Skeletons: Remains of 240 people under the Haverfordwest store
The remains of more than 240 people, including children, have been unearthed by archaeologists working on the remnants of a medieval priory found beneath a former department store.
The “hugely significant” discovery was made under the old Ocky White building in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. Archaeologists believe the ruins are from St Saviour’s Priory, founded by a Dominican order of monks in about 1256.
One expert said it offered a “window into medieval Haverfordwest”.
Ocky White was a popular store for more than a century before its riverside premises closed in 2013.
Some skulls have been found with injuries consistent with having been in battle, according to the experts
Site supervisor Andrew Shobbrook, from Dyfed Archaeological Trust, described the priory as a significant complex of buildings with dormitories, scriptoriums – rooms devoted to writing and manuscripts – stables and a hospital.
“It’s quite a prestigious place to be buried. You have a range of people, from the wealthy to general townsfolk,” he said.
It is believed that the graveyard could have been used until the early 18th Century.
Archaeologists believe the ruins are from a 13th Century priory, including a hospital
About half of the remains are those of children, which is said to be a reflection of their high mortality rate at the time.
All the bones will be analysed by a specialist before being reburied on the consecrated ground nearby.
Some of the remains have been found with head injuries, consistent with having been in battle, and the wounds could have been caused by arrows or musket balls, according to Mr Shobbrook.
Hundreds of remains and artefacts have been unearthed
Tiles have also been found at the site
It is believed that the graveyard could have been used until the early 18th Century
One theory is that the victims could date from an attack led by Owain Glyndŵr, who was the last native Welsh person to hold the title Prince of Wales.
It was a joint assault by Welsh and French forces, who had united to battle the English occupation of Wales.
“We know that the town was besieged in 1405 by Owain Glyndŵr and they could be victims of that conflict,” said Mr Shobbrook.
The remains and other finds, including tiles, are being stored at a nearby disused shop after being cleaned and dried.
Archaeologists Andrew Shobbrook and Gaby Lester say the finds are significant
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be involved in something so big,” said archaeologist Gaby Lester.
“The site is showing itself to be a massive part of the history of Haverfordwest and Pembrokeshire.
“It can be slightly overwhelming at times but it’s also quite humbling to be part of that person’s journey.”
The site is being redeveloped to become a food emporium, bar and rooftop terrace.
Unlike the world’s great metropolitan centres, ghost towns don’t usually enter sister-city partnerships. But in a paddock north of Adelaide, at a place called Baker’s Flat, there are traces of a village that is, in some ways, an unacknowledged sibling to dozens of similarly half-forgotten hamlets on the other side of the Earth.
An archaeological dig of the remains of the Irish clachan, or village, at Baker’s Flat.
“You look at it now and it’s basically a field,” said Irish-Australian archaeologist Susan Arthure.
“There’s no evidence above the ground that all these people were there for nearly 100 years.”
The west of Ireland is today dotted with ghost villages: Settlements emptied by the starvation that swept the land in the 1840s and ’50s, when a combination of crop and political failure caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the migration of hundreds of thousands more.
Following the sea lanes, they flocked to London and Liverpool, Boston and Baltimore, Melbourne and Sydney, but also to sites such as Baker’s Flat. But unlike those abandoned villages in Ireland, this village owes its beginnings rather than its decline to the Great Famine.
“The famine was a driving force, it drove migration enormously,” Ms Arthure said.
“The people of Baker’s Flat were predominantly poor and Catholic, and at that time in South Australia they weren’t particularly well-favoured.”
Ms Arthure is currently putting the finishing touches on her PhD thesis through Flinders University. For her, the clachan remnants are partly a time machine and partly a treasure-trove: They offer glimpses of SA’s colonial past but are also a potential portal into the history of Ireland itself.
Whitewash, whiskey or sweat?
When Ms Arthure began digging at Baker’s Flat, she was expecting to — and did — unearth the remains of the thatched and whitewashed cottages so redolent of Irishness today.
But her most recent research focused on a distinctive round structure that was buried beneath scrap metal.
After initially thinking it may have been for making whitewash, Ms Arthure discounted that hypothesis because “there was no evidence at all of burning or preparing lime” — the basic ingredient in the paint.
Instead, her suspicions shifted to another typically Irish liquid.
“I thought perhaps it might have been an area for a poitín still, where people were distilling illegal whiskey,” Ms Arthure said.
“But one of the roads at the back of Baker’s Flat runs quite close to that area, so it’s not hidden enough.”
At a loss, she consulted experts in Ireland and one of them suggested a sweathouse.
“Sweathouses were very common in Ireland up until probably famine times,” Ms Arthure explained.
“They would be used to deal with illness, to help with rheumatic or arthritic pain, or with fever.”
These semi-subterranean and beehive-like buildings largely died out when modern medicines became more widely available and have “faded from memory” even in the Emerald Isle.
“Given all of the help people have given me, it would be really nice to be able to reciprocate by saying, ‘Here is some information from the SA landscape that maybe can shed some light on sweathouses in Ireland,'” Ms Arthure said.
“What is really exciting about the one here at Baker’s Flat is that we can look not only at how people were following the same traditions, but how they were adapting.”
From heyday to decline
Part of the appeal of Baker’s Flat lay in its proximity to Kapunda’s copper mine, which provided work for the local community. At its peak, as many as 500 people were living there — including a large population from County Clare in the west of Ireland, which was hardest hit by the famine.
Artefacts from the site reveal the richness of its cultural life. In addition to coins, buttons and brooches, there were buckles embossed with cricketers, seemingly in recognition of the local team that was dubbed Hibernian.
“It’s not very well known but, in the 19th century, cricket was one of the most popular sports in Ireland,” Ms Arthure said.
During her research, she identified about 145 family names linked to Baker’s Flat, including Driscoll, Donnellan, McInerney and Conolan.
As those families left for greener pastures, the Baker’s Flat clachan fell into decline and then desuetude, which left only a certain Ms O’Callahan as the last surviving resident.
Local historian Peter Swann, who is 84, recalls visiting her when he was a boy.
“There were only ruins then, except for one old house that this old lady lived in,” he said.
“She lived out there on her own. If you look there now, you see nothing. Everything’s gone.”
Three-quarters of a century before the Irish famine, in an act of astonishing literary prescience, the Anglo-Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith produced an epic called The Deserted Village.
A painted scene from Goldsmith’s poem today hangs in the Art Gallery of SA, and the following quatrain could easily serve as an epitaph for Baker’s Flat and countless sites across Ireland:
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,
The mournful peasant leads his humble band;
And while he sinks, without one arm to save,
The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.
However, there is a crucial difference between the abandoned villages of Ireland and the clachan at Baker’s Flat.
If the former were sites of sorrow, the latter was emphatically a place of security, vitality and survival.
A new study published on October 17, 2022, in the journal PNAS, led by a CNRS researcher, uses zinc isotope analysis for the first time to determine the place of Neanderthals in the food chain. The results obtained suggest that they would indeed have been carnivores.
Were Neanderthals carnivores? Scientists have not yet decided on the question. If certain studies of dental calculus of individuals coming from the Iberian peninsula could suggest that they were large consumers of plants, other research carried out on non-Iberian sites seemed rather indicate an almost exclusive consumption of meat.
Thanks to new analytical techniques applied to a molar from an individual of this species, researchers 1 have demonstrated that the Neanderthals at the Gabasa site in Spain seemed to be carnivores.
Until then, to try to define an individual’s place in the food chain, scientists generally had to extract proteins and analyze the isotopes of nitrogen present in the collagen of bones.
However, this method is often only applicable in temperate environments, and rarely on samples over 50,000 years old. When these conditions are not met, the analysis of nitrogen isotopes is very complex, if not impossible. This was particularly the case for the molar from the Gabasa site, studied here.
Faced with these constraints, Klervia Jaouen, a researcher at the CNRS, and her colleagues have this time analyzed the isotopic ratios of zinc contained in dental enamel, a mineral resistant to all forms of degradation. This is the first time this method has been used to try to identify the diet of a Neanderthal.
The lower the proportions of zinc isotopes in the bones, the more likely they are to belong to a carnivore.
This measurement was also carried out on animal bones from the same period and geographical area, both on carnivores such as the lynx or the wolf, and on herbivores such as the rabbit or the chamois. As a result, the Neanderthal to whom this Gabasa tooth belonged would have been carnivorous and did not consume the blood of its prey.
According to broken bones found at the site and isotopic data, this individual would also have eaten the bone marrow of its prey, without consuming the bones.
Other chemical tracers show that he was weaned before he was two years old. Analyzes also show that he would probably have died where he had lived as a child.
Compared to previous techniques, this new method, by analyzing zinc isotopes, makes it possible to better distinguish omnivores from carnivores.
The scientists hope to reproduce the experiment on other individuals, coming from other sites to confirm their conclusions, in particular on the Payre site where new research has begun.
The First Neanderthal molar analyzed for this study
Excavation work at the Gabasa site, in Spain
Bibliography
A Neandertal dietary conundrum: new insights provided by tooth enamel Zn isotopes from Gabasa, Spain . Klervia Jaouen, Vanessa Villalba Mouco, Geoff M. Smith, Manuel Trost, Jennifer Leichliter, Tina Lüdecke, Pauline Méjean, Stéphanie Mandrou, Jérôme Chmeleff, Danaé Guiserix, Nicolas Bourgon, Fernanda Blasco, Jéssica Mendes Cardoso, Camille Duquenoy, Zineb Moubtahij, Domingo C. Salazar Garcia, Michael Richards, Thomas Tütken, Jean Jacques Hublin, Pilar Utrilla, and Lourdes Montes, PNAS , October 17, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109315119
Dairy Fat Detected in Neolithic Pottery from Central Europe
A new study has shown milk was used by the first farmers from Central Europe in the early Neolithic era around 7,400 years ago, advancing humans’ ability to gain sustenance from milk and establishing the early foundations of the dairy industry.
The international research, led by the University of Bristol and published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), deployed a pioneering technique to date dairy fat traces preserved in the walls of pottery vessels from the 54th Century BC.
This method targets fatty acids from animal fat residues, making it uniquely suited to pinpointing the introduction of new foodstuffs in prehistoric times.
Part of a decorative LBK ceramic pot used for food storage from the Ensisheim site in Alsace, France.
Part of an LBK ceramic pot used for food storage from the Colmar site in Alsace, France.
LBK ceramics from the Alsace region on display at the Historic Museum of Mulhouse, Mulhouse France.
Lead author Dr Emmanuelle Casanova, who conducted the research while completing her PhD in archaeological chemistry at the University of Bristol, said: “It is amazing to be able to accurately date the very beginning of milk exploitation by humans in prehistoric times.
The development of agropastoralism transformed prehistoric human diet by introducing new food commodities, such as milk and milk products, which continues to the present day.”
These settlers of South East, East, and West Europe were the earliest Neolithic farming groups in Central Europe, known as the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture.
The findings of this research showed some of the very first settlers in the region were using milk at scale.
This work was part of the European Research Council (ERC) NeoMilk project led by Professor Richard Evershed FRS of the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.
His team analysed more than 4,300 pottery vessels from 70 LBK settlements for their food residues. The results revealed considerable variation in milk use across the region, with only 65 percent of sites presenting evidence of dairy fats in ceramic vessels, suggesting milk use, while common, was not universally adopted by these early farmers.
Focussing on the sites and ceramics with dairy residues, the researchers produced around 30 new radiocarbon dates to chart the advent of dairy exploitation by LBK farmers. These new dates correspond to the earliest LBK settlements during the middle of the 6th Millenium BC.
Co-lead author Professor Evershed said: “This research is hugely significant as it provides new insights into the timing of major changes in human food procurement practices, as they evolved across Europe. It provides clear evidence that dairy foods were in wide circulation in the Early Neolithic, despite variations in the scale of activity.”
The study was conducted in collaboration with chemists from the University of Bristol and archaeologists from the Universities of Gdańsk, Paris 1, Strasbourg, Leiden, and Adam Mickiewicz, the Dobó István Castle Museum, Historic England, and the LVR-State Service for Archaeological Heritage, which directed excavations of the studied sites.
DNA Analysis Identifies Neanderthal Family Members
The first snapshot of a Neanderthal community has been pieced together by scientists who examined ancient DNA from fragments of bone and teeth unearthed in caves in southern Siberia.
The remains were found in caves in southern Siberia.
Researchers analysed DNA from 13 Neanderthal men, women and children and found an interconnecting web of relationships, including a father and his teenage daughter, another man related to the father, and two second-degree relatives, possibly an aunt and her nephew.
All of the Neanderthals were heavily inbred, a consequence, the researchers believe, of the Neanderthals’ small population size, with communities scattered over vast distances and numbering only about 10 to 30 individuals.
Laurits Skov, the first author on the study at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, said the fact that the Neanderthals were alive at the same time was “very exciting” and implied that they belonged to a single social community.
Neanderthal remains have been recovered from numerous caves across western Eurasia – territory the heavy-browed humans occupied from about 430,000 years ago until they became extinct 40,000 years ago. It has previously been impossible to tell whether Neanderthals found at particular sites belonged to communities or not.
“Neanderthal remains in general, and remains with preserved DNA in particular, are extremely rare,” said Benjamin Peter, a senior author on the study in Leipzig. “We tend to get single individuals from sites often thousands of kilometres, and tens of thousands of years apart.”
In the latest work, researchers including Svante Pääbo, who won this year’s Nobel prize in medicine for breakthrough studies on ancient genomes, examined DNA from the remains of Neanderthals found in the Chagyrskaya cave and nearby Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia.
Neanderthals sheltered in the caves about 54,000 years ago, seeking cover to feast on the ibex, horse and bison they hunted as the animals migrated along the river valleys the caves overlook. Beyond Neanderthal and animal bones, tens of thousands of stone tools were also found.
Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists describe how the ancient DNA points to the Neanderthals living at the same time, with some being members of the same family.
Further analysis revealed more genetic diversity in Neanderthal mitochondria – the tiny battery-like structures found inside cells which are only passed down the maternal line – than in their Y chromosomes, which are passed down from father to son.
The most likely explanation, the researchers say, is that female Neanderthals travelled from their home communities to live with male partners. Whether force was involved is not a question DNA can answer, however.
“Personally, I don’t think there is particularly good evidence that Neanderthals were much different from early modern humans that lived at the same time,” said Peter.
“We find that the community we study was likely very small, perhaps 10 to 20 individuals and that the wider Neanderthal populations in the Altai mountains were quite sparse,” Peter said. “Nevertheless, they managed to persevere in a rough environment for hundreds of thousands of years, which I think deserves great respect.”
Dr Lara Cassidy, an assistant professor in genetics at Trinity College Dublin, called the study a “milestone” as “the first genomic snapshot of a Neanderthal community”.
“Understanding how their societies were organised is important for so many reasons,” Cassidy said. “It humanises these people and gives rich context to their lives. But also, down the line if we have more studies like this, it may also reveal unique aspects of the social organisation of our own Homo sapiens ancestors. This is crucial to understanding why we are here today and Neanderthals are not.”
The ancient Golden Belt Discovered in the Czech Republic
A small farmer in the Opava region in the northeast of Czechia made a unique discovery while working in a field, unearthing a golden belt dating back to the Bronze Age. The ornamented piece, which is exceptionally well-preserved, should go on display at the Bruntál museum at the end of next year.
The golden belt had been lying underground for thousands of years before being unearthed by a farmer while he was harvesting beetroots.
The founder, who wishes to remain in anonymity, discovered the ancient piece of apparel at the end of September and immediately contacted archaeologists from the Silesian Museum in Opava.
Jiří Juchelka, head of the museum’s archaeology department, says that as soon as he saw a photo of the item, he knew it was something exceptional.
The first hypothesis was that the thin golden sheet of metal, which is around 50 centimetres long, was a tiara. However, after examining the object in greater detail, experts now believe it was actually part of a belt:
“It is decorated with raised concentric circles and topped with rose-shaped clasps at the ends. We realized that it was too long to fit on someone’s head. So we actually think it is not a tiara, but something much rarer – a part of a belt.
“Belts at the time were made of leather and this was strapped to its front part. It was crumpled when the finder found it, probably as a result of agricultural activity, so it is a miracle it has been so well preserved. It may be missing a few tiny parts, but otherwise, it is in perfect condition.”
The thin metal sheet is made mostly of gold, along with some silver and traces of copper and iron. A preliminary analysis places its origin around the 14th century BC, says Tereza Alex Kilnarová, conservator at the Museum of Bruntál.
“It is estimated to be from the middle to the late Bronze Age, but it is only a preliminary determination based on the decoration.
“Similar decorative ornaments appear in more than one prehistoric culture and therefore more detailed research and analysis of the metal is needed.
“It probably belonged to someone in a high position in society, because items of such value were rarely produced at the time. That’s why we are talking about someone more esteemed.”
While the monetary value of the belt is yet to be determined, it is already clear that the object has an incalculable cultural and historical value, says Ms Kilnarová:
“Such objects are rarely found even during excavations, so it is a really unique discovery, not only in our region but all over Czechia. I think it is safe to say that it will be one of the most valuable objects that will have on display in our museum.”
The rare item, which will become part of the Museum of Bruntál collections, will now be thoroughly examined and conserved, before going on display for the public.
Connemara-based archaeologist Michael Gibbons now says there is conclusive evidence the Carraig á Mhaistin stone structure at Rostellan on the eastern shore of Cork Harbour is a megalithic dolmen.
New research looks set to answer a long-standing question about the status of a mysterious tomb-like structure uncovered in Cork Harbour many years ago.
Archaeologists have been split as to whether it was prehistoric or a more recent 19th-century “folly”.
However, Connemara-based archaeologist Michael Gibbons now says there is conclusive evidence the Carraig á Mhaistin stone structure at Rostellan on the eastern shore of Cork Harbour is a megalithic dolmen.
Mr Gibbons has also discovered a previously unrecognised cairn close to the dolmen which would have been concealed by rising sea levels, and which he is reporting to the National Monuments Service.
The Carraig á Mhaistin dolmen at Rostellan is listed by some guides as Ireland’s only inter-tidal portal tomb.
In fact, there are two such inter-tidal tombs, Mr Gibbons says.
The small chamber at the tomb stands at the western end of the cairn, which is 25m long and 4.5m wide.
He says doubt about Carraig á Mhaistin’s age meant it was not included in the State’s survey of megalithic tombs of Ireland conducted by Professor Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin over 40 years ago.
“At that time, it was suggested that it could have a folly or type of ornamental structure commissioned by local gentry at the nearby Rostellan Castle estate, and dating from the 19th century,” Mr Gibbons says.
The small chamber at the tomb stands at the western end of the cairn, which is 25m long and 4.5m wide. Picture: Michael Gibbons
His recent field trip to Rostellan has thrown up additional details, including the discovery that the small chamber at the tomb stands at the western end of the cairn, which is 25m long and 4.5m wide.
This is significant, as a portal and court tombs “occasionally have intact long cairns which are both intended to provide structural support to the chamber itself, and to enhance visual presence in the landscape”, he says.
The cairn is “partially entombed in estuarine mud” and it is probable a great deal more of the structure is concealed below the surface, Mr Gibbons says in a report he has written on the monument.
He notes it is not known for certain when the area was inundated by rising sea levels, but levels at this part of the Cork Harbour shoreline are believed to have been stable for 2,000 years.
Mr Gibbons says the only other known inter-tidal portal tomb on the island is at “the Lag” on the river Ilen, between Skibbereen and Baltimore in West Cork.
Portal tombs or dolmens were often known as “Diarmuid and Gráinne’s bed”, being associated in folklore as resting places for the fugitive couple who were pursued by Fionn mac Cumhaill, Gráinne’s husband.
Mr Gibbons says many were built close to the coast, but the two known tombs in the inter-tidal zone may have been part of a wider network which did not survive the “high energy environment” of the Atlantic seaboard.
He says recent extreme weather has destroyed Sherkin Island’s sole megalithic tomb on Slievemore townland, just 3m to 4m above the high water mark.
Mr Gibbons says the Sherkin structure had been an example of a “very fine wedge tomb”, but it was initially severely hit by the storms of 2014, which caused substantial damage to coastal archaeology in a number of locations.
What remains of the Sherkin wedge tomb has been almost entirely eroded away by recent storms, but there are some structural stones remaining which would warrant a rescue excavation, he says.
Possible Burial Place of St. Nicholas Uncovered in Turkey
A fresco of Jesus in a church in Turkey’s Antalya region hinted at the exact location of Saint Nicholas’ burial.
Archaeologists in southern Turkey have just uncovered the original burial place of Father Christmas himself, formally known as St. Nicholas, but whose modern nicknames of Santa Claus, Saint Nick and Kris Kringle are known by children the world over.
While researchers already knew that the saint’s body was buried in the fourth century A.D. church in Turkey’s Antalya province, the holy man’s remains were stolen around 700 years after he died, so the specific spot where he was originally interred was a mystery.
Now, clues gathered during a new excavation of this church, including the ecclesiastical building’s similarity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the placement of a fresco depicting Jesus, hint at exactly where St. Nick’s body was likely laid to rest.
Located on Turkey’s southern coast, the modern town of Demre boasts the Church of St. Nicholas, built in A.D. 520 on top of an older church where the Christian saint served as bishop in the fourth century A.D. Then known as Myra, the small town was a popular Christian pilgrimage spot following St. Nicholas’ death and burial there in A.D. 343.
Very little is known about Nicholas’s life, but legends abound — he is said to have rescued three girls from prostitution, to have chopped down a demon-possessed tree, to have resurrected three murdered children who were pickled in brine, and to have gotten into a fist-fight during the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, according to Britannica(opens in new tab). And, of course, Nicholas was said to have frequently given away his inherited wealth anonymously to the poor, eventually leading to the legend of St. Nick as Santa Claus.
Unfortunately, in A.D. 1087, “some wise and illustrious men of Bari [Italy]… discussed together how they might take away from the city of Myra… the body of the most blessed confessor of Christ, Nicholas,” according to a contemporaneous manuscript translated from Latin by late medievalist Charles W. Jones.
Their plan was to “break open the floor of the church and carry away the holy corpse.” The group succeeded, carting off most of the skeletal remains of St. Nicholas, and leaving just a few bones and a broken sarcophagus in Myra.
In spite of this desecration, the church of St. Nicholas in Demre itself has survived for more than a millennium, with archaeological excavation beginning at the end of the 20th century.
Through this work, researchers discovered the foundations of the earliest church, covered by many feet of sand and silt. Last week, Osman Eravşar, chairman of the Antalya Cultural Heritage Preservation Regional Board, announced the discovery of the location of St. Nicholas’s tomb at the base of a fresco of Jesus.
In an interview(opens in new tab) with the Turkish news organization DHA (Demirören Haber Ajansı), Eravşar noted that the current excavations have revealed “the floor on which St. Nicholas’s feet stepped” from the original church.
“This is an extremely important discovery, the first find from that period,” DHA’s English coverage quoted Eravşar as saying.
The sarcophagus of Saint Nicholas is located in a church named after the saint in the down of Demre, Turkey. The saints’s bones were stolen centuries ago, but the sarcophagus survived. New research has pinpointed the exact burial spot where St. Nick was originally interred.
The original burial place of St. Nicholas has also been found, according to Eravşar. When the Bari contingent removed the saint’s bones in the 11th century, they also shoved some sarcophagi aside, obscuring their original location. Eravşar told DHA that “his sarcophagus must have been placed in a special place, and that is the part with three apses covered with a dome.
There we have discovered the fresco depicting the scene where Jesus is holding a Bible in his left hand and making the sign of blessing with his right hand.” A marble floor tile with the Greek words for “as grace” could mark his exact grave.
Supporting that hypothesis is the shape of the church itself. Just as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has an unfinished dome on top, so does the Church of St. Nicholas at Myra.
When it was restored by Emperor Alexander II of Russia in the 1860s, the dome was never completed. This unfinished dome may have been a purposeful attempt to link St. Nicholas with the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and ascension into the sky.
“It’s not unusual for churches to be built atop one another,” William Caraher, an archaeologist at the University of North Dakota with a speciality in early Christian architecture, who was not involved in the excavation, told Live Science in an email. “In fact, the presence of an earlier church on a site has been a reason to build a church since Early Christian and Byzantine times.”
But Caraher thinks that the marble floor tile with Greek letters could be from some other context, reused possibly in antiquity because of the common word “charis” (grace) etched into it.
Caraher noted that St. Nicholas is significant in Orthodox and Catholic traditions, with churches and chapels dedicated to him throughout the Mediterranean. “I think many people — from eager kiddos on Christmas Eve to world-weary science reporters and grizzled archaeologists — have at some point in their lives hoped to get a little glimpse of the real St. Nick,” Caraher said.
