Stuff behind cuts

[yakalskovich]

First, this one is for essayel; don't bother reading it if you're not her, you'll be bored out of your skulls.


Notes I took at the Scythian exhibition, as they occurred to me:

• stripey cloth in red and brown and green and yellow
• textiles very fine, thin warp around thick woof
• edges firmly hemmed in complicated fie stitches
• boar tusks for personal adornment => hunting trophies
• men and women buried apart in kurgans
• belt buckles etc. with animal ornaments
• ornaments have a severe art nouveau feel to it; simplicity not because they didn't know any better, clarity as STYLE
• pickaxe as WEAPON
• gold strips wrapped around manes and tails of horses
• the kurgan Arzan2 in Tuva holds a double burial of two men embracing spoon fashion => close to the horses. Grooms? One taller (behind), one shorter. Looks very intimate
• another double burial with two warriors + pickaxe
• arrow heads have THREE blades or are triangular; very steep angle, and hooks
• golden ornaments sewn on felt as pattern
• women had daggers -- men had BIGGER daggers
• handles of tools, implements, vessels curved like a horse's bent foreleg
• landscape: hilly, grassy, very few scattered trees
• long strings of stone beads for women
• all work very fine and detailed
• ornaments feel something between Chinese and Mexican
• battle pickax from princely tomb, with golden swirly ornaments
• carpets!
• tattoos for nobles in the same sort of stylised patterns
• tattoos raound shoulders, arms, lower legs, shoulder blades
• 'Curilian tea': a micture of herbs thought to have magical powers, as part of burial goods
• Pazyryk: frozen people foind of 'Europoid' type with just some Mongolian influence
• blond-haired warrior from ice lens grave
• Kazakh artefacts of today still look Scythian
• golden ornaments or wooden ornaments thinly gilded, sewn ONTO clothes & hats & boots
• composite bows, very complex
• grassy hills, wide valleys
• colourful carpets in graves
• horses 'dressed up' as other animals
• shields with grooves in
• coriander seeds as incense
• fish-shaped saddle pendants
• tattoo on shoulder, down chest, arm, shoulder blade -- abstraction of a horse, with one hoof reaching down almost to the right nipple, head curled on shoulder (on warrior mummy)
• brown hair cut short in front with two ROPES (not braids!) in the back, gathered over the ears and roped back (on warrior mummy)
• stripey patterns very common
• green valleys, very blue rivers reflecting the sky, mountains in the background
• big Greek pottery imported as luxury items
• helmet with point over noise, ridge around face, ridge on top, holes in the back 8from Kuban near Black Sea)
• tiny golden bells; larger bronze bells
• THE pectoral: extremely refined and detailed. Men in centre, then horses, THEN women, then sheep and smaller animals - that's what the world was like! Men: beards and long hair; European looks
• they must have had stamps to make many identical small golden ornaments
• gold work very refined, they controlled their materials very precisely and did exactly what they wanted to
• imported huge Greek bronze pots
• climate change??? Lots of timber in the Kurgans, but hardly any trees around
• how did a nomadic tribe get to meet the traders importing stuff regularly?

And then we went to the Australian place, and I had crocodile steak.

Crocodile is definitely meat, not fish. It was the first reptile meat I ever had, and it seems they slice the tail and serve it as steaks. It's tougher than fish or poultry, very white, and comes in four bunches of muscles and fat around one central bone, bit like a salmon steak there. It's not for people who insist on their meat to be lean, but you do suspect that it's far enough from human proteins to be actually good, like fishy fat? I liked it; it was nicely marinaded in garlic and very tasty; very filling. I'll definitely have it again if I get the chance, not just out of coolness/weirdness factor.-