Archeologists studying aerial photos of the coast of Wales found a 1000-year-old fish trap lurking beneath the waves.
The unique shape of the rock structure helped the Normans trap fish without boats or anything at all. All they had to do was wait for the tide to go out and hundreds of fish would be trapped behind the rocks.
Nets were placed at a narrow exit to catch the fish on their way out. Fish weirs were so effective that overfishing led to a provision in the Magna Carta banning them in rivers.
All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.
James Gleick on the value of objects in contemporary society. Mass produced and virtual items are getting ever cheaper while items like an original copy of the Magna Carta are getting more and more expensive.
Just when digital reproduction makes it possible to create a "Rembrandt" good enough to fool the eye, the "real" Rembrandt becomes more expensive than ever. Why? Because the same free flow that makes information cheap and reproducible helps us treasure the sight of information that is not. A story gains power from its attachment, however tenuous, to a physical object. The object gains power from the story. The abstract version may flash by on a screen, but the worn parchment and the fading ink make us pause. The extreme of scarcity is intensified by the extreme of ubiquity.
Gleick doesn't adequately nail the "why?" here somehow...seems there's more to it than just objects with attached stories.
Update: See also The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin. (thx, finn)
