"Gjeng vegane etter dei døde". Død, dyrking og (om-)bygging av røyser i et langtidsperspektiv

How are we to understand and interpret intentional deposits of stone built-up over long time spans? The empirical point of departure for this contribution is a complex cairn located on a hilltop in Sauherad, Telemark, excavated in 2015. Twenty C14-samples date the site from c. 300 cal. BC to the present. Additionally, a single deposition of two Neolithic thin-butted axes of Funnel Beaker type (3800–3300 BC) was uncovered. The main phase of activity is related to the Early Iron Age (c. 300 BC–AD 450). No remains of Iron Age burials were identified, but it is argued that the Neolithic axes represent a secondary deposit related to the Iron Age activity. Taking the temporal depth and durability in the practice of removing stone as a point of departure, this paper explores how gathering and placing of stones may have been accorded meaning during various points in time and focuses particularly on the relationship between stone clearance, agriculture, fertility and ancestors.

Adenocarcinoma of the Prostate Presenting as a Soft Tissue Metastasis: A Case Report and Review of Literature

Metastasis is the most frequent cause of mortality in cancer patients and symptoms related to a secondary deposit are a common form of presentation in malignancies. Cancers of the prostate commonly present with metastasis to the vertebrae, and less commonly to the lungs and liver. Metastasis to soft tissue is extremely rare and a highly unlikely form of presentation. However, with rising cancer rates in the developing world, secondary tumors should be excluded when soft tissue masses are encountered.

An Early Ethiopic Manuscript Fragment (Twelfth–Thirteenth Century) from the Monastery of St Antony (Egypt)

This article presents a single fragmentary folio that was recently uncovered in excavations at the Monastery of St Antony (Egypt). This folio was discovered in a secondary deposit below the foundations of a church which was in all likelihood constructed in the 1230s. A radiocarbon dating of the folio has returned a date of 1160–1265. Together, these two data make this fragmentary folio the earliest securely datable specimen of an Ethiopic manuscript. This find, thus, provides a new foundation for the analysis of the paleography of the earliest Ethiopic manuscripts, including the gospel manuscripts from Ǝnda Abba Gärima, which contain paleographic features that seem to predate this fragmentary folio. In addition, this find has implications for the regnant periodization of Ethiopic literature and more specifically the history of Ethiopic monastic literature, especially the Zena Abäw. Finally, this folio is among the earliest surviving Aethiopica for the entirety of Egypt and thus provides new information on the relationship between Ethiopic and Coptic Christianity.

A Hybrid Style Terracotta Protoma from Porphyreon

The paper presents the best preserved of four terracotta protomai found recently in a secondary deposit in Porphyreon (Jiyeh, Lebanon). A detailed stylistic analysis indicates that the described protoma combined the Phoenician and Greek art traditions of the Persian/Archaic period.

From Centre to Circumference

This book began with one site in Ireland and closes with another. The Loughcrew Hills in County Meath include at least twenty-five megalithic tombs, located on three summits along a prominent ridge. Many of them were investigated in the nineteenth century when Neolithic artefacts were found there. More recent work has been less extensive but features an analysis of the carved decoration inside these monuments, for the Loughcrew complex is one of the main concentrations of megalithic art in Europe (Shee Twohig 1981: 205–20). Early excavation in the westernmost group of monuments had an unexpected result, for Cairn H contained a remarkable collection of artefacts which must have been deposited three thousand years after the tomb was built. They included bronze and iron rings, glass beads, and over four thousand bone flakes (Conwell 1873). A new excavation took place in 1943, but its results only added to the confusion and, perhaps for that reason, they were not published for more than six decades (Raftery 2009). They seemed to show that the artefacts, which obviously date from the Iron Age, were directly associated with the construction of the monument; today it seems more likely that they were a secondary deposit. When they were introduced to the site, the tomb may have been rebuilt. One reason why the bone flakes attracted so much attention is that a small number of them—about a hundred and fifty in all— were decorated in the same style as Iron Age metalwork. Most of the patterns are curvilinear and show the special emphasis on circles and arcs that characterize ‘Celtic’ art (Raftery 1984: 251–63). This discovery illustrates a problem in Irish archaeology. A few stone tombs in other regions were decorated in a style that has been identified as either Neolithic or Iron Age (Shee Twohig 1981: 235–6), but in the case of the flakes from Loughcrew there is no such ambiguity. Not only do the incised patterns compare closely with those on metalwork, the decorated artefacts were associated with beads and rings dating to the end of the first millennium BC. Even so, two problems remain.