Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Ancient Helmets and Temple Ruins Exhumed Where Greeks Settlers First Arrived in Italy

Ancient Helmets and Temple Ruins Exhumed Where Greeks Settlers First Arrived in Italy

Archaeologists in southern Italy have discovered ancient warrior helmets and the ruins of a painted brick wall at a site that might have been a forerunner of a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, officials said Tuesday.

Remains of an ancient helmet found in southern Italy.

Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the remains dug up at the popular tourist site of Velia were found on what had been an acropolis of one of Magna Graecia’s most important cities.

Velia is 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Paestum, a much-visited site of ancient Greek temples.

The recently completed excavation at Velia unearthed a pair of helmets in good condition, the remains of a building, vases with the Greek inscription for “sacred” and metal fragments of what possibly were weapons, the culture ministry said.

State Museums Director Massimo Osanna, who formerly had long directed excavations at Pompeii, Italy’s most celebrated excavated site, said the area explored at Velia probably contained relics of offerings made to Athena, the mythological Greek goddess of war and wisdom, after a key naval battle in the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea.

In the 6th-century B.C. battle of Alalia off the coast of Corsica, Greek forces were victorious over Etruscan forces and their Carthaginian allies.

Velia is famed for being the home of an ancient Greek school of philosophy, including philosophers Parmenides and Zeno.

It was part of Magna Graecia, the area of southern Italy colonized by Greek city-states.

The settlement at Velia occupied an upper part, or acropolis, of the area as well as hillsides, and was surrounded by a wall. The city’s ancient name was Elea.

Velia’s founding dates to about 540 B.C. by colonists from Asia Minor.

Franceschini said the discoveries yielded by the Velia excavation underscored the importance of investing in archaeological research to reveal “important pieces of the history of the Mediterranean.”

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp

Archaeologists in Poland have discovered three pendants that belonged to people who were murdered at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in eastern Poland.

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp
A pendant featuring Moses holding the Ten Commandments was found by the gas chambers located in Camp II at Sobibor.

The researchers discovered two of the pendants in places where Holocaust victims were forced to undress before guards herded them into gas chambers; they discovered the third pendant near a mass grave at the death camp, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). 

“Little is known about the stories behind the pendants, which are heartbreaking,” Yoram Haimi, an archaeologist with the IAA who co-directed the excavation, said in a statement released Jan. 27. 

It took about 10 years of archaeological excavations to find all three pendants at Sobibor. Though each pendant is different, all three have depictions of Moses and the Tablets of the Law (also known as the Ten Commandments) on one side, and the Hebrew prayer, “Shema Yisrael,” which translates to “Hear O Israel,” on the other.

For Jews, the Shema is “an affirmation of God’s singularity and kingship,” according to My Jewish Learning, a site run by 70 Faces Media, a nonprofit, nondenominational media organization.

“Its daily recitation is regarded by traditionally observant Jews as a biblical commandment.” Traditionally, Jewish people say the prayer as their last words before death.

The words framed in each metal pendant were inscribed by hand. During the past year, researchers managed to identify each pendant’s country of origin: Lviv, Ukraine; Poland; and Czechoslovakia.

A figure of Moses and the Ten Commandments on a pendant that was found in the women’s barracks before they entered the gas chambers.

“It has been possible to identify a kind of tradition or fashion among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe with pendants that were inscribed with ‘Shema Yisrael’ on one side and a depiction of Moses and the Tablets of the Law on the opposite side,” Haimi said. However, it’s unclear how the pendants became widespread.

“Were they distributed in synagogues by local Jewish communities or possibly produced for individual orders?” Haimi wondered. “Research of the pendants is ongoing and we invite the public to provide us with details concerning them.” 

Of the 6 million Jews, as well as people with disabilities, Roma, Poles and other Slavic people killed during the Holocaust, about 250,000 people — largely Jews from Poland the occupied parts of the Soviet Union — died at Sobibor between 1942 and 1943, according to Britannica.

However, the death toll was likely higher, Haimi, whose uncle was killed at the camp, previously told Live Science. 

The pendant was found by the mass grave at Sobibor. Only the side with the Shema survived.
A pendant was discovered in a women’s undressing area at Sobibor, where victims were forced to unclothe before entering the gas chambers.

Sobibor was connected to a railroad that transported Jews captured from around Europe, and it’s likely that not everyone on the trains, or those taken to the death camp by foot or truck, were included on the lists used to estimate the death toll, Haimi previously said.

“The personal and human aspect of the discovery of these pendants is chilling,” Eli Eskozido, director of the IAA, said in the statement. “They represent a thread running between generations of Jews — actually a thick thread, thousands of years old, of prayer and faith.”

The new excavations were directed by Wojciech Mazurek, an archaeologist from Poland, Haimi and Ivar Schute, an archaeologist from Holland, all of whom were assisted by local residents.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England

A “lost” Oxford University college has been unearthed during the construction project for new student flats. The former St Mary’s College was founded in 1435 but had already fallen into disrepair 100 years later.

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England
Thirty student flats are being developed at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe where the college was found

A team from Oxford Archaeology discovered a massive limestone wall foundation, butchered animal bones and decorated floor tiles.

Construction firm Beard is developing 30 student flats at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe.

The ill-fated St Mary’s College was to be a base for Augustinian canons studying in Oxford.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built, but construction was very slow.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey tried to speed things up but was later accused of treason by King Henry VIII and died.

The college further faded into obscurity after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

A team from Oxford Archaeology are excavating a series of pits

Archaeologists have found a wall believed to have supported one of the college’s stone buildings.

They are also excavating a series of pits where disposed animal bones and charcoal suggest the kitchens were nearby.

Other items include a 17th Century stone flagon – drinks container, a bone comb and a medieval long cross silver penny.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built at the site

The site has been occupied since the late 11th Century and was once the location of a high-status Norman house.

Ben Ford, senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology, called the remains a “unique and fascinating part of Oxford”.

“We are hoping to shed light not only on the layout of the lost college of St Mary’s but also discover evidence that tells us about the lives of some of medieval Oxford’s most powerful Norman families who probably lived at the site,” he said.

He added: “If we are really lucky, we may uncover signs of even older everyday life, from Oxford’s earliest years when it was first built as a heavily-defended town on the Thames, guarding the border between Saxon and the Viking held lands.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Headless HORSE skeleton with rider unearthed in a medieval graveyard in Germany

Headless HORSE skeleton with rider unearthed in a medieval graveyard in Germany

The skeletal remains of a man buried 1,400 years ago near a headless horse have been discovered at an ancient cemetery in the town of Knittlingen in southern Germany. He likely was the horse’s owner/rider when he was alive. 

Headless HORSE skeleton with rider unearthed in a medieval graveyard in Germany
This decapitated horse, dating back about 1,400 years, was found next to the remains of a male rider.

The man was buried at a time when the Merovingian dynasty (A.D. 476–750) flourished in the area, ruling a giant swath of territory in what is now France and Central Europe. 

During his lifetime, the man likely served the dynasty’s kings. “He stood in a ‘chain of command’ with the Merovingian kings on its top, which meant he was obliged to participate in the king’s campaigns,” Folke Damminger, an archaeologist in charge of research at the site, told Live Science in an email. 

Part of the ancient cemetery that is currently being excavated is shown in this aerial image.

“As a member of the local elite, he most probably was the head of a farming household consisting of his family and his servants,” Damminger said.

However, the man was not a farmer in a strict sense, as other workers may have done much of the actual farming, Damminger said. 

Why exactly he was buried near a headless horse is not clear, but “most probably the decapitation [of the horse] was part of the burial ceremony,” Damminger told Live Science.

The horse may have been placed near its owner as a ‘grave good’ for the afterlife rather than a sacrifice, Damminger said. The horse’s head has not been found so far. 

His family members would have wanted to portray him as a wealthy and important individual so that they could benefit from his status.

“One function of this ceremony was the ‘staging’ of the deceased in his former status and wealth as a claim of his successors to maintain this status,” Damminger said. 

The archaeologists discovered the remains of several other people, who lived at around the same time as this rider, within the same cemetery.

Some of them were buried with wealthy grave goods, such as a woman interred with a gold brooch. Some of the men were buried with weapons such as swords, lances, shields and arrowheads. 

The researchers will continue to investigate the headless horse burial and excavate other burials at the cemetery.

Damminger said that the team is in the process of excavating and restoring the mysterious man’s grave goods, and future anthropological work of the man’s bones and teeth will be done to learn about his health, why he died and how old he was when he perished. 

Damminger works for Stuttgart Regional Council’s State Office for Monument Preservation. Much of the excavation work is being carried out by archaeologists from the cultural resource management firm ArchaeoBW. 

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

A Cave in France Changes What We Thought We Knew About Neanderthals

A Cave in France Changes What We Thought We Knew About Neanderthals

The stone rings found inside the French cave were probably built by the Neanderthals 176,500 years ago. The study says that the structures are the oldest known human constructions, possibly altering the way we think about our ancestors.

The team led by archaeologist Jacques Jaubert of the University of Bordeaux, using advanced dating techniques, noted that the stalagmites used in the stone ring construction had to be broken off the ground about 176,500 years ago.

Dating of the structures – if substantiated – would push back the first known cave exploration by members of the human family for tens of thousands of years. It would also change the widely held view that ancient cousins of humans were incapable of complex behaviour.

Earlier research had suggested the structures pre-dated the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 45,000 years ago and thus the idea that Neanderthals could have made them didn’t fit and was largely disregarded.

“Their presence at 336 meters (368 yards) from the entrance of the cave indicates that humans from this period had already mastered the underground environment, which can be considered a major step in human modernity.

A chance find

The structures – discovered by chance in 1990 after a rockslide closed the mouth of a cave at Bruniquel in southwest France – were made from hundreds of pillar-shaped mineral deposits, or stalagmites, which were up to 40 centimetres (16 inches) high.

The authors said the purpose of the oval structures – measuring 16 square meters (172 sq. feet) and 2.3 square meters – is still a matter of speculation, though they may have served some symbolic or ritual purpose.

“A plausible explanation is that this was a common meeting place for some type of ritual social behaviour,” said Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who wasn’t involved in the study.

The Neanderthals who built them must have had a “project” to go so deep into a cave where there was no natural light, said Jaubert.

“The site provides strong evidence of the great antiquity of those elaborate structures and is an important contribution to a new understanding of the greater level of social complexities of Neanderthal societies,” Villa noted.

Who were the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals were a species or subspecies of humans that became extinct between 40,000 and 28,000 years ago. Closely related to modern humans, they left remains mainly in Eurasia, from western Europe to central, northern, and western Asia.

Neanderthals are generally classified by palaeontologists as the species Homo neanderthalensis, having separated from the Homo sapiens lineage 600,000 years ago.

Several cultural assemblages have been linked to the Neanderthals in Europe. The earliest, the Mousterian stone tool culture, dates to about 300,000 years ago. Late Mousterian artefacts were found in Gorham’s Cave on the south-facing coast of Gibraltar.

In December 2013, researchers reported evidence that Neanderthals practised burial behaviour and buried their dead.

In addition, scientists reported having sequenced the entire genome of a Neanderthal for the first time. The genome was extracted from the toe bone of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

How did an 8000-year-old community deal with climate change?

How did an 8000-year-old community deal with climate change?

Cosmos Magazine reports that archaeologists including Rick J. Schulting of the University of Oxford have determined that Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, a cemetery on an island in northern Russia’s Lake Onega, was used for a 200-year period during the so-called mini–Ice Age.

Some 8200 years ago, a great sluice of meltwater from a now-vanished ice sheet pulsed into the North Atlantic, causing a mini-Ice Age that lasted for around 200 years. 

Across vast swathes of northern Europe, plant life began to change – broadleaf trees were outcompeted by hardier pines suited to the frigid temperatures – and animals and humans alike would have been forced to adapt to the sudden, drastic changes.

Now, in a new study out today in Nature Ecology & Environment, archaeologists from the University of Oxford have opened a small, misty window into this early Holocene upheaval, to see how one community changed in response. 

The site, the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov (YOO) cemetery in northern Russia, sits on an island in the vast Lake Onega, 350 kilometres northeast of St Petersburg.

Radiocarbon dating of remains in the cemetery shows that it was mainly used for a short window of around 200 years, spanning some 10 generations and that its use coincided with this mini-Ice Age. 

So why might people suddenly decide to organise their dead at a time of stress? The clue, the researchers say, lies in the lake. 

Site of the early Holocene cemetery of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, at Lake Onega, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

Lake Onega would have been a relative paradise as freezing temperatures closed in. With its own microclimate and lush stores of fish and plant life, it would have drawn big game such as elk to its milder shores, as well as beleaguered humans on the hunt for food. At the same time, shallower lakes in the region would likely have experienced harsh winter fish kills. 

That’s an awful lot of people milling into a small area – a well-known recipe for disaster. But humans are a resilient bunch, and the researchers believe the Lake Onega communities responded by building a more complex, more united society – their cemetery, the final resting place of their loved ones, was yet another display of social belonging and organisation.

The claim is a bold scientific leap, but it’s not unconvincing. Some 200 years on, when the climate improved, the cemetery was abandoned. 

“Whatever ‘complexity’ we see at YOO,” the authors write, “was thus situational and reversible.” 

Did this tight band of people disperse back into the landscape in smaller, nomadic groups? We’ll probably never know the exact truth of the events, but archaeology offers a tantalising vision of an ancient community in flux, at the mercy of a changing climate.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Well-Preserved Visigoth Sarcophagus Found at Roman Villa in Spain

Well-Preserved Visigoth Sarcophagus Found at Roman Villa in Spain

Researchers in southeast Spain have uncovered an incredibly well-preserved Visigoth coffin at the site of a former Roman villa. The stone sarcophagus is about six feet, seven inches, long with a swirling geometric decoration along its slanted lid interlaced with intricate ivy leaves designs.

It’s estimated the coffin dates from the 6th century AD, when the Iberian peninsula was part of the Visigoth kingdom, after the fall of the Roman empire.

The coffin was uncovered at Los Villaricos, a Roman villa established around the first century near the modern town of Mula but abandoned by the fifth century.

Sometime between the 5th and 7th centuries, it was taken over by Germanic invaders.

A team led by Rafael González Fernández, a historian at the University of Murcia, found the coffin earlier this month, during a summer archaeological campaign.

Measuring about six-foot-seven, the carved stone coffin (above) is decorated with geometric patterns interlaced with intricate ivy leaves designs

‘We weren’t expecting this spectacular discovery,’ González told the Times of London—in fact, they initially thought they’d found an ornate rectangular column, or pilaster.

But after some delicate cleaning, they found a crismón, or Chi Rho, one of the earliest forms of Christogram, at the head of what turned out to be a coffin.

A Christogram is a combination of letters forming the initials of Jesus Christ, often overlapping the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P).

A Christogram, or a combination of letters forming the initials of Jesus Christ, often overlapping the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P)

Although the Visigoths were initially pagan, by the 6th century they had largely converted to Christianity.

Human remains were found inside the coffin, though more analysis will need to be done to learn more about who the deceased was. 

‘This sarcophagus … shows the archaeological power of [Los Villaricos] and confirms our commitment to the University of Murcia,’ Mula city councilor Diego J. Boluda told National Geographic History. ‘Undoubtedly, the piece will occupy a preferential place in the Museum of the City of Mula.’ 

While the Visigoths were initially pagan, by the 6th century they had largely converted to Christianity. Pictured: 1888 Painting depicting the 587 AD conversion of Reccared I, Visigothic king of Hispania, to Catholicism, by Antonio Muñoz Degrain

In its prime, Los Villaricos was a wealthy Roman villa, Murica Today! reports, with evidence of an olive press, storage for olive oil and other agricultural activity.

The Visigoths repurposed the villa’s main reception room into a Christian basilica and the adjoining patio into a necropolis.

The three-week excavation ‘was focused on finishing excavating the last three burials in the necropolis and continuing with the excavation work of the complex located north of the town,’ González told National Geographic.

During the Roman era, Los Villaricos was a stopping point along a trade route between Carthage and Complutum, a settlement northeast of Madrid.

Later, it would have been strategic due to its proximity to the Visigoth city of Cehegín.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Archaeometry also confirms that the Curia Pompeia in Rome was built in several phases

Archaeometry also confirms that the Curia Pompeia in Rome was built in several phases

The Curia of Pompey was one of the great meeting rooms of profound historical importance during the Roman Republic. Located on the eastern flank of the ancient Portico of Pompey, within its walls the senators of ancient Rome discussed weighty political affairs in private meetings.

What is now a visible site for pedestrians who circulate through the Roman square of Largo Argentina, was actually constructed in several phases, ranging from the time of Pompey himself to the medieval era.

This is, at least, what has been corroborated by a study carried out by an Italian/Spanish research team on which the University of Córdoba participated.

Recreation of the Curia in its phase II

This fact had already been ascertained by stratigraphic studies carried out by the Spanish team that worked on the site between 2013 and 2017.

Now, these conclusions have been ratified from the point of view of archaeometry, a different scientific discipline used in Archeology that applies physical and chemical analysis techniques to archaeological materials.

Specifically, the work analyzed samples of mortar from the monument; that is, the conglomerate that was used to prepare the different construction elements. The results made it possible to establish an indirect dating method confirming that Pompey’s Curia did, in fact, feature several different construction phases.

Archaeometry also confirms that the Curia Pompeia in Rome was built in several phases
The site of the Curia of Pompey.

The first of them, according to the results of the study, was during the time of Pompey himself, around 55 BC. The samples analyzed indicate that the monument also had the second phase of construction, which must have been around 19 BC, under Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

Finally, a last stage of construction during the early medieval period has also been documented.

Tell me where you are from and I’ll tell you when

The dating of these stages was established indirectly thanks to the knowledge of the origins of the materials with which the monument was built. Analysis of the compositions of the samples analyzed allowed the authors, F. Marra, E. D´Ambrosio, M. Gaeta and A. Monterroso-Checa to ascertain the quarries from which they were extracted.

The compositions and dates of removal from the quarries revealed that there were different chronological phases in the use of these construction materials.

All of this is evident because there is a clear distinction between the composition of the samples attributable to the first construction phase and those of the Augustan and medieval ones.

For example, while in the initial stage of the monument’s construction a material known as pink pozzolana, extracted from volcanic deposits in the interior of Rome, was exclusively used, in the samples linked to the second phase of construction volcanic glass is found, which is characteristic of a different kind ofpink pozzolana that, due to the expansion of urban planning, was extracted from areas further away from the city’s monumental center.

In this way, the work, published in the University of Oxford’s prestigious journal Archaeometry, confirms, from a different perspective, the different construction phases of the building where Julius Caesar, one of history’s most important politicians and soldiers, died, a fact pertinent not only to Archeology but also to Roman History.

The study benefitted from collaboration with the Sovrintendenza Capitolina, the site’s managing body, the University of Cordoba, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Italy, and Sapienza University in Rome.

It was financed by two projects: HAR 2011 25705 and HAR2013 41818P, under the Spanish Science & Innovation Ministry’s National R&D Plan.