Ancient anti-witchcraft potion found at old Northamptonshire pub
Throughout Western Europe, about 200,000 witches were murdered, burned, or hanged, between 1484 and 1750 according to historians, while between 1644 and 1646, around 300 so-called witches were killed.
In the 1560s, the practice of witchcraft was a major offense. Many witches in Britain were often old women and were part of poor families.
A Victorian bottle that is supposed to be used to prevent evil spells has recently been found. As per the experts in Watford, Northamptonshire, the bottle has been found at the birthplace of the witch.
Angeline Tubbs, a famous witch, who is still a popular name, was born at the former Star and Garter Inn at Watford village in 1761.
Known as the Witch of Saratoga she is one of the major subjects of ghost tours at Saratoga Springs in New York, where she moved at the age of 15 and used to foretell the future.
But the 19th-century weird bottle was found during roof repairs of her house in Northamptonshire.
The bottle contains fish hooks, human teeth, glass, a liquid and suddenly appeared after several years when a chimney was demolished at the building.
As reported by BBC, Dr. Ceri Houlbrook, lecturer in folklore and history at the University of Hertfordshire said, “It’s certainly later than most witch bottles, so sadly not contemporary with Angeline Tubbs, but still a fascinating find.”
The researchers who studied the bottle at the Museum of London Archaeology mentioned that such vessels were believed to have been used as a protection method hundreds of years ago.
As per the experts, earlier these glass or stone vessels were found under the floors of historic buildings, mostly in the churchyards and riverbanks.
It should be mentioned that most of these vessels had contained weird things, such as human nails and pins as well as human urine
Roman Fort Discovered Hidden Beneath English Bus Station
The local town council reported that archeologists surveying Exeter, England, a bus station had found evidence of a defensive fort dating back to Britain’s Roman conquest.
Per a press release, workers excavating the structure—built during the early 1960s and scheduled to be replaced by a new station and accompanying leisure complex—found three ditches said to represent a previously unknown Roman compound, as well as coins, pottery and imported Samian tableware presumably used by troops based at the site.
According to the Telegraph’s Mike Wright, the fort likely served as a satellite of Isca Dumnoniorum, a military fortification garrisoned by 5,500 legionaries tasked with pacifying the fiercely resisting local populations in the region.
Established soon after the Romans’ invasion of Britain in 43 A.D., Isca Dumnoniorum was supported by a series of smaller forts located along connecting roads.
The newly discovered structure is the first recorded along an eastward road; previously, evidence of smaller forts was limited to roads leading south of Exeter.
Stephen Rippon, a landscape archaeologist at the University of Exeter, tells BBC News the find was a “complete surprise.” He adds, “There was no evidence known of [the fort] at all.”
As the council statement notes, the ditches found at the site are typical of those seen in Roman military compounds: One, a V-shaped trench featuring an “ankle breaker” pit designed to deter converging soldiers, was situated on the outer edge of the fort, while another, so steep it was nearly vertical, contributed to inner defenses and was placed directly below a rampart.
If any enemy attackers reached this point, the steep slope would have ensured that defenders firing from the rampart above had the upper hand.
Although the press release suggests the inside of the fort was located west of these trenches, Rippon says it is difficult to make an exact prediction regarding the compound’s size or location in relation to the ditches.
Andrew Pye of the Exeter City Council says the discovery demonstrates “just how pivotal a role the Exeter area played in the first decades of the Roman conquest and subjugation of Britain.”
Describing the fort as a “very important and completely unexpected” discovery, Pye notes that its unveiling testifies to “just how much of the city’s history can still survive in unlikely places,” including those damaged by wartime bombing and modern concrete foundations.
Previous archaeological discoveries in the area include the 1970s unearthing of an ancient fortress and bathhouse, as well as the identification of multiple forts of varying size and significance.
Roman forces left Isca Dumnoniorum and its network of smaller forts around 75 A.D. when the army shifted its attention to southern Wales.
Exeter, now acting as the region’s capital, was transformed into a civilian town, with improvements including public baths and defensive stone walls introduced over the coming decades.
By 360, Abbie Bray writes for Devon Live, the village had started to shrink, and in 410, the Romans abandoned Britain completely. Exeter remained sparsely occupied until 928 when settlers once again returned to the area.
Breakthrough in Translating Proto-Elamite, World’s Oldest Undeciphered Writing
Specialists claim that the world’s oldest undeciphered writing system will be decoding 5,000-year-old secrets
Jacob Dahl, a fellow at Oxford Wolfson’s College and director of Ancient World Research Cluster, said, “I hope we’re actually about to make a breakthrough.
Live Science has confirmed that Dahl’s secret weapons can see this writing more clearly than ever.
In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilizations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out the light.
This device is providing the most detailed and high-quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets.
It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200 BC and 2900 BC in a region now in the southwest of modern Iran.
The Oxford team thinks that they could be on the brink of understanding this last great remaining cache of undeciphered texts from the ancient world.
Dahl, from the Oriental Studies Faculty, shipped his image-making device on the Eurostar to the Louvre Museum in Paris, which holds the most important collection of this writing.
The clay tablets were put inside this machine, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging System, which uses a combination of 76 separate photographic lights and computer processing to capture every groove and notch on the surface of the clay tablets.
It allows a virtual image to be turned around, as though being held up to the light at every possible angle.
So far Dahl has deciphered 1,200 separate signs, but he said that after more than 10 years study much remains unknown, even such basic words as “cow” or “cattle”.
Dahl believes that the writing has proved so hard to interpret because the original texts seem to contain many mistakes – and this makes it extremely tricky for anyone trying to find consistent patterns.
“The lack of a scholarly tradition meant that a lot of mistakes were made and the writing system may eventually have become useless,” Dahl said.
Unlike any other ancient writing style, there are no bi-lingual texts and few helpful overlaps to provide a key to these otherwise arbitrary looking dashes and circles and symbols.
Proto-Elamite writing is the first-ever recorded case of one society adopting writing from another neighbouring group.
However, when these proto-Elamites borrowed the concept of writing from the Mesopotamians, they made up an entirely different set of symbols. The writing was the first ever to use syllables, Dahl said.
Dahl added that with sufficient support within two years this last great lost writing could be fully understood.
Celtic shield buried with Bronze Age warrior 2,000 years ago is ‘UK’s most important find’
Archeologists uncovered an amazing Iron Age shield within a 2,200-year-old tomb together with a cart and two ponies hidden in a springing location, in what archeologists call one of the UK’s biggest discoveries.
The grave in the vicinity of Pocklington was found by a group of archeologists headed by Paula Ware of MAP Archaeological Practice Ltd.
Ware told Yorkshire, “The shield, which has a diameter of approximately 30 inches, but its true glory was only revealed recently once conservation was completed,” Ware told Yorkshire post.
The restoration revealed that the shield is decorated with a series of complex swirls and what looks like a sphere protruding from its center.
The grave also held the remains of a man who was in his 40s when he died. In addition to the chariot and two “leaping” ponies, the site was filled with several pig joints and a feasting fork attached to a pork rib, Ware said.
Two small brooches — one made of bronze and the other of glass — were also found in the tomb. The elaborate nature of the burial indicates that the deceased man must have been “a significant member of his society,” Ware said.
Ware agreed with what other media outlets have suggested about the significance of the find: It is one of the most important ancient discoveries ever made in the U.K. “Yes, especially as it has been excavated under modern archaeological conditions,” she told Yorkshire post.
Ancient chariots are not altogether uncommon in burials. A 2,000-year-old Thracian chariot was discovered in 2008 alongside the bones of two horses and a dog in what is now Bulgaria, Yorkshire post previously reported.
The practice of burying noblemen near chariots in Bulgaria was especially popular during the time of the Roman Empire, which lasted from about 2,100 to 1,500 years ago.
Some 2,500 years ago, a Celtic prince in what is today France was buried in a lavish tomb complete with gorgeous pottery, a gold-tipped drinking vessel and… a chariot, Yorkshire post reported.
Archaeologists announced in 2014 that they had discovered a 4,000-year-old burial chamber holding two four-wheeled chariots and plenty of treasures in the country of Georgia, in the south Caucasus.
The newfound grave and chariot were discovered when the archaeological team was excavating an area where homes were going to be built. The researchers plan to submit a paper describing the finds to a scientific publication.
Scans Reveal Archangel Michael Tattoo on Mummy’s Thigh
High-tech testing on eight Egyptian mummies from the British Museum by a team of scientists from London uncovered fascinating information, including discoveries that one of the mummies has a tattoo symbolizing the Archangel Michael on her inner thigh.
The 8 mummies were from different eras, from kings to people who passed through the Nile. They came from different walks of life.
One of the mummies was only around two years of age when he died, while others lived to see their 50th birthday.
The oldest mummy tested is more than 5,500 years old, while the most recent lived around 1,300 years ago.
The mummies underwent computerized tomography scans (CAT scans) and infra-red reflectography at London hospital, which revealed what lay underneath their wrappings for the first time.
The scans enabled the scientists to build up a 3D image of the ancient remains, revealing bones, tissue, and vital organs.
The results revealed that the Egyptians suffered from some of the same health issues that plague us today, including high cholesterol, fatty diets, heart problems, and dental issues.
But most fascinating of all was the discovery of a tattoo on a female mummy, aged between 20 and 35, which Dr. David Antoine, curator of physical anthropology at the British Museum, described as “truly a unique and remarkable find”.
The 1,300-year-old female mummy was different from the others in that her remains were found in Sudan and she had been naturally-preserved by the hot and arid environment.
Her tattoo represents the symbol of the Archangel Michael, who features in both the Old and New Testaments, and who was the Patron Saint of Medieval Sudan.
“The tattoo on her right inner thigh represents a monogram that spells Michael in ancient Greek,” said Dr. Antoine. “We have found other examples of the monogram, but never in the form of a tattoo.
Michael is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings. In the New Testament Michael leads God’s armies against Satan’s forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan.
Christian sanctuaries to Michael appeared in the 4th century, when he was first seen as a healing angel, and then over time as a protector and the leader of the army of God against the forces of evil.
By the 6th century, devotions to Archangel Michael were widespread both in the Eastern and Western Churches.
The mummies and the detailed results of the scans will be available for the first time in a new exhibition opening on at the British Museum titled “Ancient Lives: New Discoveries”.
Archaeologists discovered 1,700-year-old Roman eggs
In England, archeologists found a very rare discovery, but one that is very interesting. They found an approximately 1,700 years old unbroken egg dating back to the Roman Empire.
This remarkable finding is of importance as it provides insights into the beliefs and ritualist practices of Romans and Britons. It is the only complete egg ever discovered in the British Isles.
The discovery was found in the area of Berryfields housing and community development near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, by Oxford Archeology. The search was carried out for nine years.
Here they found “a middle Iron Age settlement and the agricultural hinterland of the putative nucleated Roman settlement of Fleet Marston” according to Oxford Archaeology.
This was situated on a major thoroughfare and was once an important trading, administrative, and agricultural center.
Down the years the archaeologists have uncovered many remarkable artifacts, dating from between the 1st century AD and the 4th century AD when the site was abandoned.
Among the items found were coins, pottery, and metal items. The Daily Mail reports that they all throw light on “Roman Fleet Marston which had previously only been understood from incidental finds”.
Archaeologists were working in the area, which is very waterlogged when they came across an unusual number of deposits in a pit. These were largely items that were organic in nature and they would typically have disintegrated over time.
Among the items that were recovered were leather shoes, wooden tools, and a wicker basket, which may have once held the bread.
The remains of an oak tree and wooden piles from a bridge were also unearthed from the waterlogged earth. Edward Biddulph, of Oxford Archaeology, stated that “the pit was still waterlogged, and this has preserved a remarkable collection of organic objects” according to the BBC.
Among the organic items found were four eggs, that turned out to be chicken eggs. They were all found intact but as they were being moved, three of them broke, as they were so fragile.
The broken eggs emitted a very powerful and unpleasant smell, this was not a surprise as they were centuries old, after all.
However, one of the eggs was extracted intact from the muddy ground, after some painstaking work. This was astonishing as only fragments of eggshells had been found, previously in Britain, mainly from Roman-era graves.
The archaeologist had found the only complete chicken egg from Roman Britain. To find any intact egg from the past is very rare but to find one from 1,700 years ago is astonishing. The BBC reports that Mr. Biddulph said the discovery of the complete egg and other organic items “was more than could be foreseen”.
To understand why there were eggs and other items simply left in the ground we need to understand the area where they were found. It appears that the site was once a waterlogged pit, which was possibly used in a similar way to a wishing well.
People would toss objects into the pit for good luck. A Roman mirror and some pots had also been discovered in the location with the organic items.
It is also possible that the eggs and the basket, were offerings of food to the dead, possibly after a burial. This was very common in funerary customs in the classical era. Eggs were highly symbolic, for many ancient peoples and “In Roman society, eggs symbolized fertility and rebirth” according to the Daily Mail.
They were associated in particular with the Roman gods Mercury and Mithras, a deity of Persian origin. The eggs may have been placed in the pit to win the favor of one of these gods.
The excavation was financed by the construction company, Berryfields Consortium. The dig finished in 2016 and for the past three years, researchers have been carefully analyzing the numerous finds.
A monograph that “describes the results of the fieldwork and analysis of an exceptional range of the artifactual and environmental evidence” reports Oxford Archaeology was published this year.
Eroding World War II-Era Graffiti in England Recorded
Researchers have discovered the identities of over 30 United States soldiers graffitiing a wall 75 years ago during World War Two.
On the Western Esplanade in Southampton the 62 ft (19 m) ‘ D-Day Wall ‘ has more than 70 names grafted by soldiers who are waiting for the day D to embark on Normandy.
The naval archeology Trust has documented their war records and lives back in the US. Many took part in the Battle of the Bulge from the end of 1944.
The trust began a project to digitally record the wall after historians warned the names were in danger of wearing away.
The wall enclosed the old town mortuary and soldiers queued alongside it as they waited to board ships at what is the current-day Red Funnel ferry dock.
Volunteers used specialist photography to decipher the names before using online genealogy sources and US military records to identify the soldiers and learn more about their stories.
The soldiers are believed to have belonged to the 99th and 106th Infantry Divisions and were among the two million Americans who transited through Southampton to mainland Europe.
Many fought in the Battle of the Bulge from December 1944 – the last major German offensive faced by the allies as they fought their way towards Berlin.
Helen Wallbridge from the trust said finding the military record of Curt Hodges from Chicago proved a “breakthrough”, as it allowed the names of fellow members of his unit to be confirmed.
“Looking at the spacing of the inscriptions, it seems plausible that the men stood in a line and carved their names together.”
“It’s detective work and a jigsaw so it’s great when you get the pieces to fit and you get a name,” she added.
The researchers traced the name William Paul Urban and found he came from Chicago and reached the rank of sergeant before he was killed in action aged 29 in March 1945.
Two of the men named – Robert Golden and William Knight – were found to have been captured and spent the remainder of the war as POWs.
Among others who survived the war, William Mueller from New York went on to become an aeronautical engineer. Twenty-two-year-old Ralph Odom went to work in construction before his death in 2008.
The trust has attempted to contact family members of the veterans, providing them with an unexpected memorial to their departed loved ones.
The daughter of one said: “My gratitude and appreciation are emotions words can’t reach.”
The 19m (62ft) long wall is already a listed war memorial although the names are expected to erode further in the coming years.
Student’s Lucky Find Worth £145,000 Is Rewriting Anglo-Saxon History
A student in Norfolk certainly never dreamed that he could rewrite Anglo Saxon history with a finding of a female skeleton wearing a pendant – but experts say that the “exquisite” gold piece is doing just that.
“A discovery of a female skeleton bearing a gold pendant imported from Sri Lanka with coins bearing the marks of a continental king is prompting a fundamental reassessment of the seats of power in Anglo Saxon England.” Stated by the Telegraph.
The items are known as the Winfarthing Woman’s treasure An examination of grave objects, i.e. two inscribed coins, suggests that the grave’s owner was buried between 650 to 675 AD and was an elite member of society, possibly even royalty.
One of the large gold pendants found on the skeleton is inlaid with hundreds of tiny garnets. That artifact alone has been valued at £145,000 (almost $190,000).
A delicate gold filigree cross found in the burial suggests that the woman may have been one of the earliest Anglo Saxon converts to Christianity. Other items found in the grave included two identical Merovingian gold coins which had been made into pendants and two gold beads.
Senior Curator of the Norwich Castle Museum Dr. Tim Pestell said the craftsmanship of these objects is “equal” to the famous Staffordshire Hoard.
In an amusing turn of events, the discovery was made at a site that has been overlooked by archaeologists over the years due to the poor soil.
But Thomas Lucking, who found the site in 2015 decided that the location was worth an examination. “We could hear this large signal.
We knew there was something large but couldn’t predict it would be like that,” he said, “When it came out the atmosphere changed.”
The Guardian reports the first artifact unearthed was a bronze bowl placed at the feet of the skeleton when the human remains were noted Lucking paused the dig to call the county archaeology unit in.
Work continues at the site first identified by Lucking as it has been identified as a cemetery, possibly with a settlement located nearby as well. Mr. Lucking now works as a full-time archaeologist.
Two other interesting discoveries described at the launch of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Treasure annual reports at the British Museum include two Bronze Age hoards and a Roman coin collection.
One of the Bronze Age hoards consisted of 158 axes and ingots while the other consisted of 27 axes and ingots. Both were found in Driffield, East Yorkshire, and date to around 950-850 BC.
The Roman coins numbered more than 2,000 and were discovered inside a pottery vessel in Piddletrenthide, Dorset.