A Mysterious Partially Submerged Structure in Ireland is a Prehistoric Tomb, New Research Finds
The Carraig á Mhaistin stone structure at Rostellan on the eastern shore of Cork Harbour, Ireland.
The tomb-like Carraig á Mhaistin stone structure, uncovered in Ireland’s Cork Harbour years ago, is now believed to be a megalithic dolmen.
Previously, experts have been unsure whether it was prehistoric or a 19th-century “folly.”
New research conducted by archaeologist Michael Gibbons indicated that the monument is in fact a megalithic dolmen.
A small chamber on the west side of an unknown cairn, a man-made stone stack marking a burial mound, measures 82 feet long by 15 feet wide. The cairn was previously concealed due to rising sea levels.
This is significant, as 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”, Gibbons told the Irish Examiner.
He believes that the cairn could extend well below the surface, “partially entombed in estuarine mud”.
It is unclear exactly when sea levels in the area rose, but they are believed to have been stable for the last 2,000 years.
There is only one other intertidal portal tomb on the island, and the Carraig á Mhaistin dolmen is one of three intertidal tombs in the country.
Among Irish folklore, portal tombs or dolmens were often known as Diarmuid and Gráinne’s bed—a final resting place for the fugitive couple who were pursued by Gráinne’s husband Fionn mac Cumhaill.
Many of these structures were built close to the coast; however, due to movement in the Atlantic ocean, many have not survived, including Sherkin Island’s sole megalithic tomb on Slievemore townland.
The Carraig á Mhaistin has not been previously included in the state’s survey of megalithic tombs in Ireland, conducted Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin more than forty years ago, due to doubt surrounding its age.
New study investigates the development of the Scandinavian gene pool over the latest 2000 years
A new study resolves the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia – encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age, and later periods.
Researchers investigated a 2,000-year genetic transect through Scandinavia spanning the Iron Age to the present, based on 48 new and 249 published ancient genomes and genotypes from 16,638 modern individuals.
A surprising increase of variation during the Viking period indicates that gene flow into Scandinavia was especially intense during this period.
An international study coordinated from Stockholm and Reykjavik investigates the development of the Scandinavian gene pool over the latest 2000 years. In this effort the scientists relied on historic and prehistoric genomes, and from material excavated in Scandinavia.
These ancient genomes were compared with genomic data from 16,638 contemporary Scandinavians. As the geographical origin and the datings were known for all these individuals, it was possible to resolve the development of the gene pool to a level never realised previously.
Archaeological excavation at Sandby Borg.
Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela at the Centre for Palaeogenetics*, who analyzed all the data and extracted some of the ancient DNA used in the study, explains: “With this level of resolution we not only confirm the Viking Age migration.
We are also able to trace it to the east Baltic region, the British-Irish Isles and southern Europe. But not all parts of Scandinavia received the same amounts of gene flow from these areas. For example, while British-Irish ancestry became widespread in Scandinavia the eastern-Baltic ancestry mainly reached Gotland and central Sweden.”
The gene pool bounced back after the Viking period
Another new discovery in this study was what happened to the gene pool after the Viking period. The scientists were surprised to find that it bounced back in the direction of what it looked like before the Viking period migration.
Professor Anders Götherström at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, who is a senior scientist on the study, is intrigued: “Interestingly, the non-local ancestry peaks during the Viking period while being lower before and after.
The drop in current levels of external ancestry suggests that the Viking-period migrants got less children, or somehow contributed proportionally less to the gene pool than the people who were already in Scandinavia.”
Yet a new discovery was the history of the northern Scandinavian gene pool. There is a genetic component in northern Scandinavia that is rare in central and western Europe, and scientists were able to track this component in northern Scandinavia through the latest 1000 years.
Underwater excavations of the ship Kronan.
Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela comments, “We suspected that there was a chronology to the northern Scandinavian gene pool, and it did indeed prove that a more recent influx of Uralic ancestry into Scandinavia define much of the northern gene pool. But if it is recent, it is comparatively so. For example, we know that this Uralic ancestry was present in northern Scandinavia as early as during the late Viking period”.
Based on well-known Swedish archaeological sites
The study is based on a number of well-known Swedish archaeological sites. For example, there are genomes from the 17th century warship Kronan, from the Viking and Vendel period boat burials in the lake Mälaren Valley, and from the migration period ring fortress Sandby borg on Öland.
Anders Götherström conclude: “We were working on a number of smaller studies on different archaeological sites. And at some point it just made sense to combine them into a larger study on the development of the Scandinavian gene pool.
The study, published today in Cell, is an international effort with several collaborators, but it was led by Dr Ricardo Rodríguez Varela and Professor Anders Götherstörm at Stockholm University, and Professor Agnar Helgason, and Kristjáan Moore at deCODE in Reykavijk.
The article “The genetic history of Scandinavia from the Roman Iron Age to the present” is published in Cell.
The facial reconstruction of the Cittiglio murder victim, who was killed sometime between the 11th and the 13th centuries in what seems to have been a surprise attack.
More than 700 years ago, a medieval “case of raw violence” ended a young man’s life with four sword blows to the head, according to a new study of the medieval “cold case.”
The brutality of the wounds suggests the murder may have been “a case of overkill,” study lead author Chiara Tesi, an anthropologist at the University of Insubria’s Center for Osteoarchaeology and Paleopathology in Italy, told Live Science. Tesi and her colleagues analyzed the victim’s skeletal remains with modern forensic techniques, including computed tomography (CT) — three-dimensional X-ray scans — and precision digital microscopy of the skull injuries.
“The individual was probably taken by surprise by the attacker” and was unable to properly protect his head, she said in an email. After initially attacking the victim from the front, the murderer seems to have chased the man as he turned, likely trying to escape, as the deepest wounds were inflicted from behind, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
Brutal murder
Archaeologists discovered the victim’s skeleton in 2006 at the church of San Biagio in Cittiglio, a small town in Italy’s northern Varese province.
The oldest parts of the church are thought to date from the eighth century A.D., but the battered skeleton was found in a tomb in an atrium built near the entrance in the 11th century; radiocarbon dating indicates the victim was buried there before A.D. 1260.
The new study suggests the victim was a man who was between 19 and 24 years old when he was murdered. A study of the excavation published in 2008(opens in new tab) in the Fasti Online journal noted some of his injuries, but Tesi said the new study has revealed further injuries and the sequence of the murder.
She said the young man likely blocked or dodged the assailant’s initial attack, though the first blow still caused a shallow lesion on the top of the skull.
As he turned away to escape, however, “the victim was then hit in rapid succession by two other strikes, one affecting the auricle [ear] region and the other the nuchal [back of the neck] region,” she said. “At the end, probably exhausted and face down, he was finally hit by a last blow to the back of the head that caused immediate death.” This “evident overkill” suggested there may have been a complex motive for the murder, Tesi said; such a frenzied attack appeared to show the attacker was determined to finish his deadly job.
The latest study found the murder victim was probably killed by four sword blows to the head; the first caused a slight wound, but the others seem to have killed him as he was trying to escape the attack.
Medieval remains
The new study shows that the injuries were all caused by the same bladed weapon — probably a steel sword — while the position of the wounds suggest the injuries were inflicted by a single assailant, she said.
The researchers scoured historical records in an attempt to determine the victim’s identity, but “we didn’t find anything,” Tesi said.
His prominent burial, however, suggests he may have been a member of the powerful De Citillio family that had originally established the church.
A healed wound on the victim’s forehead suggests that he had experience in warfare; while features of his right shoulder blade were probably caused by “the habitual practice of archery and the use of a bow from an early age,” Tesi said — possibly a sign that he had often gone hunting for sport.
To examine how the sword blows impacted by the victim’s now-decomposed soft tissues, the researchers created a reconstruction of the victim’s face. “We tested wound formation by placing a blade on the reconstructed head and replicating the blows received by the subject,” she said.
The reconstruction helped assess the severity of the injuries.
“They’re using the head as a way of showing these multiple wounds to the skull,” Caroline Wilkinson(opens in new tab), the director of the Face Lab(opens in new tab) at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, told Live Science. “It’s really interesting — a good use of forensic techniques to look at trauma to the head, and how those wounds have been caused.”
Wilkinson was not involved in the new study but has worked on reconstructing the faces of some of the victims of a medieval massacre of Jews in the English city of Norwich. Facial depictions “can create a personal narrative around human remains, rather than just looking at specimens in a glass box,” she said.
Tesi also believes that the reconstruction can help people relate to the victim.
“Seeing the face and eyes of a young man is definitely more emotional than simply looking at a skull,” she said.
Ancient Necropolis of 40 Tombs With Humans Buried in Pots Discovered in Corsica
An ancient necropolis with 40 tombs, including cylindrical jars filled with human remains, has been discovered on the French island of Corsica. The people buried in the cemetery range from infants to adults, the archaeologists said.
Located in the town of Île-Rousse on the island’s northern coast, the cemetery seems to have been used between the third and fifth centuries CE, a time in which the Roman Empire was gradually declining.
Many of the people were found buried inside amphoras, large vessels that would normally be used to carry goods such as olive oil, wine or pickles.
The design of the amphoras indicates that they are from North Africa, with some possibly being manufactured in Carthage.
Even so, the people buried in the necropolis, including those inside the amphoras, likely lived near the necropolis in Corsica, said Jean-Jacques Grizeaud, an archaeologist at the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) who led excavations at the site.
At the time, a lot of trade was happening across the Mediterranean, Grizeaud added.
Archaeologists also found that some of the burials were covered with terra-cotta tiles that the Romans called “tegulae” and “imbrices”. The Romans often used such tiles to cover the roofs of buildings and, at times, to cover burials.
The necropolis is located at the foot of the Immaculate Conception church constructed in 1893, the researchers said.
The head of one of the people buried.
Other burials found on the island, such as those at the sites of Mariana and Sant’Amanza, have been linked to buildings of worship, the researchers noted.
More research needs to be done to determine what ancient towns or cities were located near this necropolis.
“There is no real mention of a city in the ancient texts or, for example, in the map of [Corsica] made by Ptolemy,” a geographer who lived in the second century CE, Grizeaud said.
Over the next few months, archaeologists will conduct lab work to determine the people’s sexes, their exact ages and any illnesses or injuries they may have had, Grizeaud said.
World’s Oldest Settlement Plan Found in “Çatalhöyük”
With the beginning of the Holocene period, many lakes have dried up and have become suitable for settlement. It is one of the lake floors in the Konya Plain that dried up in the Holocene period. There have many mounds in this area.
One of the most important of these mounds is Çatalhöyük, which is undoubtedly located within the borders of Çumra province.
It probably owes its name to the fork-like shape of the two hills. Although there are two mounds, east and west, excavations continue in the west mound. Its inhabitants moved to the western mound when the river changed direction in the early chalcolithic period.
Çatalhöyük was discovered in 1958 by James Mellaart. Since 1993, excavations have been continued by Ian Hodder, a student of Mellaart, and if nowadays excavations are carried out by Assoc. Dr. Çiler Çilingiroğlu continues.
Eastern mound, BC. Eighteen layers of Neolithic settlements dating from 7400 to 6200 have been found. Layers 12 and 8 are dated to the first phase of the Early Neolithic (6500 – 6000 BC). After 6 layers it belongs to the second phase of early Neolithic.
The Chalcolithic Age layers in the western mound are dated between 6200 and 5200 BC.
Çatalhöyük
On the north and east walls of the building, a map that is thought to be the city plan of Çatalhöyük was unearthed during the 1963 excavations. This drawing, which is dated to 8200 years ago (age 6200 ± 97 BC as determined by radiocarbon dating method) is the first known map of the world.
Approximately 3 meters long and 90 cm. has a height. It is still exhibited in Ankara Anatolian Civilizations Museum.
Çatalhöyük has its own characteristics. Conservation of art, symbolism, social structure, living of too many people, bull cult, the burial of people, skulls, ancestral cult and house shapes, an egalitarian lifestyle is seen.
Interestingly, although they know of pottery making, they did not show intensive use of up to 5 layers. This is just a preference of those who live there. Probably because they had developed in woodworking, they did not want to change their traditional structure.
The residences they use are intertwined. Since no traces of war and destruction were visible, this might mean that intimacy involves an intense bond of kinship relations.
Houses were entered through roofs. Probably these roofs were used for socializing on hot days. It is thought that many jobs required for the home are here. These flat-roofed houses are now found in the South East.
Bull cult is widely seen in this mound.
The pictures made on the walls in the settlement, where the understanding of art is very developed, is remarkable. The depictions on the walls of the housing are hunting and dance scenes, human and animal paintings.
Animal pictures are animals such as vulture, leopard, various birds, deer, and lions. In addition, there are also motifs that can be called rug motifs dating back to 8800 years ago and are associated with today’s Anatolian rug motifs.
Bull horns and heads should be important to those living here. Many houses have reliefs made by plastering real bull heads with clay on the walls. The figurine finds are cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, bulls, dogs and single cattle horns.
There are Neolithic settlements older than Çatalhöyük in the Middle East. For example, Eriha is a Neolithic settlement a thousand years older than Çatalhöyük. Still, Çatalhöyük has different characteristics from older or contemporary settlements. One of the main differences is its population, which reaches ten thousand people.
According to Hodder, Çatalhöyük is “a center that carries the concept of village beyond logical dimensions”.
It was decided by UNESCO to be included in the World Heritage List in 2012.
SOURCE: Çatalhöyük Research Project, Çatalhöyük 2008 Report
YAZAR, M., 2008 “Anadolu’da Neolitik Dönem Sanatı ve Merkezleri”, Gazi Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Tarih Anabilim Dalı, Eskiçağ Tarihi Bilim Dalı Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Ankara
Remains of a 3,700-year-old domed oven were discovered in the ancient city of Troy
Remains of a 3,700-year-old domed oven were found in the ancient city of Troy, located in the Tevfikiye district of Çanakkale province, located in the northwestern part of Turkey.
Professor Rüstem Aslan, the head of the excavation, who unearthed the 5,500-year-old remains of the city, said it was the first time they had come across the remains of such a large domed oven during excavations this year.
The discovered domed oven bears traces of Anatolian culture. Troy’s connection with Anatolia was partly established by the findings of the German archaeologist Manfred Osman Korfmann, who led the excavations from 1988 to the early 2000s.
“The description that Korfmann made during his excavations that ‘Troy is Anatolia,’ was a major focus of the next 20 years of digging. Troy is an Anatolian culture,” said Professor Rüstem Aslan.
The area of the domed oven in Troy, Çanakkale, northwestern Türkiye.
Aslan told Anadolu Agency (AA) that further excavations would be conducted to uncover the architectural dimensions of Troy, emphasizing that it was “shaped by the Anatolian culture in and after the Bronze Age.”
The oldest domed ovens so far found in Troy date back to 2000 B.C., about 300 years earlier than Aslan and his team’s latest discovery.
Aslan said architectural developments in Troy, where archeological excavations have been going on for 150 years, pointed to changes in the city’s culinary tradition during the period identified with Anatolian culture.
Troy was the first site where prehistoric period excavations were conducted and turned into a science. Troia and its environs were designated a National Historical Park by the Turkish government on September 30, 1996, and were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. Between the years 3.000 BC and 500 AD, the ancient city of Troy was continuously inhabited due to its strategic geographic location.
The area of the domed oven in Troy, Çanakkale, northwestern Türkiye.
Kerpiç (sun-dried bricks) was used during the construction of the walls of houses in the settlements. Therefore after a long chain of settlements, an artificial hill was composed containing the different layers of the city.
After the excavations were carried out 10 different city layers and more than 50 building phases were identified.
These cities in short: Troia I – III (Littoral Troia Culture): This name was especially given due to the distribution of settlements in the Mediterranean region. This period starts nearly 3000 BC and ends in 2500 BC. Troia IV – V: Anatolian Characterized Troia Culture: It begins in 2100 BC and continues until the 1700’s BC. Troia VI-VII (From 1700 BC to 1100 BC) was defined as High Troia Troia Culture by archaeologists.
After a gap of several centuries, the settlement of Greeks in Troy VIII continued from 700’s BC to approximately 85 BC. In Troia IX, there was a Roman settlement from 85 BC to 500’s AC.
In Troy X the Byzantine settlement which started in the 12th century continued to the 13th century. After this time, due to great political changes in that period, Troia lost its importance in cultural life.
Especially European intellectuals’ growing interest in Troia after the 17th century, culminated with Heinrich Schliemann and this importance has continued to the present day.
A cave complex with hieroglyphs and Varangian symbols discovered in center of Ukraine
An ancient cave complex thought to date from Kievan Rus’ has been discovered in central Kyiv at Voznesensky Uzvoz.
Dmytro Perov, a conservationist at Kyiv’s Center for Urban Development, told Radio Kultura that the caves were discovered next to a demolished house that Kyiv housing authorities had deemed unsafe for habitation.
Actually, Dmytro Perov followed his grandmother’s clues. Perov’s grandmother used to talk about a large stone house next to an old cave, but no one knew its location of it.
According to Perov, who had previously examined the area several times, only the front facia of the house remained, concealed by bushes.
The conservationist told reporters that he and his friends decided to go to the old house “on a small expedition to look for caves,” and they discovered an entrance.
The first archaeological explorations in the Voznesensky Caves were carried out by Perov and a group of researchers from the Institute of Archaeology last Saturday.
Timur Bobrovskyi, an archaeology professor at the Sofia Kyivska reserve, said he was “amazed that such a treasure was found in the center of Kyiv” after spending three hours exploring the cave.
A unique discovery in the center of Kyiv.
The team discovered pottery fragments from the Late Kyivan Rus’ era, an Eastern and Northern European state that existed from the late ninth to the middle of the thirteenth century, in the cave’s northern section.
Perov wrote on Facebook that the team scoured around 40 meters (131 feet) of caves, including the lower cave complex, which he claims is twice as long as the upper passage and has a series of “radial branches.”
The most significant discovery, according to Petrov, was “a set of Kyivan Rus hieroglyphs and Varangian symbols from the Early Rus period,” when the region was under the control of Varangian rulers.
While more investigation is required to confirm it, according to Dmytro Perov, they think that some of the carved symbols may date all the way back to the fifth or sixth centuries BC. He says that “animistic images of animals and graffiti” from the Varyaz period, including the rune Algiz (“chicken’s foot”), were also discovered on the walls. This was an ancient Varangian charm, a symbol of safety and longevity.
Several Hellenic Greek colonies were established on the northern coast of the Black Sea, on the Crimean Peninsula, and along the Sea of Azov between the 7th and 6th centuries BC.
The steppe hinterland was occupied by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians who traded with the Greek/Roman colonies after a period of control by the Roman empire during the first millennium BC.
Rurik, a Varangian or Viking prince, established the Kyivan state in the latter part of the ninth century.
Up until the 13th century, his descendants established and controlled a global trade route to the west. However, the Kyivan state was made up of East Slavic, Norse, and Finnic peoples, making it difficult to determine who left the carved symbols on the cave walls.
A rare Elizabethan ship discovered at quarry 300 meters from the coast
In April 2022, a team from CEMEX unexpectedly uncovered the remains of a rare Elizabethan-era ship, while dredging for aggregates at a quarry on the Dungeness headland, in Kent.
Found some 300 metres from the coast, the discovery stumped the quarry team, who contacted our experts to study the remains. Recognising the significance of this extraordinary discovery, Kent County Council enlisted specialist support and emergency funding from Historic England.
Above: Wessex Archaeology Marine Archaeologist, Andrea Hamel, in the Digging for Britain studio with Alice Roberts.
Very few English-built 16th-century vessels survive, making this a rare discovery from what was a fascinating period in the history of seafaring.
The late 16th-century was a period of great expansion of trade, with the English Channel serving as a major route on Europe’s Atlantic seaboard.
Although the ship remains unidentified, it represents an era when English vessels and ports played an important role in this busy traffic.
Above: Archaeologist records the ship’s remains on-site (Left). The hull of the 16th-century ship remains at the quarry (Right).
Over 100 timbers from the ship’s hull were recovered, with dendrochronological analysis, funded by Historic England, dating the timbers that built the ship to between 1558 and 1580 and confirming it was made of English oak.
This places the ship at a transitional period in Northern European ship construction. When ships are believed to have moved from a traditional clinker construction (as seen in Viking vessels) to frame-first-built ships (as recorded here), where the internal framing is built first and flush-laid planking is later added to the frames to create a smooth outer hull.
This technique is similar to what was used on the Mary Rose, built between 1509 and 1511, and the ships that would explore and settle along the Atlantic coastlines of the New World.
Above: Archaeologist records the ship’s remains on-site.
Andrea Hamel, Marine Archaeologist at Wessex Archaeology, said: “To find a late 16th-century ship preserved in the sediment of a quarry was an unexpected but very welcome find indeed.
The ship has the potential to tell us so much about a period where we have little surviving evidence of shipbuilding but yet was such a great period of change in ship construction and seafaring.”
Although uncovered 300 metres from the sea in what is today a quarry, experts believe the site would have once been on the coastline, and that the ship either wrecked on the shingle headland or was discarded at the end of its useful life. Its discovery presents a fascinating opportunity to understand the development of the coast, ports and shipping of this stretch of the Kent coast.
Antony Firth, Head of Marine Heritage Strategy at Historic England, said: “The remains of this ship are really significant, helping us to understand not only the vessel itself but the wider landscape of shipbuilding and trade in this dynamic period.
CEMEX staff deserve our thanks for recognising that this unexpected discovery is something special and for seeking archaeological assistance.
Historic England has been very pleased to support the emergency work by Kent County Council and Wessex Archaeology, and to see the results shared in the new season of Digging for Britain.”
Our archaeologists have recorded the ship using laser scanning and digital photography. Once our work is complete the timbers will be reburied in the quarry lake where they were uncovered so that the silt can continue to preserve the remains.
