills!
Also thanks for the link to the display of the treasure!