All posts by Archaeology World Team

NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Early 20th-Century Ships Spotted in Lake Superior

Early 20th-Century Ships Spotted in Lake Superior

Michigan researchers have found the wreckage of two ships that disappeared into Lake Superior in 1914 and hope the discovery will lead them to a third that sank at the same time, killing nearly 30 people aboard the trio of lumber-shipping vessels.

Early 20th-Century Ships Spotted in Lake Superior
In this image taken from video provided by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, lettering identifying the wrecked ship as property of the Edward Hines Lumber Company is seen in Lake Superior in August 2022.
In this undated image provided by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the Selden E. Marvin is seen via sonar technology in Lake Superior.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society announced the discoveries this month after confirming details with other researchers. Ric Mixter, a board member of the society and a maritime historian, called witnessing the discoveries “a career highlight.”

“It not only solved a chapter in the nation’s darkest day in lumber history, but also showcased a team of historians who have dedicated their lives towards making sure these stories aren’t forgotten,” Mixter said.

The vessels owned by the Edward Hines Lumber Company sank into the ice-cold lake on Nov. 18, 1914, when a storm swept through as they moved lumber from Baraga, Michigan, to Tonawanda, New York. The steamship C.F. Curtis was towing the schooner barges Selden E. Marvin and Annie M. Peterson; all 28 people aboard were killed.

The society’s team found the wreck of the Curtis during the summer of 2021 and the Marvin a year later within a few miles of the first discovery. The organization operates a museum in Whitefish Point and regularly runs searches for shipwrecks, aiming to tell “the lost history of all the Great Lakes” with a focus on Lake Superior, said Corey Adkins, the society’s content and communications director.

“One of the things that makes us proud when we discover these things is helping piece the puzzle together of what happened to these 28 people,” Adkins said. “It’s been 109 years, but maybe there are still some family members that want to know what happened. We’re able to start answering those questions.”

Both wrecks were discovered about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Grand Marais, Michigan, farther into the lake than the 1914 accounts suggested the ships sank, Adkins said.

There was also damage to the Marvin’s bow and the Curtis’ stern, making researchers wonder whether a collision contributed, he said.

“Those are all questions we want to consider when we go back out this summer,” Adkins said.

Video footage from the Curtis wreckage showed the maintained hull of the steamship, its wheel, anchor, boiler and still shining gauges — all preserved by Lake Superior’s cold waters, along with other artifacts.

Another recording captured the team’s jubilant cheers as the words “Selden E. Marvin” on the hull came into clear view for the first time on a video feed shot by an underwater drone at the barge wreck site.

“We’re the first human eyes to see it since 1914, since World War I,” one team member mused.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome

Lavish ancient Roman winery found at ruins of Villa of the Quintilii near Rome
View of the excavated winery from the northern dining hall of the Villa of the Quintilii outside Rome. Photograph: Stefano Castellani

Of all the Roman ruins that populate what is now a pleasant landscape of pine trees and meadows, under the distant gaze of the Alban Hills, the Villa of the Quintilii is perhaps the most impressive – almost a city in miniature, covering up to 24 hectares.

Lying on the ancient Appian Way as it runs south-east from Rome, the villa had its own theatre, an arena for chariot races and a baths complex with walls and floors lined in sumptuous marble.

But the story of the villa, whose origins lie in the second century AD, has just become even more remarkable, with the discovery of an elaborate winery unparalleled in the Roman world for lavishness.

The facility included a series of luxurious dining rooms with a view on to fountains gushing with young wine. There were also marble-lined treading areas where enslaved workers would stamp down the newly harvested fruit, while the emperor perhaps looked on as he feasted with his retinue.

The winery, just beyond the city limits of Rome during antiquity, was set in what was once a landscape of orchards and agricultural lands, dotted with monumental tombs – and the villas of the super-rich.

“[The Villa of the Quintilii] was an amazing mini city completed by a luxury winery for the emperor himself to indulge his Bacchic tendencies,” said archaeologist Dr Emlyn Dodd, assistant director at the British School at Rome and an expert on ancient wine production. He has published the archaeologists’ findings in an article for the scholarly journal Antiquity.

The discovery of the ancient Roman winery came by chance, when archaeologists from the Italian ministry of culture were trying to find one of the starting posts for the villa’s arena. The chariot-racing track was built by the emperor Commodus, who reigned from AD177-192. The later winery, it turned out, had been built over one of these starting gates.

Multicoloured decorative marble flooring from one of the dining rooms set around the winery.

It was the notoriously violent Commodus who had the original owners of the villa, the wealthy Quintilii brothers, killed in AD182-3. After that the imperial rulers took personal ownership of the complex, expanding and modifying it over the centuries.

The fact that the name Gordian is stamped into a vast wine-collection vat means that the emperor likely either built the winery or renovated it. That would almost certainly be Gordian III, giving a date of AD238-244, since the first and second emperors of that name reigned only for a matter of days.

At the villa, which is open to the public, Dodd pointed out the recently excavated rectangular wine-treading areas.

“Usually these treading areas would be covered in a waterproof concrete,” he said. “But these were covered in red marble. Which isn’t ideal, as marble gets incredibly slippery when wet. But it shows that whoever built this was prioritising the extravagant nature of the winery over practical considerations.”

After being trodden, the crushed grapes were then taken to the two mechanical presses, 2 metres in diameter, that stood nearby. The resulting grape must was then sent into three fountains, which gushed out of semicircular niches set into a courtyard wall. There were in fact five fountains, with two outer spouts producing water.

The grape must, having cascaded out of the fountains, then flowed along open channels into vast ceramic dolia, or storage jars, set into the ground – a standard winemaking technique in ancient Rome, since they created a stable microenvironment in which fermentation would take place.

Covered dining rooms with wide, open entrances were set around three sides of this open courtyard area. Dodd’s hypothesis is that here the emperor would have feasted and enjoyed the full theatrical spectacle of wine production.

Only one of these dining rooms is excavated – Dodd would like to find funding to uncover them all – and its walls and floors were covered in multicoloured inlaid marble veneers in elaborate geometrical patterns.

The whole facility seems to have been designed with both the practical matter of wine production and the sheer theatre of it in mind.

Letters by a previous emperor, Marcus Aurelius, attest to his having banqueted while watching the work of winemaking going on – perhaps at a luxury winemaking facility at the Villa Magna 30 miles away to the south-east, which is the only parallel to the newly discovered winery in the archaeological record.

Dodd’s hypothesis is that the emperor and his retinue might have visited the Villa of the Quintilii annually to inaugurate that year’s vintage with a ritual and a spectacular – and surely drunken – banquet.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

The newly discovered fossils are 200,000 years old in Denisova Cave

The newly discovered fossils are 200,000 years old in Denisova Cave

The newly discovered fossils are 200,000 years old in Denisova Cave

Scientists have discovered the earliest remains of a human lineage known as the Denisovans. Researchers have identified stone artifacts connected to these ancient ancestors of contemporary humans using these 200,000-year-old bones for the first time, according to a new study.

The DNA study of a tooth and a little finger bone discovered in a cave named Denisova in Siberia’s Altai highlands provided our first tantalizing sight of the Denisovans in 2010.

The fossil record of these mysterious individuals is extremely limited, with only four bits of bone and teeth and a jawbone discovered in Tibet.

Their DNA, however, has indicated that they had a common ancestor with the Neanderthals and our species, Homo sapiens, some 765,000 years ago.

After this ancestor population split, our branch of the human family tree remained in Africa, while the Neanderthal/Denisovan branch moved into Eurasia.

By 430,000 years ago, the Eurasian branch had split, giving rise to the Neanderthals in western Eurasia and the Denisovans in the east. It’s unclear why the Denisovans and Neanderthals split, but a recent theory argues that when the Arctic ice sheet moved southwards to the Black Sea, cutting Europe off from Asia, it split the early humans into the east and west groups indicated above.

We now know that Denisovans are bred with modern humans in at least two places: in East Asia and further south-east in Indonesia or Australasia.

Denisovan cave.

Three more Denisovan fossils have been unearthed in Denisova Cave by experts. Scientists believe they are roughly 200,000 years old, making them the oldest Denisovans yet discovered. Previously, the oldest known Denisovan specimens ranged in age from 122,000 to 194,000 years.

In the new study, researchers analyzed 3,800 bone fragments from Denisova Cave. They searched for proteins they knew were Denisovan based on previous DNA research.

The experts discovered five human bones among the remains. Four of them had enough DNA to be identified: one was Neanderthal, and the other three were Denisovan. Two of these fossils may have come from the same person or from related people, based on genetic similarities.

“We were extremely excited to identify three new Denisovan bones amongst the oldest layers of Denisova Cave,” study author Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the University of Vienna in Austria, told Live Science. “We specifically targeted these layers where no other human fossils were found before, and our strategy worked.”

One of the Denisovan bones was found in Denisova Cave in Siberia.

The age of these Denisovan fossils was calculated by the researchers based on the stratum of soil in which they were discovered. This stratum also contains a plethora of stone objects and animal bones, which might provide important archaeological insights about Denisovan life and behavior. Previously, Denisovan fossils were only discovered in levels devoid of such archaeological material, or in layers that may have also held Neanderthal material.

These newly discovered Denisovans lived in a time when, according to a prior study, the temperature was warm and similar to today’s, and they lived in a habitat that featured broad-leaved woods and open grassland. The Denisovans may have eaten deer, gazelles, horses, bison, and woolly rhinoceroses, according to butchered and burned animal remains discovered in the cave.

“This is the first time we can be sure that Denisovans were the makers of the archaeological remains we found associated with their bone fragments,” Katerina Douka said.

The stone artifacts discovered in the same strata as these Denisovan fossils are largely scraping implements that may be employed to deal with animal skins. The raw materials for these things most likely originated from river silt right outside the cave’s entrance, and the river most likely aided the Denisovans in their hunting efforts, according to the experts.

There are no direct analogs to the stone tools associated with these new fossils in North or Central Asia. They do, however, bore some similarities to artifacts discovered in Israel between 250,000 and 400,000 years ago – a time period associated with key advances in human technology, such as the widespread use of fire, according to the researchers.

The researchers published their findings online in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

The ‘boiler room’ of the bath in the Ancient City of Metropolis was unearthed

The ‘boiler room’ of the bath in the Ancient City of Metropolis was unearthed

The ‘boiler room’ of the bath in the Ancient City of Metropolis was unearthed

The vault section, called the ‘boiler room’, which provides a heat source, has been unearthed in the historical bath of the ancient city of Metropolis in the Torbalı district of İzmir.

The ancient city of Metropolis, which was founded on a hill between Yeniköy and Özbey villages in the west of Torbalı Plain, is the first residential area of Torbalı, which is situated 45 kilometers east of Izmir. Metropolis means Mother Goddess city.

The excavations carried out by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in the Ancient City of Metropolis are supported by Torbalı Municipality, Metropolis Lovers Association, Sabancı Foundation, and İzmir Metropolitan Municipality.

 The first settlement traces around Metropolis date back to the Stone Age (Neolithic) Tepeköy, Dedecik, Kuşçuburun. Although the Hellenic community on the acropolis was founded after the ninth century BC, the city’s greatest growth occurred in the third century BC.

In the ancient city, where many monumental structures were unearthed, this year’s excavations are carried out around the Hellenistic theater, one of the city’s most important structures. With the works carried out for the last 2 years, the boiler room in the historical bath of the ancient city was also unearthed.

Head of the Metropolis Ancient City Excavation, Manisa Celal Bayar University Department of Archeology lecturer Professor Dr. Serdar Aybek said, “The building where the bath is located has a large area of 6 thousand square meters. This is an extremely large area, it needs meticulous work.”

The vaulted gallery we are in is one of the most important halls of the building. The area used as the ‘service corridor’. Along with its terrace, it is one of the most original examples of stone and brick architecture in Anatolia.

Aybek also added that the bath was built in different phases and dates back to 1800 years ago. First, while it had a small area in the 1st century AD; It was expanded in the 2nd century AD, and its halls were enlarged. Additional buildings such as the vault section have been included in the plan to heat the newly enlarged halls.

Stating that the vault section unearthed can be seen as the ‘boiler room’ that provides the heat source of the bath in modern terms, Professor Aybek said, “The ‘Hypocaust’ method, which is the central heating system established by the Romans, used.”

“The baths are heated by means of perforated bricks placed on both the floor and the wall. The boilers, which are the first step of heating, are located here.

The bath is heated by burning the region’s red pine trees in furnaces positioned below ground level, below the three pools in the main area of the bath,” he said.

Professor Aybek stated that it was a pleasant surprise that the vault section was still standing with its terrace: “We saw that the building was at terrace level and completely preserved. This part was completely unearthed through archaeological excavations.”

We uncovered the well-preserved structure by excavating about 9 meters of earth fill. This part reveals only a part of the bath.

This is one of the most important structures of the Metropolis here. It has facilities and management units such as sports and dining halls. This is the place that constitutes the most important attraction center of the city,” he said.

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Rock Ship of Masuda, Japan’s mysterious monolith

Rock Ship of Masuda, Japan’s mysterious monolith

Rock Ship of Masuda, Japan’s mysterious monolith

Located in the Takaichi District of Nara Prefecture, Japan, the village of Asuka is famous for its mysterious stones. The ancient origins of the village date back to the Tumulus period, also known as Kofun Jidai (c. 3rd century–538 C.E.).

Kofun Jidai period (AD 250–552) is characterized by a specific type of earth mound in the shape of a key and surrounded by moats. However, the area is known for its many Buddhist temples, shrines, and statues.

Stone monuments that do not match Buddhist-style sculptures or construction on the hills surrounding Asuka attract curious visitors and explorers.

Masuda-no-iwafune (literally “Rock Ship of Masuda”, 益 田 岩 船 in Japanese), or Rock Ship of Masuda, is the name of the largest of these monuments.  Its function is still unknown and it is located atop a hill close to Okadera Station. 

The largest of the mysterious rock mounds, the rock ship is made of solid granite and measures 11 meters (36 feet) by 8 meters (26 feet), 4.5 meters high (15 feet), and weighs approximately 800 tons as it stands. 

It’s a carved mound, with two holes each about a meter square in the center, going through to the ground.

The “rock ship” moniker is most likely due to its canoe-like appearance or location near Lake Masuda. However, as part of regional development, the nearby body of water has been drained.

The side of the slope facing the top has been smoothed at a 45-degree angle to the ground. Close to the ground, trellis-shaped chisel marks can be seen on the other three sides.

These marks are most likely related to how the builders smoothed the surface of the rock. Because granite is notoriously difficult to carve (even with modern tools), this sculpture captivates experts and scientists who regard it as a technical marvel.

Masuda-no-iwafoune’s construction is said to be strikingly similar to that of another Japanese stone enigma, Ishi-no-Hden. Though it is now a shrine dedicated to the Shinto god shiko Jinja, no one knows who carved it or why, though it is thought to have two holes in the center, similar to Masuda-no-iwafune, though they aren’t visible.

The most popular theory about the stone’s construction is that it was used as an astronomical observation point. Its orientation alignment with the slope suggests that the monolith may be linked with the Japanese lunar calendar (important for early agriculture) and to the first astronomical observations. However, some experts disagree with this.

Other historians contend that the rock designates a royal burial ground, of which only the entrance would have been finished at the time. This still doesn’t explain the unusual features of the structure.

With no conclusive information regarding the significance of this enigmatic stone spaceship, the whys, and wherefores of its existence remain a mystery to this day.

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

Arrowhead from the Biblical Battle Discovered in the Hometown of the Giant Goliath’s

A bone arrowhead discovered in the ancient Philistine city of Gath might have been used and fired off by the city’s defenders as part of the last stand described in the Bible.

According to the Hebrew Bible, a king named Hazael), who ruled the kingdom of Aram from around 842 B.C. to 800 B.C., conquered Gath (also known as Tell es-Safi) before marching on Jerusalem. “Hazael king of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem,” the Book of Kings says (2 Kings 12:17). 

Archaeological investigations in Gath, in what is now Israel, have revealed that major damage occurred in the late ninth century B.C., when the Bible claims Hazael destroyed Gath, which was home to the Philistines (Israel’s foes). Goliath, the giant warrior killed by King David, was born in Gath, according to the Hebrew Bible.

Archaeologists found a bone arrowhead in the ruins of a street in the lower city in 2019 that may have been shot by the city’s defenders in a desperate attempt to halt Hazael’s army from conquering Gath, according to an article published recently in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.

The army of King Hazael of Aram may have passed through the lower city (shown here) while conquering Gath.

The arrowhead has an impact fracture on its tip, and the arrowhead “had been broken close to the mid-shaft, perhaps as a result of this impact,” the archaeologists said The damage suggests the arrowhead hit a target, they added. 

Desperate manufacturing in Gath

This arrowhead might have been made in a Gath workshop that was feverishly trying to make as many bone arrowheads for the city’s defenses as possible.

The workshop, which was discovered in 2006, is located roughly 980 feet (300 meters) away from where the bone arrowhead was found.

Inside this workshop, archaeologists uncovered several bones from the lower forelimbs and hind limbs of domestic cattle, suggesting that people in the workshop were in the process of making bone arrowheads.

“The assemblage represents bones at different stages of working — from complete bones, waste, to almost finished products,” the researchers wrote in the article. 

The defenders may have chosen cattle bone because the material was readily available and crafting a good arrowhead from it didn’t take long. One of the researchers, Ron Kehati, a zooarchaeologist with the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project made a replica of the bone arrowhead in about an hour, study co-author Liora Kolska Horwitz, who is also a zooarchaeologist with the project, told Live Science. 

This workshop “may have functioned as an emergency, ad hoc production center to supply arrowheads to fight the forces of Hazael of Aram, who put the site under siege,” the researchers wrote in the article.

The team plans to resume excavations at the site this summer and future discoveries may provide more clues to the fall of Gath.  

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

The Secret of the Shipwrecks at Theodosius Harbor: 1,600 Years Old Women’s Sandals and Comb

The Secret of the Shipwrecks at Theodosius Harbor: 1,600 Years Old Women’s Sandals and Comb

The 1,600-year-old sandals and comb unearthed during the excavations of Theodosius Harbor (Portus Theodosiacus), the second-biggest harbor built on the coast of the Marmara Sea, fascinate those who see it.

Excavations conducted concurrently with the construction of the Marmaray and Metro rail projects initiated to provide a solution to Istanbul’s transportation problems have resulted in the most extensive archeological survey in the city’s history.

As a result, detailed information about Istanbul’s prehistoric periods has been obtained, an area that has hosted different cultures for thousands of years and unites the cultures of the East and the West.

Before 2004, information about the settlement history of Istanbul was based on excavations outside the Historic Peninsula; settlements in these areas could be traced to 2,500 years ago.

The Secret of the Shipwrecks at Theodosius Harbor: 1,600 Years Old Women’s Sandals and Comb
The ancient sandals were discovered almost intact in the Istanbul dig.

The astonishing finds were discovered during digs prompted by the Marmaray project. One of these interesting finds was sandals with wooden soles belonging to a woman.

The sandals had a Greek message that reads: “Use in health, lady, wear in beauty and happiness.”

Researchers came to differing conclusions about the sunken ships discovered in the harbor of Theodosius, which dated from different centuries. It was suggested that the ships might have sunk during a hurricane, tsunami, or other natural disaster.

A comb was found at the excavations of the Harbor of Theodosius.

The idea that the ships were simply abandoned after serving their purpose is one of the most widely held theories. In the fourth of nine stratigraphic segments in the excavation field, researchers discovered evidence of the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in AD 553.

Another theory is that the southwesterly wind, known as kaçak (fugitive) in Turkish, which begins suddenly in the Marmara Sea during the summer months, caused these vessels to sink.

Above the vessels, a thick layer of sea sand formed. The accumulation that filled the harbor protected and preserved the sunken ships.

The rapid burial of the ships created an anoxic environment that preserved rigging tools like tackles, pulleys, ropes, and toggles as well as everyday items like combs, leather sandals, straw baskets, and wooden plates as well as a variety of organic and inorganic artifacts like stone and iron anchors.

Around the harbor, a number of fragments of sunken ships and items from earlier eras were also discovered.

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

Archeologists discover 2000-year-old Roman coins on the deserted Swedish island of Gotska Sandön

Archeologists discover 2000-year-old Roman coins on the deserted Swedish island of Gotska Sandön

Archeologists discover 2000-year-old Roman coins on the deserted Swedish island of Gotska Sandön

Archaeologists found 2,000-year-old Roman coins on the Swedish deserted island of Gotska Sandön.

Previously, ancient Roman coins were discovered on the Swedish island of Gotland. Finding similar ancient items on the deserted island of Gotska Sandön, on the other hand, is unusual. Because of its location, it is a unique discovery.

The coins stem from the time of Emperor Trajan, who ruled the Roman Empire in the years 98-117, and Antoninus Pius, who ruled between 138 and 161.

The discovery was made by a team of experts from Södertörn University and the Gotland Museum.

Archaeologists, to this day, have not been able to identify the historical role of the island within the Baltic region’s different historical eras. The island has been inhabited since the Stone Ages, as seal bones, slaughter remains from cows, and a battle glove was previously excavated.

A silver denarius showing the face of Roman emperor Trajan.

In a statement, Johan Rönnby, professor of marine archeology at Soderon University, which runs the excavations in collaboration with the Gotland Museum, stated that “These are exciting finds that raise several questions.”

Archaeologists are now debating whether the discoveries are shipwreck remains strewn across the beach. A large number of hearths and fireplace remains have been discovered along the island’s coast. Another theory is that the coins are somehow related to these activities.

A local lighthouse keeper claimed to have discovered a Roman coin on the island in the late 1800s, which was met with skepticism. The recent discoveries may vindicate him.

“Finds of Roman silver coins are not unusual for Gotland, but are for Gotska Sandon. What makes this find interesting is precisely the location,” Daniel Langhammer of the Administrative Board in Gotland County said.

Gotska Sandon islands.

Gotland, Sweden’s largest island and a key point in the Baltic Sea maritime trade, is rich in medieval treasures.

The number of Arab dirhams discovered on the island, in particular, is astounding, dwarfing any other site in Western Eurasia. These coins made their way north along the Silver-Fur Road through trade between Rus merchants and the Abbasid Caliphate.

The 9-km long and 6-km wide Gotska Sandon island is part of Gotland County and has been a national park since 1909.