Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Saturday, December 31, 2011
The Irish Elk or Giant Deer (Megaloceros giganteus),[1][2] was a species of Megaloceros and one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia, from Ireland to east of Lake Baikal, during the Late Pleistocene. The latest known remains of the species have been carbon dated to about 7,700 years ago.[3] Although most skeletons have been found in Irish bogs, the animal was not exclusively Irish and was not closely related to either of the living species currently called elk - Alces alces (the European elk, known in North America as the moose) or Cervus canadensis (the North American elk or wapiti); for this reason, the name "Giant Deer" is used in some publications.
Megaloceros giganteus first appeared about 400,000 years ago. It possibly evolved from M. antecedens. The earlier taxon — sometimes considered a paleosubspecies M. giganteus antecedens — is similar but had more complex and compact antlers.
The Irish Elk stood about 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) tall at the shoulders, and it had the largest antlers of any known cervid (a maximum of 3.65 m (12.0 ft) from tip to tip and weighing up to 40 kilograms (88 lb)). In body size, the Irish Elk matched the extant moose subspecies of Alaska (Alces alces gigas) as the largest known deer.[4] A significant collection of M. giganteus skeletons can be found at the Natural History Museum in Dublin.
It should be noted that the Irish Elk does not in any way directly correspond to any living species today, including even the Alaskan moose or North American elk. It is taxonomically a giant and completely extinct deer.[5]
The size of Irish Elk antlers is distinctive, and several theories have arisen as to their evolution. One theory was that their antlers, under constant and strong sexual selection, increased in size because males were using them in combat for access to females; it was also suggested that they eventually became so unwieldy that the Irish Elk could not carry on the normal business of life and so became extinct. It was not until Stephen Jay Gould's important 1974 essay on Megaloceros that this theory was tested rigorously.
Gould demonstrated that for deer in general, species with a larger body size have antlers that are more than proportionately larger, a consequence of allometry, or differential growth rate of body size and antler size during development. Irish Elk had antlers of just the size one would predict from their body size. This does not mean that sexual selection played no part in maintaining large antler size, only that the antlers of the species' ancestors were already large to begin with. Indeed, Gould concluded that the large antler size and their position on the skull was very much maintained by sexual selection: they were morphologically ill-suited for combat between males, but their position was ideal to present them to intimidate rivals or impress females. Unlike other deer, M. giganteus did not even have to turn its head to present the antlers to best effect, but could accomplish this by simply looking straight ahead.[6]
[edit]
Discussion of the cause of their extinction has focused on the antler size (rather than on their overall body size), which may be due more to their impact on the observer than any actual property. Some have suggested hunting by man was a contributing factor in the demise of the Irish Elk, as may have been the case with other prehistoric megafauna, even assuming that the large antler size restricted the movement of males through forested regions or that it was by some other means a "maladaptation" (see Gould 1974). But evidence for overhunting is equivocal, and as a continental species, it would have co-evolved with humans throughout its existence and presumably have adapted to their presence.
Cave painting from Lascaux
A folk memory of the Irish Elk was once thought to be preserved in the Middle High German word Shelch, a large beast mentioned in the 13th-century Nibelungenlied along with the then-extant aurochs (Dar nach schluch er schiere, einen Wisent und einen Elch, Starcher Ure vier, und einen grimmen Schelch / "After this he straightway slew a Bison and an Elk, Of the strong Wild Oxen four, and a single fierce Schelch."). The Middle Irish word segh was also suggested as a reference to the Irish Elk.[7][8] These interpretations are however, not conclusive.[9][10]
More recent research pointed out that high amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are required to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from food plants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). Thus, in the antler growth phase, Giant Deer were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis.[11]
Illustration of Megaloceros giganteus from 1856
When the climate changed at the end of the last glacial period, the vegetation in the animal's habitat also changed towards species that presumably could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals, at least in the western part of its range. The most recent specimen of M. giganteus in northern Siberia, dated to approximately 8,000 years ago - well after the end of the last glacial period - shows no sign of nutrient stress. They come from a region with a continental climate where the proposed vegetation changes had not (yet) occurred.[12]
It is easy to advance a number of hypotheses regarding the disappearance of the more localized populations of this species. The situation is less clear regarding the final demise of the Irish Elk in continental Eurasia east of the Urals. Stuart et al. (2004) tentatively suggest that a combination of human presence along rivers and slow decrease in habitat quality in upland areas presented the last Irish Elk with the choice of either good habitat but considerable hunting pressure, or general absence of humans in a suboptimal habitat.
Cernunnos is the conventional name given in Celtic studies to depictions of the horned god of Celtic polytheism. The name itself is only attested once, on the 1st-century Pillar of the Boatmen, but depictions of a horned or antlered figure, often seated cross-legged and often associated with animals and holding or wearing torcs, are known from other instances.
Nothing is known about the god from literary sources, and details about his name, his cult or his significance in Celtic religion are unknown. Speculative interpretations identify him as a god of nature or fertility.[1]
Friday, December 30, 2011
In Roman mythology, Diana (lt. "heavenly" or "divine") was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy. Diana was worshiped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Dianic Wicca, a largely feminist form of the practice, is named for her. Diana was known to be the virgin goddess and looked after virgins and women. She was one of the three maiden goddesses, Diana, Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry.
Oak groves were especially sacred to her. According to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.
Diana was initially just the hunting goddess,[citation needed] associated with wild animals and woodlands. She also later became a moon goddess, supplanting Titan goddess Luna.[citation needed] She also became the goddess of childbirth and ruled over the countryside. Catullus wrote a poem to Diana in which she has more than one alias: Latonia, Lucina, Iuno, Trivia, Luna.
Worship of Diana is mentioned in the Bible. In Acts of the Apostles, Ephesian metal smiths who felt threatened by Saint Paul’s preaching of Christianity, jealously rioted in her defense, shouting “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:28, New English Bible). After the city secretary (γραμματεύς) quieted the crowd, he said, “Men of Ephesus, what person is there who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is the keeper (guardian) of the temple of the great Diana and of her image that fell from heaven ?" (Acts 19:36)
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek παλιν + ψαω = (palin "again" + psao "I scrape"), and meant "scraped (clean and used) again." Romans wrote on wax-coated tablets that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero seems to refer to this practice.
The term has come to be used in similar context in a variety of disciplines, notably architectural archaeology.
Contents
A Georgian palimpsest of the 5th/6th century.
Because parchment, prepared from animal hides, is far more durable than paper or papyrus, most palimpsests known to modern scholars are parchment, which rose in popularity in western Europe after the sixth century. Also, where papyrus was in common use, reuse of writing media was less common because papyrus was cheaper and more expendable than costly parchment. But some papyrus palimpsests do survive, and Romans referred to this custom of washing papyrus,[1] although the reed from which it was made did not grow in Italy.
The writing was washed from parchment or vellum using milk and oat bran. With the passing of time, the faint remains of the former writing would reappear enough so that scholars can discern the text (called the scriptio inferior, the "underwriting") and decipher it. In the later Middle Ages the surface of the vellum was usually scraped away with powdered pumice, irretrievably losing the writing, hence the most valuable palimpsests are those that were overwritten in the early Middle Ages.
Medieval codices are constructed in "gathers" which are folded (compare "folio", "leaf, page" ablative case of Latin folium), then stacked together like a newspaper and sewn together at the fold. Prepared parchment sheets retained their original central fold, so each was ordinarily cut in half, making a quarto volume of the original folio, with the overwritten text running perpendicular to the effaced text.
[edit]Modern decipherment
Faint legible remains were read by eye before 20th-century techniques helped make lost texts readable. Scholars of the 19th century used chemical means to read palimpsests that were sometimes very destructive, using tincture of gall or later, ammonium bisulfate. Modern methods of reading palimpsests using ultraviolet light and photography are less damaging. Innovative digitized images aid scholars in deciphering unreadable palimpsests. Superexposed photographs exposed in various light spectra, a technique called "multispectral filming," can increase the contrast of faded ink on parchment that is too indistinct to be read by eye in normal light. Multispectral imaging, undertaken by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University, retrieved some four-fifths of the text of the Archimedes Palimpsest. More recently, at the Walters Art Museum where the palimpsest is now conserved, the project has focused on experimental techniques to retrieve the remaining fifth. One of the most successful of these techniques has proved to be X-ray fluorescence imaging, through which the iron in the ink is revealed, even under a forged overpainting.
[edit]As a form of destruction
A number of ancient works have survived only as palimpsests.[2] Vellum manuscripts were over-written on purpose mostly due to the dearth or cost of the material. In the case of Greek manuscripts, the consumption of old codices for the sake of the material was so great that a synodal decree of the year 691 forbade the destruction of manuscripts of the Scriptures or the church fathers, except for imperfect or injured volumes. Such a decree put added pressure on retrieving the vellum on which secular manuscripts were written. The decline of the vellum trade with the introduction of paper exacerbated the scarcity, increasing pressure to reuse material.
Cultural considerations also motivated the creation of palimpsests. The demand for new texts might outstrip the availability of parchment in some centers, yet the existence of cleaned parchment that was never overwritten suggests that there was also a spiritual motivation, to sanctify pagan text by overlaying it with the word of God, somewhat as pagan sites were overlaid with Christian churches to hallow pagan ground. Or the pagan texts may have merely appeared irrelevant. Texts most susceptible to being overwritten included obsolete legal and liturgical ones, sometimes of intense interest to the historian. Early Latin translations of Scripture were rendered obsolete by Jerome's Vulgate. Texts might be in foreign languages or written in unfamiliar scripts that had become illegible over time. The codices themselves might be already damaged or incomplete. Heretical texts were dangerous to harbor: there were compelling political and religious reasons to destroy texts viewed as heresy, and to reuse the media was less wasteful than simply to burn the books.
Vast destruction of the broad quartos of the early centuries of our era took place in the period which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, but palimpsests were also created as new texts were required during the Carolingian renaissance. The most valuable Latin palimpsests are found in the codices which were remade from the early large folios in the seventh to the ninth centuries. It has been noticed that no entire work is generally found in any instance in the original text of a palimpsest, but that portions of many works have been taken to make up a single volume. An exception is the Archimedes palimpsest (see below). On the whole, Early Medieval scribes were indiscriminate in supplying themselves with material from any old volumes that happened to be at hand.
[edit]Some famous palimpsests
Wolfenbüttel Codex Guelferbytanus A
The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris: portions of the Old and New Testaments in Greek, attributed to the fifth century, are covered with works of Ephraem the Syrian in a hand of the twelfth century
Among the Syriac manuscripts obtained from the Nitrian desert in Egypt, British Museum, London: important Greek texts
Codex Nitriensis, a volume containing a work of Severus of Antioch of the beginning of the ninth century is written on palimpsest leaves taken from sixth century manuscripts of the Iliad and the Gospel of St Luke, both of the sixth century, and the Euclid's Elements of the seventh or eighth century, British Museum
A double palimpsest, in which a text of St John Chrysostom, in Syriac, of the ninth or tenth century, covers a Latin grammatical treatise in a cursive hand of the sixth century, which in its turn covers the Latin annals of the historian Granius Licinianus, of the fifth century, British Museum.
The only known hyper-palimpsest: the Novgorod Codex, in which maybe hundreds of texts have left their traces on the wooden back wall of a wax tablet
The Ambrosian Plautus, in rustic capitals, of the fourth or fifth century, re-written with portions of the Bible in the ninth century, Ambrosian Library
Cicero, De republica in uncials, of the fourth century, covered by St Augustine on the Psalms, of the seventh century, Vatican Library
Codex Theodosianus of Turin, of the fifth or sixth century
the Fasti Consulares of Verona, of 486
the Arian fragment of the Vatican, of the fifth century
the letters of Cornelius Fronto, overwritten by the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon
the Archimedes Palimpsest, a work of the great Syracusan mathematician copied onto parchment in the tenth century and overwritten by a liturgical text in the twelfth century
Sinaitic Palimpsest
the unique copy of a Greek grammatical text composed by Herodian for the emperor Marcus Aurelius in the second century, preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Codex Zacynthius – Greek palimpsest fragments of the gospel of Saint Luke, obtained in the island of Zante, by General Colin Macaulay, deciphered, transcribed and edited by Tregelles
Codex Dublinensis (Codex Z) of St. Matthew's Gospel, at Trinity College, Dublin, also deciphered by Tregelles
Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis, with text of Origins of Isidore, partly palimpsest, with texts of earlier codices Guelferbytanus A, Guelferbytanus B, Codex Carolinus, and several other texts Greek and Latin;
Other palimpsests (New Testament)
To the present day survived about sixty palimpsest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Uncial codices:
Porphyrianus, Vaticanus 2061 (double palimpsest), Uncial 064, 065, 066, 067, 068 (double palimpsest), 072, 078, 079, 086, 088, 093, 094, 096, 097, 098, 0103, 0104, 0116, 0120, 0130, 0132, 0133, 0135.
Lectionaries:
Lectionary 1637.
[edit]Extended usages
The word palimpsest also refers to a plaque which has been turned around and engraved on what was originally the back.
In planetary astronomy, ancient lunar craters whose relief has disappeared from subsequent volcanic outpourings, leaving only a "ghost" of a rim are also known as palimpsests or ghost craters. Icy surfaces of natural satellites like Callisto and Ganymede preserve hints of their history in these rings, where the crater's relief has been effaced by creep of the icy surface ("viscous relaxation"). They are characterized by fast projectile which penetrates the cold, icy crust. Inward flow of slushy surface causes the surface to retain this upflowing of water from the past.
In medicine it is used to describe an episode of acute anterograde amnesia without loss of consciousness, brought on by the ingestion of alcohol or other substances: 'alcoholic palimpsest'.
The term is used in forensic science or forensic engineering to describe objects placed over one another to establish the sequence of events at an accident or crime scene.
Several historians are beginning to use the term as a description of the way people experience times, that is, as a layering of present experiences over faded pasts.
Palimpsest is beginning to be used by glaciologists to describe contradicting glacial flow indicators, usually consisting of smaller indicators (i.e., striae) overprinted upon larger features (i.e., stoss and lee topography, drumlins, etc).
During the opening credits of the film version of The Name of the Rose, it is described as "A palimpsest of the novel by Umberto Eco".
Gore Vidal titled his 1995 memoir "Palimpsest".
The contemporary British composer George Benjamin has written a pair of orchestral pieces titled Palimpsest I and Palimpsest II.
[edit]Decipherment in architecture
Example of an architectural palimpsest in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Architects imply palimpsest as a ghost—an image of what once was. In the built environment, this occurs more than we might think. Whenever spaces are shuffled, rebuilt, or remodeled, shadows remain. Tarred rooflines remain on the sides of a building long after the neighboring structure has been demolished; removed stairs leave a mark where the painted wall surface stopped. Dust lines remain from a relocated appliance. Ancient ruins speak volumes of their former wholeness. Palimpsests can inform us, archaeologically, of the realities of the built past.
Thus architects, archaeologists and design historians sometimes use the word to describe the accumulated iterations of a design or a site, whether in literal layers of archaeological remains, or by the figurative accumulation and reinforcement of design ideas over time. An excellent example of this can be seen at The Tower of London, where construction began in the eleventh century, and the site continues to develop to this day.
Archaeologists in particular use the term to denote a record of material remains that is suspected of having formed during an extended period but that cannot be resolved in such a way that temporally discrete traces can be recognized as such.
Egyptologists use the word for texts and representations inscribed in stone that have been scraped away, either completely or partially, often with a plaster filling being applied, and then a new inscription carved on top.
The term has come to be used in similar context in a variety of disciplines, notably architectural archaeology.
Contents
A Georgian palimpsest of the 5th/6th century.
Because parchment, prepared from animal hides, is far more durable than paper or papyrus, most palimpsests known to modern scholars are parchment, which rose in popularity in western Europe after the sixth century. Also, where papyrus was in common use, reuse of writing media was less common because papyrus was cheaper and more expendable than costly parchment. But some papyrus palimpsests do survive, and Romans referred to this custom of washing papyrus,[1] although the reed from which it was made did not grow in Italy.
The writing was washed from parchment or vellum using milk and oat bran. With the passing of time, the faint remains of the former writing would reappear enough so that scholars can discern the text (called the scriptio inferior, the "underwriting") and decipher it. In the later Middle Ages the surface of the vellum was usually scraped away with powdered pumice, irretrievably losing the writing, hence the most valuable palimpsests are those that were overwritten in the early Middle Ages.
Medieval codices are constructed in "gathers" which are folded (compare "folio", "leaf, page" ablative case of Latin folium), then stacked together like a newspaper and sewn together at the fold. Prepared parchment sheets retained their original central fold, so each was ordinarily cut in half, making a quarto volume of the original folio, with the overwritten text running perpendicular to the effaced text.
[edit]Modern decipherment
Faint legible remains were read by eye before 20th-century techniques helped make lost texts readable. Scholars of the 19th century used chemical means to read palimpsests that were sometimes very destructive, using tincture of gall or later, ammonium bisulfate. Modern methods of reading palimpsests using ultraviolet light and photography are less damaging. Innovative digitized images aid scholars in deciphering unreadable palimpsests. Superexposed photographs exposed in various light spectra, a technique called "multispectral filming," can increase the contrast of faded ink on parchment that is too indistinct to be read by eye in normal light. Multispectral imaging, undertaken by researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University, retrieved some four-fifths of the text of the Archimedes Palimpsest. More recently, at the Walters Art Museum where the palimpsest is now conserved, the project has focused on experimental techniques to retrieve the remaining fifth. One of the most successful of these techniques has proved to be X-ray fluorescence imaging, through which the iron in the ink is revealed, even under a forged overpainting.
[edit]As a form of destruction
A number of ancient works have survived only as palimpsests.[2] Vellum manuscripts were over-written on purpose mostly due to the dearth or cost of the material. In the case of Greek manuscripts, the consumption of old codices for the sake of the material was so great that a synodal decree of the year 691 forbade the destruction of manuscripts of the Scriptures or the church fathers, except for imperfect or injured volumes. Such a decree put added pressure on retrieving the vellum on which secular manuscripts were written. The decline of the vellum trade with the introduction of paper exacerbated the scarcity, increasing pressure to reuse material.
Cultural considerations also motivated the creation of palimpsests. The demand for new texts might outstrip the availability of parchment in some centers, yet the existence of cleaned parchment that was never overwritten suggests that there was also a spiritual motivation, to sanctify pagan text by overlaying it with the word of God, somewhat as pagan sites were overlaid with Christian churches to hallow pagan ground. Or the pagan texts may have merely appeared irrelevant. Texts most susceptible to being overwritten included obsolete legal and liturgical ones, sometimes of intense interest to the historian. Early Latin translations of Scripture were rendered obsolete by Jerome's Vulgate. Texts might be in foreign languages or written in unfamiliar scripts that had become illegible over time. The codices themselves might be already damaged or incomplete. Heretical texts were dangerous to harbor: there were compelling political and religious reasons to destroy texts viewed as heresy, and to reuse the media was less wasteful than simply to burn the books.
Vast destruction of the broad quartos of the early centuries of our era took place in the period which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, but palimpsests were also created as new texts were required during the Carolingian renaissance. The most valuable Latin palimpsests are found in the codices which were remade from the early large folios in the seventh to the ninth centuries. It has been noticed that no entire work is generally found in any instance in the original text of a palimpsest, but that portions of many works have been taken to make up a single volume. An exception is the Archimedes palimpsest (see below). On the whole, Early Medieval scribes were indiscriminate in supplying themselves with material from any old volumes that happened to be at hand.
[edit]Some famous palimpsests
Wolfenbüttel Codex Guelferbytanus A
The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris: portions of the Old and New Testaments in Greek, attributed to the fifth century, are covered with works of Ephraem the Syrian in a hand of the twelfth century
Among the Syriac manuscripts obtained from the Nitrian desert in Egypt, British Museum, London: important Greek texts
Codex Nitriensis, a volume containing a work of Severus of Antioch of the beginning of the ninth century is written on palimpsest leaves taken from sixth century manuscripts of the Iliad and the Gospel of St Luke, both of the sixth century, and the Euclid's Elements of the seventh or eighth century, British Museum
A double palimpsest, in which a text of St John Chrysostom, in Syriac, of the ninth or tenth century, covers a Latin grammatical treatise in a cursive hand of the sixth century, which in its turn covers the Latin annals of the historian Granius Licinianus, of the fifth century, British Museum.
The only known hyper-palimpsest: the Novgorod Codex, in which maybe hundreds of texts have left their traces on the wooden back wall of a wax tablet
The Ambrosian Plautus, in rustic capitals, of the fourth or fifth century, re-written with portions of the Bible in the ninth century, Ambrosian Library
Cicero, De republica in uncials, of the fourth century, covered by St Augustine on the Psalms, of the seventh century, Vatican Library
Codex Theodosianus of Turin, of the fifth or sixth century
the Fasti Consulares of Verona, of 486
the Arian fragment of the Vatican, of the fifth century
the letters of Cornelius Fronto, overwritten by the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon
the Archimedes Palimpsest, a work of the great Syracusan mathematician copied onto parchment in the tenth century and overwritten by a liturgical text in the twelfth century
Sinaitic Palimpsest
the unique copy of a Greek grammatical text composed by Herodian for the emperor Marcus Aurelius in the second century, preserved in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Codex Zacynthius – Greek palimpsest fragments of the gospel of Saint Luke, obtained in the island of Zante, by General Colin Macaulay, deciphered, transcribed and edited by Tregelles
Codex Dublinensis (Codex Z) of St. Matthew's Gospel, at Trinity College, Dublin, also deciphered by Tregelles
Codex Guelferbytanus 64 Weissenburgensis, with text of Origins of Isidore, partly palimpsest, with texts of earlier codices Guelferbytanus A, Guelferbytanus B, Codex Carolinus, and several other texts Greek and Latin;
Other palimpsests (New Testament)
To the present day survived about sixty palimpsest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. Uncial codices:
Porphyrianus, Vaticanus 2061 (double palimpsest), Uncial 064, 065, 066, 067, 068 (double palimpsest), 072, 078, 079, 086, 088, 093, 094, 096, 097, 098, 0103, 0104, 0116, 0120, 0130, 0132, 0133, 0135.
Lectionaries:
Lectionary 1637.
[edit]Extended usages
The word palimpsest also refers to a plaque which has been turned around and engraved on what was originally the back.
In planetary astronomy, ancient lunar craters whose relief has disappeared from subsequent volcanic outpourings, leaving only a "ghost" of a rim are also known as palimpsests or ghost craters. Icy surfaces of natural satellites like Callisto and Ganymede preserve hints of their history in these rings, where the crater's relief has been effaced by creep of the icy surface ("viscous relaxation"). They are characterized by fast projectile which penetrates the cold, icy crust. Inward flow of slushy surface causes the surface to retain this upflowing of water from the past.
In medicine it is used to describe an episode of acute anterograde amnesia without loss of consciousness, brought on by the ingestion of alcohol or other substances: 'alcoholic palimpsest'.
The term is used in forensic science or forensic engineering to describe objects placed over one another to establish the sequence of events at an accident or crime scene.
Several historians are beginning to use the term as a description of the way people experience times, that is, as a layering of present experiences over faded pasts.
Palimpsest is beginning to be used by glaciologists to describe contradicting glacial flow indicators, usually consisting of smaller indicators (i.e., striae) overprinted upon larger features (i.e., stoss and lee topography, drumlins, etc).
During the opening credits of the film version of The Name of the Rose, it is described as "A palimpsest of the novel by Umberto Eco".
Gore Vidal titled his 1995 memoir "Palimpsest".
The contemporary British composer George Benjamin has written a pair of orchestral pieces titled Palimpsest I and Palimpsest II.
[edit]Decipherment in architecture
Example of an architectural palimpsest in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Architects imply palimpsest as a ghost—an image of what once was. In the built environment, this occurs more than we might think. Whenever spaces are shuffled, rebuilt, or remodeled, shadows remain. Tarred rooflines remain on the sides of a building long after the neighboring structure has been demolished; removed stairs leave a mark where the painted wall surface stopped. Dust lines remain from a relocated appliance. Ancient ruins speak volumes of their former wholeness. Palimpsests can inform us, archaeologically, of the realities of the built past.
Thus architects, archaeologists and design historians sometimes use the word to describe the accumulated iterations of a design or a site, whether in literal layers of archaeological remains, or by the figurative accumulation and reinforcement of design ideas over time. An excellent example of this can be seen at The Tower of London, where construction began in the eleventh century, and the site continues to develop to this day.
Archaeologists in particular use the term to denote a record of material remains that is suspected of having formed during an extended period but that cannot be resolved in such a way that temporally discrete traces can be recognized as such.
Egyptologists use the word for texts and representations inscribed in stone that have been scraped away, either completely or partially, often with a plaster filling being applied, and then a new inscription carved on top.
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