Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Traces Of An Ancient Road In A Lake

Traces Of An Ancient Road In A Lake

Anyone travelling from the German city of Brandenburg via Berlin to Frankfurt an der Oder at the Polish-German border does so along with an ancient route that reaches far into Poland.

From a raft, the team uses a hollow cylinder to punch through the lake bottom thus getting sediments with layers. The layers are called warves and preserve traces from historic developments and landscape changes, e.g. pollen or ashes.

German and Polish researchers have now documented the influence of this East-West connection on the history of the landscape by examining the sediments of Lake Czechowskie in the Bory Tucholskie and also evaluating historical sources.

According to the results, three phases of landscape development can be distinguished in the last eight hundred years: from an almost untouched landscape through an intermediate phase lasting several centuries—characterized by alternations between strong settlement activity and the return of nature after wars—to today’s cultural landscape.

One of the two main authors, Achim Brauer of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, says: “Wars had a clear influence, as the Via Marchionis was repeatedly used for troop transports that led to local destruction and devastation.

In this study, for the first time, we have shown the impact on the landscape of every war in the region’s history. In general, wars have led to greater or lesser devastation (‘renaturalization’) of the landscape, which has also lasted for varying lengths of time.”

At other times, it was political developments that left their mark on the landscape, such as an agrarian reform in 1343, which led, with a certain time lag, to an accelerated “anthropogenization” of the landscape, that is, to clearly a visible human influence. In the sediments of Lake Czechowskie this is shown by a strong increase of rye pollen and the decrease of birch and pine pollen.

Because sediments in a lake exhibit annual stratification similar to tree rings, the German-Polish team was able to pinpoint the year from which pollen originated by counting the individual layers (“warves”) down to a resolution of five years.

According to this, the landscape remained largely untouched by humans until about 1350 AD. Extensive forests and natural grasses dominated. Then followed five turbulent centuries.

The expansion of agriculture and the formation of larger towns were favoured by a warm climate and politically calm times. However, between 1409 and 1435 there was war between the Teutonic Order and Poland—fields became fallow land, forests expanded again.

After peace was concluded, five quiet decades followed again, during which an increase in handicrafts was also evident. Hardwood was cut to obtain building material and potash—thus, birch pollen disappeared from lake sediments, rye again increased massively.

Sediments from the bottom of lakes are often layered. The individual layers, called warves, preserve information from the past and can be “read” like tree rings. By identifying pollen or ashes, landscape evolution, climate and even political events can be traced.

Huge army campaigns with thousands of riders and foot soldiers, plague epidemics in several waves and some very cold years with crop failures are also documented. Then, from the middle of the 19th century, the influence of agriculture, settlements and economic activity took over to such an extent that one can speak of a predominantly human influence, which continues to this day.

READ ALSO: ANCIENT ROMAN ROAD DISCOVERED AT THE BOTTOM OF VENICE LAGOON

First author Michał Słowiński says that “the most important result is that this development did not take place uniformly. Rather, we see an alternation of phases of rapid development and significant regressions.

The reasons for this are complex interactions of socio-economic, political and climatic factors.”

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Human Remains Discovered Under 19th-Century Pub in Ireland

Human Remains Discovered Under 19th-Century Pub in Ireland

The first skeleton was unearthed almost two weeks ago and works have now uncovered the remains of six people, believed to predate the 19th-century building on the site. The skeletal remains of six people have now been found under a partially demolished pub near the medieval heart of Cork city.

Human Remains Discovered Under 19th-Century Pub in Ireland
The fragmentary remains of the first skeleton were discovered on the site.

Confirmation of the new discoveries on the site of the former Nancy Spain’s pub on Barrack St comes almost two weeks after the discovery of a partial human skeleton during groundworks on the site, which is being cleared for a Cork City Council social housing project.

City archaeologist Ciara Bret, confirmed an archaeological excavation, which has been ongoing since by a licensed archaeological consultant and an osteoarchaeologist, a human bones specialist, in consultation with her and the National Monument Service, has uncovered the remains of six individuals.

“The remains are fragmentary and predate the current 19th-century building on the site,” she said.

“Given that the site is still being archaeologically investigated, it is not possible at this time to definitively date the remains but they are likely to be 18th century or earlier.

“It is important to note that it is only through post-excavation analysis, which will include examination by the osteoarchaeologist and radiocarbon dating of the bones, that a complete understanding of the remains will be achieved.” 

The human remains are being fully recorded and will be removed by experts under an archaeological license issued under Section 26 of the National Monuments Act 2004.

Gardaí is on duty on the site of the former Nancy Spain’s pub on Barrack Street, Cork, where suspected human remains have been discovered.

Following the completion of the post-excavation analysis, the skeletal remains will be prepared for acquisition by the National Museum of Ireland or will be re-interred at “an appropriate location”.

Ms Brett said because the Barrack Street area forms part of the former suburbs of the medieval city, it is of important historical and archaeological significance, and all groundworks at the site were being archaeologically monitored.

The main contractor, MMD Construction, appointed archaeologist John Cronin and Associates to oversee the groundworks.

An archaeologist was present for the excavation of the ground floor slab but during the final stages of the excavation, there was what Ms Brett described as “a notable change in ground conditions” and it was decided that a hand exploration of the area would be required.

It was during this process that the first skeleton was uncovered.

Following a preliminary visual inspection of the remains in situ by the archaeologist and Garda scenes of crime experts, the bones were deemed a historic find and the Garda investigation was stood down.

The site was then handed back to the builders and the hand exploration continued, leading to the discovery of the other remains nearby.

Nancy Spain’s was once one of Cork’s best-known music venues. Singer-songwriter David Gray played his first Cork gig there in 1992.

The city council plans to build 32 apartments on the site.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

11,000-year-old ‘abandoned’ site found with ‘erected penis’ pillars and head carvings

11,000-year-old ‘abandoned’ site found with ‘erected penis’ pillars and head carvings

Archaeologists in Turkey have found evidence that an 11,000-year-old prehistoric site was used for a ceremonial parade through a building containing phallus-shaped pillars and a carving of a human head.  

11,000-year-old 'abandoned' site found with 'erected penis' pillars and head carvings
Scientists have been left to speculate how the penis pillars were erected

Called Karahantepe, the site is located in southern Turkey, east of Şanlıurfa, and has a series of buildings that date back to long before writing was invented.

Within the remains of the buildings, archaeologists found carvings of human heads, snakes and a fox, as well as several interestingly shaped pillars. 

For instance, the archaeologists discovered 11 pillars near a carving of a human head. “All pillars are erected and shaped like a phallus,” Necmi Karul, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Istanbul University, wrote in a paper recently published in the journal Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi. 

Researchers excavate at the site of Karahantepe in Turkey on Sept. 30, 2021.

In the journal article, Karul did not speculate as to why the heads and phallus-shaped pillars were built or what meaning they may have had. 

This building is connected to three others to form a complex of sorts.

Ancient people may have held a ceremonial parade through this complex, Karul said. Current evidence suggests that people used the complex for “a ceremonial process, entering the building from one end and exiting at the other end, having to parade in [the] presence of the human head” and the phallus-shaped pillars, Karul wrote in the journal article.

More excavation and analysis will need to be done before archaeologists can say for certain that this parade took place, Karul wrote. 

Rather than being abandoned, the buildings were filled in with dirt, possibly during a decommissioning ceremony of sorts. 

READ ALSO: 2,000-YEAR-OLD ROMAN MILLSTONE FOUND WITH MASSIVE PENIS ENGRAVED ON IT

The site dates to a similar time as Gobekli Tepe, another archaeological site that has large buildings and carvings of animals and human heads.

Gobekli Tepe is also located near Şanlıurfa, and archaeologists are trying to determine the relationship between the two sites.

Although Karahantepe was discovered in 1997, excavations didn’t start until 2019. Between those years, researchers completed several archaeological surveys of the site. Karul did not reply to requests for comment. 

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Medieval Graves Containing Luxury Goods Unearthed in Germany

Medieval Graves Containing Luxury Goods Unearthed in Germany

A wealthy medieval man who died over 1,500 years ago in what is now Bavaria, Germany, may have been a fierce warrior who also cared deeply about his personal appearance. 

Medieval Graves Containing Luxury Goods Unearthed in Germany
Ornate carvings on the ivory comb depict scenes with animals.

The man, who was about 40 to 50 years old when he died, was buried with fine weapons and a horse. But his grave also included luxurious toiletries, including a pair of scissors and an intricately carved ivory comb that may have been used to style his hair and beard, archaeologists recently reported.

They also discovered a second, equally lavish grave holding a woman who was about 30 to 40 years old when she died. It contained jewellery, food and a high-quality red ceramic bowl that likely came from northern Africa, representatives of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Protection (BLfD), the agency supervising the excavation, said in a German-language statement.

Both burials dated to around the sixth century A.D., according to the statement. The ivory comb and ceramic bowl were highly unusual burial items for this period, and they “must have been real luxury goods at the time,” BLfD Conservator General Mathias Pfeil said in the statement (translated from German).

Scientists found the two graves in Bavaria’s Nördlinger Ries or Ries Crater. This ancient crater in southern Germany measures about 16 miles (26 kilometres) in diameter, with a rim that rises about 660 feet (200 meters) above the crater floor, according to NASA.

It was identified in the 1960s as the site of a meteor impact, but because its subtle shape with low elevation blends into the surrounding landscape, the crater is not easily detected in satellite images, NASA reported.

During the sixth century A.D., red ceramic bowls such as these were produced in northern Africa.

Medieval Europeans may not have known that the area was once struck by a massive space rock, but they nonetheless followed the faint outline of its central depression to construct a settlement that covered 0.6 miles (1 km), according to NASA. Researchers discovered the two luxurious burials at the site of this ancient village, according to the BLfD.

Gazelle-like animals

Restoration of the broken fine-toothed comb revealed carved decorations of animals on both sides of the object. In the scenes, creatures resembling gazelles leap to escape predators, though the scientists haven’t yet confirmed the types of animals shown, according to the statement. 

Combs are often found in graves from the Middle Ages, but they are usually simpler tools that aren’t made of such fine material.

Ivory carvings are rare in sixth-century burials, and very few ornately carved ivory combs are known from this period at all; the previously described combs from this period are all carved with Christian motifs rather than hunting scenes, the statement said. 

Near the man’s skeleton lay the remains of a horse, along with spurs and pieces of a bridle. There were also weapons in the grave, including a battle-axe, lance, shield and longsword, hinting that their owner was wealthy and important, BLfD representatives said.

The burial of a middle-aged man included an axe, a lance and a sword, and the body of a horse was found nearby in the pit.

In the woman’s grave were food items, such as preserved eggs, as well as a weaving sword, which is a wooden loom accessory used for tightening threads, according to the statement.

But the standout item in her burial was the red bowl, which was in excellent condition. Unlike other vessels in the two graves, the bowl was not produced locally; rather, it was a style known from the Mediterranean trade, and it likely originated in what is now Tunisia, in North Africa. 

A cross was stamped into the bowl’s base, and markings carved into the bowl’s rim could be magical symbols or runes — letters in ancient Germanic alphabets — perhaps indicating the name of the vessel’s owner, according to the statement. 

However, further analysis is required to determine what the inscription might mean, BLfD representatives said.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

1,800-Year-Old Rock-Cut Tombs Discovered in Turkey

1,800-Year-Old Rock-Cut Tombs Discovered in Turkey

Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered 400 rock-cut chamber tombs that date to 1,800 years ago and makeup part of one of the largest rock-cut chamber tomb necropolises in the world.

The team found the tombs in the ancient city of Blaundos (also spelled Blaundus), located about 110 miles (180 kilometres) east of the Aegean Sea in what is now Turkey. The city was founded during the time of Alexander the Great and existed through the Roman and Byzantine periods.

The tombs are filled with sarcophagi, many of which contain multiple deceased individuals — a clue that families used these tombs for burials over many generations, said Birol Can, an archaeologist at Uşak University in Turkey and head of the Blaundos Excavation Project.

“We think that the Blaundos rock-cut tomb chambers, in which there are many sarcophagi, were used as family tombs, and that the tombs were reopened for each deceased family member, and a burial ceremony was held and closed again,” Can told Live Science in an email.

The city of Blaundos sits on a hill surrounded by a valley, which is actually a branch of the vast Uşak canyons, one of the longest canyon systems in the world, Can said. The people of Blaundos built the necropolis into the slopes of the canyon. “Due to the rocky nature of the slopes surrounding the city, the most preferred burial technique was the chamber-shaped tombs carved into the solid rocks,” he said. 

Though archaeologists knew about the necropolis for more than 150 years, they have never done a systematic excavation of Blaundos, which is why Can’s team began their excavation project in 2018, with the goal of documenting the ruins and preparing conservation projects. So far, they’ve identified two temples, a theater, a public bath, a gymnasium, a basilica, city walls and a gate, aqueducts, a shrine dedicated to an ancient Greek or Roman hero known as a heroon, and the rock-cut chamber tombs.

“Apart from these, we know that there are many religious, public and civil structures still under the ground,” Can said.

The restored paintings decorate the tombs’ ceilings.

Tombs of the valley

In 2018, when excavating one of the rock-cut chamber tombs, the archaeologists found human bones dating to the second to third centuries A.D. So, in 2021, the team focused on the necropolis. “As a result of this work, which has been dangerous at times, the documentation of approximately 400 rock-cut chamber tombs that can be noticed on the surface has been completed,” Can said.

However, the necropolis was a hotspot for grave robbers, who destroyed burials as they stole precious jewelry and other artifacts from the tombs over the centuries. The archaeologists still found plenty of clues that the deceased individuals date to Roman times. For instance, pottery fragments and coins discovered in the excavated tombs indicate that they date from the second to fourth centuries A.D., during the Roman period. “In addition, the technique of the wall paintings covering the walls, vaults and ceilings of the tombs and the style of the vegetal and figurative scenes depicted on them show Roman characteristics,” Can said.

The team found different types of rock-cut chamber tombs, including single-roomed chambers, as well as “complex structures formed by arranging rooms one after the other,” Can said. “These rooms were not created in one go. It is understood from the traces on the walls that these tombs were originally designed as a single room. However, in time, when there was no place for burial in this single room, the room was expanded inwards and the second, third and then the fourth rooms were added.”

Some tombs still had artifacts that were likely meant to help the deceased in the afterlife, Can said. These grave goods included mirrors, diadems, rings, bracelets, hairpins, medical instruments, belts, drinking cups and oil lamps, all of which shed light on the people buried in the tombs, such as their sex, occupation, habits and burial date.

An aerial view of the stone-cut chamber tombs at the necropolis.
A view of the northeastern necropolis in the canyon wall.
A bird’s-eye view of the archaeological site at Blaundos.
1,800-Year-Old Rock-Cut Tombs Discovered in Turkey
Two researchers carry out restorative work at one of the tombs in Blaundos.

Beautiful paintings

The walls and ceilings of these burial chambers were decorated with colorful, intricate paintings, although many have deteriorated over the millennia, Can said. The murals in 24 of these chambers are still visible, but they’re in bad shape. 

“Some of these tombs were used as animal shelters by shepherds a long time ago,” Can said. “The frescoes were covered with a dense and black soot layer due to the fires that were set in those times.” But the restoration conservation team was able to clean some of the paintings, revealing the vibrant floral, geometric and figurative scenes painted on the walls. 

“Vines, flowers of various colors, wreaths, garlands, geometric panels are the most frequently used motifs,” Can said. “In addition to these, mythological figures — such as Hermes (Mercury), Eros (Cupid) [and] Medusa — and animals such as birds and dogs are included in the wide panels.”

There are hundreds more graves to be excavated, and “all wall paintings will be revealed with the excavations to be made in the necropolis in the coming years,” he noted.

The team also plans to do DNA and chemical studies that will reveal the deceased individuals’ ancestries, as well as their sex, age and nutritional habits, Can said.

Blaundos is open to tourists. As the excavations reveal more of the city, Can hopes to protect the new findings and share them with the world.

EUROPE, WORLD

‘World’s oldest wine found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia

‘World’s oldest wine’ found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia

This remarkable find deserves a toast: People were fermenting grapes into wine about 8,000 years back in what is now the Republic of Georgia, say scientists who found what’s now considered the oldest known winemaking site on record.

Archaeologists discovered ceramic jars that showed proof of winemaking during an excavation of two Neolithic sites called Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, which are in the South Caucasus, about 30 miles (50 kilometres) south of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.

Previously, the oldest evidence of winemaking was discovered in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, and dated to between 5500 B.C. and 5000 B.C. The new discovery, dated to 6000 B.C., shows that people were enjoying the alcoholic drink a good 600 to 1000 years longer than formerly thought, the researchers stated.

During the excavation in Georgia, researcher uncovered fragments of ceramic jars.

While analyzing the chemical residue on shards from 8 large jars, the scientist found tartaric acid, a fingerprint compound of grapes and wine.

“We believe this is the oldest example of the domestication of a wild-growing Eurasian grapevine solely for the production of wine,” study co-researcher Stephen Batiuk, a senior research associate in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilization and the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto, said in a statement.

Researchers analyzed the residues on the base of this Neolithic jar.

During the Neolithic period, people began settling into permanent villages, farming crops, domesticating animals, making polished stone tools and developing crafts, such as pottery and woven goods.

These new technologies likely helped ancient people with winemaking, the researchers said.

A view of the excavations at Gadachrili Gora in Georgia, taken by a drone.

“Pottery, which was ideal for processing, serving and storing fermented beverages, was invented in this period together with many advances in art, technology and cuisine,” Batiuk said.

Moreover, there are more than 10,000 varieties of table and wine grapes worldwide, and “Georgia is home to over 500 varieties for wine alone, suggesting that grapes have been domesticated and cross-breeding in the region for a very long time,” Batiuk said.

A number of analyses — including archaeological, chemical, botanical, climatic and radiocarbon — indicate that the Eurasian grape known as Vitis vinifera was abundant at the 2 Neolithic sites.

This grape likely had ideal growing conditions in this Neolithic village, which had conditions close to those of the modern wine-producing regions of Italy and France, the researchers said.

It is no surprise that once ancient farmers domesticated the grape, wine culture followed, Batiuk added.

These ancient societies were awash in wine, which permeated nearly every aspect of life, including medical treatments, special celebrations and everyday meals.

READ ALSO: ISRAEL WINERY: 1,500-YEAR-OLD BYZANTINE WINE COMPLEX FOUND

“As a medicine, social lubricant, mind-altering substance and highly valued commodity, wine became the focus of religious cults, pharmacopoeias, cuisines, economics and society throughout the ancient Near East,” Batiuk said.

Viniculture is complex; it includes domestication, propagation, selection of desirable traits, wine presses, suitable containers and proper closures (such as modern-day corks), the researcher wrote in the study, which was published online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And now, people living in the South Caucasus have reason to be proud of the history within their region.

“The Eurasians grapevine that now accounts for 99.9 per cent of wine made in the world today has its roots in Caucasia,” Batiuk said.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Unlocking 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Unlocking 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Artefacts from the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried in ash during an explosive Mount Vesuvius eruption, was a scale-out at the British Museum in 2013. But could even bigger treasures still lie underground, including lost classical literature?

Scholars have been investigating the lost works of ancient Greek and Latin literature for centuries. Books were found in monastic libraries in the Renaissance. Papyrus scrolls were discovered in Egypt’s deserts in the late 19th century. But only in Herculaneum in southern Italy has an entire library from the ancient Mediterranean been discovered in situ.

On the eve of the catastrophe in AD 79, Herculaneum was a chic resort city on the Bay of Naples, and during the hot Italian summer many top families went out to relax and recover. It was also an area where Rome’s richest people were involved with cultural uniqueness-none no other than Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a politician and Julius Caesar’s father–in–law.

In Herculaneum, Piso built a palatial seaside villa, its wide façade exceeding 220 m (721 ft) alone. When excavated in the middle of the 18th century, there are more than 80 high-quality bronze and marble statues, including one of the Pan with a goat. When he came to plan his own exercise in cultural showing off, J Paul Getty chose to copy Piso’s villa for his own Getty museum in Malibu, California.

Piso’s grand villa, which has come to be known as the Villa of the Papyri, also contains the only library to have survived from the classical world. It is a relatively small collection, some 2,000 scrolls, which the eruption nearly destroyed and yet preserved at the same time.

A blast of furnace-like gas from the volcano at 400C (752F) carbonised the papyrus scrolls before the town was buried in fine volcanic ash which later cooled and solidified into rock. When excavators and treasure hunters set about exploring the villa in the 18th Century, they mistook the scrolls for lumps of charcoal and burnt logs. Some were used as torches or thrown onto the fire.

But once it was realised what they were – possibly because of the umbilicus, the stick at the centre of the scrolls – the challenge was to find a way to open them. Some scrolls were simply hacked apart with a butcher’s knife – with predictable and lamentable results. Later a conservator from the Vatican, Father Antonio Piaggio (1713-1796), devised a machine to delicately open the scrolls. But it was slow work – the first one took around four years to unroll. And the scrolls tended to go to pieces.

The fragments pulled off by Piaggio’s machine were fragile and hard to read. “They are as black as burnt newspaper,” says Dirk Obbink, a lecturer in Papyrology at Oxford University, who has been working on the Herculaneum papyri since 1983. Under normal light the charred paper looks “a shiny black” says Obbink, while “the ink is a dull black and sort of iridesces”.

Reading it is “not very pleasant”, he adds. In fact, when Obbink first began working on them in the 1980s the difficulty of the fragments was a shock. On some pieces, the eye can make out nothing. On others, by working with microscopes and continually moving the fragments to catch the light in different ways, some few letters can be made out. Meanwhile, the fragments fall apart. “At the end of the day, there would be black dust on the table – the black dust of the scroll powdering away. I didn’t even want to breathe.”

This all began to change 15 years ago.

In 1999, scientists from Brigham Young University in the US examined the papyrus using infrared light. Deep in the infrared range, at a wavelength of 700-900 nanometres, it was possible to achieve a good contrast between the paper and the ink. Letters began to jump out of the ancient papyrus. Instead of black ink on black paper, it was now possible to see black lines on a pale grey background.

Scholars’ ability to reassemble the texts improved massively. “Most of our previous readings were wrong,” says Obbink. “We could not believe our eyes. We were ‘blinded’ by the real readings. The text wasn’t what we thought it was and now it made sense.”

In 2008, a further advance was made through multi-spectral imaging. Instead of taking a single (“monospectral”) image of a fragment of papyrus under infrared light (at typically 800 nanometres) the new technology takes 16 different images of each fragment at different light levels and then creates a composite image.

With this technique, Obbink is seeking not only to clarify the older infrared images but also to look again at fragments that previously defied all attempts to read them. The detail of the new images is so good that the handwriting on the different fragments can be easily compared, which should help reconstruct the lost texts out of the various orphan fragments. “The whole thing needs to be redone,” says Obbink.

So what has been found? Lost poems by Sappho, the 100-plus lost plays of Sophocles, the lost dialogues of Aristotle? Not quite.

Despite being found in Italy, most of the recovered material is in Greek. Perhaps the major discovery is a third of On Nature, a previously lost work by the philosopher Epicurus.

But many of the texts that have emerged so far are written by a follower of Epicurus, the philosopher and poet Philodemus of Gadara (c.110-c.40/35BC). In fact, so many of his works are present, and in duplicate copies, that David Sider, a classics professor at New York University, believes that what has been found so far was in fact Philodemus’s own working library. Piso was Philodemus’s patron.

READ ALSO: THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS CONTAIN GENETIC CLUES TO THEIR ORIGINS

Not all of the villa’s scrolls have been unrolled through – and because of the damage, they suffer in the unwinding process that work has now been halted. Might it be possible to read them by unrolling them not physically, but virtually?

In 2009 two unopened scrolls from Herculaneum belonging to the Institut de France in Paris were placed in a Computerised Tomography (CT) scanner, normally used for medical imaging. The machine, which can distinguish different kinds of bodily tissue and produce a detailed image of a human’s internal organs could potentially be used to reveal the internal surfaces of the scroll. The task proved immensely difficult, because the scrolls were so tightly wound, and creased.

“We were able to unwrap a number of sections from the scroll and flatten them into 2D images – and on those sections, you can clearly see the structure of the papyrus: fibres, sand,” says Dr Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, who led the effort.

CZECH REPUBLIC, EUROPE, WORLD

Who’s a Good Archaeologist? Dog Digs Up Trove of Bronze Age Relics

Who’s a Good Archaeologist? Dog Digs Up Trove of Bronze Age Relics

Is this the world’s least likely archaeologist? A dog named Monty, who was out for a walk in the Czech village of Kostelecké Horky this past March, began excitedly digging in a field when he, miraculously, discovered a buried cache of rare Bronze Age artefacts.

Who’s a Good Archaeologist? Dog Digs Up Trove of Bronze Age Relics
Bronze Age artefacts were discovered by a local dog named Monty. Image courtesy of Hradec Králové Region.

The dog helped uncover 13 sickles, two spear points, three axes, and a number of bracelets, all-around 3,000 years old.

Monty’s owner, identified only as “Mr Frankota,” received a 7,860 CZK ($360) reward for turning over the artefacts, Smithsonian magazine reports.

“The fact that there are so many objects in one place is almost certainly tied to an act of honorarium, most likely a sacrifice of some sorts,” archaeologist Martina Beková, of the Museum and Gallery of Orlické Mountains in Rychnov told Radio Praha.

“What particularly surprised us was that the objects were whole, because the culture that lived here at the time normally just buried fragments, often melted as well.

These objects are beautiful, but the fact that they are complete and in good condition is of much more value to us.”

Archaeologists believe the artefacts are from the Urnfield period of the late European Bronze Age, named for the communities that were increasingly cremating their dead and burying them in urns.

A flyer for the town of Kostelec nad Orlicí’s exhibition “Journey to the Beginning of Time,” featuring Bronze Age artefacts discovered by a local dog named Monty. Image courtesy of Hradec Králové Region.

The artefacts are currently on view in the town of Kostelec nad Orlicí through September 21 as part of the exhibition “Journey to the Beginning of Time.”

The ancient objects will then undergo conservation before being put on permanent display at the Kostelec palace.

Monty’s sharp nose has left the experts wondering what else might be uncovered in the area. 

READ ALSO: RESEARCHERS SAY FOSSIL SHOWS HUMANS, DOGS LIVED IN C. AMERICA IN 10,000 BC

“Archaeologists have searched the surrounding fields with metal detectors,” Sylvie Velčovská, a spokesperson for the Hradec Králové Region, told Radio Praha.

Though nothing else has turned up yet, “there were some considerable changes to the surrounding terrain over the centuries, so it is possible that the deeper layers are still hiding some secrets.“