Newly Identified Inscription Names Ancient Greek Students
Experts in the UK have discovered that an ancient Greek marble slab which had spent more than a century in storage is inscribed with the names of graduates of the Ephebic College, an elite military academy that prepared young Athenian men for adulthood, British broadcaster ITV reported on Thursday.
“On seeing it we realized that this was not a copy of an already known inscription, but it was a completely unique new discovery which had been in the storerooms of the [National Museum of Scotland] for a very long time, since the 1880s, and it listed a group of young men who called themselves co-ephebes or co-cadets and friends,” Dr Peter Liddel, a professor of Greek history and epigraphy at the University of Manchester, told ITV.
“It turned out to be a list of the cadets for one particular year during the period 41-54 AD, the reign of Claudius, and it gives us new names, names we’d never come across before in ancient Greek, and it also gives us among the earliest evidence for non-citizens taking part in the ephebate in this period,” added Liddel, who led the team that made the discovery.
Similar to a “graduate school yearbook,” the marble slab would probably have been displayed in the college and was intended to “create a sense of camaraderie and comradeship among this group of people who had been through a rigorous training program together and felt like they were part of a cohort,” Liddel told ITV.
Containing the names of 31 young men who made it through the rite of passage, the marble slab dates to the first century AD and is believed to offer valuable insight into Athenian society at the time.
Rare 18th-Century Warship Rudder Found in the Solent
The rudder was discovered intact, 60m (200ft) from the main structure of the wreck
The lost rudder of a warship that sank in the Solent in 1758 has been discovered on the seabed, 60m (200ft) away from the main shipwreck. HMS Invincible – built by the French in 1744 and captured by the British in 1747 – is regarded as one of the most significant warships of its time.
The 11m-long intact rudder was spotted during a routine inspection of the site near Portsmouth.
Marine archaeologist Dan Pascoe said it was “unique and significant”.
“We weren’t particularly looking for it. A feature had shown up in geophysical surveys, 60m off the stern,” he said.
“It looks like it’s in pretty good condition and is complete from top to bottom.”
The 11m-long rudder has been scanned on the seabed
The 74-gun ship was lost when the rudder jammed and it ran aground on a sandbank between Langstone Harbour and the Isle of Wight, capsizing three days later. No lives were lost.
Mr Pascoe said: “The ship was highly manoeuvrable and the rudder was critical to its design.
“It’s the last piece of the jigsaw that tells the story of Invincible. It’s a fantastic, wonderful find and extremely rare – it only survived because it was buried.”
The rudder is due to be protected with sandbags to prevent it from being quickly eroded by the elements underwater, but bringing it to the surface and conserving it could cost up to £80,000, Mr Pascoe estimated.
“It’s a unique find – there are no other examples from warships of this era. Its future depends on whether it is financially viable to raise and find somewhere to display it,” he added.
HMS Invincible’s class of ships became the “backbone of the Royal Navy”, the National Museum of the Royal Navy said
A major excavation project, carried out by Poole’s Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST) and Bournemouth University experts, began on the wreck site in 2017.
Among the artefacts discovered were a gunpowder barrel, swivel guns, a bottle of corked rum and woodworking tools.
Many have since gone on display at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth.
Volunteer delighted to uncover very rude Ancient Roman graffiti at Vindolanda
You see them scrawled on school desks, toilet walls and underpasses across the UK. However, it seems that the tradition of drawing the male appendage as graffiti goes back far further than any of us would have realised – after a volunteer uncovered graffiti at Vindolanda depicting an explicitly carved phallus.
Dylan Herbert, the volunteer who discovered the stone
The popular museum has found some hugely significant archaeological finds over the years, including the world’s oldest boxing gloves and the largest collection of leather shoes, consisting of around 7,000 items.
Earlier this year, a Roman Altar from the 3rd century AD was uncovered, thought to be from a similar time period to the most recent discovery. Though this one is quite a lot ruder!
Not only was there a drawing, but the 40 x 15cm stone is also engraved with SECVNDINVS CACOR, making the graffiti a very personal insult. Specialists in Roman epigraphy, Drs Alexander Meyer, Alex Mullen and Roger Tomlin, recognised it as a mangled version of ‘Secundinus cactor’ or in English, ‘Secudinus, the sh**ter.”
Retired biochemist Dylan Herbert was delighted to make the discovery on May 19. He said: “I’d been removing a lot of rubble all week and to be honest this stone had been getting in my way, I was glad when I was told I could take it out of the trench.
“It looked from the back like all the others, a very ordinary stone, but when I turned it over, I was startled to see some clear letters. Only after we removed the mud did I realise the full extent of what I’d uncovered, and I was absolutely delighted.”
The stone with the depiction of a phallus and the insult
Dr Andrew Birley, director of excavations and CEO of the Vindolanda Trust said: “The recovery of an inscription, a direct message from the past, is always a great event on a Roman excavation, but this one really raised our eyebrows when we deciphered the message on the stone.
Its author clearly had a big problem with Secundinus and was confident enough to announce their thoughts publicly on a stone.
“I have no doubt that Secundinus would have been less than amused to see this when he was wandering around the site over 1,700 years ago.”
What do you think of Vindolanda’s latest discovery? Let us know!
Though the Roman phallus is often seen as a good luck charm or symbol of fertility, in this case, the author has taken the meaning and subverted it to their own aims. Each letter has been carefully carved, which would have taken a while, leaving little doubt about the depth of feeling held.
Described as a ‘fabulous’ bit of social commentary, it is expected to amuse visitors for many years to come.
According to the team at Vindolanda, carving such a message would have been one of the best ways to get a lot of people to notice a point of view, centuries before printed papers or social media existed.
Excavations have taken place at Vindolanda for almost 100 years, and in that time the site has chalked up more phallus carvings than any other on Hadrian’s Wall.
The new addition takes that tally up to 13, and while that’s considered unlucky for some, Vindolanda archaeologists hope it’s a great sign for the rest of the excavation season in a huge year for the Wall.
Vase Kept In Kitchen Turned Out To Be 250-Year-Old Relic, Auctioned For 1.5 Million Pounds
A royal blue 18th-century Chinese vase decorated with gold and silver, which sat in a U.K. kitchen for several years, just sold at auction for about $1.8 million after historians realized it had once belonged to an emperor.
The 18th-century Chinese vase was auctioned for about $1.8 million.
However, the vase’s unclear history — combined with the looting of Chinese palaces in the 19th century — raises ethical concerns, according to an expert who was not involved with the sale.
The vase is large, about 2 feet (0.6 meters) tall, and it is marked with a symbol associated with the Qianlong emperor — the sixth emperor of the Qing dynasty, the country’s last imperial dynasty — who ruled China from 1735 to 1795, according to a statement released by the auction company Dreweatts, which sold the vase on May 18.
The vase is painted with a colour called “sacrificial blue” — so named because the same shade decorates parts of the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
At this temple, the emperor of China would sacrifice animals in hopes that these sacrifices would ensure a good harvest.
This close-up photo shows a crane image on the vase. A mix of silver and gold was used in the vase’s decorations.
The decorations on the vase are made of a mix of silver and gold, and they depict clouds, cranes, fans, flutes and bats — symbols of the emperor’s Daoist beliefs that are associated with a good and long life, said Mark Newstead, a specialist consultant for Asian ceramics and works of art with Dreweatts, said in a YouTube video.
The combination of silver and gold used on this vase is “technically very difficult to achieve and that’s what makes it so special and unusual,” Newstead said, noting that a man named Tang Ying (1682-1756), who was the supervisor of an imperial porcelain factory in the eastern city of Jingdezhen, is sometimes credited with the creation of the technique used on this vase.
This vase would likely have been placed in the Forbidden Palace — where the Chinese emperor resided — or in one of the emperor’s other palaces, Newstead said.
During the Qianlong emperor’s rule, the government had to put down a number of rebellions. Despite this unrest, the arts flourished in China, wrote historian Richard Smith in the book “The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture(opens in new tab)” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015).
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the political situation worsened as China lost a number of wars against Europe and America, and foreign troops looted a number of palaces.
Uncertain origins
Much about the history of this vase is unknown. The vase was owned by a surgeon who “we believe bought it in the early 1980s,” Newstead told Live Science in an email.
The surgeon “was a buyer in the country salerooms in the [English] Midlands from the 1970s onwards and that is all we know,” Newstead said. After the surgeon died, the vase was passed on to his son. Neither the surgeon nor the son realized the true value and the vase was placed in the son’s kitchen for some time, and Newstead first saw it in the late 1990s.
The vase’s unclear origins and the history of foreign troops looting palaces in the 19th century raise some ethical concerns that the vase was plundered by foreign troops in the 19th or early 20th century, an expert told Live Science.
“It could have been a gift from the emperor to one of his officials, and that official’s family could have sold it on the open market in the 20th century when they fell on hard economic times. And from there it would have been sold many more times. Or, it could be the product of the military plunder of 1860 or 1901, which would make its auction much more morally dubious,” Justin Jacobs, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., told Live Science in an email.
Jacobs has studied and written extensively about the pillaging of Chinese art in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“We just don’t know [how the vase left China] and likely we never will,” Jacobs said.
NEW research by Historic England and the Cornwall Archaeology Unit (CAU) has revealed a previously unknown stone circle inside Castilly Henge, near Bodmin.
Volunteers marked out the position of the newly discovered stone circle within the banks of Castilly Henge.
The first modern archaeological surveys of Castilly Henge, which is located close to the A30 near the turn-off for Lanivet, have been carried out as part of a project to conserve and better understand the site.
Although many people will associate the term with the Stonehenge stone circle in Wiltshire, the word henge actually refers to a particular type of earthwork of the Neolithic period, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area of more than 20 m (66 ft) in diameter. There is typically little if any evidence of occupation in a henge, although they may contain ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles and coves.
Castilly Henge is believed to have been built during the late Neolithic period (c. 3,000 – 2,500 BC). Defined by an external bank and an internal ditch, it would have formed an amphitheatre-like setting for gatherings and ritual activities.
Previous researchers have suggested that the site was used as a theatre (‘Playing Place’ or plen-an-guary in the Cornish language) in the Middle Ages, and then as a battery during the English Civil War.
The opportunity to apply modern survey methods to this intriguing monument arose in 2021, when it was included in a Monument Management Scheme (MMS), a partnership between Historic England and the CAU to conserve and repair monuments on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register.
Volunteers coordinated by the CAU cleared the site of vegetation which threatened below-ground archaeological deposits. This work enabled teams from Historic England to carry out the first detailed topographic and geophysical surveys of Castilly Henge.
The surveys, which will be detailed in a Historic England report released later this year, revealed:
1.Traces of a long-buried stone circle in the centre of the henge, making this only the second henge with a stone circle in Cornwall.
2. Detailed information about the henge’s original form and its modification over time.
Ann Preston-Jones, Heritage at Risk Project Officer at Historic England, said: “The research at Castilly Henge has given us a deeper understanding of the complexity of this site and its importance to Cornish history over thousands of years. It will help us make decisions about the way the monument is managed and presented, so that it can be enjoyed by generations to come.”
Peter Dudley, Senior Archaeologist at Cornwall Archaeological Unit, said: “The help of the local volunteers has been invaluable in removing the bracken and scrub obscuring the henge.
Over the winter, thirteen people gave 111 hours of their time and now the monument is looking so much better. The project has also re-fenced the field and the farmer is happy to start grazing again, improving the long term management of this amazing archaeological site.”
Castilly Henge is on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register because its location makes it difficult to look after, and as a result the earthworks and part of the interior were heavily overgrown with bracken.
As part of the MMS, volunteers have removed the bracken and other damaging vegetation from the monument, making it visible in the landscape again. The site has now been fenced, allowing it to be grazed.
Castilly Henge is protected as a scheduled monument. This late Neolithic henge monument is located at the centre of Cornwall, overlooking a major junction on the A30 trunk road with the A391 to St Austell and A389 to Bodmin.
It has well-preserved earthworks and survives as an oval enclosure measuring 68m long by 62m wide, with a level interior measuring 48m long by 28m wide. The surrounding ditch is 7.6m wide and 1.8m deep, with an outer bank up to 1.6m high.
Prehistoric “Poop” Found At Stonehenge Gives Insight Into Ancient Humans
A study of ancient faeces uncovered at a settlement thought to have housed builders of the famous stone monument suggests that parasites got consumed via badly-cooked cow offal during epic winter feasts.
Human coprolite (preserved human faeces) from Durrington Walls.
A new analysis of ancient faeces found at the site of a prehistoric village near Stonehenge has uncovered evidence of the eggs of parasitic worms, suggesting the inhabitants feasted on the internal organs of cattle and fed leftovers to their dogs.
Durrington Walls was a Neolithic settlement situated just 2.8km from Stonehenge, dating from around 2500 BC when much of the famous stone monument was constructed. It is believed that the site housed the people who built Stonehenge.
A reconstruction of one of the Neolithic houses discovered at Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge.
A team of archaeologists led by the University of Cambridge investigated nineteen pieces of ancient faeces, or ‘coprolite’, found at Durrington Walls and preserved for over 4,500 years. Five of the coprolites (26%) – one human and four dogs – were found to contain the eggs of parasitic worms.
Researchers say it is the earliest evidence for intestinal parasites in the UK where the host species that produced the faeces has also been identified. The findings are published today in the journal Parasitology.
“This is the first time intestinal parasites have been recovered from Neolithic Britain, and to find them in the environment of Stonehenge is really something,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.
“The type of parasites we find are compatible with previous evidence for winter feasting on animals during the building of Stonehenge,” he said.
Four of the coprolites, including the human one, contained the eggs of capillariid worms, identified in part by their lemon shape. While the many types of capillariid around the world infect a wide range of animals, on the rare occasion that a European species infects humans the eggs get lodged in the liver and don’t appear in the stool.
The evidence of capillariid eggs in human faeces indicates that the person had eaten the raw or undercooked lungs or liver from an already infected animal, resulting in the parasite’s eggs passing straight through the body.
Microscopic egg of capillariid worm from Durrington Walls. Black scale bar represents 20 micrometres.
During excavations of the main ‘midden’ – or dung and refuse heap – at Durrington Walls, archaeologists uncovered pottery and stone tools along with over 38,000 animal bones. Some 90% of the bones were from pigs, with less than 10% from cows. This is also where the partially mineralised faeces used in the study were found.
“As capillariid worms can infect cattle and other ruminants, it seems that cows may have been the most likely source of the parasite eggs,” said Mitchell.
Previous isotopic analyses of cow teeth from Durrington Walls suggest that some cattle were herded almost 100km from Devon or Wales to the site for large-scale feasting. Patterns of butchery previously identified on cattle bones from the site suggest beef was primarily chopped for stewing, and bone marrow was extracted.
“Finding the eggs of capillariid worms in both human and dog coprolites indicates that the people had been eating the internal organs of infected animals, and also fed the leftovers to their dogs,” said co-author Dr Evilena Anastasiou, who assisted with the research while at Cambridge.
To determine whether the coprolites excavated from the midden were from human or animal faeces, they were analysed for sterols and bile acids at the National Environment Isotope Facility at the University of Bristol.
One of the coprolites belonging to a dog contained the eggs of fish tapeworm, indicating it had previously eaten raw freshwater fish to become infected. However, no other evidence of fish consumption, such as bones, has been found at the site.
Microscopic egg of fish tapeworm found in dog coprolite.
“Durrington Walls was occupied on a largely seasonal basis, mainly in winter periods. The dog probably arrived already infected with the parasite,” said Mitchell.
“Isotopic studies of cow bones at the site suggests they came from regions across southern Britain, which was likely also true of the people who lived and worked there”
Dr Piers Mitchell
The dates for Durrington Walls match those for stage two of the construction of Stonehenge, when the world-famous ‘trilithons’ – two massive vertical stones supporting a third horizontal stone – were erected, most likely by the seasonal residents of this nearby settlement.
While Durrington Walls was a place of feasting and habitation, as evidenced by the pottery and a vast number of animal bones, Stonehenge itself was not, with little found to suggest people lived or ate there en masse.
Prof Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, who excavated Durrington Walls between 2005 and 2007, added: “This new evidence tells us something new about the people who came here for winter feasts during the construction of Stonehenge.”
“Pork and beef were spit-roasted or boiled in clay pots but it looks as if the offal wasn’t always so well cooked. The population weren’t eating freshwater fish at Durrington Walls, so they must have picked up the tapeworms at their home settlements.”
Incredibly Well-Preserved 1,000-Year-Old Wooden Ladder Discovered In The UK
Archaeologists in the UK have made many fascinating discoveries while excavating at a site known as Field 44 near the village of Tempsford in Central Bedfordshire.
Some weeks ago, archaeologists working in the area announced the remains of a Roman malting oven that could be the earliest physical evidence for beer-making in the UK, dating back more than 2,000 years to the Iron Age. Evidence of early Iron Age porridge and bread-making has also been uncovered.
In recent days MOLA archaeologists have unearthed an incredibly, well-preserved 1,000-year-old wooden ladder.
This 1,000-year-old wooden ladder has been unearthed in the UK.
According to the MOLA scientists, the ladder was found in a well, where water and mud preserved the wood for 1,000s of years! Preliminary reports state the ladder comes from a cluster of watering holes dated to the Middle Iron Age (c.300-100 BC).
In the vicinity archaeologists also found Roman artefacts and evidence of an ancient farm that has offered an incredible glimpse through time to see how life has changed over the last 6,000 years.
The farm’s story spans a 700-year period from Middle Iron Age to the Roman conquest and beyond. Well before the farmstead existed, people were already visiting this area. Although no evidence of where they lived has been found, they left behind signs of their activities.
Flint arrowheads were discovered dating back to the Neolithic (c. 4000-2200 BC) and Bronze Age (c. 2600-700 BC), suggesting people were hunting animals in the surrounding landscape well before the farmstead existed.
The first evidence of a settlement is from the Middle Iron Age (c. 300-100 BC), with the unearthing of two large roundhouses dating back to that period.
They measure more than 15 meters in diameter and contain evidence of the remains of butchered animals, pottery, loom weights, and personal items. This shows that people both lived and worked in them.
The remains of the northern roundhouse, show its shape and size.
After the Roman conquest in AD 43, there is evidence, that the settlement expanded and continued to be occupied for around 400 years. During this time, farming was an essential activity at this settlement.
This is proved by the discovery of an oven used to dry grains and make malt for brewing, as well as by the querns (simple hand mills for grinding grains) and cereals found on site.
However, this was also a place where goods were being produced and traded. Archaeologists have identified a Roman pottery kiln with a vast number of wasters (pots which failed during the firing process).
Moreover, a number of higher-status small finds have also been uncovered, beyond what is expected of a typical farmstead in this part of the country. Together these discoveries show the growing wealth and importance of the settlement.
“These early excavations suggested that the site had a long and complex history, which is now being revealed,” MOLA archaeologists say.
A rare Bronze Age spearhead has been found by workers while developing a wetland in Gloucestershire. Experts discovered it at Cirencester Sewage Works, near South Cerney, earlier this year and on 10 May estimated it is about 3,500 years old.
The spearhead was found alongside other small items and fragments of pottery
Archaeologists said it appeared to be a family heirloom that was placed into a pit for a reason unknown.
Other items unearthed include a selection of prehistoric pottery fragments and flint tools.
Archaeologists will analyse the discoveries before handing them to a museum
The spearhead was found on 22 March at the site owned by Thames Water, which is being turned into a wetlands area to improve biodiversity.
Cotswold Archaeology project manager Alex Thomson said: “Items like this are quite rare and during the Bronze Age they would have been equally as rare and quite special.
“It’s always exciting as you never know what you’re going to find, it could be absolutely nothing or, as in this instance, you could find more than you bargained for.”
Mr Thomson said he thought the spearhead was likely associated with a “wider settlement” found nearby during excavations undertaken in the late 1990s.
Workers have been on-site to turn the area into a wetland
Thames Water archaeologist Victoria Reeve added: “We knew we were likely to come across something interesting while carrying out the work, which is why we had Cotswold Archaeology on site ready to record any archaeology that was present, but we were blown away by what we actually discovered.
“It was one of the first things that came out and normally if we had started excavating, we might have expected something to turn up more mid-way through.
“There’s been a lot of work in this wider area, so if you bring all of those sources together, then you can start to plot where you think people might have been in the past.”
The items will be taken back to a laboratory for analysis and then handed to the Corinium Museum in Cirencester.
