At the excavation site of a new community hospital in the Sheil District, Ballyshannon, several finds from the Bronze Period have been discovered.
The Bronze Age urn will undergo further examination
In the course of archaeological research, a large capstone was found last week. It comprises a large flat sandstone boulder complete with rock art in the form of cup marks incised into its upper surface.
Monuments of this kind are classified as Boulder Burials and are thought to date to the Bronze Age 2,500 BC to 500BC.
The capstone did overlay a small amount of cairn material within a large pit, which was fully investigated but contained no burial.
A number of differing burial sites have been found at the site
The National Monuments Service and National Museum were made aware of the unearthing of the capstone last Monday (August 24) and a team of three archaeologists has been on the sites since carefully examining the area where the capstone was unearthed and a wider area close to it.
On Friday, August 28 the capstone was carefully removed from the site for further examination and analysis.
Subsequent further archaeological Investigations have uncovered the remains of an inverted urn burial. Urn burials date to the Bronze Age and comprise a large ceramic pot usually highly decorated, and containing cremated remains.
The urn has been removed by the Specialist Conservator and sent for conservation. All the cremated remains recovered from the site will be analyzed by osteoarchaeologist and the results presented in the site excavation report.
The dig is on the site of a new hospital at Ballyshannon
Mr. Shane Campbell, HSE Estates Manager, North West was present at the unearthing and stated “The earth removal work that started last week is part of an overall €21 million euro construction of the new Sheil Community Hospital. I wish to offer reassurance that work is continuing on site as planned.
The contractor is on-site and continuing with the site clearance, removal of trees, etc and erecting the site Hhoarding, all as planned, the archaeological works will not delay the overall works programme.
The HSE would like to thank Tamlyn McHugh and Fadó Archaeology for their painstaking work in uncovering these significant historical artifacts and ensuring they are properly conserved.”
One of Scotland’s great mysteries: the 5,200 years old carved stone balls
Scottish carved stone balls are a mysterious class of artefacts, and scientists have been the subject of much speculation by scientists over the years.
In all, more than 500 stone balls were collected, the largest to fit neatly into the palm of the hand. They were designed so that a number of knobs protrude from the surface and some have beautiful, intricate patterns incised onto them.
So elaborate are the carvings that early archaeologists didn’t believe it was possible for them to have been made using flint tools, so they dated them to a later period. But we know they were indeed carved using flint and date back to around 3,200 BC to 2,500 BC, a time when people in Scotland were leaving their lives as hunter-gatherers and settling into life in farming communities.
What were they for?
Although no hard evidence exists to definitively determine their function, many have speculated as to the stones’ purpose.
Some believe that they were part of a weighing system for primitive scales, but others argue that their weights vary too much for that to be practical. They might have been used to weigh down fishing nets, or as bearings to move bigger rocks, but then why would they be carved so elaborately?
Australian author Lynne Kelly has proposed that the stone balls served as “memory devices” that could have been used as mnemonic aids to the oral history of the times, much like Australian Aboriginal cultures used rock art and their surroundings.
Three Scottish examples, in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Some suggest the carved stone balls were used as weapons.
Others have suggested they were used as weapons — either fixed to a wooden handle or simply thrown. But most of the stones show no signs of the kind of damage you’d expect to see on a weapon.
“It is perhaps best to think of them as ceremonial or stylized weapons,” explains Hugo Anderson-Whymark, curator of National Museums Scotland. “Things that could inflict damage if you wanted to use them, and may in some circumstances have been used that way, but are more likely to be objects which represent the status or power of the individual that held them in that community.”
Prehistoric stone balls in 3D
In an effort to gain more understanding, and make the stones more accessible to the public, Anderson-Whymark has created 3D images of the balls. Using a technique called photogrammetry, Anderson-Whymark took hundreds of 2D images from every angle to create very detailed 3D renderings of 60 carved stone balls.
The images, which have been uploaded online for anyone to see, revealed details of the stone balls that had not previously been visible. “Actually being able to see them in virtual reality is hugely valuable,” Anderson-Whymark told CNN. “It allows us to see some fine details which we didn’t spot before.
“There’s one of them that has concentric lines on the circles, and no one had ever seen that before and it’s been in our collection for well over 100 years,” he added.
The 3D images also revealed that some of the stones were modified over time, possibly across generations. It’s still unclear what that could mean, but Anderson-Whymark said that at the very least it opens the door to other possibilities about the balls’ purpose and significance to people of that era.
“It’s telling us how they were worked and re-worked over time. It’s allowing us to explore that bigger story of how they were made and how they developed, which is potentially going to tell us more about that bigger theory of how they were used,” Anderson-Whymark said.
Some of the 3D images of the carved stone balls revealed previously unknown details about their design.
Carved stone balls, classed as Neolithic
Many of the balls have not had their discovery site recorded and most are found as a result of agricultural activity.
While a few of the balls have been found in Ireland and northern England (one even travelled to Norway), all the others have been found in Scotland, mostly in Aberdeenshire. Five were found at the remarkably preserved Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae, in the Orkney Islands, off the northern coast of Scotland.
National Museums Scotland, in Edinburgh, has the world’s largest collection of these carved stone balls at around 200 (including 60 casts). Perhaps most famous among them is the Towie ball. Found in Aberdeenshire in the 19th century, it features neatly carved circles, spirals and lines on four knobs.
“The Towie carved stone ball is the finest example of a carved stone ball from Scotland and the motifs on it are just absolutely incredible,” Anderson-Whymark said. “The very fine grooves on the surface are about a millimetre across and have all been carved with a flint tool. Incredibly fine, delicate workmanship.”
An enduring enigma
According to the museum, the patterns on the Towie ball are sacred symbols resembling those in a passage grave in Ireland. Anderson-Whymark says the similarities in the design raise interesting questions about the relationships between these locations.
“One thing they show is that there was perhaps a long-distance contact in that period which we don’t always give prehistoric people credit for,” he said.
“Certainly, when we look at Orkney, we see objects which are moving up from around the west coast through the western seaways … The grooved ware (a style of British Neolithic pottery) originates in Orkney and it travels south towards Ireland and into southern Britain as well. “We’re seeing things, ideas and people moving with them through that time.”
The enigma of the stone balls will endure for now, and while we may never know exactly what they were used for, we can still appreciate them as fine examples of Neolithic art.
7,000-Year-old Horned Face Image found Under Ancient Polish Home
In the area of a large, prehistoric settlement populated by a group identified by specialists as the Linear Pottery culture, the discovery in Biskupice was completed.
Marta Korczyńska, Field Work Chief at the Institute of Botany of the Polish Academy of Sciences said: “The fragments of pottery that we discovered are decorated with a plastic ornament depicting a stylized outline of a human face. There are two bumps on the forehead, reminiscent of horns.”
She added that only a part of the unusual ornament has survived, including the eyes and nose. The preserved fragment measures approx. 10 cm in width.
This photo clearly shows the eyes, nose and two bumps over the eyes that are presumed to be horns.
Project leader Dr Magdalena Moskal-del Hoyo from the W. Szafer Institute of Botany PAS said: “Today we are not able to clearly interpret this image. It seems likely, however, that such an unusual artefact could be related to the sacred sphere to some extent.”
According to Professor Marek Nowak from the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, who was also involved in the research, this type of artefact is evidence the inhabitants of the settlement had contact with people living in the area of today’s Hungary and Slovakia.
This is indicated not only by the discovery of the broken bowl, but also products made of obsidian, a raw material not found in Poland. It is a volcanic glass with a black and shiny surface.
Korczyńska said that while vessels with similar ornamental motifs are known from that period in Slovakia and Hungary (although they usually do not have stylised horns), this is the first such object been found in Poland.
The archaeologists also found over 3,000 artefacts, including obsidian tools and so-called cores, stone blocks used to strike stone flakes and chips that were later used to make tools. These products were primarily used as leather scrapers, tools for processing wood and bones, and sickle blades.
In addition to archaeologists, experts in the field of botany are also involved in the project. ‘It may be surprising that the employees of the Institute of Botany PAS conduct archaeological research, but in this interdisciplinary project, next to ceramics and other artefacts, plant remains are an equal, unfortunately often overlooked source of information on material culture and old customs’, said Dr Moskal-del Hoyo.
She added that the remains of plants from sites dating back to the early Neolithic period (the time when farming began) were and are relatively rarely collected and studied by excavation leaders.
Meanwhile, in her opinion, they can provide very important information about the people of the time and their crops.
The project is financed by the National Science Centre.
Archaeologists say they’ve found a massive underground structure that could be four times the size of Stonehenge
Archaeologists have confirmed that the ruins of a significant, modern prehistoric stone monument, buried less than 3 kilometres (186 miles) from Stonehenge have been identified.
Artist’s concept of how the stones at Durrington Walls may have been positioned.
The site is 15 times the size of Stonehenge. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team – a group of British archaeologists – used multi-sensor technologies to reveal evidence for a row of about 90 standing stones hidden beneath the bank of what is now called Durrington Walls, a super-henge in Britain.
Durrington Walls is one of the largest known henge monuments measuring 500 meters (0.3 miles) in diameter. It’s thought to have been built around 4,500 years ago.
The word henge refers to a particular type of earthwork, typically consisting of a roughly circular or oval-shaped bank with an internal ditch surrounding a central flat area. Henges may have contained (or may still contain) ritual structures such as stone circles, timber circles and coves.
Durrington Walls may have contained an ancient village at one time. The henge surrounds several smaller enclosures and timber circles and is associated with a recently excavated later Neolithic settlement.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team, using non-invasive geophysical prospection and remote sensing technologies, discovered evidence for a row of up to 90 standing stones, some of which may have originally measured up to 4.5 meters (14.8 feet) in height. Many of these stones have survived because they were pushed over and the massive bank of the later henge raised over the recumbent stones or the pits in which they stood.
These stones have been hidden for millennia.
Durrington Walls is less than 3 kilometres (1.86 miles) from Stonehenge. It is a circular earthwork, some 15 times larger than Stonehenge.
Artist’s concept of standing stones beneath Durrington Walls super-henge.
At Durrington, more than 4.5 thousand years ago, a natural depression near the river Avon appears to have been accentuated by a chalk cut scarp and then delineated on the southern side by the row of massive stones. Essentially forming a C-shaped ‘arena’, the monument may have surrounded traces of springs and a dry valley leading from there into the Avon.
Although none of the stones has yet been excavated, researchers are interested in a unique sarsen standing stone – a kind of sandstone boulder – which they are calling the Cuckoo Stone, in the adjacent field.
The researchers say this particular stone suggests that other stones may have come from local sources.
“Cuckoo Stone” in a field near Durrington Walls. Researchers are interested in this stone as being possibly related to the stones buried beneath the structure.
Previous, intensive study of the area around Stonehenge had led archaeologists to believe that only Stonehenge and a smaller henge at the end of what researchers call Stonehenge Avenue possessed significant stone structures. The researchers now say:
The latest surveys now provide evidence that Stonehenge’s largest neighbour, Durrington Walls, had an earlier phase which included a large row of standing stones probably of local origin and that the context of the preservation of these stones is exceptional and the configuration unique to British archaeology.
Radar evidence for hidden stones at Durrington Walls.
The earthwork enclosure at Durrington Walls was built about a century after the Stonehenge sarsen circle (in the 27th century BC), but archaeologists say the new stone row could be contemporary with or earlier than this.
Paul Garwood, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Birmingham is the principal prehistorian on the project. Garwood said in a statement:
The extraordinary scale, detail and novelty of the evidence produced by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which the new discoveries at Durrington Walls exemplify, is changing fundamentally our understanding of Stonehenge and the world around it.
Everything written previously about the Stonehenge landscape and the ancient monuments within it will need to be re-written.
Artist concept of standing stones at Durrington Walls.
Ancient Irish DNA reveals incredible secrets, including Down Syndrome
In the earliest periods of Irish history, archaeologists and geneticists led by those from Trinity have shed new light.
The Poulnabrone portal dolmen in County Clare where the fascinating discovery was made.
The amazing findings of this study include an adult male genome hidden in the heart of the Newgrange passage tomb points to first-degree incest, implying he was among a ruling social elite akin to the similarly inbred Inca god-kings and Egyptian pharaohs.
Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland is world-famous for its annual solar alignment where the winter solstice sunrise illuminates its sacred inner chamber in a golden blast of light. However, little is known about who was interred in the heart of this imposing 200,000 tonnes monument or of the Neolithic society which built it over 5,000 years ago.
The survey of ancient Irish genomes, published in Nature, suggests a man who had been buried in this chamber belonged to a dynastic elite.
The research, led by the team from Trinity, was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from University College London, NUIG, University College Cork, University of Cambridge, Queen’s University Belfast, Sligo Institute of Technology and the National Monuments Service, with support from the National Museum of Ireland and National Museums Northern Ireland.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” said Lara Cassidy, professor at Trinity College Dublin, first author of the paper. “We all inherit two copies of the genome, one from our mother and one from our father; well, this individual’s copies were extremely similar, a tell-tale sign of close inbreeding. In fact, our analyses allowed us to confirm that his parents were first-degree relatives.”
Matings of this type (e.g. brother-sister unions) are a near universal taboo for entwined cultural and biological reasons. The only confirmed social acceptances of first-degree incest are found among the elites – typically within a deified royal family.
By breaking the rules, the elite separates itself from the general population, intensifying hierarchy and legitimising power. Public ritual and extravagant monumental architecture often co-occur with dynastic incest, to achieve the same ends.
“Here the auspicious location of the male skeletal remains is matched by the unprecedented nature of his ancient genome,” said Professor of Population Genetics at Trinity, Dan Bradley. “The prestige of the burial makes this very likely a socially sanctioned union and speaks of a hierarchy so extreme that the only partners worthy of the elite were family members.”
The team also unearthed a web of distant familial relations between this man and other individuals from sites of the passage tomb tradition across the country, including the mega-cemeteries of Carrowmore and Carrowkeel in Co. Sligo.
“It seems what we have here is a powerful extended kin-group, who had access to elite burial sites in many regions of the island for at least half a millennium,” added Cassidy.
Remarkably, a local myth resonates with these results and the Newgrange solar phenomenon. First recorded in the 11th century AD, four millennia after construction, the story tells of a builder-king who restarted the daily solar cycle by sleeping with his sister.
The Middle Irish place name for the neighbouring Dowth passage tomb, Fertae Chuile, is based on this lore and can be translated as “Hill of Sin.”
“Given the world-famous solstice alignments of Brú na Bóinne, the magical solar manipulations in this myth already had scholars questioning how long an oral tradition could survive,” said Ros Ó Maoldúin, an archaeologist on the study. “To now discover a potential prehistoric precedent for the incestuous aspect is extraordinary.”
The genome survey stretched over two millennia and unearthed other unexpected results. Within the oldest known burial structure on the island, Poulnabrone portal tomb, the earliest yet diagnosed case of Down Syndrome was discovered in a male infant who was buried there five and a half thousand years ago.
Poulnabrone tomb, in The Burren, County Clare.
Additionally, the analyses showed that the monument builders were early farmers who migrated to Ireland and replaced the hunter-gatherers who preceded them. However, this replacement was not absolute; a single western Irish individual was found to have an Irish hunter-gatherer in his recent family tree, pointing toward a swamping of the earlier population rather than an extermination.
Genomes from the rare remains of Irish hunter-gatherers themselves showed they were most closely related to the hunter-gatherer populations from Britain (e.g. Cheddar Man) and mainland Europe.
However, unlike British samples, these earliest Irelanders had the genetic imprint of a prolonged island isolation. This fits with what we know about prehistoric sea levels after the Ice Age: Britain maintained a land bridge to the continent long after the retreat of the glaciers, while Ireland was separated by sea and its small early populations must have arrived in primitive boats.
1,000-year-old Christian cemetery yields terrifying discoveries
It is suspected that the nearly 1,000-year-old find is the oldest known Christian burial site in north Poland’s Dobrzyn Region. In the year 966 Poland formally accepted Christianity, switching from paganism to Catholicism.
In the village of Starorypin Prywatny, archaeologists have now discovered possible proof of Christianity, unearthing the corpses of women and children in 30 graves.
Lead archaeologist Dr Jadwiga Lewandowska of the Dobrzyn Land Museum in Rypin said: “Until now, based on uncovered artefacts, we thought the necropolis dated back to the 12th century.
“Thanks to the physicochemical analysis of bones discovered last year, we know that it already existed in the middle of the 11th century.”
The burial site yielded a number of gruesome discoveries, including the body of a woman with a boulder on her chest. Another woman was buried on her side in the foetal position. It is likely the woman was tied up when she was buried.
A 1,000-year-old cemetery was discovered in northern Poland
And the majority of the bodies uncovered at the site were of children. These were children aged two-and-a-half to four-years-old. One of the burials also appears to have been a premature birth.
Professor Krzysztof Szostka of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw said: “What is interesting, it was in this grave that we found probably the most beautiful necklace we have so far been able to find at the cemetery.”
The oldest corpses were of men aged 40 to 45-years-old. And the women were all likely aged 25 to 30-years-old. The corpses all featured grounded down teeth, which is a sign of a diet heavy in poorly refined flour.
Alongside the corpses, the archaeologists discovered a number of small metallic crosses – evidence of the denizens’ Christian faith.
Dr Lewandowska said: “The wealth of the deceased’s items surprised us.”
From the 13th century and onwards, Christians were buried without personal effects.
And the cemetery is likely to yield many more discoveries in the years to come as only a small fraction of it has been explored so far. The 30 graves are part of a necropolis believed to cover nearly five acres of land.
So far, the archaeologists have only explored a few hundred square metres of it. The cemetery was discovered in a cornfield and, unfortunately, many of its graves have been destroyed by the ploughing of the land.
None of the bodies unearthed at the site has been linked to other religious practices outside of Christianity. The archaeologists believe this is good sign Christianity reached this part of Poland earlier than the mid-11th century.
8,600 years old Textile tools found in western Turkey
The excavation site in Ekşi Höyük, one of the oldest settlements in western Anatolia, located in the present-day Denizli province, western Turkey.
Hurriyet Daily News reports that 8,600-year-old textile tools have been uncovered in western Anatolia at the ancient settlement site of Ekşi Höyük.
Fulya Dedeoğlu of Ege University said the bone needles and round stones for spinning thread were found in a building dated to the Neolithic period.
Bone needles and round stones used for spinning thread dating back some 8,600 years were found in an excavation site in Ekşi Höyük, one of the oldest settlements in western Anatolia, located in the present-day Denizli province.
“During excavations carried out in this Neolithic-era settlement, we discovered some of the first tools used for textiles in history,” Ege University’s Fulya Dedeoğlu, head of the excavation team, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
“The architectural remains here are in very good condition. You can see all of the typical materials of the era here.”
Archaeologists in western Turkey have discovered textile tools nearly twice as old as Egypt’s Great Pyramids.
She added: “One of the most striking things we found is the needle bones, which we think date back to 8,600 years ago, and carved round stones for spinning thread.”
She stressed that Denizli is known for its history in textiles and that many bone needles used in textiles were found at the excavation site.
“The findings here prove that the textile tradition in Denizli dates back to earlier times. We’ve discovered them in a building that we think was built in 6400 B.C.,” Dedeoğlu added.
Along with Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Ministry, academics from universities across the country are helping in the excavations, which started in 2015.
600-Year-Old Skeleton found beneath Edinburgh School Playground
A skeleton discovered in a school playground could be that of a 600-year-old pirate, according to archaeologists. City of Edinburgh Council workers found the remains at the city’s oldest primary school while carrying out survey work to build an extension.
Victoria Primary School is close to Newhaven’s harbour, where workers had expected to find remains of the original marina but instead made the gruesome discovery.
Archaeologists have since studied the bones and initially thought they were Bronze Age because they were in such poor condition and found next to 4,000-year-old shards of pottery.
The school, pictured, is the oldest primary in Edinburgh and the discovery came as workers built an extension.
Remains were found at Victoria Primary School, Edinburgh
But during carbon dating, they were found to be from the 16th to 17th centuries.
The skeleton is believed to belong to a man in his fifties – who was probably a criminal. Six hundred years ago Newhaven dockyard was home to a gibbet – commonly used to execute witches and pirates.
Experts think the man could have been killed in the device for criminal behaviour or piracy before his body was dumped in the nearby wasteland.
The skeleton of a man believed to have been in his fifties was discovered near a gibbet used to execute criminals.
The condition of his bones and his burial site close to the sea rather than in any of the nearby graveyards suggests that after his execution the man’s body was displayed insight of ships to deter other pirates.
His burial in a shallow, unmarked grave also suggests he had no relatives or friends in the area. Forensic artist Hayley Fisher, along with AOC Archaeology, has created a facial reconstruction of the pirate’s skull.
Councillor Richard Lewis, Culture Convener for the City of Edinburgh Council, said: ‘Edinburgh has an undeniably intriguing past and some of our archaeological discoveries have been in the strangest of places.
‘Thanks to carbon dating techniques, archaeologists now know that the skeleton was likely to have been a murder victim – and quite possibly a pirate.
‘It’s fantastic that through the Council’s archaeology and museums service, we are able to investigate such discoveries and add to our understanding of Newhaven’s heritage.’
Laura Thompson, Head Teacher at Victoria Primary School, said her pupils were excited about the discovery.
She said: ‘As the oldest working primary school in Edinburgh, we are proud of our history and heritage and the school even has a dedicated museum to the local area.
‘The pupils think it’s fantastic that a skeleton was found deep underneath their playground.
‘The archaeologists will hold a special lesson with some of the children about how they have used science to analyse the remains and it will be a good learning opportunity for them.’
