We have posted a feature article on our main Medievalists.net website about the discovery of a 13th century document at Brock University in Canada. The document, which details a land transfer between Robert de Clopton and his son, was hidden away in a drawer at the University's archive for over 30 years.



Last month, we published an article about the discovery, and since then we have interviewed all the people involved in researching this manuscript. We now are publishing new details about charter as well as images of it.

Click here to access The Clopton Charter at Brock University.

Pieces of an Islamic ceramic vase dating back to the late eighth century have been discovered in Nara Prefecture, making it possibly the oldest Islamic porcelain found in Japan, Nara city government researchers said Friday.

Nineteen pieces with a blue-green exterior and dark green interior surface were unearthed at Saidaiji Temple in the ancient Japanese capital, they said without giving the specific date of the discovery.

The excavation team also unearthed a piece of wood bearing Chinese characters indicating the year of the reigning Japanese emperor, corresponding to 768 AD, which led the researchers to determine the era in which the Islamic vase was made.

Keisuke Morishita, the head of the western city's research center for buried cultural property, described the discovery as providing "first-class historical data that indicates there was a 'Silk Road of the Sea' linking eastern and western Asia."

The Nara researchers believe the vase was more than 50 centimeters high and had a diameter of 11 to 12 cm at its base, adding it was likely that the vase was used to carry spices or dates.

What were previously thought to be the oldest Islamic ceramics in Japan were found in Fukuoka Prefecture, but the latest find from the Abbasid Caliphate appears roughly a century older, they said.

The pieces will be on display at the Nara research center from Monday until the end of the month and then at Nara city hall from Aug. 10 to 31, according to the center.

The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown.

Researchers at the universities of Florence, Ferrara, Pisa, Venice and Parma discovered the genealogical discontinuity by testing samples of mitochondrial DNA from remains of Etruscans and 27 people who lived in the Middle Ages (between the 10th and 15th centuries) as well as from people living in the region today.

While there was a clear genetic link between Medieval Tuscans and the current population, the relationship between modern Tuscans and their Bronze Age ancestors could not be proven, the study showed.

"Some people have hypothesised that the most ancient DNA sequences, those from the Etruscan era, could contain errors or have been contaminated but tests conducted with new methods exclude this," said David Caramelli of Florence University and Guido Barbujani of Ferrara University.

"The most simple explanation is that the structure of the Tuscan population underwent important demographic changes in the first millennium before Christ," they said.

"Immigration and forced migration have diluted the Etruscan genetic inheritance so much as to make it difficult to recognise."

The scientific data does not necessarily mean that the Etruscans died out, the researchers said.

Teams from Florence and Ferrara universities are working to identify whether traces of the Etruscans' genetic inheritance may still exist in people living in isolated locations in the region.

The new study, Genealogical discontinuities among Etruscan, Medieval and contemporary Tuscans, is published online by the scientific journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

The Etruscans lived mainly between the rivers Tiber and Arno in modern-day Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany, in the first millennium BC.

Lidia de Ragusa reports that she has posted a small album of photos from the 2009 Baronial Birthday celebration in the Barony of Hidden mountain (Kingdom of Atlantia).

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Experts are studying the silver and gold casing of a medieval book dating to the end of the 14th century discovered recently in the yard of St. Peter and St. Paul Church in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria.

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An archaeological dig in Lincolnshire, England, which teams professional and volunteers, has led to satisfying results on its first day. Among items found: "Roman coins, flints and walls."

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Before the trumpet curled into its present configuration, was the Lituus, an 8.5 foot long instrument last heard 300 years ago. Now new software has allowed the "lost" instrument to be recreated. (photos)

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Construction work on a new vestry at St Michael's Church in Mickleham, England has led to the discovery of five graves dating from at least the 15th century, one belonging to a small child. The graves are believed to mark the location of the medieval churchyard.

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When I was in Art School, we used old sofa cushions, wrapped in duct tape, for chiseling marbel, plaster, cement, etc.... worked pretty well actually Robert