Seven Roman altars at the Great North Museum: Hancock now feature animations projected directly onto the stone surface
Historians often tell us to try and visualize the past as a colorful place – whether it be the bright colors of medieval clothing and statuary or the vibrant blues and golds found in the tombs of Antiquity.
Accordingly Roman Britain was also a place of vibrant hues – even at its most northern reaches. Apart from the deep red robes of the Roman legions, Pliny the Elder cited the orange, red and purple worn by priests and priestesses, while common dyes used in the Roman world included madder, kermes, weld, woad, saffron and lichen purple.
But these colors weren’t just confined to robes and other clothing, the statues and buildings also offered a surprising palette – as can be glimpsed in a new project at the Hancock in Newcastle, which is revealing the colors encountered along Rome’s Northern frontier at Hadrian’s Wall.
The Museum has a vast collection of altars recovered from Hadrian’s Wall – many of them with dedications to the deceased and inscriptions to the Roman Gods – and seven of the latter now feature animations projected directly onto the stone surface to offer a sense of how brightly colored the altars appeared 1900 years ago.
The project, called Roman Britain in Color, is a collaboration between the Museum and Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project (WallCAP), working alongside creative studio NOVAK.
“We’re used to the look of sandstone altars and reliefs in museums but we forget that they were originally painted in bright colors,” says Andrew Parkin, the Museum’s Keeper of Archaeology. “The paint has been lost over the centuries but researchers have found trace amounts of pigment using ultraviolet light and x-rays.
“These new projected animations really make the altars stand out and add greatly to the Hadrian’s Wall gallery in the museum. The team at NOVAK have done a fantastic job in creating the artwork and mapping the projections precisely onto the stones.”
The animations also offer some artistic interpretations of the altars and the gods associated with them. For instance, the altar to Neptune, Roman god of freshwaters and rivers, was found in the River Tyne. It depicts a blue underwater scene filled with fish.
The altar to Oceanus, god of the sea, is animated with seaweed, starfish and a crab, whereas the altar to Fortuna drips with bright crimson, perhaps suggesting a ritual using wine or the blood of a sacrificed animal.
Other altars with new animations are dedicated to Jupiter, supreme deity of the Roman pantheon, Minerva, goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, and Antenociticus, a native British god only found at Condercum Roman Fort – present-day Benwell in the west end of Newcastle.
“Roman altars are a great source for understanding the culture of the Roman Empire, but they can seem boring and uninteresting for people that do not know how to ‘read’ them,” adds Dr Rob Collins, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and WallCAP Project Manager at Newcastle University.
“Working with NOVAK and the Great North Museum: Hancock, the altars come alive and invite you to look more closely at the artistry and information that they hold.”
Anyone interested in volunteering for the WallCAP project can register at wallcap.ncl.ac.uk. Volunteers receive regular updates to alert them of forthcoming opportunities and events to investigate and protect the Wall.
Cause sometimes you need a reminder of how far you’ve come.
Excuse the weird-ass face, and I know it was a bad picture, and I’m not just like, TRYING to emphasize “I was so sad and feeling so terrible then because I was smoking and drinking and eating poorly!!!” because I wasn’t, I felt great… this was one of the only pictures I could find where you could really see how bad my acne had gotten.
When this picture on the left was taken, I was smoking like, a pack a day, sometimes more. I was going out drinking nearly every night. I think at the point this exact picture was taken, I was already ¾ of the way through a bottle of tequila (that I had drank all by myself). That year there was a period where I went through an entire bottle of tequila a week. I was eating out for every meal, and eating delivery on the nights I wasn’t eating out. To be fair, I was in my in-between phase living part-time with my parents (whose kitchen was being renovated) and part-time with my then-gf, full-time out of my car. I was not exercising, save maybe a walk through the woods once every other week. I was sharing a twin-size bed with my then-gf so wasn’t sleeping so well. I smelled from all the smoke and the lack of washing my clothes and self.
But I have to say, I was happy. I had met someone I fell totally in love with, I was out partying with friends constantly and I loved it!!! I still miss that. I was eating foods I loved and not feeling any sort of guilt about it. I was going to a freaking all you can eat pizza buffet twice a week with my best friend, like, how could I not have been stoked??? BURGER KING HAD RELEASED CHEETO FRIED MAC AND CHEESE BITES, IT WAS SO GREAT! Right after that picture was taken, I went and drunk passed out on the lawn and just took a nap right there. (The neighbors actually came over to ask if I was okay….)
But on the right, I’m also happy. I’m just focusing on the things that make me happy that also make me healthy. I can still go get food with my friends twice a week, just maybe the pizza buffet a little less frequently. I can still go out partying with my friends, I’m just drinking diet coke instead of nearly an entire bottle of tequila. I am going bike riding instead of sitting at a bar day-drinking… both activities I love, but one that makes me healthier. I am going to pole during the week instead of getting drunk at a bar…. again, both activities I love, one I think I now enjoy more than the other. I am in three separate plays, and go to rehearsal 2 days a week, soon to be 3, instead of sitting at home on the couch watching Netflix eating a box of pizza rolls after, you guessed it, being at the bar. I am going bouldering with my friends instead of sitting at a restaurant drinking. I just put that exact pullover I’m wearing on the left in a give-away bag. I haven’t called off sick from work for being hungover in two years.
I have quit smoking (IT IS NOT EASY PLEASE DON’T EVER START IT SUCKS SO BAD AND THE WEIRDEST THING IS TO JUST KNOW “OK I’VE GOT THIS NOW I JUST HAVE TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN FOR EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE”), and I have quit drinking, as of two weeks ago. I may bring the drinking back eventually, but I know it’s a problem for me and I know it does nothing but hurt me, so for now, goodbye booze. I am happy, just like I was before, but now I am also healthy. And that’s pretty neat.
Our guide rests in the shade of the Vherr-osh, the great sunspires. These glittering towers are composed of thousands of tiny chambers like the units of a compound eye, the inside of each lined with a photosynthetic “retina” protected from the extremes of the subarctic winters and summers.
The units are capped by a convex silica lens that refracts light into the chamber to maximize surface area for photosynthesis, while protecting the delicate living cells inside. The reflective lining beneath the lens thickens at the height of summer to prevent overexposure, and is also responsible creates a striking violet iridescence. The lenses are likely derived from silica spicules in the ancestral species; extant relatives still bear these spicules for anti-predation and structure.
These strange trees grow slowly, taking centuries to reach even 5 feet in height. Accounts from the nomads of the region suggest they can live for thousands of years beyond that. A Tuin clan legend attests that they first grew from the shed scales of a primordial bird as it circled the newly formed world. Mature forests such as this were already vanishingly rare by the time I was lucky enough to lay eyes on one. The inhospitable region where they grow is seldom visited by birgs, though just a few centuries before, these lenses were scraped away by the hundreds of thousands to make all manner of decorative windows, sun catchers, even primitive spectacles and telescopes. To this day, some Twowi nobility covet the iridescent crystals as an exotic and expensive jewelry.
My original idea for Valentine’s Day was another piece for the silhouette song series featuring JJ, but I just did not like how it was turning out. I then doodled Wilford and really liked it so it became this! Interpret it how you like because I didn’t have any message or image behind this either when I was making it :P
Maybe it’s Wilford the heart breaker (or his own broken heart) and Dark trying to keep his own hearts together. IDK
Please do not edit or repost this without my permission.
Any tips or criticism will be greatly appreciated.
This is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever drawn, it took me about two months from sketch to shading. I felt like making something sorrowful, so I rewatched WKM for some inspiration, and this is the result - I think it turned out beautifully! Please remember to reblog ^-^
