The Great London [Search results for Shard

  • The 1st Cable Car in London

    The 1st Cable Car in London
    Cable Car, London

    Rope-way, Thames, London

    In London constantly are under construction the most modern infrastructural objects of type of new Wembley Stadium or the Big London Eye, but there never was a rope-way. However this city lack will be fast eliminated. The Mace Group has declared the intention to construct the 1st cable car in London.
    Today, the capital of Great Britain actively prepares for 2012 Summer Olympic Games. All forces and all city resources are thrown on creating an infrastructure necessary for this grand action. And, if artificial clouds, most likely, are not constructed — the rope-way will appear in this city by next summer.

    Legendary Mace Group Projects

    Mace Group company is known in London thanks to infrastructural projects of a new formation. It has erected already mentioned big wheel the London Eye, the London City-Hall (residence of Administration of the Greater London), skyscraper «Shard London Bridge» and many other architectural objects. Thus, in a year, in the track record of Mace Group will also the first rope-way in London.

    London Eye, Great Britain
    London City Hall, Great Britain
    Shard London

    One station of this new kind of the London transport will be on the Greenwich Peninsula near huge entertainment complex «O2». The second — on other party of Thames, around the central input in the British Museum. The length of this cable car: about 1 km. There are suspicions that a cable car will use, first of all, not as public transport, and as tourist way.

  • Jordan: Drone offers glimpse of looting at Jordanian site

    Jordan: Drone offers glimpse of looting at Jordanian site

    At a sprawling Bronze Age cemetery in southern Jordan, archaeologists have developed a unique way of peering into the murky world of antiquities looting: With aerial photographs taken by a homemade drone, researchers are mapping exactly where - and roughly when - these ancient tombs were robbed.

    Drone offers glimpse of looting at Jordanian site
    Chad Hill, an archaeologist at the University of Connecticut, operates a drone to 
    survey looting at a 5,000-year-old cemetery known as Fifa in southern Jordan. Hill, 
    an archaeologist at the University of Connecticut who built the drone, piloted it
     over a part of the graveyard that hadn't been mapped yet. The drone, built
     by Hill takes photographs that show in great detail how looting
     has altered the landscape [Credit: AP/Sam McNeil]

    Based on such images and conversations with some looters whose confidence they gained, archaeologists try to follow the trail of stolen pots and other artifacts to traders and buyers. They hope to get a better understanding of the black market and perhaps stop future plunder.

    It's sophisticated detective work that stretches from the site, not far from the famed Dead Sea in Jordan, to collectors and buyers the world over.

    The aerial photography detects spots where new looting has taken place at the 5,000-year-old Fifa graveyard, which can then sometimes be linked to Bronze Age pots turning up in shops of dealers, said Morag Kersel, an archaeologist at DePaul University in Chicago. Kersel, who heads the "Follow The Pots" project, also shares the data with Jordan's Department of Antiquities, to combat looting.

    On a recent morning, team members walked across ravaged graves, their boots crunching ancient bones, as a tiny, six-bladed flying robot buzzed overhead. In recent years, drone use in archaeology has become increasingly common, replacing blimps, kites and balloons in surveying hard-to-access dig sites, experts said.

    Chad Hill, an archaeologist at the University of Connecticut who built the drone, piloted it over a part of the graveyard that had not been mapped yet. The drone snapped photographs that allowed Hill to see in great detail how looting altered the landscape.

    "We can see the change through time, not just of `a huge pit has been dug' but where different stones have moved," Hill said. "It's a level of resolution of spatial data collection that's never really been possible until the last couple of years."

    Drone offers glimpse of looting at Jordanian site
    Archaeologist Morag Kersel holds a pottery shard found at a Bronze Age cemetery, 
    known as Fifa, in southern Jordan. Kersel heads a program called "Follow The Pots" 
    that, based on aerial photography and conversations with looters, tries to track
     stolen artifacts to middlemen, dealers and customers 
    [Credit: AP/Sam McNeil]

    As the drone's batteries ran low, Hill overrode the automatic pilot and guided the landing with a remote control. Flipping the drone on its back, he checked the camera, nodding approvingly at the afternoon's work.

    The cemetery in Jordan's Dead Sea plain contains about 10,000 graves, part of the vast archaeological heritage of the region.

    It looks like a moonscape as a result of looting, with about 3,700 craters stretching to the horizon and strewn with shards of skeletons and broken ceramics. Looters typically leave human remains and take only well preserved artifacts.

    "I spend my days stepping on dead people," said Kersel, picking up a broken shell bracelet, presumably from ancient Egypt.

    An underlying cause for looting is high unemployment, said Muhammed al-Zahran, director of the nearby Dead Sea Museum. "Looting happens all across the region," he said.

    In Jordan, unemployment is 12 percent, and it's twice as high among the young.

    Yet stolen antiquities rarely enrich local looters, said Neil Brodie, a researcher at the University of Glasgow's Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research.

    Drone offers glimpse of looting at Jordanian site
    A six-bladed drone casts a shadow on a heavily looted 5,000-year-old 
    cemetery, known as Fifa, in southern Jordan. At the sprawling Bronze Age 
    site, archaeologists have developed a unique way of peering into the murky
     world of antiquities looting: With aerial photographs taken by the drone, 
    researchers are mapping exactly where and roughly when new
    tombs were robbed [Credit: AP/Sam McNeil]

    Rather, the profits end up in Europe or America, Brodie said, describing high markups as the artifacts move from looter to middleman, dealer and then customer.

    Brodie studied looting at another site in Jordan, the ruins of the early Bronze Age community of Bab adh-Dhra, though without the help of drones.

    He estimated that diggers were paid about $10,500 for 28,084 pots that were subsequently sold in London for over $5 million, sometimes marketed as "Old Testament" artifacts.

    An artifact that later sold for $275,000 was initially traded for a pig, Brodie's research showed. And he also found that a dancing Hindu deity bought for about $18 sold eventually for $372,000.

    Some of the artifacts stolen from Jordan's sites, including tombstones, end up in neighboring Israel, said Eitan Klein, a deputy at the Israeli Antiquities Authority's robbery unit.

    Kersel, from the "Follow the Pots" project, said looters told her they sell their goods to middlemen from the Jordanian capital of Amman or the southern town of Karak. She said the trail stops with the shadowy middlemen, but that she can sometimes pick it up on the other end, by comparing the looting timeline with what eventually ends up on the market all across the world.

    In addition to monitoring the cemetery, Kersel also teaches local workshops on profiting from antiquities legally, including by making and selling replicas, to discourage robbing graves.

    Yet, looting will be difficult to stop as long as demand remains high, she said.

    "People don't ask the sticky questions about where artifacts come from," said Kersel, standing inside a robbed grave in Fifa. "They just want to own the piece regardless of what kind of background the artifact has, and that is what causes people on the ground to loot."

    Author: Sam McNeil | Source: The Associated Press [April 03, 2015]

  • The London Architecture

    The London Architecture
    The London Bridge

    Architecture of London

    The architecture of London is presented almost by all architectural styles: from the baroque and art-deco to a postmodernism and hi-tech. Many medieval buildings have not saved because of the Great fire of 1666 which has destroyed more than 13,000 London buildings, and air-bombardments during the Second World War.

    The Norman architecture to England was brought by William the Conqueror. From constructions of Norman style is known the London Tower which has started to be constructed by William the Conqueror and was repeatedly completed by other British Kings. Besides in the same style is executed the Westminster Hall constructed in 1097. At that point in time it was the biggest hall in Europe.

    Westminster Abbey, London

    Norman Architectural Style for London

    One of the brightest samples of this architectural style is the Westminster Abbey. Other samples of this period in London have not remained. The XIX-century is the time of the variety of architectural styles. In the neo-Gothic Style is constructed the well-known building of Parliament with Big Ben Tower. This building has been constructed after a fire on October, 16th, 1834 on a place of the old Westminster palace.

    City Hall

    London City Hall by Fosters + Partners

    In the XX-century in a London City there were skyscrapers: the Shard by Renzo Piano, the Lloyd’s of London, a mega-complex the Canary Wharf (Docklands). Norman Foster became the leading British architect, he constructed skyscraper SwissRe or 30 St Mary Axe and the New City Hall (the mayor house).

    SwissRe

    Architecture in London, 8 out of 10 [based on 540 votes]
  • UK: Evidence of early Christian presence in Roman London

    UK: Evidence of early Christian presence in Roman London

    A piece of broken pottery, newly identified 40 years after it was found as important evidence of an early Christian community in Roman London, is going on display for the first time at the Museum of London, over the Easter weekend.

    Evidence of early Christian presence in Roman London
    A volunteer spotted the shard while sorting through hundreds of pieces 
    of broken pottery found in the 1970s [Credit: Museum of London]

    A sharp-eyed volunteer, sorting through hundreds of pieces of pottery shards found in the 1970s in an excavation on Brentford High Street, west London, noticed one fragment inscribed with the chi rho, the first two letters of Christ in the Greek alphabet, which was a common symbol in the early Christian church.

    The pottery was made in Oxfordshire in the 4th century, rather than imported, so the symbol suggests a very early Thames-side Christian community.

    Adam Corsini, the archaeology collections manager, said it was a very rare find. “Although we can’t say from one object that Roman London and its hinterland were practising Christianity, it does suggest that Christians were at least present at some point in 4th-century Roman Brentford.

    “Christian symbols from the Roman period are rare, especially from sites within Londinium’s surrounding hinterland, and there are only a few examples in our collections relating to London.”

    Although Brentford is now a nondescript suburb, carved up by main roads and scattered with tower blocks, it has a long and distinguished history. From prehistoric times it was an important river crossing, where the Thames could be forded at low tide. The museum has a wealth of material from Brentford, including beautiful bronze age metalwork believed to have been thrown into the river as ritual offerings.

    There was a Roman settlement, and possibly an even earlier encounter with the invaders. A large pillar made from recycled stone was erected by an amateur historian in 1909, recording the belief that the local tribesmen fought Julius Caesar there in 54BC. Although historians doubt the story, the pillar still stands, though it has been moved from its original riverside site. There is better evidence for the battle in 1016 between King Canute and Edmund Ironside, which the pillar also marks.

    Author: Maev Kennedy | Source: The Guardian [March 24, 2016]

  1. Vatican to display bones claimed to be those of Saint Peter
  2. Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World in original exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum
  3. Early archeology an adventure in plunder
  4. "Roads of Arabia" at the Sackler Gallery
  5. Roman water mill found during Cumbrian dig to go on display