At Teufelberg, in the West Kingdom, Their Majesties Rolf the Relentless and Aurora Komnene created seven new peers at Twelfth Night on January 7.

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Macedonians discovered a valuable treasure hid in the bowels of the earth, thanks to the methodical excavations undertaken in the construction of the Thessaloniki metro.

Many artifacts found in the excavation, from items such as gold hoops, benches, and thousands of everyday objects, up to whole churches, remnants of the glorious, long history of Thessaloniki, have come to light. The excavations were completed by the end of the year, leaving behind thousands of “mosaics” of cultures that flourished in the city.

Archaeologists are revealing a palimpsest of the city, a city that has undergone constant and continuous phases of occupation from the 4th century BC, when it was founded in Thessaloniki, until now! “In Byzantium, Thessalonica was described as the second city of Constantinople, precisely because of its extremely important historical position in the region.” They emphasized, among other things, that the general secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Lina Mendoni, spoke to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economic Affairs of the House, ahead of signing an additional contract to perform archaeological work. "In terms of area stations, there are mainly archaeological investigations in the order of 17,000 sq.m. In essence, speaking of the area of ​​excavation, we speak about 28,000 square meters," explained Ms. Mendoni.

Click here to read this article from The Greek Reporter

In honor the the Year of the Dragon, the Chengdu Temple Fair in China is displaying 43 dragon-themed lantern sets, some dating back centuries.

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The epic song cycles of the First Crusade, like Led Zeppelin’s debut album, plucked the same brash chord that was heard in Crusades Two, Three, Four and Five. They presented a Western view of the Byzantine Emperor, from which he never recovered, as a treacherous double-dealer, in sympathy with Islam, who knowingly encouraged up to nine-tenths of a Crusader force of 80,000 to their doom. This vitriolic portrait resounded through the centuries and was strummed in the 18th by a misled Edward Gibbon who claimed the Emperor’s widow inscribed on his tomb: “You die as you lived – an HYPOCRITE.”

Not true, says Peter Frankopan, an Oxford historian whose ambition is to restore Alexios I to his bold and rightful position, from which French and Italian chroniclers airbrushed him: as a figure who was crucial in galvanising a moribund 11th-century Europe to expand its horizons. “After more than 900 years in the gloom, Alexios should once again take centre stage in the history of the First Crusade.”

The First Crusade reshaped the medieval world. It restored the authority of a divided papacy set the course for the Reformation and is “one of the most written-about events in history”. And yet its narrative is one-sided, Frankopan argues, dominated by Western voices and by grossly over-promoted characters like the Frankish Prince Bohemond, a charismatic liability who failed three times to capture Ephesus and was not even present at the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.

Click here to read this review from the Daily Telegraph

A hoard of more than 300 medieval silver coins unearthed in a Maryport garden has been declared as treasure.

The find was uncovered in the foundations of an old wall by workers using a digger at the property in Ellenborough.

The bulk of them are silver pennies from England of a type introduced by Edward I in the national recoinage of 1279, a series that runs through to Edward III’s reign.

Most of the English coins are pennies, although there are a number of halfpennies and farthings. There are also coins from Ireland, from the Berwick mint and coins of King Alexander of Scotland.

Click here to read this article from The News and Star

In an open letter, Clan Marshin Fayne challenges households, clans, and other non-official groups to offer assistance to the SCA's official branches in meeting the financial stipulations of the recently-announced legal settlement.

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Greetings to the Gentlefolk of the SCA, Here is a copy of my Florilegium article for February detailing what is new in the Florilegium this month. I am always

Mistress Solveig Eiriksdottir, Overall Class Coordinator for Gulf Wars 2012, is seeking class and demo instructors for the upcoming War.

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The Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. (SCA) has been operating under the burden of a massive and difficult legal battle that has critically drained resources and caused significant ongoing difficulties for the organization. In October 2011, the board of the SCA and its legal counsel were finally able to resolve this issue, but not without significant financial costs.

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The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is currently hosting the exhibition The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, one of the masterpieces of late medieval sculpture in Europe. The exhibit will run January 21, 2012 through April 15, 2012.

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