Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Clare man discovers cliff fort near his home while flying a drone in Ireland

Clare man discovers cliff fort near his home while flying a drone in Ireland

A respected software maker and drone operator have discovered an unexplained cliff near his home in Co Clare.

During the present lockdown Matthiew Kelly, a satellite, communication, and electronics specialist, worked a drone near Crag, Lahinch when he made his archeological discovery.

Kelly, however, has a history in this area having previously uncovered ancient forts in Dundalk in 2018.

His latest find had not been previously recorded in the National Monuments Service (NMS) database but has since been officially added.

Matthew Kelly explained: “I found the fort while flying my drone around the small cliffs at Lahinch during a lockdown.

I have been filming forts and stone circles for years so I knew what it was when I found it. I emailed the National Monuments Service who checked it out and added it to their database which means it is now recorded and protected.”

If this discovery is making you want to have a go at flying your own drone in the hopes of making an archaeological finding like this, then you can have a look at drdrone for some really great options.

Kelly isn’t however claiming all the credit for his latest discovery.

“The artist Jim Fitzpatrick inspired me to get into Irish mythology years ago so I asked him to name the fort. He suggested ‘Cliodna of the Waves’ so we will call it ‘Dun Cliodna’ (Cliodna’s fort).

Clíodhna is the goddess of love and beauty and is said to have three brightly colored birds who eat apples from an otherworldly tree and whose sweet song heals the sick,” Mr. Kelly said.

Matthew worked with artist Jim Fitzpatrick on a video about Newgrange and some of that footage was used on RTÉ’s Nationwide.

“I got into drones a few years ago when they first came out in 2014, my first footage was used on RTÉ’s programming Weather-Beaten in 2014 about the big storm.

I was lucky to work on a small project with Jim Fitzpatrick in 2016 and he encouraged me to visit the ancient sites of Ireland to see if anything new could be discovered with the drone,” Matthew added.

The discovery is now classed as a ‘cliff-edge fort’ in the townland of Crag and is “scheduled for inclusion in the next revision of the RMP (Record of Monuments and Places). “I also want to thank Anthony Murphy for helping me get the find reported to the NMS,” Mr. Kelly added.

The confirmation from the NMS states that the fort is: “Situated on a steep cliff-edge c. 450m S of Lahinch beach backing onto a NE-SW cliff. A sub-circular enclosure reported to the National Monuments Service by Matthew Kelly.”

During the hot summer of 2018, Matthew discovered a group of 5000-year-old forts in Dundalk.

Among the other sites reported over that summer were a prehistoric barrow cemetery found in Redcow near Dundalk, Co Louth by Mr. Kelly who was trying to locate a site once described as Ireland’s Stonehenge. His footage also included two ring-fort enclosures in the townlands of Glebe and Lisdoo.

The NMS estimates the range of monuments recorded across all sites date from 2200 BC to 1000 AD.

The newly discovered ring-fort near Lahinch has been named Dún Clíodna

Kelly is also an award-winning app developer and created a drone search and rescue (SAR) app called DroneSAR now being used by a range of SAR groups.

DroneSAR provides software that enables commercially available drones to maintain autonomous search patterns based on waypoint missions or user-defined search ‘boxes’, reducing risk to search personnel, improving situational awareness, and increasing the chance of finding people in distress, all at a fraction of the cost of a SAR helicopter.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

France digs up bones from 6,000-year-old ‘massacre’

France digs up bones from 6,000-year-old ‘massacre’

A shattered skull discovered among fractured and fossilized skeletons at the site of an archaeological dig in Alsace, north-eastern France.

Archaeologists had discovered the remains of victims from a 6,000-year-old massacre in Alsace in eastern France that was likely carried out by “furious ritualized warriors”.

The bones of the 6,000- year-old genocide in Alsace, in north-eastern France have been found by archeologists.

According to a team from the National Institute for Preventive Archeological Research (Inrap), the bodies of 10 people have been found in one of 300 ancient silos, used to store grain and other food.

The Neolithic group appeared to have had violent deaths, with multiple injuries to their legs, hands and skulls.

The way in which the bodies were piled on top of each other suggested they had been killed together and dumped in the silo.

The fossilised skeletons of two men with numerous fractured bones.

“They were very brutally executed and received violent blows, almost certainly from a stone axe,” said Philippe Lefranc, an Infrap specialist on the period.

The skeletons of five adults and an adolescent were found as well as four arms from different individuals.

The arms were probably war trophies, like those found at a nearby burial site of Bergheim in 2012, said Lefranc.

The mutilations indicated a society of “furious, ritualised warriors”, he said, while the silos were stored within a defence wall that pointed towards “a troubled time, a period of insecurity”.

Researchers examine human remains at the massacre site.

It is hoped genetic testing on the bones will reveal more information about the killings, but Lefranc said one theory was that a local tribe had clashed with a group arriving from the area around modern-day Paris.

“It appears that a warrior raid by people from the Parisian basin went wrong for the assailants, and the Alsatians of the era massacred them,” he said.

However, in the long run, it was the “Parisians” who had the last laugh.

The local tribe appears to have been supplanted by the newcomers at about 4,200 BC, as demonstrated by new funeral rites, pottery, and hamlets.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Rome Sinkhole Makes Extraordinary Archaeological Find

Rome Sinkhole Makes Extraordinary Archaeological Find

A sinkhole that appeared outside the Pantheon in Rome last week has revealed remnants of the original imperial flooring in Piazza della Rotonda.

The Roman Archaeologists have confirmed that the sinkhole that opened up in front of the Pantheon in recent days has brought to light the ancient imperial flooring in Piazza Della Rotonda.

In addition, the discovery of the seven travertine slabs, which are situated at about 2.5 meters below piazza level, is, in fact, a rediscovery.

The flooring was uncovered during works in the 1990s but was sealed up again after being documented by archaeologists who have now had a chance to re-examine the ancient remains.

“More than 20 years after their first discovery” – explains Daniela Porro, special superintendent of Rome – “the slabs of the ancient floor of the square in front of the Pantheon emerge intact, protected by a layer of fine pozzolan”, in what he described as “unequivocal proof of the importance of archaeological protection, particular in a city such as Rome.”

In imperial times the square was much larger than the current one, opening out in front of the Pantheon, the temple dedicated to all the Roman gods, built by Agrippa between 27 and 25 BC.

The area was completely transformed in the second century AD, under Emperor Hadrian, with the level of the piazza raised and repaved.

The ancient slabs/pavement unearthed by the Rome sinkhole in front of the Pantheon.

However, the appearance of another sinkhole in the city is also further evidence of why ancient Romans became master hydrologists specializing in systems of channeling and holding water like tunnels, cisterns, spas, bath-houses, channels, and aqueducts. 

Only in January this year, The Local reported that a Rome apartment building has been evacuated and that a street was closed after “a sinkhole opened up” near the Colosseum.

Located on Rome’s famous Via Marco Aurelio, near the ancient Roman gladiatorial landmark, an apartment building, and two businesses were evacuated, and the street temporarily closed, as firefighters, police and housing authorities carried out emergency structural checks.

And The Local reported in February 2018 that a massive ten meters (33 feet) deep sinkhole occurred in the Balduina district, a residential area northwest of Vatican City, into which seven parked cars fell, with 22 families being evacuated from the residential area.

Another angle of the floor unearthed by the Rome sinkhole in front of the Pantheon.

Why on Earth, does this sinkhole phenomena occur so frequently in Rome, and not in say Naples or Milan? After the January 2020 sinkhole, the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, told  TG24 News that technicians were at something of a loss trying to explain the geological causes of the incident, and she said sinkholes (known as  voragine) are a “major problem in central Rome.”

Traditionally, on average every year 30 fresh sinkholes, subsidence, and other collapses are recorded in Rome, but what is alarming, according to The Local, is that since 2008 the annual figure has “tripled.”

Searching for a cause, a 2018 Guardian article asked should we “blame the rain, the government or just geology,” not only for sinkholes but for increasing extreme weather events in Italy, in general?

The article opens with reference to a shocking statistic published in Roma Republica, that in the first four months of 2018, Rome suffered an astonishing “44 sinkholes,” once every two or three days, with an average of “90 sinkholes a year in Rome since 2010.”

Many blame the rain in Rome, because in 2018 it was the wettest six months in living memory, and this may have had catastrophic effects on Rome’s geology, as the city is founded upon a floodplain, and most of it still rests on a sandy, soft soil.

Water finds no resistance in penetrating this permeable substrate, especially now that its gravitational path of destruction is assisted with the cracks caused by the vibrations of thousands of cars, trucks, and scooters buzzing over the aquaplane.

In an attempt to safeguard the city’s residents, or at least to appear to be doing something to support what is a catastrophically neglected city, in 2018, it was announced that a  multi-million-euro plan would be launched to fix its streets, but what was reported as ‘slow progress’ has now ground to a halt as Italian emergency authorities are presently struggling to build scaffolding around the perimeters of much more life-threatening, medical sinkhole.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

4,200-year-old burial of Bronze Age chieftain discovered under UK skate park

4,200-year-old burial of Bronze Age chieftain discovered under UK skate park

GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND—BBC reports that two Bronze Age burials situated within a circular ditch were unearthed in southwestern England by a team including Andy Hood of Foundations Archaeology.

The first burial, placed in the center of the circle, contained the remains of a possible chieftain, who had been placed in the grave on his side in a crouched position.

The skulls and hooves of four cattle, a copper dagger with a whale-bone pommel, a stone wrist guard, an amber bead, and a flint and iron pyrite for starting fires were also found in the grave.

An excavation of the chieftain’s burial

The second grave, found near the first, held the remains of an older man placed in a seated position, and the skull and hooves of one animal.

Radiocarbon dating of the burials indicates the men lived around 4,200 years ago, and the artifacts in both burials indicate the men might have been members of the Beaker culture.

“It’s quite a significant investment of wealth to go into the ground,” Hood added. “There’s a chance that these animals were slaughtered as part of a ceremony related to the burial.”

The age and style of the burials, as well as artifacts found near the chieftain, suggest that these men were part of the Beaker culture, named for its beaker-like ceramic pots.

According to recent DNA studies, the people in this culture arrived from mainland Europe around 2400 B.C. They were an impressive lot who might have been the first to use copper and bronze in Britain, “so we think that their arrival is a fairly important moment in prehistory,” Hood said.

Some of the so-called “head and hoof” remains found in the chieftain’s burial.
The copper dagger that was found in the chieftain’s burial.

The Beaker culture commonly buried its dead with a “standard package” of grave goods: a beaker pot, a copper dagger, a stone wrist guard used by archers, a “strike-a-light kit,” amber beads and sometimes a cattle head and hoof offering, Hood said.

The chieftain had all these goods, except for the beaker pot, the archaeologists found. Because of the missing piece, “we think that this individual was a revered ‘specialist’ within Beaker society — somebody who wasn’t associated with the direct symbolism attached to the Beaker pot itself,” Hood said.

Even so, his grave goods were impressive and included: a copper dagger with a whale-bone pommel (the round knob at the end of the handle), a stone wrist guard, an amber bead, a flint and iron pyrite for starting a fire, and the cattle offerings.

The chieftain was buried at the center of a circular ditch that, at the time of burial, was a barrow, meaning that it had soil piled on top of it. Next to him, just off-center but still within the circular enclosure, were the remains of the older man, who was about 50 to 60 years old when he died. 

Other news outlets have speculated that this older man was a shaman who may have been sacrificed to help the chieftain in the afterlife, but there is no evidence to support those claims, Hood said.

“The idea of him being a ‘shaman’ was postulated by some British newspapers,” Hood said, adding that “there is no evidence that he was sacrificed.”

Still, the older man’s burial is odd. “He was buried in an unusual ‘seated’ position — his legs were presently extending downwards towards the base of his grave pit,” Hood said. “We haven’t found a direct parallel elsewhere in Bronze Age Britain.”

Most people buried in Bronze Age Britain were arranged in a crouched position on their sides, as the chieftain was. So the older man’s proximity to the chieftain, as well as the man’s lack of a Beaker “package” and strange burial position, may remain a mystery for the ages. 

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

New Virtual Reality Experience Transports Viewer Inside Spanish Paleolithic Caves Seen By Only 50 People In 16,000 Years

New Virtual Reality Experience Transports Viewer Inside Spanish Paleolithic Caves Seen By Only 50 People In 16,000 Years

In the caves of La Garma mountain in Northern Spain, there were only 50 other people, a novel archeological site with one of the most important international collections of rock art and archeological stays in the Paleolithic age.

Screen shot from virtual reality revel in within La Garma caves in Northern Spain

La Garma is a UNESCO World Heritage site as part of the Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art in northern Spain. La Garma houses five levels of caves and is considered the most important Paleolithic archaeological discovery since the mid-twentieth century. 

The cave’s lower gallery, which was discovered in 1995 features the world’s biggest example of paleolithic flooring. The flooring and ancient stays inside the cave have been neatly preserved through a landslide 16,000 years ago that sealed off the cave to the elements.

Two decades after the rediscovery and preliminary learning about the lower gallery at La Garma, scientists saw the need for additional study of the cave’s underground system-its microclimate and microbiology-and assessment of the state of conservation of the rock art.

Still of La Garma cave flooring in Memoria VR revel in

With the support of American shoe dressmaker Stuart Weitzman, who has been producing footwear in Spain for the reason that the 1970s, the World Monuments Fund has been working on a project to conserve and promote La Garma with Morena Films and Overlat studio.

A multidisciplinary team of experts have been studying the cave’s ecosystem and archaeological remains. Two short documentaries and a virtual reality experience have been produced to allow people to enjoy and learn about this extraordinary site.

Now anyone can “travel” to Northern Spain on a virtual consult with those hardly ever visited Spanish caves Memoria: Stories of La Garma, through award-winning VR director Rafael Pavón, is a new virtual reality revel in simply introduced through Viveport, the arena’s first limitless VR subscription service.

This VR experience is really the only way to learn about these fascinating caves due to the danger of the site.

Only 50 people have physically been able to enter them in the past 16,000 years and the caves are off-limits to the public but by mapping them for virtual experiences, they can now be viewed virtually by anyone.

Still from Memoria of cave drawings of animals in La Garma caves

Memoria premiered in 2019 on the Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria in Santander and it used to be this museum’s staff who worked with Rafael Pavon on the VR experience.

Narrated by Geraldine Chaplin (The Crown, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), this VR film is an incredible story from the Paleolithic era about a community who on returning from hunting discovered that the La Garma caves they called home had been blocked off by a landslide, creating a time capsule.

Thousands of relics, from cave-wall paintings of animals and signs to animal bones, seashells, and artifacts carved in bone, remained undisturbed and intact for 16,000 years.

So what is the VR experience like, what equipment is required and how much does it cost? The Memoria: Stories of La Garma VR experience is impressive and is compatible with most VR headsets.

The user can “walk” around three spaces of the cave, captured with millimetric precision using laser scanners and photogrammetry.

The viewer will see paleolithic hunters, a mother, and her child and a cave lion who made his way deep into the cave to live his final days.

You can watch videos about the caves but the nature of VR means people can physically explore the caves, virtually pick things up, and become immersed, as if they were in the caves.

A UK viewer of the content makes an onetime purchase for 4.56 from Viveport and then can view the experience repeatedly.

Alternatively, Viveport has an unlimited VR subscription service called Infinity that can be purchased as a monthly ( 12.99) or annual subscription (works out as 8.99/month), allowing unlimited access to their entire range of content.

EUROPE, HUNGARY, WORLD

Deformed ‘alien’ skulls offer clues about life during the Roman Empire’s collapse

Deformed ‘alien’ skulls offer clues about life during the Roman Empire’s collapse

The multicultural change between local residents and migrant Romans is documented by researchers studying deformed skulls from an old cemetery in Hungary.

Mönzs-Icsei dülő cemetery, founded in 430 AD and abandoned in 470 AD, in the settlement of Mözs near Szekszárd in the Pannonia region of present-day Hungary, was created in the late Roman period at the beginnings of Europe’s Migration Period when the barbarian Huns invaded Central Europe forcing the Romans to abandon their Pannonian provinces and retreat from modern-day Western Hungary.

The site was recently excavated by a new study integrating experimental isotope analysis and biological anthropology, which determine that seeking refuge from the Huns, new foreign groups arrived in Pannonia and integrated with the remaining local Romanized population.

The upper part of the body in Grave 43, during excavation. The girl had an artificially deformed skull; she was buried with a necklace, earrings, a comb, and glass beads.

These migrant waves sparked a period of rapid-onset, and chaotic cultural transitions, and the deformed skeletons recovered from Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery held important clues about life and death during this turbulent time.

The new paper was published April 29, 2020, in the open-access journal  PLOS ONE  by Dr. Corina Knipper from the Curt-Engelhorn-Center for Archaeometry, Germany, István Koncz, Tivadar Vida from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues.

The authors first conducted an archaeological survey of the 5th-century cemetery, and then they combined isotope analysis with biological anthropology to interpret the burials.

What the pair of researchers found was a “remarkably diverse” ancient community consisting of two or three generations (96 burials total) of three distinctly different cultural groups.

The first was the founding, or local, group who were buried in brick-lined Roman-style graves, the second group comprised of 12 foreigners who arrived about a decade after the founders, and the third were a later culture, who blended Roman and various foreign traditions.

The brick-lined burial of Grave 54 represents late Antique traditions, which prevailed among the supposed founder generation of the cemetery.

The researchers think that the second group of 12 foreigners most probably established the ritual burial tradition of burying the deceased with elaborate grave goods, and also the practice of “cranial deformation,” which was found in 51 skeletons of adult males, females, and children.

Artificially deformed skull of an adult woman. Permanent binding during childhood caused the elongation of the braincase and the depressions in the bone.

Artificial cranial deformation, or modification, is commonly called head flattening, or head binding. This ancient form of body alteration in which a human child’s skull is deformed with blocks of wood bound to the skull under a constant force, was practiced on every continent of the prehistoric world.

However, Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery represents one of the largest concentrations of this ancient aesthetic cultural phenomenon in the region; a practice that was generally reserved for societal elites.

Buckle in, it’s time for the science bit: according to researcher Doug Dvoracek from the Centre of Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia , who was not involved in the new study, strontium isotopic ratios are widely used as indicators of provenance, residential origins and migration patterns of ancestral humans, in an archaeological context, where it provides “links to the land where food was grown or grazed.”

A number of deformed skulls used in the study.

The two researchers’ data showed the strontium isotope ratios measured on skeletons at the Mözs-Icsei dülő cemetery were “significantly more variable” than the prehistoric burials and animal remains excavated at other archaeological sites in the same geographic region in the Carpathian Basin.

In conclusion, the scientists say their isotopic analysis indicates most of Mözs’ adult population had lived elsewhere during their childhood and had migrated to Pannonia as teens and adults.

Moreover, carbon and nitrogen isotope data attest to what the scientists say were “remarkable contributions of millet” in the human diet.

Millets are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses that were grown as cereal crops or grains for human food and fodder.

What ancient cultures who grew millets observed, but didn’t know why they had stronger bones, bigger muscles, tougher warriors and fitter farmers, because not only is millet gluten-free, but it also has high levels of protein, fiber, and antioxidants contents.

In the 5th century, the forested mountain ranges and resource-rich agricultural plains of what is today Hungary made this region a choice destination for fleeing Romans and other asylum seekers and refugees displaced by expanding Germanic armies.

And while archaeological and anthropological research in Hungary will continue, for now, the researchers have established that after the decline of the Roman Empire at least one community briefly emerged in Pannonia comprising local and Roman incomers who not only shared the same geographical space, but they blended and infused their burial rituals and traditions into a new multicultural system of internment.

CROATIA, EUROPE, WORLD

Nomadic Warriors’ Remains Unearthed in Croatia

Nomadic Warriors’ Remains Unearthed in Croatia

ZAGREB, CROATIA—Archaeology Org reports that the remains of an Avar warrior dating to the late seventh or early eighth century A.D.

Archaeologists have been found in a tomb in eastern Croatia, near the site of the Roman city of Cibalae. The Avars were Eurasian nomads who arrived in Europe in the sixth century A.D.

During archaeological studies at the city cemetery of Vinkovci, which had started before the coronavirus pandemic and resumed these days, and investigating Avar graves, discovered by workers who had been expanding burial plots.

The City museum archeologists have discovered remains of an Avar warrior and a set belt that can be dated to the turn of the 7th to the 8th century, which is, according to Vinkovci city museum archaeologist Anita Rapan-Papesa, a very valuable find.

She said that previously there had been no Avar graves in Vinkovci, but that it was a known fact that there had been Avars in the area.

“When we observe the walled grave we have discovered, it turns out that Avars saw how Romans were buried so they made their own copies of Roman graves,” the archaeologist specializing in the Middle Ages said.

In addition to the walled grave, the archaeologists explored an ordinary earthen grave, where they found a warrior and his horse, with unique bridle ornaments.

Rapan-Papeša underscored that the border of the protected archaeological site in Vinkovci went through the middle of the field where the Avar graves had been unearthed and that they were the westernmost graves in the area of the former Roman city of Cibalae.

There are five more Avar graves to be explored, and as the work on expanding burial plots in the city cemetery in Vinkovci continues, further archaeological research will continue, as well.

CROATIA, EUROPE, WORLD

2,000-Year-Old Boat Unearthed in Croatia

2,000-Year-Old Boat Unearthed in Croatia

POREČ, CROATIA—According to an Archaeology org report, a 16-foot boat held together with rope and wooden pegs have been uncovered at the waterfront in the city of Poreč, which is located on the western coast of the Istrian Peninsula.

The boat is estimated to date to the first century A.D. “This finding is significant because it is well preserved and has many elements that are very rarely seen,” said archaeologist Bartolić Sirotić of the Regional Museum of Poreč.

The most important archaeological discovery in the last 30 years is that the boat is well preserved and has many rare elements.

At the very end of the Porec waterfront on the Porta de Mar site, at the intersection of the waterfront with Cardo Maximus street close to the former Kompas building the old wooden boat was found

The first of these boats was located in Pula. This is the third such boat found on the mainland in Istria and the first in Poreč. The boat was made by a sewing technique, which was characteristic of the northern Adriatic area.

“It is a Roman sewn ship from the 1st century AD. The technique of sewing the ship is known from earlier periods, from the time of Histra.

One of the oldest boats of this type was found at the site of Zambratija near Umag. This specimen from Poreč is one of three boats found on land that are not part of an underwater archaeological survey,” Bartolić Sirotić, an archaeologist from the Regional Museum of Poreč, told Jutarnji list before adding.

“This finding is significant because it is well preserved and has many elements that are very rarely seen. These are primarily the formwork, ribs, and keel. In years, it will be possible to make a preliminary reconstruction of the vessel.”

The discovered boat is five meters long, although an archeologist revealed to the Jutarnji list that it was in fact a bit longer. It is 1.70 meters wide and had a sail.

It was well preserved because it was at a certain depth in the soil and could not be penetrated by oxygen. Certainly, a significant role in its conservation was played by the sludge with which it was covered.

“All this preserved it and the wood was not destroyed. We are now conducting research. Every stitch that is made is recorded.

The sewing technique is such that we have ropes that are tied with rope and sewn through holes that insert wooden nails called spots. And after that, the ribs, which are connected with this plate by the big wooden nails, are put on,” Bartolić Sirotić adds.

The archaeologist points out that the very context of the findings is very interesting because Poreč was once an ancient colony.

Excavations also show what the waterfront of Poreč once looked like. It was more recessed and lower than the present. The boat was found at an ancient pier.