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This paper reviews the aims, context, approach and early outcomes of a new transnational participative archaeology project focussed on rural village communities. ‘Community Archaeology in Rural Environments Meeting Societal Challenges’ (CARE-MSoC) includes three European countries where participative community archaeology is new- the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland. CARE-MSoC aims to explore the feasibility, value and impact of excavation by rural residents within their home communities by using a method which can be deployed anywhere and which in the UK has been shown to advance knowledge of the past while also delivering a wide range of social and heritage benefits: multiple test pit excavation within inhabited villages. Data presented here from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Poland show the activity to be popular and effective here in benefitting people while also attracting, sustaining and growing local interest in heritage participation in all three countries.

During archaeological excavations in burial sites, sometimes stoned organic objects are found, in addition to human remains. Those objects might be of a different origin, depending on various factors influencing members of a community (i.e. diseases, trauma), which provides information about their living conditions. The St. Nicholas Church archaeological site (Libkovice, Czechia) in the 18th century horizon of the cemetery, yielded a maturus-senilis female skeleton with a stone object in the left iliac fossa. This object was an oviform cyst-like rough structure, measuring 54 mm in length, 35 mm in maximum diameter and 0.2–0.7 mm shell thickness. Within the object there were small fetal bones (long bones, i.e. femur and two tibias, two scapulas, three ribs, vertebrae and other tiny bone fragments). Methods utilized to analyze the outer and inner surface morphology of the cyst and its inside, included: X-ray, CT imaging, SEM, histological staining and EDS. The EDS analysis revealed the presence of primarily oxygen, calcium and phosphorus in bone samples, and oxygen and silicon, in stone shell. Based on the length of the femur (20.2 mm) and tibia (16 mm) shafts, the fetal age was determined as being in the 15–18 week of pregnancy. The differential diagnosis was conducted, including for the three most probable cases: fetiform teratoma (FT), fetus-in-fetu (FIF) and lithopedion. The possibility of fetiform teratoma was discounted due to the presence of an anatomically correct spine, long bones and the proportions of the find. Although the low calcium content in the shell (2.3% atom mass), the lack of skull bones and the better developed lower limbs indicate fetus-in-fetu rather than lithopedion, the analyses results are unable to conclusively identify the object under one of these two categories since there are insufficient such cases in excavation material with which to draw comparison.

We describe the Second Multilingual Named Entity Challenge in Slavic languages. The task is recognizing mentions of named entities in Web documents, their normalization, and cross-lingual linking. The Challenge was organized as part of the 7th Balto-Slavic Natural Language Processing Workshop, co-located with the ACL-2019 conference. Eight teams participated in the competition, which covered four languages and five entity types. Performance for the named entity recognition task reached 90% F-measure, much higher than reported in the first edition of the Challenge. Seven teams covered all four languages, and five teams participated in the cross-lingual entity linking task. Detailed evaluation information is available on the shared task web page. V článku popisujeme druhou vícejazyčnou úlohu pro rozpoznávání pojmenovaných entit. Cílem úlohy je rozpoznání pojmenovaných entit v textech z webových stránek, jejich normalizace a mezijazyčné propojení. Úloha byla součástí workshopu “7th Balto-Slavic Natural Language Processing Workshop”. Celkem devět týmů se zůčastnilo popsané úlohy. Nejlepší vytvořené systémy dosáhly 90% F-skóre, cože je výrazně lepší výsledek než v předešlém ročníku. Sedm týmů vytvořilo systém pokrývající všechny čtyři možné jazyky a pět týmů se zúčastnilo dílčí úlohy mezijazyčného propojování entit.

The article presents various approaches to the methodology of modern and contemporary art history. It provides signposts and a set of possible orientations toward the field of art history, by presenting some of the theoretical perspectives most widely used in the discipline today (e.g. historiography, iconography, “iconic turn” as well as “crisis in art history”). The aim of this article is to present art as a visual representation of a range of concepts and emotions as well as to examine the changes of different ways in which people study, interpret and appreciate art in its richness and multitude of forms.

The aim of this article is to present an overview of changes which have taken place in Visual Arts in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid in 1994. The artistic issues are shown in a broader perspective of grave alterations which ocurred in South African society and culture after the termination of apartheid. One of the most important aspects concerning contemporary South African Art is the problem of dealing with South Africa’s traumatic past (this problem is the dominating theme of an artistic output of such diverse artists as Minnette Vári,William Kentridge, SueWilliamson, Judith Mason and Kendell Geers). Another extraordinary problem faced by South African present-day art is to find paths in order to construct links between South African art and modern and classical art from Europe. In order to analyze these problems, we take under scrutinous consideration such 21st century artists as Johannes Phokela,Wim Botha, Andrew Putter.