Category Archives: EUROPE

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Roman Wooden Bed Unearthed in London

Roman Wooden Bed Unearthed in London

Wooden Bed
The funerary bed being excavated and a reconstruction. It is the first funerary bed ever found in Britain.

Archaeologists in London have made the “exceptionally important” discovery of a complete wooden funerary bed, the first ever discovered in Britain.

The remarkably preserved bed, described as “unparalleled” by experts, was excavated from the site of a former Roman cemetery near Holborn viaduct, central London, alongside five oak coffins. Prior to this dig, only three Roman timber coffins in total have been found in the capital.

Wooden remains from the Roman era in Britain (AD43-410) rarely survive to the present day but, because the waterlogged burial site adjoins the now underground river Fleet, its graves were well preserved.

The funerary bed is made from high-quality oak and has carved feet and joints fixed with small wooden pegs. It was dismantled before being laid within the grave of an adult male in his late 20s or early 30s.

Archaeologist excavating the funerary bed, in Holborn, London.

“It’s been quite carefully taken apart and stashed, almost like flat-packed furniture for the next life,” said Michael Marshall, an artefacts specialist with archaeologists Mola (Museum of London Archaeology) – although he stressed there was much about the burials that is yet to be studied. Excavations at the site continue.

Part of the site, outside the walls of the Roman city and 6 metres below the modern ground level, had been excavated in the 1990s. However, “the bed was a complete surprise, because we’ve never seen anything like it before”, said Marshall.

While there are accounts of people being carried on beds in funeral processions, and sometimes depictions of them on tombstones, he said: “We didn’t know that people were buried in these kinds of Roman burials beds at all. That’s something that there is no previous evidence for from Britain.”

Reconstruction of Roman London by Peter Froste with the location of the site circled.

No other grave goods were found with the bed burial, but it was almost certainly a high-status person, said Marshall. “It’s an incredibly well-made piece of furniture.

This is a piece of proper joinery, as opposed to something has been sort of banged together. It’s one of the fancier pieces of furniture that’s ever been recovered from Roman Britain.”

A Roman lamp, glass vial, and beads were also found from a cremation burial.

Personal objects were recovered from elsewhere in the cemetery, however, including beads, a glass vial apparently still containing residue, and a decorated lamp, thought to date to the very earliest period of Roman occupation between AD43 and 80.

Strikingly, it is decorated with the design of a defeated gladiator, “which is kind of a wonderful thing”, said Marshall. Similar images have previously been found in funeral contexts in London and Colchester.

“There’s something about the symbolism of the fallen gladiator that makes sense in a funerary context. A defeated gladiator is somebody who is dying, obviously – but they also fight against death.

“So there’s evidence that some really quite subtle choices about how people mourned their dead are starting to come through from analysing these burials.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Discarded Neolithic Meal Identified in Germany

Discarded Neolithic Meal Identified in Germany

Discarded Neolithic Meal Identified in Germany
This pottery shard has 5,000-year-old charred food on it.

People have been burning their porridge for at least 5,000 years, remains of a charred cooking pot unearthed in Germany confirms. And just like today, cleaning the pot was more hassle than it was worth.

Archaeologists discovered the meal mishap after examining a trash heap of mixed pottery shards at Oldenburg LA 7, a Neolithic settlement that researchers consider one of the oldest villages in Germany, according to a study published Jan. 19 in the journal PLOS One.

“As soon as we looked inside the person’s cooking pot it was obvious that something went wrong,” study lead author and archaeobotanist Lucy Kubiak-Martens, a cooperation partner with BIAX Consult, a company that specializes in archaeobotany and paleobotany in the Netherlands, told Live Science.

Chemical analyses of the residues still caked onto the ceramic shards revealed “food crusts” containing traces of different ancient cereal grains, including emmer wheat and barley.

Researchers also found remnants of white goosefoot, a wild plant known for its starchy seeds, according to a statement from Kiel University in Germany. 

“One pottery shard that once was part of a plain, thick-walled pot contained the remains of white goosefoot seeds, which are related to quinoa and rich in protein,” Kubiak-Martens said.

“There was also emmer, which when sprouted, has a sweet flavor. It looked like someone had mixed cereal grains with the protein-rich seeds and cooked it with water. It wasn’t incidental, it was a choice.”

While there is evidence that people ground wild oats, likely for flour, 32,000 years ago in Italy, the newly described broken pot may represent the world’s first recorded (and failed) attempt at cooking porridge. It is impossible to say if the person broke the pot rather than be bothered with cleaning it, or if the pot broke naturally long after the cooking mishap.

A microscopic image of the internal microstructure of the food crust showing emmer grain particles.

A separate pottery shard contained animal fat residue — most likely milk — that had seeped into the clay. However, it didn’t appear that the cook in question had mixed any grains into the liquid, so the milk was unlikely part of the porridge. 

“The sprouted grains also tell us when they harvested them, which would have been when they sprouted sometime in the late summer,” Kubiak-Martens said. “Back then they couldn’t put grains on a shelf and store them for later use like we do today. They had to use what they harvested immediately.”

While previous analyses of soil samples have shown evidence of cooking with similar ancient grains and seeds during this time period, this study marks the first time that researchers have found burnt food residue on a ceramic vessel in Neolithic Germany and offers a glimpse of this person’s diet, according to the statement.

“[This cooking incident] not only shows us the last step in someone’s daily routine of preparing meals but also the last cooking event using this pot,” she said. “This is much more than just a charred grain. We are seeing how people prepared their daily meals thousands of years ago.”

EUROPE

‘Landmark paper’ shows why Ice Age Europeans wore jewelry

‘Landmark paper’ shows why Ice Age Europeans wore jewelry

Your jewelry may be sending all kinds of messages: You’re married or a Super Bowl champion. You worship Jesus or belong to the pearls and suits set—or perhaps the piercings and purple hair crowd.

‘Landmark paper’ shows why Ice Age Europeans wore jewelry
An artistic rendering depicts the bling preferred by Iberian foragers some 30,000 years ago.

For ice age hunters in Europe some 30,000 years ago, styles of ornaments including amber pendants, ivory bangles, and fox tooth beads may have also signaled membership in a particular culture, researchers report today in Nature Human Behaviour.

The study, which compared thousands of handcrafted beads and adornments from dozens of widespread sites, suggests at least nine distinct cultures existed across Europe at this time.

“It’s a landmark paper,” says archaeologist Peter Jordan, a professor at Lund University and  Hokkaido University who was not involved with the study. For centuries, archaeologists have tried to distinguish ancient peoples based on similarities in their artifacts. In recent years, however, sorting populations by ancient genetic group has at times overshadowed the archaeology. Here, “The archaeology strikes back,” Jordan says. “[It’s] showing that we can generate new narratives that also use a very rigorous, quantitative approach to the study of material traditions.”

The earliest known ornamental beads—seashells punched for stringing—come from early Homo sapiens sites dated to between 150,000 to 70,000 years ago in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean coast. Unlike knives or awls, ornaments offer no obvious survival functions. Instead, anthropologists think they likely communicated one’s traits and achievements, such as reaching adulthood, hunts completed, or family lines. “It’s a kind of common language or common discourse with other individuals in that group,” Jordan says. Many scholars think the invention of beads indicates that our ancestors had also evolved the capacity for symbolism and language.

Between 34,000 and 24,000 years ago, foragers in Europe fashioned beads from a diverse array of materials including ivory, bone, human and animal teeth, and flashy stones. These communities also painted caves and crafted so-called Venus figurines resembling voluptuous women, while coping with the glaciers and frigid temperatures of the last ice age. Despite the “horrendous” conditions, their artistic expressions suggest these people “weren’t just surviving—they were thriving,” says University of Bordeaux archaeologist and doctoral student Jack Baker.

Because of the widespread locations of figurines and similarly fashioned spearpoints, archaeologists traditionally clumped all these people into a single culture known as the Gravettian, spread from what is now Portugal to Russia. More recently, though, analyses of subtle differences in stone toolmaking, funerary practices, and ancient DNA have suggested more than one group roamed the continent at this time. Could the diverse beads found from this period result from different cultures?

As part of his dissertation, Baker aimed to find out. In 2020, he began to comb the literature for every ornament reported from 112 Gravettian burial and habitation sites excavated between the mid-1800s and the 2010s. He classified thousands of beads into 134 types based on their raw materials and other design elements.

Next, he compared bead types between sites and found that places with similar accoutrements clustered geographically. Nine distinct groups emerged. People at the easternmost sites, such as Kostenki along the Don River in Russia, seemed to prefer ornaments made of stone and red deer canines, whereas those in northwest Europe wore tube-shaped shells of Dentalium mollusks.

Different ice age peoples formed personal ornaments from a variety of shell species.JACK BAKER ET AL.
Different ice age peoples formed personal ornaments from a variety of shell species.

The Gravettian was not “one monolithic thing,” Baker says, but instead included several culturally distinct groups, each hewing to their own ornamental traditions. His team thinks these groups crossed paths: The team’s computer simulations suggest the patterns of bead differences most resemble a scenario in which neighboring groups occasionally swapped styles or territories. Perhaps ivory-adorned people gazed across a river and spotted a band decked in vibrant seashells: “They would have been like, ‘Oh my God! Someone completely different!’” Baker imagines. Despite those differences, some cultural and genetic exchange seems to have occurred.

DNA from human remains excavated from Gravettian sites identified two major genetic lineages in Europe at the time: one situated around the Pyrenees Mountains, and another in central and Eastern Europe.

The bead-based groups mostly accorded with these populations, but added more subdivisions and a few twists, including data for places that have yet to yield ancient DNA, such as Moldova and southern Spain.

For groups for which genetic data are available, being closely related didn’t necessarily mean they wore matching jewelry. Ancient groups living in modern-day Italy, for example, shared ancestry but some buried their dead with cowrie shells and others put fish vertebrae and ivory beads into graves. In contrast, in what’s now France and Belgium, individuals with different ancestry sported similar ornaments. These results imply somewhat porous, shifting cultural boundaries, and perhaps some adornment differences for people with special social roles.

It makes sense that some peoples with shared ancestry may develop different cultural identities, reflected by their fashions and other behaviors—and conversely, that distinct genetic groups can blend culturally, says Cosimo Posth, a paleogeneticist at the University of Tübingen who was not involved with the new study. “It’s expected that genes don’t always match the culture that you’re carrying.”

Bioarchaeologist Elizabeth Sawchuk of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History adds that the database of Gravettian beads is “an enormous contribution to the literature.” She also praised the study’s synthesis of archaeological and genetic results. “We’re in a cool, new, interdisciplinary space and these are exactly the kind of studies that I would hope to start coming out,” she says.

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Iron Age Bog Body Found in Northern Ireland

Iron Age Bog Body Found in Northern Ireland

The PSNI say it is a “unique archaeological discovery for Northern Ireland”

Ancient human remains which date back more than 2,000 years have been recovered by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The discovery was made after archaeologists were alerted to human bones on Bellaghy peatland in County Londonderry in October 2023.

It is thought the remains could be those of a teenage boy.

The PSNI said it is a “unique archaeological discovery for Northern Ireland”.

It explained that the remains had been carbon dated to “as old as 2,000-2,500 years”.

Det Insp Nikki Deehan said excavations “first uncovered a tibia and fibula and a humerus, ulna, and radius bone relating to the lower left leg and right arm respectively”.

“Further investigation revealed more bones belonging to the same individual,” the officer added.

The human remains were found at peatland in Bellaghy in October 2023

“About five metres south of the surface remains, the bones of a lower left arm and a left femur, were located protruding from the ground.

“Further examination of the area between the main body and the surface remains located additional finger bones, fingernails, part of the left femur and the breastbone.

“A post mortem was carried out by a certified forensic anthropologist and determined that the individual was possibly a male aged between 13 and 17 years old at the time of death.”

Iron Age Bog Body Found in Northern Ireland
The remains have been carbon dated to more than 2,000 years ago

The senior officer said this is an “extraordinary find on a global scale” due to the body having both bone and skin still intact”.

‘Well preserved’

Initially police believed the remains could have been more recent as the condition of the bones was so good.

Det Insp Deehan said that “little is known so far about the individual’s cause of death” but that, “unlike some other ‘bog bodies’, the individual’s skeleton was well preserved and also had the presence of partial skin, fingernails of the left hand, toenails and possibly a kidney”.

The head of the body is missing – it is not clear if it was removed before or after death.

“The well-preserved nature of the body meant radiocarbon dating could be used to ascertain the time of death,” Det Insp Deehan added.

“The radiocarbon dates have placed the time of death between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago.

“This is the first time radiocarbon dating has been used on a bog body in Northern Ireland and the only one to still exist, making this a truly unique archaeological discovery for Northern Ireland. The radiocarbon dating was conducted at the 14Chrono Centre, which is part of Queen’s University Belfast.

The well-preserved nature of the body meant radiocarbon dating could be used to ascertain the time of death

Dr Alastair Ruffell from the university said it conducted two phases of high-resolution, ground-penetrating radar survey at the site.

“The remains were discovered at approximately one metre below the current land surface which matches the radiocarbon estimates,” he added.

“In addition, they were amongst a cluster of fossil tree remains suggesting that the body may have died or been buried in a copse or stand of trees, or washed in.”

Dr Alastair Ruffell says the discovery is truly fascinating and one that is important to study

“This is not only significant because it’s Iron Age, but also because of the landscape situation”, Dr Ruffell said.

“We are in a series of boglands north of Lough Neagh which are very interesting from where they occur because of how the glaciers moved through here and how humans then arrived.”

Dr Ruffell also said the location of the find may also have been of huge interest to one of the island of Ireland’s greatest ever poets and playwrights who lived not too far from the discovery.

“We are in Heaney country, after all,” he said.

Dr Ruffell said the Seamus Heaney had a real fascination with boglands, writing extensively on the topic and also working in turf cutting for a time.

“He would’ve just been amazed that a few miles up the road from his home that actual remains which he was so fascinated about were coming out of the ground,” he said.

A kidney was among the remains recovered

John Joe O’Boyle, chief executive of Forest Service in NI, said the ancient bog body was discovered on land owned by the Department of Agriculture and it was now working with National Museums NI to transfer it to them so that they can continue with further examination and preservation of the remains.

“I hope, in due course, the find will help us all understand better something of our very early history,” he added.

“It certainly adds an important chapter to the historical and cultural significance of this hinterland and archaeological discoveries of bog bodies across Europe.”

This excavation is one of many investigations carried out by the dedicated Body Recovery Team within the PSNI.

The team has previously assisted in recovering and examining human remains, including recovering those of missing persons up to almost three decades after the individuals went missing.

EUROPE, SYRIA, WORLD

Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era

Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era

Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era

Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era, in the central town of Rastan, describing it as the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago.

The mosaic, which shows ancient Amazon warriors, 120 square meters (around 1,300sq ft), was found in an old building that was under excavation by Syria’s general directorate of antiquities and museums.

The property, which dates back to the 4th century, was purchased by Lebanese and Syrian businessmen from the neighboring country’s Nabu Museum and donated to the Syrian state. Each panel was filled with square-shaped, small, colorful stones about a half-inch on each side.

Dr. Humam Saad, Associate Director of Excavation and Archaeological Research at Syria’s General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, said the mosaic shows the Ancient Amazon warriors as portrayed in Roman mythology.

A detail of a large mosaic that dates back to the Roman era is seen in the town of Rastan, Syria.

In Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, the demigod hero Hercules killed Hippolyta, the queen of the Amazons, in one of his 12 labors. The mosaic also portrays Neptune, the Ancient Roman god of the sea, and 40 of his mistresses.

“What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale,” Saad told The Associated Press, adding that the images are “rich in details,” and includes scenes from the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans.

“We can’t identify the type of the building, whether it’s a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet,” Saad told the AP.

One side of the mosaic panel discovered in Rastan, Homs (AFP)

Sulaf Fawakherji, a famous actress in Syria and a member of the Nabu Museum’s board of trustees said she hopes they could purchase other buildings in Rastan, which she says is filled with heritage sites and artifacts waiting to be discovered.

“There are other buildings, and it’s clear that the mosaic extends far wider,” Fawkherji told the AP.

“Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be very important heritage city for tourism.”

Over the past ten years of ongoing, violent conflict, Syrian heritage sites have been looted and destroyed.

The Islamic State group captured Palmyra, a UNESCO world heritage site with 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades and priceless artifacts, and partially destroyed a Roman theater.

After seizing it from armed opposition forces in 2016, Syria’s cash-strapped government has been slowly rebuilding Aleppo’s centuries-old bazaar. Before the Syrian government reclaimed the city in 2018, Rastan was a significant opposition stronghold and the scene of violent clashes.

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

‘Lost’ 4,000-year-old wedge tomb rediscovered in Ireland

‘Lost’ 4,000-year-old wedge tomb rediscovered in Ireland

‘Lost’ 4,000-year-old wedge tomb rediscovered in Ireland

A “lost” 4,000-year-old wedge tomb has been rediscovered in County Kerry, in the peninsular southwest region of Ireland.

The megalithic tomb, known locally as Altóir na Gréine (the sun altar), was believed to have been destroyed in the 1840s, with its stones broken and carried away for use as building material.

Lady Georgiana Chatterton, an English aristocrat and traveler, sketched the monument when she visited the site in 1838. She described the site as a “curious piece of antiquity,” suggesting it was used for Sun sacrifices.

However, when the antiquarian Richard Hitchcock came to West Kerry to inspect the tomb in 1852 he found the monument no longer existed, “the stones which composed it having been broken and carried away for building purposes as if there were no others in the neighborhood”.

Although a 19th-century record of a burial tomb was found close to Baile an Fheirtéaraigh, the precise location of the monument has been lost. But now the tomb has been rediscovered, dating back about 4,000 years.

However, the 180-year-old mystery has now been solved by folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn.

The folklorist has not only found the prehistoric site, but he has also discovered some of the large stones, which had been believed to have been removed, still in situ.

Mr Mag Fhloinn had long been fascinated by Ms Chatterton’s sketch and Altóir na Gréine’s association with the sun in local folklore and he set about searching for the “lost” tomb on the slopes of Cruach Mhárthain.

The only known visual representation of the intact monument was captured in a sketch by Lady Chatterton in 1838

Local folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn first recognized stones on a hill’s crest as part of a recent archaeological mapping project, and he later compared this hill with the one Lady Chatterton drew.

Several large upright orthostats and a capstone were discovered during Fhloinn’s primary research, refuting local legends that the tomb was completely destroyed in the middle of the 19th century.

Archaeologist Caimin O’Brien, the National Monuments Service in Dublin, confirmed that the stones represented about a quarter of the original Bronze Age wedge tomb, dating between 2500 BC and 2000 BC. Wedge-tombs are the most numerous megalithic burial structures found on the Dingle Peninsula.

Folklorist Mag Fhloinn believes “the taboo” surrounding the destruction of such tombs is related to 19th-century beliefs “in bad luck or disaster associated with their demise”.

“They are usually positioned on high ground, but not the highest point. There’s often certain alignments associated with them. Quite often the opening tends to look towards the west, or the south, or the southwest,” said Mr Mag Fhloinn.

“Usually you will find cremated remains of people inside and they probably represent the burial place of a significant family or community group.

“But they could have been used for other things as well, ceremonies and rituals for example. They may have cosmological and astronomical significance in the case where they are facing the setting sun in the west and southwest.”

“For the first time in over 180 years archaeologists know where the tomb is situated and it will enhance our understanding of wedge-tomb distribution,” said Caimin O’Brien, an archaeologist with the National Monument Service.

The rediscovered tomb of Altóir na Gréine will also form part of a deep-mapping project being carried out on the peninsula by Sacred Heart University.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Well-Preserved 1,000-Year-Old Ulfberht Sword Found In The Wisla River, Poland

Well-Preserved 1,000-Year-Old Ulfberht Sword Found In The Wisla River, Poland

Ulfberht swords were famous for their strength, flexibility, and high-tech blades. Viking warriors highly prized these weapons, which were extraordinarily valuable because of their properties.

Well-Preserved 1,000-Year-Old Ulfberht Sword Found In The Wisla River, Poland
This well-preserved Ulfbrecht sword was found in the Wisla River in Poland.

“Ulfberht blades were made of crucible steel with relatively high carbon content, making them more robust and flexible than European swords during the Viking and Middle Ages.

Crucible steel could not be produced in Europe until the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Still, in India, such steel (known as wootz, has been manufactured since 300 BC and has spread to large parts of the Middle East during the 9th century. Vikings probably gained access to the material from Persia via the trade route across the Volga and the Caspian Sea.” 

Very few Ulfberht swords have been found so far. Only eight such swords are known to exist in Poland and 170 in the rest of Europe.

Earlier this month, Polish workers accidentally found a well-preserved 1,000-year-old Ulfberht in the Wisla River (Vistula River) in the city of Wroclawek. They were carrying out dredging work related to deepening the pool of the port of the Sport and Recreation Center in Włocławek when they suddenly made an unprecedented historical discovery.

The sword had an Ulfberht inscription.

One can imagine how surprised Sławomir Mularski, the owner of the company, was when he spotted ‘an oblong, metal object’ sticking out of the sediment.

Experts suggest the sword may have belonged to a Viking, but this has not been confirmed. Scientists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have conducted an X-ray analysis of the weapon and dated it to before 950 A.D.  The sword also has an inscription of the word ‘Ulfberht.’

This historical period is highly important in Polish history. Poland did not exist prior to the 10th century A.D. when the formation of the House of Piast, the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland, took place.

Weapons of this kind are associated with Scandinavia and the Frankish Empire.

“This is an extremely valuable find. We know that these so-called Ulfberht swords were produced somewhere in Central Europe, but it’s not known exactly where.

They were manufactured using very specific methods using carbon steel and a very precise composition.

The amount of carbon steel that was used was strictly defined, making the sword very strong and flexible – its durability and combat value depended on this.

More importantly, after lying in silt for over 1,000 years, the sword has been preserved in excellent condition,” Sambor Gawinski from the Kuyavian-Pomeranian branch of the conservator’s office said.

Gawinski stressed he was not convinced this was a Viking sword. “Several theories have been posited, and so far, all variants are acceptable, but we need to wait for the results of more detailed research,” he said.

Polish archaeologist Robert Grochowski agrees it is much too early to say a Viking once owned this sword. These swords are often referred to as Viking swords, but they were technically created in territories in today’s Germany and traded widely throughout Europe. This could explain why the sword was found in Poland.

“I don’t know where the idea that the sword belonged to a Viking comes from. Without detailed research, this is completely unjustified. It is difficult to say anything more than the fact that it is an early medieval sword,” Grochowski told the Warsaw-based newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

2,800-Year-Old ‘Pharmaceutical production area’ discovered in ancient Thracian City

2,800-Year-Old ‘Pharmaceutical production area’ discovered in ancient Thracian City

2,800-Year-Old ‘Pharmaceutical production area’ discovered in ancient Thracian City

Archaeologists have unearthed a “pharmaceutical production area” supported by a water source during ongoing excavations in the Thracian Ancient City Heraion Teikhos,  in the northwestern province of Tekirdağ.

Heraion Teichos ancient city on the İstanbul-Tekirdağ highway, situated on the banks of the Marmara Sea in Tekirdağ Province, is extremely important since it is the only Thracian city excavated in Türkiye.

In recent years, scientific data revealed by archaeological excavations prove that the city has been inhabited from third millennium B.C.E. to XIII century. Century A.D. The city lived its most brilliant periods from 5Th century B.C.. to 1st century A.D.

In 2021, a team of researchers from Istanbul Rumeli University unearthed a 2,800-year-old temple in Türkiye’s ancient Thracian city of Heraion Teikhos. Now, a water system has been identified leading to a space within the temple that researchers call an “ancient pharmaceutical production area.”

Professor Dr. Neşe Atik told Hurriyet Daily News, “Heraion Teikhos is a Thracian City, the first Thracian settlement in our country where excavations are still being carried out, and the only excavation site that yields Thracian finds.”

Atik stated that the aim of the excavations is to identify pharmaceutical production areas, the size of which is not yet known, and how the water was transported.

“Water systems in hilltop settlements were usually built with large water cisterns in ancient times.

The 2023 excavations at the Heraion Teikhos settlement yielded findings indicating that water was transported not from cisterns but from an area a few kilometers to the east of the excavation site, which is still wooded today. In addition to this, a new pharmaceutical was unearthed in the west of the settlement.

Terracotta pipes connecting the pools and stone channels also revealed that there was a pharmaceutical production area spread over the entire excavation area,” Atik said.

“The fact that the medicine ovens and the clean water system and pools required for medicine making were located close to each other in the same areas is scientifically important since it is the first time they have been identified archaeologically,” she concluded.

The Thracians were a group of tribes renowned for their rich culture and formidable warriors, that thrived in Southeast Europe from as early as 2000-1500 BC. They were a group of tribes who occupied the southeastern part of the Balkan Peninsula.

The Thracians are most famous for their magnificent metalwork, particularly in gold and silver, and for people like the fabled Spartacus, who was descended from them. Their culture, interwoven with Greek and later Roman influences, contributed significantly to the tapestry of classical antiquity, but it remains shrouded in mystery due to a lack of written records.