A one-of-a-kind golden neck ring from the Germanic Iron Age (400-550 A.D.) has been discovered in a field not far from Esbjerg on the Jutland Peninsula in mainland Denmark.
The ring weighs in at almost half a kilo (446 grams) and is designed with crescent-like depressions. The decoration is so meticulously detailed that the crescent shapes on the two rings are ever so slightly different: the crescents on the outer ring have eight decorative divots inside them, and the crescents on the inner ones have six. The broadest point of the ring measures 21 centimetres in diameter.
The embellishments on the ring are so rare, which makes it a “masterpiece of almost divine quality,” as termed by the South West Jutland Museum.
That kind of decoration is only known from fewer than a dozen similar rings found in Denmark. And this is by far the most elaborate, most finely worked of them. It is the only one with a soldered plate with intricate gold thread decoration.
The experts noted that the ring was deliberately buried and hidden away and that the inhabitant to whom it belonged did not sacrifice the ring to the gods, which was common practice in that era.
“When sacrificing items at that time, it usually took place in wetlands and bogs and the like. We know a large wetland existed near the discovery site, so if it was sacrificed to the gods, it would have been located out there instead”, Claus Feveile, curator at the Ribe Viking Museum, said in a statement.
The golden neck ring was discovered by metal detectorist Dan Christensen in October 2021. Christensen when he found the neck ring, immediately alerted museum staff.
In the week following the discovery, the entire field was scanned with metal detectors in case the ring had been part of a larger grouping of precious objects scattered by agricultural activity. (Previous examples of neck rings from this period have been found in pairs.) Nothing turned up.
Subsequent full excavation of the find site revealed evidence of a settlement under a thin layer of plow soil, including roof-bearing post holes from multiple three-nave longhouses dating to between 300 and 600 A.D. The neck ring was found inside one of the longhouses.
It was recovered from below the plow layer, so archaeologists believe it was buried where it was found.
Archaeologists don’t think it has been moved since, as the golden neck ring is in mint condition and has maintained its shape.
Initially, the neck ring will be exhibited at Museet Ribes Vikinger up until December 23.
Unprecedented 1800-year-old marble bathtub recovered in Turkey
The 1800-year-old marble bathtub, which was seized when it was about to be sold by historical artefact smugglers in Aydın’s Karacasu district, was delivered to the Aphrodisias Museum Directorate. Experts stated that the 1-ton marble bathtub with reliefs of the lion’s head is not similar in Turkey.
The 1800-year-old marble bathtub, which was seized when it was about to be sold, during the operation carried out by the gendarmerie on March 31 against historical artefact smugglers, weighs 1 tonne and is 1 meter 80 centimetres long.
There are lion head reliefs on the right and left sides of the tub, and these reliefs represent power and power.
Experts pointed out that it was evaluated that the bathtub may have been used by a state administrator or a wealthy business person.
In the research, it was stated that the work, which stands out as the only bathtub made of marble among the bathtubs found so far, has no analogues in Turkey.
Aydın Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Umut Tuncer said, “The ancient city of Aphrodisias was one of the richest cities of its time.
We think that the marble bathtub is an important part of the history of this city, which dates back to the 1st century BC. This bathtub, which is about 1800 years old, is one of the rare examples in the world because it is completely marbled.”
“There are bathtubs created with various mud layers that have been found in Turkey before, but this completely marble structure actually expresses the wealth of this region and the welfare society of the period.”
Aphrodisias was an important city on its own like other Roman and Byzantine cities. Aphrodisias was surrounded by fertile soil to grow all kinds of nutrients and was the first city of the era. In addition, it had the sleek wall and cotton industries, advanced commercial, political, religious, and cultural institutions, great art and painting tradition, philosophy, and a world-famous school of sculpture.
Aydın Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Umut Tuncer said, “The seized marble bathtub is rare in the world”
In ancient times, Aphrodisias was actually quite famous for its expert sculptors, high-quality marble statues, and an important sculpture workshop that was uncovered during excavations. Marble quarries near the city were an important factor in Aphrodisias becoming a leading centre of arts.
In the 4th-6th centuries AD, Aphrodisian sculptors were in high demand to produce marble busts and statues for important individuals in the Roman Empire.
Their products were considered the best marble statues of the time and were displayed in major cities such as Rome, Constantinople, Sardis, Laodikeia, and Stratonikeia. Surviving works of Aphrodisian sculptors include Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli.
The Neanderthal lifestyle: archaeological insights from Valencia
A research team from the Department of Prehistory, Archaeology and Ancient History of the University of Valencia (UV) has discovered and dated in Aspe (Alicante) an open-air neanderthal habitat over 120,000 years old in the Natural Park of Los Aljezares.
The lower limbs of a Neanderthal analyzed
The team was led by Professor Aleix Eixea, in collaboration with the University of Alicante (UA), the Bizkaiko Arkeologi Museoa and the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution of France.
Neanderthals, also known as homo neanderthalensis, are an extinct subspecies of humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. Experts are not sure of the exact cause of their extinction; they may have simply assimilated and interbred with homo sapiens (modern humans).
Based on the recent study of the area, Prof. Eixea posited that “this site served as a crossing point for the neanderthal populations between the coast and the interior of the Iberian Peninsula within a wide territorial network that the different groups would use to stock up on biotic and abiotic resources.”
We know that during the Middle Paleolithic era, the period during which Neanderthals lived, the primitive human populations settled in open-air camps. This is the case at the Los Aljezares site.
However, historically, the archaeological record of the European Paleolithic Era, particularly that of the Iberian Peninsula, comes from sites located in caves. In fact, most of the archeological excavations there in the last century and a half have been carried out in caves.
Thus, there is relatively little data about neanderthal activity –human behaviour, settlement patterns, and so on — outside of their cave shelters.
A Neanderthal tooth studied by researchers
Prof. Eixea explained that the Los Aljezares site “is one of the few examples of this type in the Iberian Peninsula and the only one in the Valencian area in which two archaeological levels have been documented in their original position, rich in lithic, faunal and archaeobotanical materials, and well-dated in time.”
This made it possible for researchers to gain a more detailed understanding of the landscape and climate, both very different from the current ones, and also the activity of the neanderthals themselves.
Further analysis of the configuration of the site indicated that it was also a place where neanderthals would make stone and wooden tools. They also prepared animals they hunted (deer and horses) for consumption.
Overall, Los Aljezares can be said to provide a number of keys to understanding the ecology, adaptation and dynamics of the neanderthal lifestyle in the Iberian Peninsula.
Newcomers from Eastern Europe settled in today’s Serbia almost 5,000 years ago
Bones of tall men covered with a red dye, discovered by researchers including Polish archaeologists in two burial mounds in Vojvodina (northern Serbia) probably belonged to people who had come there almost 5 thousand years ago from the steppes of today’s South Russia or Ukraine.
The targets of research were two large mounds with a diameter of 40 m and a height of 3-4 m located in the region Šajkaška (in the autonomous district of Vojvodina) on the lower Tisa, at the western edge of the Eurasian steppe. In each of them, there were two spacious, wooden tomb chambers.
Both mounds were built in two stages. Initially, when the first deceased was buried approx. 3-2.9 thousand years BCE, they were much smaller. After some 100-200 years, during the second burial, their diameters and heights were significantly increased.
The mound ‘Medisova humka’ during research.
‘The graves we discovered were not spectacularly equipped, but we noticed the red colouring of some bones. This was due to the use of ochre on the bodies of the dead’, says Dr. Piotr Włodarczak from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, one of the supervisors of excavations. According to the expert, during that period it was a ‘sacred colour’ used during the funeral rituals. The remains belonged to tall man, over 1.8 m.
‘Both the use of ochre and above-average height of the deceased (men living in this part of Europe at the turn of the fourth and third millennium BCE were usually approx. 1.6 m tall) indicate that they were newcomers.
The ritual involving the use of ochre and burial in large mounds it is associated with communities living in Eastern European steppes’, the scientist explains.
Reconstruction of the Yamnaya culture burial from the mound in Žabalj.
The researchers managed to dot the ‘i”. Genetic analysis of the remains shows that they the deceased either came from the East themselves, or were the immediate descendants of the newcomers. Samples for isotopic analyses were also taken from the bone to determine the diet, among other things.
‘It was not a surprise that their diet contained a lot of meat, because these communities were animal breeders’, adds Dr. Włodarczak.
Excavations took place in 2016-2018, but only now scientists concluded a series of expert analyses. The project was financed by the Polish National Science Centre. It was carried out in cooperation with the Museum of Vojvodina in Novi Sad.
According to Dr. Włodarczak, at the turn of the IV and III millennium BCE, Europe saw an influx of nomads from the southern steppes of today’s Russia and Ukraine, whose traces of archaeologists describe as the Yamnaya culture (from Russian, Pit Grave culture). It significantly changed Europe’s cultural situation.
‘The Bronze Age proto-state centres and elites began to emerge, as evidenced by huge mounds, under which individual people were buried’, he adds. Archaeologists believe they were community leaders.
Some of the graves were very richly equipped with weapons, ornaments and decorated dishes. The mounds discovered in Vojvodina is the westernmost tombs of the nomadic community of Yamnaya culture.
The new population also reached the areas of contemporary Poland. Archaeologists recorded a cultural change in the third millennium BCE – funeral rituals and method of making ceramic vessels changed.
Based on evidence in the form of genetic analyses, researchers believe that the community referred to as the Corded Ware culture also consisted of descendants of steppe nomads.
Archaeologists excavating a 3,000-year-old settlement in Austria have unearthed a golden bowl with the image of a sun adorning its underside.
“At the bottom of the bowl, a sun disc with 11 rays is depicted,” Michał Sip, an archaeologist with the German company Novetus, who is leading excavations at the site, told Live Science in an email. The artisan (or artisans) who crafted the bowl also included a “circular motif [images] of circles and dots” decorating the bowl’s exterior, Sip said.
The fragile bowl was shaped out of gold sheet metal, and it “probably had a cultic function,” Sip added.
A photo of the sun bowl is seen here. The bottom has a sun disc with 11 rays coming out. There are also circular motifs decorating the bowl.
Archaeologists know of about 30 similar bowls from ancient Europe, but “this is the first find of this type in Austria, and the second to the east of the alpine line,” Sip told Science in Poland.
These bowls were produced in the regions of what is now Germany, Scandinavia and Denmark, he noted.
At nearly 8 inches (20 centimetres) in diameter, the bowl is slightly larger than a person’s hand. But it’s very shallow — just 2 inches (5 cm) tall. An analysis revealed that the vessel is about 90% gold, 5% silver and 5% copper, and researchers are now hoping to discover where its raw materials originated, according to Science in Poland.
The bowl wasn’t the only stunning artefact found at the site. Two bracelets made from twisted gold wires were found with the bowl, and some organic remains, possibly fabric or leather, still cling to them.
The team is doing DNA tests to try to determine what the organic remains are, Sip said.
The bowl was found near the wall of one of the houses at the Bronze Age settlement, said Sip, adding that it’s possible that the bowl was wrapped in the gold wires and intentionally deposited at this location, perhaps during a religious ceremony honouring the sun.
The settlement dates back to before writing was used in the area, making it harder to determine what exactly the bowl would have been used for.
The prehistoric settlement lies beneath the modern-day town of Ebreichsdorf, Austria, and excavations are being conducted prior to the construction of a train station at the site.
During their excavations, the archaeologists also found nearly 500 bronze objects, including daggers, pins and knives, in a now-dry area south of the settlement that was once a swamp.
None of these objects is damaged, meaning that the swamp wasn’t used as a garbage dump for broken goods. Rather, these bronze objects were likely thrown into the water during rituals, Sip told Science in Poland.
After excavations are complete, the site will be returned to the Austrian Federal Railways, Sip said. Excavation of the site and analysis of its remains is ongoing. The gold bowl will soon go on display at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
First Modern Humans Arrived in Europe Earlier Than Previously Known
Some 30 years of archaeological and other types of scientific research around the ancient artefacts and human remains in the Grotte Mandarin, located in the Rhone River Valley in southern France, has revealed that humans may have arrived in Europe about 10,000 years earlier than originally thought.
This conclusion, drawn by an international team of researchers including Jason Lewis, PhD, of Stony Brook University, will help scientists rethink the arrival of humans into Europe and their replacement of and interactions with Neanderthals who also lived in the cave.
The research is detailed in a paper published in Science Advances.
Previous studies have suggested that the first modern humans reached the European continent – originally from Africa and via the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean crossroads – between 43,000 and 48,000 years ago.
But this discovery of modern human presence in the heart of the Rhone River Valley at Grotte Mandrin points to about 54,000 years ago.
Close-up of the Grotte Mandrin in southern France where scientists have uncovered layers of history that include both modern human and Neanderthal activity.
The area of the cave excavated and analyzed that proved the evidence of modern human presence is Mandrin’s Layer E. It is sandwiched between 10 other layers of artefacts and fossils that contain evidence of Neanderthal life.
“The first curious signal to emerge during the initial decade of excavations were thousands of tiny triangular stone points, resembling arrowheads, some less than a centimetre in length,” explains Lewis.
“These had no technical precursors or successors in the surrounding Neanderthal layers.”
Lewis explained that the well-preserved cave, discovered in the 1960s, includes uppermost layers that contain materials from the Bronze Age and Neolithic periods. But over the past quarter-century, the international scientific team has analyzed three meters of sediment and evidence from the Paleolithic – a period when Neanderthals and their ancestors occupied Europe and periodically had contact with evolving modern humans.
The consensus theory until now was that these modern humans expanded into the southeastern European region about 50,000 years ago and the Neanderthals progressively disappeared.
The research involved analyses of various types of hundreds of fossils, stone tools, and ancient human teeth.
The team used radiocarbon and luminescence dating, DNA and another molecular testing, and lithic technological analysis.
Co-author Marine Frouin, PhD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, completed luminescence dating work at Mandarin that helped estimate dates when humans occupied the cave.
“I joined the team in 2014 to obtain the first luminescence dates at the site,” explains Frouin.
“Due to advances in our dating methods and new collaborations that developed a few years later, we were able to put together a precise and robust timeline for when modern humans and Neanderthals were there.”
Many small triangular stone points from Mandrin’s Layer E helped lead scientists to determine modern humans lived in the cave, and therefore their presence in Europe was 10,000 years earlier than previously suspected.
Intriguingly, the international scientific team also determined that the evidence of humans at and around the ancient cave showed they occupied the territory for only one or two generations. Then, they disappeared just as mysteriously and quickly as they had arrived and Neanderthals reoccupied the region and site.
“Our overall discovery changes the landscape regarding the time humans arrived in Europe and raises other questions, some of which we think we can answer and others that require more investigation,” adds Lewis
Such questions are: How did modern humans know about the stone resources around the cave in France around the varied landscape in such a short time? Did they have relationships with Neanderthals, such as exchanging of information, and goods and acting as guides? Did these two hominin groups interbreed more frequently than science has previously suggested? Additional discoveries from Mandarin will soon be announced that will shed light on these and other questions about our ancient ancestors.
Prehistoric Artworks May Have Been Carved by Firelight
Our early ancestors probably created intricate artwork by firelight, an examination of 50 engraved stones unearthed in France has revealed. The stones were incised with artistic designs around 15,000 years ago and have patterns of heat damage which suggests they were carved close to the flickering light of a fire, the new study has found.
Photograph showing ambient light levels and the position of replica plaquettes in relation to the fire.
The study, by researchers at the Universities of York and Durham, looked at the collection of engraved stones, known as plaquettes, which are now held in the British Museum.
They are likely to have been made using stone tools by Magdalenian people, an early hunter-gatherer culture dating from between 23,000 and 14,000 years ago.
The researchers identified patterns of pink heat damage around the edges of some of the stones, providing evidence that they had been placed in close proximity to a fire.
Recreate
Following their discovery, the researchers have experimented with replicating the stones themselves and used 3D models and virtual reality software to recreate the plaquettes as prehistoric artists would have seen them: under fireside light conditions and with the fresh white lines engravers would have made as they first cut into the rock thousands of years ago.
Lead author of the study, Dr Andy Needham from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and Co-Director of the York Experimental Archaeology Research Centre said: “It has previously been assumed that the heat damage visible on some plaquettes was likely to have been caused by accident, but experiments with replica plaquettes showed the damage was more consistent with being purposefully positioned close to a fire.
“In the modern-day, we might think of art as being created on a blank canvas in daylight or with a fixed light source; but we now know that people 15,000 years ago were creating art around a fire at night, with flickering shapes and shadows.”
Dramatic
Working under these conditions would have had a dramatic effect on the way prehistoric people experienced the creation of art, the researchers say. It may have activated an evolutionary capacity designed to protect us from predators called “Pareidolia”, where perception imposes a meaningful interpretation such as the form of an animal, a face or a pattern where there is none.
Dr Needham added: “Creating art by firelight would have been a very visceral experience, activating different parts of the human brain.
We know that flickering shadows and light enhance our evolutionary capacity to see forms and faces in inanimate objects and this might help explain why it’s common to see plaquette designs that have used or integrated natural features in the rock to draw animals or artistic forms.”
Flourishing
The Magdalenian era saw a flourishing of early art, from cave art and the decoration of tools and weapons to the engraving of stones and bones.
Co-author of the study, PhD student Izzy Wisher from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham, said: “During the Magdalenian period conditions were very cold and the landscape was more exposed.
While people were well-adapted to the cold, wearing warm clothing made from animal hides and fur, the fire was still really important for keeping warm. Our findings reinforce the theory that the warm glow of the fire would have made it the hub of the community for social gatherings, telling stories and making art.
“At a time when huge amounts of time and effort would have gone into finding food, water and shelter, it’s fascinating to think that people still found the time and capacity to create art. It shows how these activities have formed part of what makes us human for thousands of years and demonstrate the cognitive complexity of prehistoric people.”
Archaeologists were left baffled by a grim Roman discovery made in Wales: ‘Quite peculiar’
This decapitated man, whose head was placed at his feet, was found in a Romano-British burial.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a possible Roman mercenary buried with his sword and the skeleton of another Roman-period man whose decapitated head lay at his feet in Wales, in the United Kingdom.
Investigations into these two distinct burials are ongoing, as is an examination of the other burials at the site, which has been used by humans since the Stone Age. One spot, for instance, has hundreds of burials from two different time periods; people who lived during the early medieval period (A.D. 410 to 1169) chose to bury their dead within a mound that had been used as a burial ground during the Bronze Age (2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.), the team found.
“[The early medieval people] went back to the prehistoric site to make this burial mound, even though it was a Christian period, and you would expect them to be buried around a chapel or a church,” excavation project director Mark Collard, an archaeologist and director of Rubicon Heritage, an Ireland-based archaeological firm, told Live Science.
Archaeologists first discovered the site in the 1960s, upon finding the remains of Iron Age roundhouses (800 B.C. to A.D. 43) and the Whitton Lodge Roman Villa built on a farmstead dating to the Roman period (A.D 43 to 410).
However, it wasn’t until recently that, during an archaeological survey ahead of a road construction project, archaeologists realized the site preserved far more history.
The Whitton Lodge Roman Villa was first discovered in the 1960s.
From 2017 through most of 2018, Rubicon Heritage excavated the site and since then has been working on a monograph or a detailed, peer-reviewed description of the site. In March, Rubicon Heritage released an eBook and an online interactive map of the site, known as 5 Mile Lane.
The earliest evidence at 5 Mile Lane is hunter-gather flint tools dating to the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age (8000 B.C. to 4000 B.C.), Collard said. “It shows that Mesolithic people are going through the area” and hunting animals such as aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct cattle species, he said.
People living there during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (4000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.), built some type of communally-used ritual structure, according to several large pits or postholes that archaeologists found. “It basically looks like a large post alignment running across the countryside,” Collard said.
The team also unearthed the remains of a person in a crouched position buried nearby, suggesting that the burial was tied to this ritual landscape, he said.
A late Bronze Age crouch burial at the base of the monument.
Archaeologists found the remains of several roundhouses and mound burials dating to the Bronze Age. But it wasn’t until the Iron Age that the landscape became more settled with small, timber-built and thatched round houses and cultivated farmland, Collard said. These farms were close together — less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) apart — and had domesticated animals and grain processing.
“It shows how dense the settlement was,” Collard said. These people were also producing iron tools, such as knives, he noted. Eventually, people switched from round houses to rectangular stone Roman buildings.
“We don’t know if it was the same owners or the same family, but we like to think that the continuity was there. And they just took on with new fashions and assimilated into the Roman Empire,” he said.
Collard and his colleagues plan to test whether there actually was continuity by examining preserved DNA found in the human burials, especially the roughly 450 burials found in the mound used by both the Bronze Age and early medieval peoples.
It’s likely that this gently sloped area at 5 Mile Lane was well-used because “it’s very rich farming land around there,” Collard said. “It’s good for growing crops but also for keeping animals” pastured and had “access to the sea, which is a couple of miles away,” he said. It was also “close to the highway” — a nearby Roman road that was heavily trafficked.
An aerial view of the Bronze Age burial monument that was reused during medieval times.
Binoculars found at 5 Mile Lane date to World War II.
The mercenary and the decapitated man
The possible mercenary had a “quite peculiar” burial, Collard said. “It’s in the middle of a field near the Roman villa looking out over the valley and over the sea … It’s a great place to be buried.” The deceased was buried prone, or face down, with a long iron sword, a silver crossbow brooch and hobnail boots inside a coffin closed with iron nails. The sword and brooch are indicative of Roman military regalia dating to the late fourth to early fifth centuries A.D., the researchers found.
It’s not certain how the man — who stood up to 5 feet, 9 inches (1.75 meters) tall and was in his early 20s — died, but he may have suffered from a middle-ear infection that spread to his skull, the team found.
During the late Roman period, when this man was alive, Roman control broke down in what is now the United Kingdom, leading the empire to take on mercenaries to fight off invaders, Collard said. So, it’s possible that this man, whose brooch looks like those found in continental Europe, was a Roman mercenary or possibly even an invader who took over the Roman villa, Collard said. Genetic analysis of the man’s remains will hopefully shed light on his roots, Collard added.
The decapitated man was also in his 20s when he died during the Roman period. His skull had been removed and placed at the feet, and the remains of wood and iron nails indicate that he was buried in a coffin or a board that had a shroud over it, the team found.
About 2% to 3% of burials at Roman sites include decapitated people, likely from executions, according to a 2021 study in the journal Britannia. This practice may have been used to separate the soul from the body or to prevent the body from rising again, Collard said.
