All posts by Archaeology World Team

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.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Chelmsford: Roman Apollo ring with links to Snettisham hoard found

Chelmsford: Roman Apollo ring with links to Snettisham hoard found

Chelmsford: Roman Apollo ring with links to Snettisham hoard found
The silver ring’s carved gemstone is a dark orange-red colour and “is probably a carnelian”, experts said in their report to the Essex Coroner

A silver ring unearthed in an Essex field may be connected to a famous Roman jeweller’s hoard found in Norfolk in 1985, a historian has said. The ring is inset with a carnelian carving of the god Apollo. It was found by a metal detectorist near Chelmsford.

Its 2nd Century wearer would have hoped for the god’s protection, Essex finds liaison officer Lori Rogerson said.

The ring seemed to be from the same workshop as the Snettisham hoard of carved gemstones, she added.

The large hoard was found buried in a pot during building work and included 110 unmounted gemstone intaglios – carved gemstones used as seals – silver jewellery and ingots, 110 coins, and tools, Its contents are now at the British Museum.

Miss Rogerson said the way it had been carved using long strokes and the fact it dated from AD125 to 175 suggested a connection to the Norfolk hoard.

The seal would leave an impression of Apollo holding a laurel wreath when pressed into wax (above)

The ring would have been used as a seal to sign documents by “literate men and women in wider Romano-British society which grew around military towns… leaving an impression of the engraved image in wax”, she added.

But it would also have been a “very personal” object.

“We know these people would have had a very close personal relationship with their gods and goddesses,” she said.

“Apollo, being the god of healing and prophecy, would hopefully have protected the wearer from harm or illness.

“It’s also really interesting because it’s evidence of a pagan religion that has its roots in Ancient Greece being worshipped by Romano-British society.”

Another ring unearthed at Upper Winchendon, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 2018 is also believed to have links to the Snettisham workshop.

The Essex ring was declared treasure by a coroner and Chelmsford Museum hopes to acquire it.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Reduced predictability of seasonal rainfall might have played a significant role in the disintegration of Classic Maya societies about 1,100 years ago. The decline in seasonal predictability potentially destabilized Classic Maya societies in a new study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment.

University of New Mexico archaeologist Keith Prufer is among the authors, along with colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Potsdam University. The findings may have significance for populations in the region facing climate change today. 

The research team studied variations in stable isotope signatures from a stalagmite collected in a cave in Belize near an archaeological site in the former heartland of the Maya. The carbon and oxygen isotope ratios are sensitive recorders of local and regional rainfall dynamics. 

This paper is a continuation of 18 years of research by Prufer, UNM colleagues, and an international team of scientists into the past climate in the Belize tropics.  

Prufer has been a principal investigator for the research program, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alphawood Foundation. 

“The climate record was generated from a cave called Yok Balum, located near the ancient Maya city of Uxbenká. That ancient city figures prominently in this article and is important because it is the closest to the site of the climate data and because of two decades of research there exploring the timing of the collapse,” Prufer explained. 

This paper is a collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany to get advanced time-series modeling to understand the patterning of seasonal variation. The lead at PIK, Tobias Braun, used this study for his dissertation. 

Also included in the research team from UNM are Ph.D. candidate student Erin Ray and Victor Polyak, a senior research scientist in the UNM Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Ray worked to assemble the cultural data, such as the data that records the dynastic history of the Maya from their hieroglyphs, and demographic data. Polyak originally developed the high-precision chronology for the climate and seasonality records. 

“A key ingredient for Maya agriculture was the timely arrival of sufficient rainfall. Farming in subtropical Central America is tough because freshwater is only available during the summer rainy season.

Changes of onset and intensity of the rainy season can have serious repercussions for Central American societies,” Braun noted in a PIK press release about the newly published study. While most scientists agree that repeated intense droughts were one of the key factors that led to the fragmentation of urban centers and population dispersal in lowland Maya societies, evidence at seasonal time scale was so far missing. And this is exactly what the study takes into focus.  

The significance of this record is three-fold, according to Prufer. 

“First, it is a novel climate record for the American tropics with such high resolution – one to seven samples per year over a 1,600-year period − allowing us to look at changes in seasonality from year to year. It is also the first such record to incorporate advanced time series modeling to evaluate seasonal variation in the neotropics and link those changes directly to quantitative cultural records,” Prufer explained. 

Second, the research sheds new light on an enduring question in Maya archaeology: What caused the population decline and disintegration of political institutions at the end of the Classic Period between 250 and 850 CE? 

Prufer and his colleagues found that changes in seasonality would have challenged food production in this region where all agriculture is directly dependent on rainfall by making the timing for planting harvesting much more difficult − or impossible − to predict from year-to-year. 

“The collapse was significant,” he noted. “Over the course of perhaps 100 to 150 years, populations as high as 5 to 10 million people declined by as much as 60 to 70 percent, and a complete form of governance was abandoned.” 

Third, this research has significance for farming today. The past is an indication of what might be expected in a dire future. 

“With modern global climate change, seasonality patterns are again far less predictable than they were only a couple of decades ago,” Prufer pointed out. “This is forcing modern Maya farming communities − and everyone else − to rethink how they produce food and how to achieve food security, considering their dependence on the timing of the rainy season and the seasonal distribution of rainfall, which is no longer predictable.

“This is important because farming requires both traditional knowledges of when to clear fields and plant, as well as a reliable amount of rainfall each season. When this breaks down, it causes food shortages and human suffering. This case study has implications for collective responses to climate change across the global tropics, a region that feeds over 2 billion people.” 

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza
With its complete Mayan hieroglyphic text, a Ball Game marker is discovered at Chichén Itzá.

*** Presents two ball players in the center; It has a diameter of 32.5 centimeters, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight.

*** It must have been attached to an arch that served as access to the Casa Colorada architectural complex

 In the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá, archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered a stone marker of the Ball Game in a circular shape, which presents a bas-relief glyphic band surrounding two attired characters like ball players. 

The relevance of the finding lies in the fact that it is a sculptural element that preserves its complete glyphic text.

With 32.5 centimeters in diameter, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight, the piece was found during archaeological work carried out as part of the Program for the Improvement of Archaeological Zones (Promeza), in charge of the Federal Ministry of Culture.

The piece, named Ball Players Disc, was found by archaeologist Lizbeth Beatriz Mendicuti Pérez, within the Casa Colorada architectural complex (named after the remains of red paint inside) or Chichanchob ─located between the Ossuary and the Observatory─, as part of Structure 3C27, which corresponds to an access arch to the area, informed the archaeologist Francisco Pérez Ruiz, who together with the archaeologist José Osorio León coordinates the execution of the Promise in Chichén Itzá.

“In this Mayan site it is rare to find hieroglyphic writing, let alone a complete text; It hasn’t happened for more than 11 years,” said archaeologist Pérez Ruiz, explaining that the monument found functioned as a marker of some important event related to the Casa Colorada Ball Game, a court much smaller than the Great Game of Chichen Itza ball.

The researcher estimates that this Ball Game marker must correspond to the Terminal Classic or Early Postclassic period, between the end of the 800s and the beginning of 900 AD.

In turn, the archaeologist Mendicuti Pérez explained that the monument was found in an inverted position, 58 centimeters from the surface, which suggests that it was part of the east wall of the aforementioned arch, and its final position was due to its collapse.

He explained that it is a disc composed of rock of sedimentary origin, recognized by the geographer Arlette Herver Santamaría. The glyphic band, present on the front face, measures approximately six centimeters wide, which surrounds an iconographic interior record 20 centimeters in diameter: the iconographic and epigraphic study, headed by the responsible archaeologist, Santiago Alberto Sobrino Fernández, has identified two characters dressed as ball players, standing in front of a ball.

“The character on the left wears a feathered headdress and a sash that features a flower-shaped element, probably a water lily. At the height of his face, a scroll can be distinguished, which can be interpreted as breath or voice. The opponent wears a headdress known as a ‘snake turban’, whose representation is seen on multiple occasions in Chichén Itzá.

The individual wears ballcourt protectors. The epigraphic band consists of 18 cartouches with a short count date of 12 Eb 10 Cumku, which tentatively points to AD 894.

Pérez Ruiz announced that the study of the piece will be carried out within the Promeza; At the moment, its conservation is already being attended to.

Meanwhile, the movable property restorer, Claudia Alejandra Mei Chong Bastidas, desalinated the piece with cellulose fiber compresses and physical-chemical cleaning with distilled water.

In turn, the biologist Luis Alberto Rodríguez Catana has carried out the photogrammetry process, in order to have high-resolution images of the details of the iconography and the glyphic text, to later be studied down to the smallest detail, the researcher concluded. 

WORLD

Hidden Ptolemy text, printed beneath a Latin manuscript, deciphered after 200 years

Hidden Ptolemy text, printed beneath a Latin manuscript, deciphered after 200 years

A drawing of Ptolemy’s meteoroscope, a nine-ringed instrument used by astronomers.

Researchers have deciphered an ancient manuscript that they think Claudius Ptolemy, an Egyptian mathematician and astronomer of Greek descent, penned during the first century A.D.

Written in Greek on parchment, the text was originally discovered in 1819 by Angelo Mai, a Roman Catholic cardinal and scholar of ancient texts, who found it hidden in a library at Bobbio Abbey in northern Italy.

Now, a team of researchers from Sorbonne University in Paris and New York University (NYU) has deciphered much of the mysterious text and revealed its contents. They detailed their work in a study published on March 9 in the journal Archive for History of Exact Sciences.

Prior to this, experts struggled to decipher the manuscript and could decode only chunks of copy. Because parchment, or prepared animal skin, was considered wildly expensive, at some point during the sixth or seventh centuries A.D, someone had recycled the pages and printed another work — in this case, Spanish theologian Isidore of Seville’s “Etymologiae” — on top of Ptolemy’s writing. Someone also “cleaned” the paper in an attempt to read it, causing portions of the pages to turn dark brown, according to the study. 

“Angelo Mai had splashed chemicals on the pages to erase the Latin,” study co-author Alexander Jones, a professor at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, told Live Science. “On some pages [he] did a pretty good job of erasing the writing. And then you also have this other writing written directly on top of Ptolemy’s.”

The researchers needed a way to get an optimized view of the text, since “it was essentially impossible to read more than just a few isolated words on these particular pages,” Jones said. So they turned to a method called multispectral imaging.

Hidden Ptolemy text, printed beneath a Latin manuscript, deciphered after 200 years
A multispectral logarithmic color image showing upside-down Latin overtext in brown and enhanced traces of the Greek undertext.

“The basic idea is that different wavelengths of light have different illuminations on a page that’s written using ink of any particular composition,” Jones said.

“The technique is to take lots of digital photos with different wavelengths of light and then combine these images by adding and subtracting the signals of various proportions to see if you can bring out the writing you want to see and suppress the writing you don’t. For each page, it’s a different recipe.”

This method allowed them to “read well over half of what was written,” Jones said.

Notably, it revealed a manual, written by Ptolemy, that explained how to construct a meteoroscope, an armillary instrument used to trace distances and study the stars. Composed of nine metal rings that pivot around one another, the device could be used to orient a person as they made astronomical calculations. In the text, Ptolemy advised constructing an instrument that was no smaller than about 1 foot (0.3 meters) in diameter, according to the study.

So how did the researchers know that Ptolemy was indeed the author of this work?

“Unfortunately, we don’t have the first and the last pages, so we don’t have an author name,” Jones said. “But things started showing up that are very characteristic of Ptolemy’s Greek vocabulary. He has a distinctive style and uses certain phrases and words that either no one else used in all of ancient Greek literature or hardly anybody unless they were influenced by him.”

The subject matter itself also offered clues.”Then we found a particular passage where the author is speaking in the first person, saying, ‘I introduced a new terminology for certain angles used in astronomy,'” Jones said.

“We also have another book by Ptolemy where he used the same terminology of new names for these angles. That’s our strongest piece of evidence that it is by him.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Tomb of Amun Temple Steward Discovered in Saqqara

Tomb of Amun Temple Steward Discovered in Saqqara

An archaeological mission from the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (RMO) and the Egyptian Museum in Turin (Museo Egizio) uncovered the remains of Panehsy’s tomb, the steward of Amun Temple in the early Ramesside period, along with a collection of smaller chapels in the Saqqara Necropolis.

“The new discovery sheds new light on the development of Saqqara Necropolis during the Ramesside period and introduces new individuals that were yet unknown in the historical sources,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. 

The tomb of Panehsy, which has the form of a freestanding temple with a gate entrance, an inner courtyard with columned porticoes, and a shaft to the underground burial chambers, is situated north to the tomb of the famous Maya, the high-ranking official from the time of Tutankhamun.

The mud brick walls of the upper structure are 1.5 metres high and embellished with decorated limestone revetment slabs.

These show the colourful reliefs of the tomb owner and his wife Baia, who was the singer of Amun, along with several priests and offering bearers.

Christian Greco, director of the Museo Egizio in Turin, said the most beautiful representation depicts Panehsy worshipping the cow goddess Hathor. Beneath it, Panehsy and Baia sit together before an offering table.

A bald man with leopard skin around his shoulders stands opposite the couple. This was the priest who took care of their mortuary cult, pouring out water.

Lara Weiss, a curator of Leiden’s Egyptian and Nubian collection, pointed out that during excavation work, the mission stumbled upon four smaller tomb chapels located to the east of Panehsy’s tomb, one of which is of the gold foil-maker of the treasury of the Pharaoh Yuyu.

The tombs are very well preserved, and their walls bear high-quality, detailed, and stunning decorations. Although it is a relatively small tomb chapel, four generations of Yuyu’s family were venerated in beautiful colourful reliefs showing Yuyu’s funerary procession and the reviving of his mummy to live in the afterlife as well as the veneration of the Hathor cow and the barque of the local Saqqara god Sokar.

Another notable find was made at the eastern side of Panehsy’s tomb, where a yet anonymous chapel with a very rare sculptured representation of the tomb’s owner and his family was discovered.

The artistic style of the representation might have been inspired by the statues neighbouring the tomb of Maya and Merit.

The archaeological mission aims to understand the history of Saqqara, one of the most important burial sites of ancient Egypt.

The Leiden Museum conducted research in Saqqara together with the Egypt Exploration Society of London from 1975 to 1998. Since 1999, Leiden University has been a partner in the project, and in 2015 the Museo Egizio in Turin joined the mission.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and ‘guardian spirits’

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and ‘guardian spirits’

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and 'guardian spirits'
The inner chamber of the ornate tomb is made of bricks shaped to look like carved wood.

A stunning brick tomb thought to be more than 800 years old has been discovered in northern China by workers renovating stormwater drains.

The tomb contained three bodies — two adults and one child — as well as several pottery items. One of these, a “land coupon” inscribed with writing, indicates that the tomb was built between A.D. 1190 and 1196, when the region was ruled by the Jurchen Jin or “Great Jin” state.

According to the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology, the tomb was unearthed by the workers in mid-2019 near the village of Dongfengshan, in Yuanqu County, about 400 miles (650 kilometers) southwest of Beijing.

Archaeologists from the institute then carried out an excavation to document the tomb, and a full report on the work was released in February, according to a press release from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS.) The south-facing tomb has similarities to others found in the region from the time, such as a ceremonial “gatehouse” on its northern wall, but it is relatively simple, according to the report.

Archaeologists say the tomb is similar to others in the area from the same time, but is relatively simple.
The entire structure of the tomb includes a buried “road”, a staircase, and a door to the inner chamber.
The square inner chamber of the tomb is capped by an octagonal spire made of stepped bricks.

The buried structure consists of a “tomb road” to a staircase that leads down to a door in the inner chamber, which is a square about 6.5 feet (2 meters) long on each side, beneath an elaborate octagonal spire made of stepped bricks. 

The entire chamber is faced with bricks shaped to look like carved wood, which the archaeologists say were not painted. The tomb also features ornate decorations on the walls, including lions, sea anemones, flowers and two figures that are thought to represent guardian spirits.

Archaeologists from the Shanxi Institute say the three bodies found there were those of two adults aged between 50 and 60 years old, and one child aged between 6 and 8 years old.

The tomb held the remains of three individuals – two adults, aged between 50 and 60 years, and one child, aged between 6 and 8 years.

Jurchen Jin

“Great Jin” was the second Chinese state of that name and it is often referred to as the Jurchen Jin state to distinguish it, said Julia Schneider, a professor of Chinese history at University College Cork in Ireland who was not involved in the tomb’s discovery.

Jurchen Jin emerged in about A.D. 1115 amid rebellions against the region’s earlier Liao Dynasty, and fell to the invading Mongols in 1234. But for the intervening century, it was one of the major powers in China.

Although many of its subjects were ethnically Han Chinese, Jurchen Jin was ruled by an imperial family that was ethnically Jurchen, a semi-nomadic people from northeast China related to the Manchu people, Schneider told Live Science. (The Manchu were an ethnic  native to China’s northeast and surrounding regions — called Manchuria — who conquered China and Mongolia in the 17th century and ruled for about 250 years.)

Two figures portrayed on the panels are thought to be guardian spirits; one of the figures is thought to be male and the other is thought to be female.

A census in 1207 gave the population of the Jurchen Jin state as 53 million people, but “probably less than 10% were Jurchen,” Schneider said.

“What makes the Jurchen Jin so interesting was that this was a multi-ethnic empire,” she said.

While many of its subjects were oriented toward Confucianism and other ideologies it considered “Chinese,” the Jurchen Jin state developed a distinctive script for the Jurchen languages and established dual administrations to oversee its Chinese and Jurchen subjects, she said.

Chinese tomb

A pottery “land coupon” inscribed with writing found in the tomb firmly dates its construction to between 1190 and 1196 A.D.

In the case of the tomb at Dongfengshan: “I’m not an archaeologist, but my idea is that this is a Chinese tomb, based on its location in the very south of the Jurchen state,” Schneider said.

That region was mostly populated by Han Chinese, rather than ethnic Jurchen. It was possible that Jurchen dead had been entombed there in the Chinese style, but “I don’t see anything, particularly Jurchen,” she said.

The statement from CASS said the land coupon meant the structure could be firmly dated, which would provide a basis for dating other Jurchen Jin structures and artifacts found in the region.

EUROPE, PORTUGAL, WORLD

Centuries-old skeleton with massive, crippling bone growth unearthed in Portugal

Centuries-old skeleton with massive, crippling bone growth unearthed in Portugal

Centuries-old skeleton with massive, crippling bone growth unearthed in Portugal
The 3-inch-long lump of bone grew precisely where the pectineus muscle is attached to the femur and would have caused the woman severe pain.

A rare and gruesome bone growth protruding from a 14th to 19th-century woman’s thigh bone mushroomed after she suffered severe trauma, anthropologists in Portugal have found.

The 3-inch (8 centimeters) lump sprouted precisely where a muscle joins the inner thigh bone and the public bone together, which would have caused the woman debilitating pain and severely impaired mobility.

“I have never seen such [a] large bone formation,” lead author Sandra Assis, a biological anthropologist at the NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal, told Live Science in an email. “I was really intrigued by its morphology.”

The massive, “rope-like” bone spur probably formed on the woman’s femur as a result of a serious muscle injury, according to a study published Jan. 9, 2023 in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

The researchers think that this could be a rare form of bone growth called myositis ossificans traumatica, which can develop after a single traumatic accident or following multiple minor injuries.

Archeologists unearthed the maimed woman’s skeleton in 2002 in the ancient necropolis of São Julião Church, in the village of Constância, Portugal. They discovered her remains among those 106 adults and 45 children who lived between 600 and 200 years ago.

Although it was incomplete and missing the left femur, her skeleton was well preserved and indicated that she was roughly 5 feet tall (1.54 meters) and over 50 years old.

Archeologists found her on her back, with her hands resting on her pelvis, a coin on her left forearm and her head tilted to the right. Researchers later spotted the protruding lump of bone, while cleaning the skeleton in the laboratory, Assis said.

The researchers detected no fracture on the woman’s thigh bone and remain uncertain about what caused the grisly growth to sprout. They concluded that the injury was 6 weeks to a year old when she died and would have prevented the woman from making any dynamic movements or from carrying weight.

The gruesome bulge probably developed following a traumatic accident that crippled a muscle in the woman’s inner thigh called the pectineus.

This is the first time that paleopathologists document a case of this rare type of bone growth, known as myositis ossificans traumatica, affecting the pectineus muscle.

“The appearance of the femoral bone suggests a longstanding process,” Assis said. “We do not have the medical record of this female, but looking at similar clinical cases we can assume that this femoral lesion was quite debilitating.”

Nowadays, surgery can remove bone spurs, but that was not an option when the woman lived, Assis said.