Holey cow! Evidence of Stone Age veterinary ‘surgery’
A hole in the skull of a Stone Age cow was likely made by humans about 5,000 years ago, probably by a primitive veterinarian or trainee surgeon, scientists said.
A 3D reconstruction of the Stone Age cow’s skull, showing internally and externally the hole produced by trepanation.
The hole appears to have been painstakingly carved into the animal’s head, but whether it was an operation to save the cow or practice for surgery on humans, was not clear, a duo of anthropologists reported in the journal Scientific Reports.
Either way, the puncture does seem to represent the earliest known example of veterinary “trepanation” – the boring of a hole into the skull, they said.
“There are many Neolithic (human) skulls in Europe which bear the marks of trepanation. But we have never seen it in animals,” co-author Fernando Ramirez Rozzi of France’s CNRS research institute told AFP.
The Neolithic era was the closing chapter of the Stone Age – a time when prehistoric humans, hunter-gatherer nomads until then, first tried their hand at cultivating crops and building permanent villages.
The cow skull comes from an archaeological site in western France, inhabited by a Stone Age community between 3,400 and 3,000 BC.
Bone fragments scattered around the camp showed that cows were the main source of food, along with pigs, sheep, and goats.
It was thought at first that the matchbox-sized hole was made when the cow was gored by a horned rival in a fight.
But on closer inspection with high-definition scanners, the team found no splintering or fractures consistent with such a strong blow.
The puncture was too regular to have been the work of a gnawing pest, nor did it appear to have been made by a tumour or infectious diseases, such as syphilis or tuberculosis, as the skull showed no other signs of sickness.
This picture shows cut marks in a cow skull (a, b, c) and in a human skull (d, e) from the Neolithic period suggesting that the technique used for the trepanation in humans is the same as that employed in the cow skull.
DEAD OR ALIVE?
Religious ritual also seemed an unlikely explanation, as the skull was thrown away with the rubbish.
Cut- and scrape marks were found around the hole, said Rozzi – similar to those seen on Neolithic human skulls into which holes had been bored.
“I believe that the evidence of trepanation is indisputable,” the researcher added. “It is the only possible explanation.”
But why would a Stone Age human operate on an animal?
“There are two possible explanations,” according to Rozzi. “Either they were treating the cow, or they were practising on it before trying their hand at the surgery on humans.”
The first option seemed unlikely, he added, given that cows were in such abundance.
The team could not determine whether the hole was made while the cow was still alive, or after it died.
The bone, however, had not started regrowing around the hole, which showed the cow either did not survive the operation, if there was one, or was cut post-mortem.
Evidence of Surgery Some 5,300 Years Ago Identified in Spain
A team of several researchers from the University of Valladolid, in Spain and one from the Spanish National Research Council in Italy, has found evidence of the earliest ear surgery performed on a human being.
In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the group describes their study of a human skull found at the Dolmen of El Pendónis back in 2018 and what they learned from it.
Dolmen of El Pendónis is a dig site near Burgos, Spain. Prior research has shown that the site was once used by early people as a funerary chamber. Prior research has also shown that the site was used for approximately 800 years, between 3,800 and 3,000 BC.
Skull understudy found at El Pendón site. Superior: Frontal and lateral view of the skull (Photo: ÑFotógrafos Photography Study). Inferior: Skull with mastoidectomy in situ in the context of the megalithic ossuary.
In the summer of 2018, a skull was found at the site and was put into storage. More recently, the researchers with this new effort retrieved the skull and took a closer look at it. In so doing, they found it bore evidence of a type of cranial surgery meant to cure an ear ailment.
They also found evidence showing that the patient, a woman between the ages of 35 and 50, had survived the surgery—at least for a few months.
There was evidence of bone regrowth in the holes that had been bored through her skull. The skull was dated 5,300 years ago, making it the earliest known example of ear surgery.
The procedure, known today as a mastoidectomy, is done to clean out the area behind the ear that has become infected. Failure to correct the problem can lead to deafness in some cases, or progressive infections leading to more serious problems, including death.
The woman who underwent the procedure required it on both ears. It is presumed that her condition was painful, enough so that she was willing to undergo what must have been an incredibly painful surgery.
Further inspection of the skull showed she had lost a lot of teeth, suggesting she was quite old for the time.
The researchers also found evidence of enlarged auditory canals, likely the result of the surgical procedure.
In the same tomb as the surgical patient, a flint tool was discovered—it had evidence of having been reheated several times, likely making it a cautery tool for stopping bleeding.
Lavish Roman mosaic is biggest found in London for 50 years
Archaeologists have uncovered the largest area of Roman mosaic found in London for more than half a century. The two highly decorated panels feature large, colourful flowers, geometric patterns and elaborate motifs in a style unique to the capital.
The mosaic is thought to have been the floor of a large dining room which the Romans called a triclinium
It is thought it once decorated the floor of a Roman dining room.
The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) find came during excavations as part of the construction of a regeneration project near the Shard in Southwark.
It is made up of two highly-decorated panels made up of small, coloured tiles set within a red tessellated floor
MOLA site supervisor, Antonietta Lerz, said: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime find in London.
It has been a privilege to work on such a large site where the Roman archaeology is largely undisturbed by later activity – when the first flashes of colour started to emerge through the soil everyone on site was very excited.”
It is made up of two panels, with the largest showing large, colourful flowers surrounded by bands of intertwining strands – a motif known as a guilloche.
There are also lotus flowers and several different geometric elements, including a pattern known as Solomon’s knot, which is made of two interlaced loops.
Dr David Neal, the former archaeologist with English Heritage and leading expert in Roman mosaic, has attributed this design to the “Acanthus group” – a team of mosaicists working in London who developed their own unique local style.
The complete footprint of the building is still being uncovered but current findings suggest this was a very large complex.
While the largest mosaic panel can be dated to the late 2nd to early 3rd century AD, traces of an earlier mosaic underneath the one currently visible have been identified which shows the room was refurbished over the years.
It was located on the outskirts of Roman Londinium, an area centred on the north bank of the Thames which roughly corresponds to the modern City of London.
A spokesperson for MOLA added the room it was situated in would have contained dining couches, where people would have reclined to eat and it might have been part of a Roman mansio – an upmarket “motel” for state couriers and officials travelling to and from London.
The excavations are part of the Liberty of Southwark regeneration project, which will comprise homes, workspace, shops and restaurants.
The mosaics will be carefully recorded and assessed by an expert team of conservators before being transported off-site, to enable more detailed conservation work to take place. Future plans for the public display of the mosaics are currently being determined.
Prehistoric Site in Portugal Yields 350-Year-Old Remains
An African man who lived just 350 years ago was buried in a prehistoric shell midden in Amoreira in Portugal. This was very surprising because Amoreira and other midden sites in the Muge region are well known by archaeologists for the cemeteries of the last hunter-gatherers living in area 8 000 years ago.
To investigate this burial researchers from Uppsala University and Universidade de Lisboa combined biomolecular archaeology, ancient DNA, and historical records.
We could determine that these were the bone remains of a first-generation African, probably from Senegambia, arriving in Portugal via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, who died around 1630 and 1760.
His genetic signature indicates African ancestry, while dietary isotope analysis shows that for most of his life, his diet consisted of plant foods commonly found in Senegambia, but not in Portugal at that time, plus a minor consumption of low trophic level marine foods (such as bivalve molluscs).
The oxygen isotopic signal in the bone bioapatite reflects the ingested water at the place of origin, which could be narrowed to the coastal areas of western Africa, in present-day Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia.
For more than three centuries, Africans were brutally dislocated from their homeland while forced to adopt a new religion, a new name, and a new language.
African communities in Portugal developed strategies to preserve their socio-cultural identity and values, similar to what is documented in the Americas.
We used our results to search for other clues that could help us understand the motivations behind his unusual burial.
The burial of this man in an 8000-years old site could be an example of the maintenance of African cultural beliefs and practices by African people translocated to Europe, even though this particular practice is not documented in the historical records. Like many other archaeological sites, Amoreira was probably known by the local populations as an ancient burial ground, given the abundance of animal and human bones at the site.
This grave seems to have been arranged with a layer of sand, suggesting a level of preparation for a burial in a seemingly deviant place; in Portugal, from the Middle Ages up to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the dead were generally buried in religious grounds, but this one was not.
We found that interestingly, up to the present day, shell middens are actively used in western Africa. In Senegambia in particular, the usage of shell middens includes ancient and modern cemeteries.
The burial of this individual in a Portuguese shell midden could indicate the recognition of the site as a meaningful place by the African community of Amoreira, possibly according to West African socio-cultural traditions.
In fact, other examples of non-Christian funerary practices have been identified in a cemetery of enslaved people in the Canary Islands. Future investigations may clarify if this was an isolated event or part of a broader movement.
We attempted to identify this individual and found a document from the local church dated to Nov 1st, 1676, which mentions the murder of a young man named João at Arneiro da Amoreira, which is precisely the area where the bone remains were found.
However, the church registers state that the victim was buried in the churchyard, but the bones we found were buried at Amoreira.
Additionally, the murdered man is described as brown or dun, possibly describing an interracial individual, but our results show that both mother and father were of African ancestry.
Whether the concurring site of the described murder and our studied bone remains is a mere coincidence, or rather the result of incompleteness, lack of detail or even accuracy of the historical records remains unknown.
Despite the incompleteness of the human remains and the historical records, the intersection of several lines of investigation enabled the reconstruction of specific aspects of the life and death of a first-generation African individual in Portugal during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade period, which would not otherwise have been possible to scrutinise from the skeletal material in the archaeological context.
More importantly, it shows the value of multidisciplinary research to investigate individual African life-histories in Early Modern Europe which have been obscured in large-scale studies.
Inscribed Medieval Gold Brooch Recovered in England
A metal detectorist has discovered a medieval gold brooch with a series of Latin and Hebrew inscriptions. The artefact, found in Wiltshire in the U.K., may have mixed religion and magic in an attempt to give its user protection against illness or supernatural events.
The Latin inscriptions translate to “Hail Mary full of grace the lord/ is with thee/ blessed art thou amongst women/ and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Amen.” The Hebrew initials for “AGLA” are also inscribed on the brooch and represent Hebrew words that mean “Thou art mighty forever, O Lord.”
The gold brooch dates to sometime between A.D. 1150 and 1400 and may have been used in an attempt to prevent fever, according to a brief report on the brooch published online by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and written by Sophie Hawke, a finds liaison officer for PAS. In England and Wales, metal detectorists report their discoveries to the PAS, a government-sponsored organization that publishes reports and images of the finds on its website and sometimes in scholarly journals.
This gold brooch dates back around 800 years and has a series of Latin and Hebrew inscriptions engraved on it.
What was it used for?
Live Science talked with a number of scholars with expertise in medieval history and magic to get their thoughts on what the brooch might have been used for.
The Hebrew initials that represent the phrase “Thou art mighty forever, O Lord” may be important to the brooch’s purpose, some of the scholars said. This phrase “figures prominently in medieval magic,” Richard Kieckhefer, a professor of religious studies at Northwestern University, told Live Science in an email.
He noted that the other prayers engraved on the brooch were common religious prayers at the time. “What I would want to emphasize is that this sort of combination of ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ is not unusual,” Kieckhefer said, noting that the mixture of religious and magical meanings would have given the brooch special powers in the eyes of the person who created it.
The Hebrew initials for “AGLA” were “very commonly used in magic, from high ritual magic to protective amulets and charms,” Frank Klaassen, a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told Live Science in an email. “It is one of many divine names or words of power common in medieval traditions.”
But why would someone wear such a brooch?
“Wearing Bible quotes like this was sometimes done as a way of protecting a person against misfortune,” such as fire, sudden death or supernatural forces such as demons, Catherine Rider, a professor of medieval history at the University of Exeter in the U.K., wrote in an email. “It’s hard to be sure that it’s magical — it’s perhaps more in a grey area between what we’d see as magic and religion.”
Given the brooch’s small size and mention of the Virgin Mary, the person wearing it may have been a woman. With its “small, though elegant, size, I would guess it was used on a woman’s garments of some light fabric,” Karen Jolly, a history professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Live Science in an email. “This woman was of sufficient means to have the object or have been given it. Whether she was literate or not, she would know what it said and what it meant,” Jolly said, adding that perhaps the brooch served a protective purpose related to pregnancy and childbirth.
The brooch, with its tiny engraved inscriptions, was well crafted. “My main reaction to the brooch is that it was made by somebody who was highly skilled and that its first owner, at least, was a pious person who recorded on it both devotion to the Virgin and a charm to protect them against various threats,” Anne Lawrence-Mathers, a history professor at the University of Reading in the U.K., wrote in an email.
The brooch is now going through the Treasure Act, as required by British law. It’s a process by which a determination is made as to what will happen to the artefact. It may end up being placed in a local museum depending on a number of factors. For instance, one possible outcome is that the metal detectorist may be given a monetary reward and the artefact may be handed over to the government, which could place it in a museum.
Archaeologists puzzled how ‘big clue’ over Cerne Abbas Giant’s age was missed
Carved into the hillside of rural Dorset is a 55-metre tall naked man wielding a huge club in his right hand. With an 11-metre erection on full display, he is England’s largest and rudest chalk hill figure. Situated near the village of Cerne Abbas, he was created by scouring away at grass to reveal the white chalk below and filling the trenches with more chalk from nearby quarries. Alongside the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, he is one of two remaining human hill figures in England.
Both have scheduled monument status, giving them protection against unauthorised change. Yet both have been the source of intense mystery and fascination for many hundreds of years. Until recently, nobody knew who created him, or when, or why. Archaeologists and camera crews from the BBC’s Digging for Britain series headed to the southwest to carry out their own analysis. Though the earliest written record dates back to the late 17th Century, antiquarians speculated it could have been a Saxon deity, while others believed it could have been a Roman-made figure.
Dr Mike Allen hinted the club, or staff had been largely ignored.
The Giant has been a source of intense speculation for years.
In July 2020, a survey of snail shells unearthed at the site suggested that the Giant is “medieval or later”, as no snails from the Roman period were found at the site. A further survey, using optically stimulated luminescence, analysed samples from the deepest layers of sediment, pointing to a construction date of 700-1100AD — the early medieval and late Anglo-Saxon period. Professor Alice Roberts, the Digging for Britain presenter, said archaeologists might have missed a “big clue” right under their noses when investigating the Giant’s age. Dr Mike Allen, an environmental archaeologist, told the documentary: “That’s one thing that archaeologists are normally very good at — saying why they’re there, what was happening and what date they are.”
He added: “Everyone seems to have been carried away with his nakedness and the member. Carved into the hillside of rural Dorset is a 55-metre tall naked man wielding a huge club in his right hand. With an 11-metre erection on full display, he is England’s largest and rudest chalk hill figure. Situated near the village of Cerne Abbas, he was created by scouring away at grass to reveal the white chalk below and filling the trenches with more chalk from nearby quarries.
Alongside the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, he is one of two remaining human hill figures in England. Both have scheduled monument status, giving them protection against unauthorised change. Yet both have been the source of intense mystery and fascination for many hundreds of years.
Until recently, nobody knew who created him, or when, or why.
Archaeologists and camera crews from the BBC’s Digging for Britain series headed to the southwest to carry out their own analysis. Though the earliest written record dates back to the late 17th Century, antiquarians speculated it could have been a Saxon deity, while others believed it could have been a Roman-made figure. In July 2020, a survey of snail shells unearthed at the site suggested that the Giant is “medieval or later”, as no snails from the Roman period were found at the site. A further survey, using optically stimulated luminescence, analysed samples from the deepest layers of sediment, pointing to a construction date of 700-1100AD — the early medieval and late Anglo-Saxon period.
Professor Alice Roberts, the Digging for Britain presenter, said archaeologists might have missed a “big clue” right under their noses when investigating the Giant’s age.
Dr Mike Allen, an environmental archaeologist, told the documentary: “That’s one thing that archaeologists are normally very good at — saying why they’re there, what was happening and what date they are.”
He added: “Everyone seems to have been carried away with his nakedness and the member.
The abbey (white square) once stood beneath the Giant.
“No one had really talked about the obvious — the Abbey sitting behind us.”
Prof Roberts explained that below the Giant once lay Cerne Abbey, founded in 987AD, right in the middle of the period archaeologists now know the Giant was created. She asked Martin Papworth, a National Trust archaeologist, what connection a huge naked figure might have to a Benedictine monastery.
He explained: “Just right next to his outstretched hand is, in fact, the abbey, which was established at the same time.”
The Abbey’s wealth was created predominantly by pilgrims worshipping the local holy man, St Eadwold of Cerne. Legend has it that he lived as a hermit on a nearby hill after he planted his wooden staff on the ground there, and it miraculously grew into a tree. Prof Roberts suggested the Giant’s club could actually be a staff sprouting leaves.
Mr Papworth asked: “Is he St Eadwold? What do I think? I don’t know who he is.
“But this medieval date makes all sorts of theories possible.”
Others, however, have speculated on different theories.
Homer Simpson has drawn next to the Giant in a 2007 publicity stunt.
Alison Sheridan, a freelance archaeological consultant, told the New Scientist: “It would almost seem to be an act of resistance by local people to create this fantastically rude pagan image on the hillside. It’s like a big two fingers to the abbey.”
National Trust researchers flew sophisticated drones over the Giant in July 2020 and carefully examined the images afterwards. Their findings hinted the Giant’s phallus might not be original, and subtle shifts in the earthworks may have been made around the 18th Century.
He told the Washington Post that “there appears to be an outline of a belt”, suggesting that once upon a time he might not have been naked at all.
Either way, more research is required to get to the bottom of this long-lasting source of fascination. The Cerne Abbas Giant, regardless of its age, has become a crucial part of local culture and folklore. In 2007, a giant Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was drawn next to the Giant as a publicity stunt for the opening of The Simpsons Movie.
In 2012, pupils and members of the local community recreated the Olympic torch on the Giant, marking the passing of the official torch in the build-up to the London 20212 Olympics. He has appeared in several films and TV programmes too, and his image has been reproduced on various souvenirs and local food produce labels.
He has remained a prominent tourist attraction in the region, with most tourist guides recommending a ground view from the ‘Giant’s View’ lay-by and car park just off the A352.
If you want to kill a reindeer with a bow and arrow you have to get as close to the animal as you possibly can. You probably can’t be further away than 10-20 metres. Which is difficult, with an animal that will flee at the smallest sound or movement.
As glaciers and ice patches in the mountains melt due to climate change, items of the past reveal themselves. The Secrets of the Ice programme monitors 65 sites in Innlandet county, and have recovered thousands of items from the past. This rare iron arrowhead was found at Sandgrovskaret in 2018.
The mountains and ice patches in Sandgrovskaret didn’t provide hiding places for the hunters, so they had to construct some. 40 such so-called hunting blinds – a rock wall shaped like a half-circle that hunters would hide behind – were found when glacial archaeologists visited the site four years ago.
“This was a big hunting location”, archaeologist Espen Finstad says to sciencenorway.no.
Hunting blinds are stone-built structures made to hide the hunters so as not to scare the reindeer away. They are a regular feature on the reindeer hunting sites surveyed by Secrets of the Ice, both at the ice and further down the mountains. The hunting blind in this picture was used for shooting towards reindeer on the snow and ice in the background. On hot summer days, the reindeer seek relief from pestering insects by walking onto the snow and ice.
Hunted in the mountains and lived in the valley
The mountain in question is 1800-1900 metres above sea level, so the hunters wouldn’t have been living here.
“Most likely they lived down in the valleys, but clearly had large hunting stations higher up in the mountains”, Finstad says.
People have hunted here for thousands of years.
“In the Stone Age, they would have lived in simple settlements, and during the Iron Age they would have had grand long houses down in the valley”, Finstad says.
Some such settlements were discovered by glacial archaeologists about a year ago, dating back to the Viking Age and Early Medieval period.
The Secrets of the Ice team at Sandgrovskardet (from the left): Espen Finstad, James Barrett, Mathilde Arnli, Elling Utvik Wammer, Øystein Rønning Andersen and Erlend Gjelsvik
Good camping spots that protect against the wind were hard to find, but the team managed to squeeze in the individual tents and the common mess tent between rocks and puddles.
Manipulating reindeer with sticks
The archaeologists also found 32 so-called scaring sticks at Sandgrovskaret, which were used in the reindeer hunt.
“Some of these were lying in a line, indicating where a type of psychological fence for reindeer once stood”, Secrets of the Ice write in a post on their Facebook page.
Scaring sticks are the most commonly found from the melting ice in Innlandet. Some sites have hundreds, others just a few. In total, more than 1000 such sticks have been recovered.
And they were used, as the name suggests, to scare the animals into position.
The sticks are usually about one metre long, with a movable object attached to the top, like a thin wooden flag that would flap in the wind.
“You would bring a bunch of these sticks to the mountains, and depending on weather and wind and where the reindeer are found, you would calculate how best to make them move toward the hunting blinds, and place lines of these sticks along the ice”, Finstad explains.
The movement from the sticks would make the reindeer worried and move in the opposite direction. It was a way of manipulating the animals to walk in the direction where you were waiting for them with your bow and arrow”, Finstad says.
Bones and arrows
Five arrows were found, a nice little collection, Finstad says.
Three of them have preserved iron arrowheads. One of them is of a rare type, and it’s the first find of this type of arrowhead on the ice. It is previously known only from a single grave found in the county, which dates to around AD 550-600. The other two arrowheads are well known from Iron Age burials.
The other two arrows were very long – up to 1 metre – but did not have arrowheads. These are from earlier periods, likely 800 BC based on the shape.
Bones and antlers from reindeer were collected but have yet to be dated using DNA analysis.
At another site, which was kept secret for some time, the glacial archaeologists once found a total of 68 arrows dating from the Stone Age to the Medieval Period. It was a prehistoric arrow bonanza, according to the Secrets of the Ice blog.
The rare arrowhead is the first of its kind found on the ice.
This iron arrowhead is of a well-known type from Iron Age burials in the lowlands. It has a flat tang and a long blade, and dates to AD 300-600. The photo also shows the broken remains of the wooden shaft.
Perfect conditions, in 65 sites
The first traces of finds at Sandgrovskaret were seen in 2013.
“We were there just to explore the conditions and could see some materials that had been uncovered from melted ice. Over the years we returned sporadically and saw more items”, Finstad says.
A larger mission was then planned for 2018. The archaeologists spent a week in the challenging environment, surveying the site systematically, documenting the hunting blinds, and rescuing as many finds as they could. The report from this mission was just published.
But the ice may have melted more since. At Sandgrovskaret, and other locations. Glaciers are sensitive to climate change, and a recent mapping showed that Norway’s glaciers in total have shrunk about 14 per cent over the past six years. Many smaller ice patches have nearly disappeared.
The Secrets of the Ice project has a total of 65 sites in Innlandet county where there are finds, spread out over Jotunheimen, Dovrefjell and Breheimen.
“These are great distances”, Finstad says.
“We have a window of opportunity from August and until the snow falls, where more items might surface and we can go rescue them. So every year we have to plan and prioritize”, he says.
There have been finds from melted glaciers in other parts of Norway, but no other project can boast as many as Secrets of the Ice – spanning from the Stone Age and up until the Plague in the 1300s.
“These are the highest mountains in Norway with several thousand years old ices, be they glaciers or ice patches. There has been plenty of reindeer here throughout the centuries, and short distances between the mountains and valleys where people have lived. So both the conditions for preservation as well as the cultural history setting in this area means that there has been a lot of activity here and that things have been left behind and preserved”, Finstad explains.
Sandgrovskardet has six individual ice patches, five of which have archaeological finds. The ice patches seen in this photo amass a total of about 170 000 square metres. The highest peeks were most likely not covered with snow in the past either.
One of the cairns, which has partly fallen down, from the ancient mountain trail at Sandgrovskaret.
Forgotten mountain trails
The surveys at the Sandgrovskaret site also revealed an ancient mountain trail. According to local history, this was used all the way up to the 19th century. What the archaeologists don’t know, is how far back the use of the mountain trail goes. The trail is marked by a number of so-called cairns, little man-made piles of stone used to mark the path.
“It’s impossible to say based on these cairns how old the trail is”, Finstad says.
At another site, however, Lendbreen in Jotunheimen, the melting ice revealed a forgotten mountain pass, as well as a number of artefacts dated back to the Iron Age. Here the archaeologists know that the pass was since forgotten and not in use. In total, the archaeologists have discovered approximately 800 artefacts left behind by people who were there centuries ago, sciencenorway.no wrote about this pass.
Remains of sledges, dead animals, clothing and household items melted out of the ice in the pass. Many of the artefacts found, including a knife and a mitten dated to the Viking Age, are very well preserved. Radiocarbon dates of the finds in fact confirmed that the trail was most intensely used around 1000 years ago, during the Viking Age.
“The lost mountain pass at Lendbreen is the greatest discovery of the Secrets of the Ice program”, according to archaeologist Lars Pilø.
Treasures and lead coffin found in the ancient Roman mausoleum
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered. Archaeologists found a huge amount of litharge – a lead oxide and by-product of silver extraction – which suggests a clan was melting down metal to get at its precious material. The 15 kilos of litharge discovered at Grange Farm, an excavation site in Gillingham, Kent, is the largest amount ever uncovered at a Roman Britain site.
An ancient mausoleum with the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain has been discovered.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building.
The 15-year research project was triggered following excavations in 2005 and 2006, prior to a house-building. The earliest evidence for occupation at Grange Farm occurs during the Late Iron Age, about 100BC before the site grew into a small Roman rural settlement in the late first century AD, and the settlement evolved until the 5th Century AD when it was abandoned.
Metal extraction took place at one end of a building, with fireplaces in the middle, and at the other end high-status domestic use. Researchers say that it was likely a large clan who were also working the land, hunting, raising animals and metalworking.
An archaeological dig at Grange Farm in Gillingham, Kent, where an ancient mausoleum has been discovered
The ancient mausoleum that was host to the largest illegal silversmithing site in Roman Britain
As the 3rd and 4th centuries in the Roman world operated on a gold and silver economy, the control of those metals was closely tied to imperial taxation.
This is why the investigators believe the silversmithing may have been done illicitly. Dr James Gerrard, senior lecturer in Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University, said: ‘Was that legal? Was that supervised?’
‘Quite why people were refining silver from silver-rich base metal alloys is a mystery.
‘Quite what the objects being melted down were is a mystery too.
‘They probably weren’t coins, as the bronze coinage had too little silver in it.
‘We might expect that the refining of silver here was either being done officially by the ‘Roman state’ or perhaps illicitly. It’s an unusual aspect of the site.
‘Maybe they were making silver objects like the ingots in the Canterbury Treasure.’
An officially stamped Roman British silver ingot, produced between the 4th and 5th centuries AD, weighing 353 grams (0.78 pounds). The stamped inscription reads EX OFFE HONORINI, which translates “from the workshop of Honorinus.” It was found in 1777 with two gold coins of Emperor Arcadius and one of Honorius, and dates to the end of the Roman period in Britain.
The investigators also discovered a monument, which would have stood at almost the height of a two-storey house, proving the occupant was very high-status. In the lead coffin, investigators found a middle-aged to elderly woman, who may have been a leader or chief of the clan.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The mausoleum is a house for the dead.
‘It’s basically a funerary monument. It probably dates back to the late 3rd Century or early 4th Century AD, and it was a stone building structure, probably with a tile roof. It was probably quite tall – certainly visible from the Medway – perhaps about the height of a two-storey house or a little less. It’s quite unusual in that it had a tessellated pavement of plain mosaic – a plain red colour – which is really unusual for Roman Britain.
‘This middle-aged to the elderly lady was buried there in a lead-lined coffin. She was probably local from the isotope analysis we did on the teeth. The silver suggests wealth. The mausoleum is wealth. It takes resources to build the structure like the mausoleum and it takes resources to put someone in a lead coffin. She had quite a hard life though. She had osteoarthritis but she lived to a good age and was buried with reverence. I think she was quite a high status. She was no peasant and she was someone with clout locally. Further evidence of wealth comes from gold jewellery found in the rubble of the mausoleum – including a necklace or bracelet made of gold filigree double-loop links threaded with polyhedral faceted beads of variscite.
Evidence of wear and modification suggests it may have been a necklace turned into a bracelet for a child, and it’s not known if it would have come from the mausoleum itself or sarcophagi possibly located next to it. Unusually, the mausoleum stayed intact until the 11th or 12th Century with the Anglo-Saxons left the ancient Roman structure alone. But it was not unoccupied, as the researchers found the mausoleum had been taken over by owls.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘We think during the 5th Century the grave is disturbed.
‘We don’t know why that was – and then the building stayed up until the Norman Conquest.’
‘We’ve got tawny owl pellets. The building becomes ruinous and then you’ve got owls living here.
‘It’s the end of the Roman Empire, the mausoleum is abandoned and the owls take up residence – we can’t be too precise about when that was but it would have been somewhere between the 5th and 10th Century. The researcher said he believes the monument was left alone by the Anglo-Saxons who may have used it as a navigational structure for people coming down the River Medway.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘If the building is visible from the Medway it might be a navigational structure for people coming down the river. It’s the 5th Century and water was more important as a means of travel.’
At the site, the team uncovered in all 453 Roman coins, 20,000 fragments of pottery weighing a quarter of a ton, and 8,000 animal bones. The mausoleum was moved after Domesday in 1086 when the land – recorded as having pasture, a tidal mill and six unfree peasants – was given to Bishop Odo of Bayeaux, half-brother of William the Conqueror.
Dr Gerrard said: ‘The site then becomes the medieval manor.
‘Probably what happened was they reused the stone from the building to build a chapel. At 1122, the manor was called Grenic, then Grenech in 1198, Grenge in the 14th Century, and more recently it became known simply as Grange Farm.
The Grange Farm dig produced considerable evidence of high-end silversmithing including this Saltern Hearth with a group of fired clay pedestals.
Dr Gerrard added: ‘It’s the end of a long process,’ he said. ‘I started my involvement in 2005 as a site assistant and digger on a short-term contract. I was in my late 20s. It’s 15 years later and I’m in my early 40s and I’m a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. It’s been with me a long time – it’s part of my career. For all the other people in the report, it’s been a huge part of our lives..’
