The arrowhead from the Viking Age melted out of the ice in a new site in the Jotunheimen mountains which was recently surveyed by a team of glacial archaeologists.
“Oh, look at this little beauty”, the team of archaeologists enthusiastically exclaim in their Facebook update, which includes a video of the three-bladed arrowhead.
“The last person who touched it was a Viking,” the post reads.
The team of glacial archaeologists from Innlandet county’s Secrets of the Ice and the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo are currently doing their annual field work up in the Norwegian mountains, where melting ice keeps on revealing lost items from our past.
The unique arrowhead is from a new site in the Jotunheimen Mountains, where the team were just doing an initial exploratory survey. Finds like this Viking Age arrowhead means they will most certainly be returning.
Was it made for hunting or war?
The arrowhead is made of iron. Its shape indicates that it is typical for the Viking Age, Lars Pilø writes in an email to sciencenorway.no.
“This type of arrowhead is known, but it is rare,” he writes.
Four such arrowheads were found in a burial mound in Sparbu in Trøndelag, and one such arrowhead has also appeared in Leirtjønnkollen in Oppdal – another glacial archaeological site.
“We haven’t tested this, obviously, but it is not unlikely that this sort of arrowhead would have had greater penetration than the arrowheads we normally find. It looks more like a war arrowhead than one made for hunting,” he writes – adding that this of course is pure speculation.
Several of the people who have commented on Facebook suggest the same. Three blades would increase blood loss and stop a wound from potentially closing up. “Either way it’s military/war-related,” one reader comments.
“Yes, that is what we are thinking as well. However, it was found at a reindeer hunting site. Perhaps they just grabbed the arrows they had when they went out hunting,” Secrets of the Ice respond.
The arrowhead with scale.
Broader than your usual combat arrow
Vegard Vike is the Head Engineer of Archaeological Conservation at the Museum of cultural history in Oslo. He is an expert in among other things weapons of the Viking Age.
Vike comments that the arrow is incredibly well preserved.
“Three-bladed arrowheads from the Viking Age are not so common in Norway, they are more commonly found in Sweden,” he writes in an email to sciencenorway.no.
These are however usually slimmer, more like arrowheads made for combat. Some of these combat arrowheads from Sweden and Denmark are decorated and fastened with noble metals.
“The one which is found here I would think is rather made for hunting, as it is so broad,” Vike concludes and explains:
“The reason why dedicated combat arrows are slim and do not have broad blades is that they needed to penetrate chain mails. More broad-bladed arrows are on the other hand perfect for hunting as they create larger wounds, which means that the animal bleeds out faster. They would however be stopped by a chain mail.”
Massive Roman Phallus Relief Carving Uncovered in Spain
A large Roman-era relief carving of a phallus was uncovered by archaeologists excavating in Nueva Carteya, Córdoba, Spain, earlier this month, according to an announcement by the area’s local history museum.
Ancient Roman phallus relief carving found in Nueva Carteya, Córdoba, Spain, 2022.
At more than one-and-a-half feet long, it could be the largest preserved Roman phallus carving, according to archaeologists.
The phallic carving was found at the base of a building within a fortified enclosure at the archaeological site El Higuerón. The site was originally an Iberian settlement occupied in the 4th century BCE until 206 BCE, when the Romans conquered the region.
El Higuerón was initially excavated in 1966 and again in 1968 and is considered one of the benchmarks of Iberian culture in the Córdoba province. Current excavations are overseen by the Museo Histórico Local de Nueva Carteya, which announced the finding of the phallic relief.
In ancient Roman culture, the fascinus was a depiction of the divine phallus used to invoke masculine generative power. Ancient Romans believed that it provided good fortune and protection.
Phallic depictions can be found among Roman sculptures, mosaics, frescoes, and pendants. The ancient Roman city Pompeii, for example, is loaded with graffiti and carvings of phallic imagery.
One of the largest concentrations of phallic symbols, however, is at Hadrian’s Wall in England. There, along the wall corridor and at military installations, are 59 identified penis etchings.
Additionally, during this season the team discovered the base of an Iberian-era wall in the western part of the site. It contained a Roman limestone floor and structural remains from the Roman and medieval periods.
New Thoughts on Societal Changes in Bronze Age Crete
A modern scientific analysis of ancient stone tools is challenging long-held beliefs about what caused radical change on the island of Crete, where the first European state flourished during the Bronze Age: the ‘Minoan civilization.’
Lead researcher Tristan Carter in front of a quarry obsidian exposure on Melos
About 3,500 years ago, Crete underwent significant cultural transformations, including the adoption of a new language and economic system, burial customs, dress and drinking habits – all of which could be traced to the neighbouring Mycenaean Greek mainland.
At roughly the same time, many important sites across the island were destroyed and warriors’ graves appeared at the famed palace of Knossos, leading scholars to long believe that these seismic changes had been the result of a Mycenaean invasion.
A new study, published online in the journal PLOS One questions that theory.
“Our findings suggest a more complex picture than previously believed,” explains Tristan Carter, a lead author of the study and professor in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University who has conducted research in north-central Crete for nearly three decades.
“Rather than wholescale cultural change, our study has found evidence of significant continuity after the alleged invasion. While new practices can be initiated through external forces such as invasion, migration, colonialism, or cross-cultural intermarriage, we also know of examples where locals choose to adopt foreign habits to distinguish themselves within their own society,” says Carter.
Rather than looking at things like burial, art, or dress, practices that tend to shift with fashion, archaeologists have begun to look more closely at more mundane, everyday practices as a better insight into a culture’s true character, he explains.
For the study, the researchers analyzed a sample of tools the Bronze Age Cretans fashioned from obsidian, a black volcanic glass which is sharper than surgical steel when freshly flaked.
Vassilis Kilikoglou, director of the Demokritos national research centre in Athens, used a nuclear reactor to determine the origin of the raw materials and found them to be from the Cycladic island of Melos.
When these results were considered together with the way the obsidian blades had been made and used for work such as harvesting crops, it was clear the community had lived the same way their predecessors had for the past thousand years, which continued to be distinct from life on the Greek mainland.
“Our analysis suggests the population had largely remained local, of Minoan descent,” says Carter and Kilikoglou.
“This is not to say an invasion of Crete didn’t occur, but that the political situation across the rest of the island at this time was more complex than previously believed with significant demographic continuity in many areas.”
The researchers believe that while local elites were strategically aligned with Mycenaean powers, as evidenced by their conspicuous adoption of mainland styles of dress, drinking, and burial, most people continued to live their lives in much the same way as before.
Cupra Marittima, in Italy’s Marche region, is today a sleepy seaside town — but it was once a thriving and powerful outpost of the Roman Empire. Close to the pristine beaches of the Adriatic coast lie the ruins of the ancient Cupra temple, where a new discovery has come to light.
Last week, archaeologists recovered parts of the 2,000-year-old temple’s frescoed walls and ceiling, painted in blue, yellow, red, black and green hues and decorated with flowery garlands, images of candelabra and tiny palms.
Finding ancient Roman temples with interiors “still covered in paintings” is “extremely rare,” said archaeologist Marco Giglio, the site’s research project coordinator and a professor at the University of Naples L’Orientale.
“It’s the first time that the ruins of a shrine painted with such a wide palette of colours in an incredibly well-preserved state — and with such rich, elaborate decorations — has been unearthed,” he claimed in a phone interview, adding: “Once we have cleaned and analyzed all the 100 fragments found and pieced them together, we hope it will give us a complete picture of what the temple once looked like.”
Colourful wall fragments recovered from the site.
A red fragment is carefully recovered.
Giglio hopes that the discovery sheds new light on the engineering techniques used by the Romans. Studying the walls’ recurring decorative motifs may also help researchers further understand the city’s local economy.
“The chronology of the different styles and decorative elements could tell (us) a lot about the artisan shops active at the time,” he said. “And the patterns and motifs could highlight whether it was the work of just one atelier or more.”
Images of candelabra decorated the walls of the temple.
Unusual painting style
The Cupra temple, built at the start of the first century AD, was the spiritual hub of a strategically and commercially important city that helped the Romans control the Adriatic coast and its maritime trading routes. Excavation began in July and is being led by the University of Naples L’Orientale and Cupra Marittima’s town council, which oversees the archaeological park where the old city’s ruins are situated.
A fragment was found with sky-blue paint.
Unusually, the newly discovered wall paintings appear to have been created in the so-called Third Pompeian (or “ornamental”) style typically used to decorate rich households in Pompeii and Rome, rather than religious structures, according to Giglio.
The ancient sanctuary is thought to have had a sky-blue ceiling, while the lower part of the temple’s walls was painted yellow. Red, black and yellow squares were separated by images of candelabra and garlands, with green bands of colour running horizontally along the walls. “Recovering intact ancient wall paintings like these are very rare. Paint is hard to preserve across time due to humidity, and it’s also very hard to dig out correctly during an excavation,” said Ilaria Benetti, an archaeologist from Pisa and Livorno provinces’ Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape in a phone interview.
“The incredible state of preservation and integrity of the frescoed parts, and the extremely rich colour palette used — particularly the bright sky-blue and pinkish-red — stand out as quite exceptional when compared to the traditional red paint normally used in ancient times, thus suggesting it was a lavish shrine,” added Benetti, who is a frescoes expert but was not directly involved in the excavation.
A flowery motif breaks up a block of red.
Giglio added: “The sky-blue colour is very rare for ceilings, which leads us to believe it was meant to indicate the celestial vault and that the shrine was built to honour a goddess.”
Although the temple shares a name with Cupra, an Etruscan goddess later incorporated into Roman religion, archaeologists have yet to determine which cult was associated with the shrine. A large statue of a goddess was likely kept in the main cell for worshippers, said Giglio. Over time, most of the temple was destroyed, though the podium and a staircase leading to the entrance have survived. The rest of the shrine has been reduced to a heap of fragments lying one meter (more than three feet) below the ground, where archaeologists began digging earlier in the summer.
Research into the temple began in 2015, following a partnership between the Cupra archaeological park and the University of Naples L’Orientale. The temple will eventually be incorporated into the wider site, which gives visitors access to the Roman city’s ruins.
The temple underwent several radical changes after its foundation, making it harder for Gilgio’s team to envision what it originally looked like. In 127 AD, the Roman emperor Hadrian funded a complete overhaul of the shrine as he feared it might collapse due to structural damage caused by ageing or natural disasters.
To reinforce the structure, Hadrian is thought to have had the painted walls chiselled off and covered in marble. This process pulverized the original coloured sections but they were later used as a base for the new floors. “That’s why the fragments recovered have been so well preserved, because their life was indeed short, roughly only a hundred years,” said Giglio, noting that this detail supports the idea that Roman builders recycled materials.
Hadrian then added nine-meter high columns with ornate capitals, semi-columns and lion-headed roof dripstones, some parts of which have now been found. He also built two brick arches that still flank the temple site.
One of the roof dripstones was found on site.
According to Giglio, Hadrian’s pagan masterpiece was later crushed to pieces starting from the 7th century. The marbles and columns were knocked down to be used as building materials, while at the end of the 19th century the temple walls were demolished to make room for a since-abandoned rural house that still looms over the shrine’s ruins.
Fragments of the shrine lie one meter (more than three feet) below ground.
“The house was actually built by incorporating part of the sanctuary’s walls, so we’re still trying to figure out whether it is best to restore it or take it down to recover the shrine in its entirety,” said Giglio. With just one-fifth of the temple site excavated thus far, the archaeologist said his team has had “just a taste” of what’s to come. “Who knows what other decorations, patterns and elements could come to light?” he said. “It would be great that what we will unearth will lead to understanding exactly how a construction site worked back in ancient Roman times.”
Golden Sword Found in Young Scythian Warrior’s Grave in Ukraine
An early grave of a Scythian warrior buried with a golden sword has been unearthed in the Mount Mamai cemetery near the village Velyka Znamyanka in Zaporizhia Oblast, central Ukraine.
Archaeologists exploring a small tumulus found a trench with animal bones and fragments of clay amphorae.
There are characteristic Scythian funerary offerings. They then unearthed two graves within the mound: a large central one and a smaller one on the periphery.
Excavation of the warrior’s grave where the sword was found.
The central burial had been thoroughly looted in antiquity and archaeologists were only able to recover one arrowhead and some bone fragments. The remains suggest the occupant of this grave was an elderly male.
The accompanying grave had also interfered with it, but it still contained the skeletal remains of a young man about 18-20 years old.
He was interred with a rare large grey clay amphorae, fittings from a horse’s bridle, an iron battle axe, bronze and bone arrows and the star of the funerary show: an akinakes (a Scythian dagger or short sword) with a gold plated scabbard, a grip with a leaf motif and a cross-guard with granulation details.
Ornaments and amphora were found at the site where the sword was found.
Not only had the young warrior been buried together with his weapons, but also with some ornaments; the archaeological team found beads made of glass paste, a red deer tooth necklace, a gold earring and a gold pendant with chalk inlay.
The Mount Mamai burial grounds, the largest barrow cemetery in the region and one of the largest in Europe, have been excavated for 32 years, a long-term salvage operation to recover as much archaeological material as possible before the site is destroyed by erosion from the construction of the Khakhovka Reservoir.
Already a quarter mile of the shore has fallen into the lake in just three decades, so archaeologists are fighting a battle against time.
Artefacts and remains dating as far back as the Neolithic era through the Middle Ages have been unearthed there. Of the 700 burials thus far excavated, around 400 are Scythian.
The leaf-ribbed grip, cross-guard of the Scythian short sword.
The discoveries made this season are so exceptional the 32nd dig has been dubbed the most successful yet. The very fine grave goods would be more than significant on their own, but the burial is even more notable because it dates to the 6th century B.C., making it the earliest Scythian burial found at Mount Mamai and extending the window of the cemetery’s usage during the Scythian period.
The other Scythian tombs that have been excavated there are at least two centuries older.
The objects have been cleaned and will be conserved at the Museum of Local History in Kamianets-Dniprovsky.
Part of a pottery drinking beaker discovered at the High Hunsley site
Archaeologists excavating a site in East Yorkshire say they may have stumbled on a medieval alehouse. Volunteers have spent the past three weeks searching for the remains of a village at High Hunsley, near Beverley.
Assistant site director Emma Samuel said a large number of pottery beakers and jugs had been unearthed, suggesting a pub may once have served the village.
Also found were sheep and cattle bones, giving rise to an alternative theory there was a hostelry, said Ms Samuel.
A knife believed to have been from either the 13th or 14th Century
She said: “From their design, we know the beakers date back to about the 13th Century. The site could well have been a pub or some kind of large house, perhaps even a hostelry.
“The bones, belonging to sheep and cows, were carefully butchered. Perhaps people gathered here to eat? There may well have been a hostelry here.”
Ms Samuel said in medieval times it was dangerous to travel at night, so people on the move would seek out a place to stay.
“People would stop and rest,” he said. “It was a myth that everyone owned horses back then. They didn’t. Horses were expensive. People would often walk. People had to stay overnight somewhere when making long journeys.”
The three-week “community dig” led by Humber Timelines and Ethos Heritage CIC also unearthed a knife, chisels and jewellery from between the 7th and 13th Centuries, including a clasp used to fasten a shirt, a hair pin and a copper brooch, thought to be of Celtic origin.
Geophysical surveys of the site show what appears to be buried houses
Prior to the dig, geophysical surveys of the site revealed more than a dozen stone structures, as well as a larger building, which may have been the pub or hostelry, the team believes.
Ms Samuel, a director at Ethos Heritage CIC, said she suspected the settlement probably had its origins rooted in the 7th Century, or even earlier, although further work was required to confirm this.
Teams plan to return to the site next year to resume excavations.
400-year-old Ship Figurehead from 80 Years War Caught By Dutch Shrimpers!
A carved wooden statue in exceptional condition has been attached to fishing nets off the coast of Texel, one of the Dutch Wadden Islands. On Tuesday, August 1, the crew of the shrimp boat Wieringer 22 caught the sculpture.
The rare and exceptionally preserved Dutch wooden ship figurehead was found off the island of Texel in the Wadden Islands in early August 2022.
The crew that named the statue Barry posted it on social media where he garnered an instant following.
Considering that it might have been submerged since the 17th century, their unexpected solid oak haul was astonishingly well preserved.
The head is made of oak, which would normally be vulnerable to shipworm depredations, but the sculpture avoided this fate by embedding itself in the sea floor after the wreck.
The sediment kept marine organisms from eating the figurehead and kept it from rotting. That is the only reason it is in such excellent condition.
Acting on advice from archaeologists, the crew placed the head in an eel tub filled with seawater to keep the wood from drying out and deteriorating while the ship was still out shrimping.
According to Michiel Bartels, a municipal archaeologist for that region of the Netherlands, the “very special discovery” came from a warship, possibly during the Eighty Years’ War, which lasted from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s.
Archaeologist Michiel Bartels said the man in the carving wore a special headdress called a Phrygian cap.
Bartels added, “This hat symbolizes freedom and independence,” he said. “The Phyrigians were enslaved by the Romans. Slaves were shaved bald. When released from slavery, [Phyrigians] wore a cap to hide their baldness and signify their freedom.”
Bartels, the local archaeologist, thinks that finding Barry could be a sign that someone needs to do a bit more underwater exploration in that area.
Phrygian cap
In European and colonial cultures, the idea of liberty has long been connected with red Phrygian or “liberty” caps. They became symbols of allegiance to the republican cause after being worn and used as icons during the French and American Revolutions in the late 1700s.
Phrygian caps are soft conical hats with the top curled forward. Although these hats, named after Phrygia, a part of modern Turkey, are associated with many ancient nations, the oldest depiction of the Phrygian cap is from Persepolis in Iran.
Prisoner with Phrygian cap (Roman statue from the 2nd century), Louvre
The Phrygian cap was associated in ancient times with various peoples in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, including the Persians, Medes, and Scythians, as well as in the Balkans, Dacia, Thrace, and Anatolia.
In ancient Rome freed slaves wore a similar style of hat, called the pileus, to indicate their liberty. In Europe, it was later assumed that the pileus and the Phrygian caps were one and the same.
Ancient Roman gymnasium discovered in southwest Turkey
An ancient Roman gymnasium was discovered in Turkey’s southwestern Konya province after a landowner submitted an application to receive a building permit on his land which had been declared a protected site.
The land owner identified as Adem Kalender reportedly applied to the museum directorate in Sarayönü district, home to the ancient Roman city of Laodicea, for a building permit.
Upon arrival at the site, museum officials discovered ancient mosaics and immediately launched further works after closing the site and placing it under protection.
Aerial view of the ancient gymnasium discovered in Turkey’s southwestern Konya province.
“Excavations have revealed that there had been an ancient gymnasium here,” the village headman of Ladik neighbourhood Mustafa Arabacı told Ihlas News Agency.
Excavation work on the site is expected to be completed by spring, Arabacı said, adding that the site will be open to the public for visit.
Laodicea is currently on the tentative list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Turkey.
In March, the restoration – currently being conducted in the ancient city- was awarded the European Union Cultural Heritage Jury’s special award.
Regarded as one of the most important ancient cities in Anatolia, Laodicea is home to one of the Seven churches of Asia mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
