Sunken 13th-Century Medieval Village Submerged in Italian Lake Will Reemerge in 2021
Although Atlantis ‘s search for the famed underwater town still has to bring fruit, the lake has been the birthplace of a truly medieval Italian village known as Fabbriche di Careggine has emerged from a lake after being submerged many decades ago.
You haven’t heard about Fabbriche di Careggine, but the Italian village is one of the most popular and exclusive tourist destinations in the world. No, not because of its price-tag or luxury adornments, simply because it’s one of the hardest to get into, literally.
At present, the medieval village resides on the bottom side of Lake Vagli, buried under 34 million cubic meters of water. However, the good news is that it will soon be open to visitors.
As you’ve probably guessed, Fabbriche di Careggine wasn’t always a sunken city. In fact, the 13th-century town was once a thriving hotbed for iron production, characterized by its high proportion of skilled blacksmiths.
However, in 1947, a hydroelectric dam was built close to the village, forcing the residents to move to the nearby town of Vagli di Sotto. Fabbriche di Careggine was then flooded to create the artificial lake.
Incredibly, being sunken underwater has allowed the village’s stone buildings, cemetery, bridge, and church to remain remarkably intact. Where the story gets interesting, however, is in the lake’s management.
Since it was constructed, the man-made lake has been drained four times for maintenance work, each time revealing the lost city of Fabbriche di Careggine.
As the fluid dissipates, the outline of the historic ‘Ghost Town’ is unveiled, like the lost city of Atlantis rising from the watery depths.
The last time the phenomenon occurred was back in 1994, but it appears a fresh draining is in order, according to Lorenza Giorgi, daughter of Domenico Giorgi, the ex-mayor of the Municipality of Vagli di Sott.
“I inform you that from certain sources I know that next year, in 2021, Lake Vagli will be emptied,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
“The last time it was emptied in 1994 when my father was mayor and thanks to his commitment and to the many initiatives that, with effort, had managed to put up in one summer the country of Vagli welcomed more than a million of people.”
Since Giorgi’s post, energy company ENEL, which owns the dam has confirmed it is considering draining the lake as a possible boost to the local tourism sector.
With Italy still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic that devastated the country, tourism officials have been trying anything they can to get visitors back to the area. If you ask us, resurrecting a lost city from its watery grave might be just the way to do it.
New Evidence Of Ancient Child Sacrifice Found From Bronze Age Mesopotamia
Eight human sacrifices were found at the entrance to this tomb, which held the remains of two 12-year-olds from ancient Mesopotamia.
About 5,000 years ago, the Mesopotamians buried two 12-year-olds — a boy and a girl — and surrounded their slender bodies with hundreds of bronze spearheads and what appears to be eight human sacrifices, a new study finds.
The eight human sacrifices were positioned just outside the tomb, located at the site of Basur Höyük in southeastern Turkey, the researchers said. The team determined the age of six of the human sacrifices and found that the victims ranged in age from 11 to 20 years old.
These two 12-year-olds, along with the eight human sacrifices, “had been deposited in a single event, and furnished with an unprecedented number of high-status grave goods for the period and the region,” the researchers wrote in the journal Antiquity.
The mysterious tomb was discovered in 2014, said the study’s two researchers, Brenna Hassett, a post-doctoral researcher of archaeology at the Natural History Museum in London; and Haluk Sağlamtimur, an archaeology professor at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey.
The remains of an adult were also found beside the two children, but that body could have come from an earlier burial that got mixed in with the two 12-year-olds, Hassett told Newsweek.
And while the evidence isn’t 100 percent clear, scientists are fairly certain that the eight people were sacrificed.
“While we only have evidence for violent trauma on two of the skeletons, it’s important to remember that violent death doesn’t always leave a mark on the skeleton,” Hassett said. “As a grim example, stab wounds are normally aimed at the soft parts of the body, which do not preserve.”
Hundreds of bronze spearheads were found buried in the ancient Mesopotamian tomb holding the remains of two 12-year-olds (a male and female).
She added that “from the careful dressing and positioning of the bodies outside the door to the main chamber, it seems all eight would have been retainer sacrifices.” The term ‘retainer sacrifice’ refers to people who were sacrificed so that they can accompany or serve others to the afterlife.
The human sacrifices were buried with textiles, beads and ceramics.
Mysterious sacrifices
The discovery leaves archaeologists with a series of mysteries. Who were the two 12-year-olds who seem to be the focus of the burial? Were they also sacrificed? What’s more, why was human sacrifice carried out at all at this site?
“Unfortunately, preservation wasn’t great inside the chamber, so we don’t have any evidence that the [two 12-year-old] children were sacrificed,” Hassett said. But because the two 12-year-olds received such an elaborate burial, it appears that they must have “held an important biosocial status,” Hassett and Sağlamtimur wrote in the study.
The skull of one human sacrifice shows evidence that a pointed instrument was driven down into the skull, killing the individual. This individual was between 16 and 20 years old at the time of death.
Archaeologists know that human sacrifices also occurred at other sites in Mesopotamia, including a nearby site called Arslantepe that also dates back to roughly 5,000 years ago.
“One thought is that what we are witnessing at Basur Höyük is part of a phenomenon we see in other societies across the globe, where power is being consolidated into a more structured, formal hierarchy; what archaeologists would call ‘early states,'” Hassett said.
The excavation site in Turkey at Basur Höyük
“Perhaps [what] we are seeing is a display of power by an increasingly hierarchical society; the power to dispose of great wealth — and even people — might be the same kind of power you need to show to build a state-like society,” Hassett said. “It’s a truly fascinating puzzle that will hopefully tell us more about how human societies form and change.”
In the future, the team plans to do stable isotope analyses (a kind of study that provides information on the birthplace and diet of the deceased individuals) and DNA studies on the skeletons.
Evidence of 5,000-year-old Neolithic fabric found in Orkney
In Orkney, Scotland, archeologists found new evidence of ancient fabrics from the Neolithic era more than 5000 years ago.
Cord impression with textile to the right
The only discovery in Scotland, the second of its kind, came from a fragment of pottery with an impression of a cloth stamped into its surface, found at Ness of Brodgar.
The site is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site on the small island archipelago off the northern coast of Scotland.
Ness of Brodgar is a large Neolithic site in Orkney
Because it’s rare for organic material from prehistory to survive outside of very specific oxygen-free conditions, researchers studying Neolithic textiles have generally had to rely on secondary evidence like pottery fragments.
This latest discovery came from the Archaeology Institute of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI), which in 2019 began working to find pottery fragments with these types of impressions on them, known as ‘sherds.’
The team used a technique called reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) to examine the sherds, which involves taking multiple photographs of them with a slightly different angled source of light in each frame.
These images were analyzed by a computer program that created a highly-detailed digital image of the sherds, that could be more closely examined than the real physical fragment.
RTI analysis of the outer face of the sherds suggested multiple fragments had been ‘co-joined’ with a cord cloth, possibly in the shape of a basket-like object.
The inner face of the fragments had a different patterned impression that researchers believe came from the clothing worn by the potter who made the original piece.
‘There is no evidence of textile tools available in Neolithic Orkney, suggesting textiles were made by hand, or using tools made with organic materials that have not survived in the archaeological record,’ Ness of Brodgar’s site director Nick Card said.
‘This lack of material culture around textile production can help us to infer what techniques they may have been using.’ The patterns match similar findings at other sites in the region, that suggest using textiles with clay vessels was common.
‘A growing number of base sherds from the Ness have impressions of coiled mats used in the construction of clay vessels,’ Card said.
An impression on clay of the Orkney woven fabric
‘These match examples found at Barnhouse and Rinyo in Orkney and also at Forest Road in Aberdeenshire.
‘All specimens suggest fibre mats of spiral construction that may have eased the turning of the pot as it was formed and even facilitated its transportation whilst it was dried and then fired.’
The announcement of the Orkney discovery comes just a month after researchers in France discovered strands of woven yarn believed to be between 41,000 and 52,000 years old.
The yarn fragments were believed to have been used to bind simple tools and could have been used in more complex forms of weaving.
In the Swiss city of Baden, a Roman bath part of an ancient spa has been uncovered. It was dismantled at the new pipeline in Baden’s Kurplatz city center and in extremely good condition, completed with finely designed entry steps.
The Roman bath as uncovered at the building site in Baden
It dates back to the second half of the 1st or early 2nd century, according to archeologists. It was connected to a much later concrete conduit that piped the water from the thermal springs to the reservoir.
After finding a hot spring on the left bank of the Limmat river a few kilometers far off from the legionary settlement of the Vindonissa (modern day Windisch), Baden was founded by Romans as Aquae Helveticae about 20 A.D.
A civilian settlement grew around the mineral baths. It was burned by the legions during the upheavals of the Year of the Four Emperors (69 A.D.) but was quickly rebuilt in stone this time. The basin dates to the time of that reconstruction.
The highly mineralized waters always at a comfortable 47° C (117° F) combined with its riverbank location and a short distance from Zurich (less than 15 miles) made Aquae Helveticae a popular and easily accessible destination throughout the Roman period and beyond.
Even during times of decline, like when the troops left Vindonissa in the early 2nd century, the Roman baths were in continuous operation. In the 4th century, a defensive wall was built to protect the baths after the onslaught of Germanic incursions in the mid-3rd century.
While there is no surviving documentation of the use of the thermal baths after the collapse of the empire, but archaeological evidence does suggest at least some of the Roman facilities remained in operation through the 9th century.
By the 13th century, Aquae Helveticae had been rebuilt with new bathing facilities and a new name: Baden, the Middle German word for baths.
Most of the ancient Roman city and bath facilities lie under the modern spa town.
The remains of three bathing basins and few structures confirm that the medieval thermal baths and the modern ones were built over the Roman site and within its perimeters.
With so little material to go by, the question of whether the Roman bathing infrastructure was in continuous use after the Fall is still an open one.
The newly-discovered basin is a key clue, especially with the conduit pointing to it having been used after the late medieval reconstruction of Baden.
The basin is thought to be part of Baden’s legendary open-air St Verena Baths that were used from the Middle Ages well into the 19th century. But the find was probably only used early on, and at some point during its history, the St Verena Baths were made smaller and the Roman bath was forgotten, archaeologists believe.
But it remains important for the town’s spa history because it may provide a clue to whether there was continuous use of the baths between Roman and Medieval times, which has not yet been proven.
“We are very happy that we have further evidence of a 2,000-year-old bathing history [in Baden],” added [Andrea] Schaer, who is leading the archaeological project.
Also found was the structure that captured the spring water, which was built in the Middle Ages, but directly on the original Roman structure.
Newly discovered mass graves could be filled with an ancient greek Tyrants followers
A former Greek athlete named Cylon tried to overthrow the government thousands of years ago. It didn’t finish right.
Two mass graves near the Greek capital, including 80 skeletons of the men who may have been followers of ancient would-be tyrant Cylon of Athens discovered by the Archaeologists.
The bones – which had teeth intact – were found in two graves between 675 and 650 B.C., Agence France-Presse reported. They rest in an ancient cemetery where the National Library of Greece and the National Opera are being constructed.
The remains of men buried in a mass grave found in an area of the Falirikon Delta in South Athens
Regional archaeological services director Stella Chryssoulaki laid out the theory as she unveiled the findings at the Central Archaeological Council, the custodians of Greece’s ancient heritage.
Given “the high importance of these discoveries”, the council is launching further investigations, the culture ministry said in a statement.
Two small vases discovered amongst the skeletons have allowed archaeologists to date the graves from between 675 and 650 BC, “a period of great political turmoil in the region”, the ministry said.
The skeletons were found lined up, some on their backs and others on their stomachs. A total of 36 had their hands bound with iron.
They were discovered during excavations at an ancient cemetery on Athens’ seaside outskirts, on the construction site of the new National Library of Greece and National Opera.
Archaeologists found the teeth of the men to be in good condition, indicating they were young and healthy.
This boosts the theory that they could have been followers of Cylon, a nobleman whose failed coup in the 7th century BC is detailed in the accounts of ancient historians Herodotus and Thucydides.
Cylon, a former Olympic champion, sought to rule Athens as a tyrant. But Athenians opposed the coup attempt and he and his supporters were forced to seek refuge in the Acropolis, the citadel that is today the Greek capital’s biggest tourist attraction.
The conspirators eventually surrendered after winning guarantees that their lives would be spared.
But Megacles, of the powerful Alcmaeonid clan, had the men massacred—an act condemned as sacrilegious by the city authorities.
Historians say this dramatic chapter in the story of ancient Athens showed the aristocracy’s resistance to the political transformation that would eventually herald in 2,500 years of Athenian democracy.
Very strange Gallo roman horse and human burials at Evreux (Eure) France.
A team from the Institut National d’archéologie preventive (Inrap) has discovered a mortuary practice hitherto unknown in Roman Gaul.
The archaeologists are working in an area of 200m2 intended for the construction of a private house at Evreux (Eure).
The earliest traces of human occupation of the town of Evreux seem to date from the third quarter of the 1st century BC. Its Roman name was Mediolanum Aulercorum, and it was the main town of the Aulerci Eburovices.
It became important during the Augustan period and in the 1st century of our era, it was equipped with a theatre, baths, and villas with painted walls, etc.
The antique cemetery is on a hill-side, outside the town, thus respecting the Law of the Twelve Tables then in force, along the road linking Evreux and Chartres.
Already known during the 19th century because of some accidental discoveries, the site seems to have been used from the 1st–4th century AD. Evaluations and excavations carried out from 2002 onwards have clarified the typo-chronological evolution of the necropolis.
During the 1st century, secondary cremation graves were predominant, even though some perinatal and adult inhumations have been found. From the second century AD onwards burial became the exclusive funerary practice.
Such Unusual Burials
Up to now, about forty inhumation graves have been excavated. Two of them can be dated from the 3rd century by association with a ceramic vase characteristic of this period.
Other subjects have been radiocarbon dated (14 C). This part of the cemetery contains mainly adults, new-born babies and a few children under 10 years of age.
The graves are very concentrated, and for the most part, are grouped together without any spatial organisation. The deceased were buried with their heads towards the North, the South, the East or the West.
Many adults were buried in an unusual position: several of them face downwards, one of them with an upper member twisted (right elbow placed behind the left shoulder), another buried with his lower members very bent, etc.
Men & Horses
The second exceptional element is the fact that large pieces of horses were placed in most of the graves. Most of the time they were skulls or parts of vertebrae.
However, one grave contained three horses, almost complete, buried simultaneously, one above the other. The most unusual deposit is that of an adult whose head is clasped by two horse skulls.
Skull of an adult surrounded by two horse skulls placed head to tail (probably 3rd century AD).
The horse bones were placed in direct contact with the deceased, or in the pit fills.
Was it the result of war, of an epidemic, or were they food offerings? These three hypotheses should be discarded: there is no trace of violence on the bones, they were not multiple graves linked with a catastrophe, and lastly, horsemeat wasn’t eaten in Roman times.
This deliberate act – the placing of sections of horses in Gallo-Roman graves – seems to be unique in France.
Should one envisage the presence of a distinct people, through its origin, its religion, or its craft? Was it a survival of the worship of the Gallic goddess Epona?
The continuation of the excavation and subsequent research may provide some answers.
A high density of mutually overlapping burials (probably 3rd century AD). We can see on the left three horses deposited simultaneously.
The high density of mutually overlapping burials (probably 3rd century AD). We can see on the left three horses deposited simultaneously.
Second Viking Ship Burial Detected on Norway’s Edoya Island
The georadar study completed on Edoya Island off the coast of Western Norway revelated a second burial of the Viking ship, according to Archaeology Org. Oslo, Norway.
The overgrown boat tomb appeared in the georadar scans just to the right of the old church.
On the tiny island, the ship burial was discovered known as the Edoya ship. Manuel Gabler of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) said the data indicates an object about 24 feet long and three feet wide had been placed inside a circular structure thought to be a round stone cairn.
Introducing Edøya
Never heard of Edøya? That’s not a big surprise, for the island is just 7.5km2 (2.9 square miles) in size. Yet this tiny island in Møre og Romsdal county was an important centre of power in the Viking Age.
Along with its larger island neighbours Smøla, Ertvågsøya and Tustna, Edøya is now sure to come under the spotlight like never before.
A second Viking boat grave
The georadar data clearly shows a second boat burial. Manuel Gabler from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) explains:
The georadar data from Edøy island that clearly shows a Viking boat grave.
“In the process of interpreting the data, we discovered a clear circular and reflective structure. In the middle of that structure, we see a 7.3 metre long and approximately 1-meter wide anomaly. “We interpret it as a boat tomb under a round stone cairn.”
Although the grave is considerably smaller than the first find, it can’t be described as small. NIKU’s Knut Paasche, who was a guest on the Life in Norway Show recently, explains:
“If a 7.3-metre long anomaly represents the bottom of a boat and the upper board aisles have rotted away, the original boat will have been a few metres longer. It’s likely to have needed four pairs of oars.”
Burial mounds and remains of houses
In the report, archaeologists revealed more of Edøya’s secrets. North of the boat grave, another round anomaly appears albeit without a boat structure. The team believes this fragmented anomaly is where a burial mound has been ploughed over.
Around 50 metres further north, the georadar data revealed traces of two more graves, measuring 11 and 19 metres in diameter. Two more anomalies to the north-west of the boat grave appear to be remains of houses.
The NIKU georadar system outside the old Edøy church.
“We see a curved, rectangular structure of approximately 12 by 5.9 metres. In the central part of the house is a large reflective anomaly, which may be the remains of a floor or hearth,” said Gabler. There are other round anomalies nearby that together form a rectangular structure.
County conservator Bjørn Ringstad believes the houses and boat graves could well come from different time periods: “The houses that have been traced may well be from the older Iron Age, circa 300-600 AD. The tombs may be from the younger Iron Age, circa 600-900 AD. The findings nevertheless show that there was a close connection between the residences and the burial ground at Edøy.”
Similar to a previous find in Møre og Romsdal
According to the experts, the boat is likely more than 1,000 years old. “This is probably a somewhat similar boat tomb from the Viking Age, from the 900s to the one found in Surnadal in 1994,” said Ringstad.
The grave was excavated the following year by archaeologists from NTNU in Trondheim and Møre og Romsdal county. Within the boat’s imprint, the team found fine weaponry including swords, spears, and arrows. The new find at Edøya is about the same size.
Edøya: A Viking Age powerhouse?
The discoveries strengthen the belief that Edøya was a centre of power during the Viking Age.
“Ship burial finds still belong to the rarities of Norwegian archaeology. In general, ship burials are reserved for the top layer in society, so the ship grave at Edøy is a clear proof of a local power elite,” added Paasche. He believes the house remains are not large enough to have been part of the chieftain’s seat, but could still represent parts of a larger farm structure.
The full report (only available in Norwegian) is available for download from NIKU here. Based on the results of the project, further archaeological investigations in and around the region are likely.
Bronze Age logboat remains found at Faversham boatyard
In a Cambridgeshire quarry in the suburbs of Peterborough, a group of eight ancient vessels, including a float about nine meters long. The boats, all purposely sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are the largest group of vessels in the Bronze Age in the same UK, most of whom are remarkably well preserved.
The boats, which were deliberately sunk into the long-dried-up creek, have been well preserved and still show carvings
One is covered inside and out with decorative carving described by conservator Ian Panter as looking “as if they’d been playing noughts and crosses all over it”.
Another has handles carved from the oak tree trunk for lifting it out of the water. One still floated after 3,000 years and one has traces of fires lit on the wide flat deck on which the catch was evidently cooked.
Many had ancient repairs, including clay patches and an additional section shaped and pinned in where a branch was cut away. They were preserved by the waterlogged silt in the bed of a long-dried-up creek, a tributary of the River Nene, which buried them deep below the ground.
“There was huge excitement over the first boat, and then they were phoning the office saying they’d found another, and another, and another, until finally, we were thinking, ‘Come on now, you’re just being greedy,'” Panter said.
The boats were deliberately sunk into the creek, as several still had slots for transoms – boards closing the stern of the boat – which had been removed.
Archaeologists are struggling to understand the significance of the find. Whatever the custom meant to the bronze age fishermen and hunters who lived in the nearby settlement, it continued for centuries. The team from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit is still waiting for the results of carbon 14 dating tests but believes the oldest boats date from around 1,600 BC and the most recent 600 years later.
They already knew the creek had great significance – probably as a rich source of fish and eels – as in previous seasons at the Much Farm site they had found ritual deposits of metalwork, including spears.
The boats themselves may have been ritual offerings or may have been sunk for more pragmatic reasons, to keep the timber waterlogged and prevent it from drying out and splitting when not in use – but in that case it seems strange that such precious objects were never retrieved.
Some of the boats were made from huge timbers, including one from an oak which must have had a meter-thick trunk and stood up to 20 meters tall. This would have been a rare specimen as sea levels rose and the terrain became more waterlogged, creating the Fenland landscape of marshes, creeks, and islands of gravel.
“Either this was the Bermuda Triangle for bronze age boats, or there is something going on here that we don’t yet understand,” Panter said.
Kerry Murrell, the site director, said: “Some show signs of long use and repair – but others are in such good condition they look as if you could just drop the transom board back in and paddle away.”
The boats were all nicknamed by the team, including Debbie – made of lime wood, and therefore deemed a blonde – and French Albert the Fifth Musketeer, the fifth boat found. Murrell’s favourite is Vivienne, a superb piece of craftsmanship where the solid oak was planed down with bronze tools to the thickness of a finger, still so light and buoyant that when their trench filled with rainwater, they floated it into its cradle for lifting and transportation.
Because the boats were in such striking condition, they have been lifted intact and transported two miles, in cradles of scaffolding poles and planks, for conservation work at the Flag Fen archaeology site – where a famous timber causeway contemporary with the boats was built up over centuries until it stretched for almost a mile across the fens.
“My first thought was to deal with them in the usual way, by chopping them into more manageably sized chunks, but when I actually saw them they just looked so nice, I thought we had to find another way,” Panter, an expert on waterlogged timber from York Archaeological Trust, said. “I think if I’d arrived on the site with a chainsaw, the team would have strung me up.”
Must Farm, now a quarry owned by Hanson UK, which has funded the excavation, has already yielded a wealth of evidence of prehistoric life, including a settlement built on a platform partly supported by stilts in the water, where artifacts including fabrics woven from wool, flax, and nettles were found. Instead of living as dry-land hunters and farmers, the people had become experts at fishing: one eel trap found near the boats is identical to those still used by Peter Carter, the last traditional eel fisherman in the region.
The boats will be on display at Flag Fen, viewed through windows in a container chilled to below 5c – funded with a £100,000 grant from English Heritage which regards their discovery as of outstanding importance – built within a barn at the site. At the moment conservation technician Emma Turvey, dressed in layers of winter clothes, is spending up to eight hours a day spraying the timbers to keep them waterlogged and remove any potentially decaying impurities. They will then be impregnated with a synthetic wax, polyethylene glycol, before being gradually dried out over the next two years for permanent display.
Murrell is convinced there is more to be found down in the silt.
“The creek continued outside the boundaries of the quarry, so it’s off our site – but the next person who gets a chance to investigate will find more boats, I can almost guarantee it.”
