Category Archives: EUROPE

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Iron Age Artifact May Shed Light on Origins of Basque Language

Iron Age Artifact May Shed Light on Origins of Basque Language

More than 2,000 years after it was probably hung from the door of a mud-brick house in northern Spain to bring luck, a flat, lifesize bronze hand engraved with dozens of strange symbols could help scholars trace the development of one of the world’s most mysterious languages.

Iron Age Artifact May Shed Light on Origins of Basque Language
The Hand of Irulegi was discovered last year near Pamplona.

Although the piece – known as the Hand of Irulegi – was discovered last year by archaeologists from the Aranzadi Science Society who have been digging near the city of Pamplona since 2017, its importance has only recently become clear.

Experts studying the hand and its inscriptions now believe it to be both the oldest written example of Proto-Basque and a find that “upends” much of what was previously known about the Vascones, a late iron age tribe who inhabited parts of northern Spain before the arrival of the Romans, and whose language is thought to have been an ancestor of modern-day Basque, or euskera.

Until now, scholars had supposed the Vascones had no proper written language – save for words found on coins – and only began writing after the Romans introduced the Latin alphabet. But the five words written in 40 characters identified as Vasconic, suggest otherwise.

The first – and only word – to be identified so far is sorioneku, a forerunner of the modern Basque word zorioneko, meaning good luck or good omen.

Javier Velaza, a professor of Latin philology at the University of Barcelona and one of the experts who deciphered the hand, said the discovery had finally confirmed the existence of a written Vasconic language.

“People spoke the language of the Vascones in the area where the inscriptions were found,” he said.

“We had imagined that to be the case but until now, we had hardly any texts to bear that out. Now we do – and we also know that the Vascones used writing to set down their language … This inscription is incontrovertible; the first word of the text is patently a word that’s found in modern Basque.”

Velaza’s colleague Joaquín Gorrochategui, a professor of Indo-European linguistics at the University of the Basque country, said the hand’s secrets would change the way scholars looked at the Vascones.

“This piece upends how we’d thought about the Vascones and writing until now,” he said. “We were almost convinced that the ancient Vascones were illiterate and didn’t use writing except when it came to minting coins.”

According to Mattin Aiestaran, the director of the Irulegi dig, the site owes its survival to the fact that the original village was burned and then abandoned during the Sertorian war between two rival Roman factions in the first century BC. The objects they left behind were buried in the ruins of their mud-brick houses.

“That’s a bit of luck for archaeologists and it means we have a snapshot of the moment of the attack,” said Aiestaran. “That means we’ve been able to recover a lot of day-to-day material from people’s everyday lives. It’s an exceptional situation and one that has allowed us to find an exceptional piece.”

Despite the excitement surrounding the deciphering of the inscription, Velaza counselled calm study rather than giddy conjecture. After all, he added, the hand hails from one particular moment in time and tells us only that the people in the area then spoke and wrote the Vasconic language.

“That doesn’t mean we know how long they’d been there, nor what their future was after that moment,” he said.

“It’s true that this is an extraordinarily important text but I’d urge a bit of caution about using it to extrapolate too many conclusions about what happened afterwards. But linguistically speaking, it’s going to provide linguists who specialise in the Vasconic language and Proto-Basque with something they haven’t had until now.”

He added: “I think we should be excited – but we should still be very rigorous scientifically speaking.”

Not every recent Basque language discovery has lived up to its billing. Two years ago, a Spanish archaeologist was found guilty of faking finds that included pieces of third-century pottery engraved with one of the first depictions of the crucified Christ, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Basque words that predated the earliest known written examples of the language by 600 years.

Although the archaeologist, Eliseo Gil, claimed the pieces would “rewrite the history books”, an expert committee examined them and found traces of modern glue as well as references to the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

U.S. Repatriates Looted Artifacts to Turkey

U.S. Repatriates Looted Artifacts to Turkey

U.S. Repatriates Looted Artifacts to Turkey

The items of unique historical heritage, including the human-sized bronze statue of the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus and the columnar sarcophagus fragments from the ancient city of Perge in Antalya, have been returned to Türkiye from the United States.

Six artefacts, including nine pieces, which were taken from two different auction houses and a collector in the U.S., were taken under protection in the Antalya Museum.

The artefacts, which were returned to the county on Oct. 22, were introduced yesterday at a ceremony attended by the Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.

The historical artefacts, which were illegally taken abroad from Anatolia, were returned to Türkiye as a result of the joint efforts of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, the Antalya and Burdur Museum Directorates, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Based on the work of Türkiye’s first female archaeologist, the late Professor Jale İnan, and the information provided by journalist and writer Özgen Acar, the ministry prepared a file for the return of the historical artefacts.

Examinations have been made in the archival and international publications and interviews were also made with the witnesses. Professor Ramazan Özgan and Professor Ertekin Doksanaltı made scientific reports.

The results of the examinations and the reports were sent to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Finally, the human-sized bronze statue of the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus, which was taken out of the country from the ancient city of Bubon in the southern province of Burdur, and the four-piece Roman-era sarcophagus originating from the ancient city of Perge in Antalya were returned.

The statue of Verus is one of the rare human-sized bronze statues that have survived to the present day.

The fact that many of the ancient bronze cast statues were melted and used for various purposes gives the statue of the emperor special importance.

Again, during the examinations, an early Bronze-Age marble Kusura-type idol, which was one of the schematized female figures common in Western Anatolia in the third B.C. and mentioned in both Greek and Roman mythology, and a silver figurine of Apollo from the northern province of Balıkesir that have been smuggled out of the country was found at an auction house in the U.S.

Also, a sitting Attis statuette and a terracotta earth plate from the ancient city of Pisidia Antiokheia of Isparta were found in another auction house.

The sale of four works that were determined to be smuggled from Anatolia was stopped. In total, six artefacts of nine pieces were returned to their homeland.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

“Unprecedented” Phoenician necropolis found in southern Spain

“Unprecedented” Phoenician necropolis found in southern Spain

“Unprecedented” Phoenician necropolis found in southern Spain

A 4th or 5th-century B.C Phoenician necropolis has been found at Osuna in Southern Spain. A well-preserved underground limestone vault necropolis, where the Phoenicians living in the Iberian peninsula buried their dead, was discovered during water utility upgrades.

Council workers have found a well-preserved necropolis from the Phoenician era with at least eight subterranean limestone burial vaults and a staircase.

Archaeologists said the “unprecedented” Phoenician-Carthaginian cemetery. Such sites are normally found in coastal areas rather than so far inland, they say.

It is a unique find because the only comparable necropolises that have been unearthed so far are coastal, dotting the area around the ancient Phoenician colony of Cádiz. Osuna is inland, about 55 miles east of Seville.

Preliminary surveys have so far turned up eight burial vaults as well as staircases and areas that are thought to have served as atriums. These were elite graves, and unprecedented in what would have been practically the hinterlands of Phoenician Spain.

The phoenician-Punic necropolis was discovered in Osuna, Spain.

The lead archaeologist, Mario Delgado, described the discovery as very significant and very unexpected. “To find a necropolis from the Phoenician and Carthaginian era with these characteristics – with eight well tombs, atriums, and staircase access – you’d have to look to Sardinia or even Carthage itself,” he said.

“We thought we might find remains from the imperial Roman age, which would be more in keeping with the surroundings, so we were surprised when we found these structures carved from the rock – hypogea [subterranean vaults] – perfectly preserved beneath the Roman levels.”

Rosario Andújar, the mayor of Osuna, said the find had already prompted a re-examination of the area’s history.

The mayor said that while more research needed to be done, the luxurious nature of the necropolis suggested it had been built for those at “the highest level” of the social hierarchy.

Excavation work is currently underway in order to reach the ground levels of a possible atrium, officials said.

The Phoenicians were amongst the greatest Mediterranean traders from approximately 1,500 to 600 BC. Based on archaeological remains, the consensus now is that colonisation began around 800, when settlements were founded along the south coast of the peninsula.

They settled in southern Spain, not long after the founding of Phoenicia’s greatest colony, Carthage.

They set to work exploiting the region’s rich and untapped deposits of tin, gold, and silver and expanding their trade networks.

The trade of metals and consumer goods (fish, textiles) made the Phoenician settlements of what is now Andalusia enormously prosperous.

Archaeologists believe that the rich tombs found on the coast were built for the shipping dynasties that ran Phoenician commerce.

The Spanish town of Osuna came to the spotlight when it became the location for parts of the fifth season of the HBO series, Game of Thrones.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Large Temple Found in Italy’s Etruscan City of Vulci

Large Temple Found in Italy’s Etruscan City of Vulci

Archaeologists from the universities of Freiburg and Mainz identify one of the largest known sacred buildings of the Etruscans

An interdisciplinary team headed by archaeologists Dr. Mariachiara Franceschini of the University of Freiburg and Paul P. Pasieka of the University of Mainz has discovered a previously unknown Etruscan temple in the ancient city of Vulci, which lies in the Italian region of Latium.

The building, which is 45 meters by 35 meters, is situated west of the Tempio Grande, a sacred building which was excavated back in the 1950s.

Archaeologists and other colleagues uncover the walls of the Etruscan temple in Vulci.

Initial examination of the strata of the foundation of the northeast corner of the temple and the objects they found there, led the researchers to date the construction of the temple towards the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century BCE.

“The new temple is roughly the same size and on a similar alignment as the neighbouring Tempio Grande, and was built at roughly the same Archaic time,” explains Franceschini. “This duplication of monumental buildings in an Etruscan city is rare, and indicates an exceptional finding,” adds Pasieka.

The team discovered the temple when working on the Vulci Cityscape project, which was launched in 2020 and aimed to research the settlement strategies and urbanistic structures of the city of Vulci.

Vulci was one of the twelve cities of the Etruscan federation and in pre-Roman times was one of the most important urban centres in what is now Italy.

New discoveries about city design and development

“We studied the entire northern area of Vulci, that’s 22.5 hectares, using geophysical prospecting and Ground Penetrating Radar,” explains Pasieka.

“We discovered remains from the city’s origins that had previously been overlooked in Vulci and are now better able to understand the dynamics of settlement and the road system, besides identifying different functional areas in the city.”

The researchers were able in 2021 to uncover the first sections of wall, made of solid tuff.

“Our knowledge about the appearance and organization of Etruscan cities has been limited until now,” says Franceschini. “The intact strata of the temple are offering us insights into more than a thousand years of development of one of the most important Etruscan cities.”

Over the coming years scientists want to study the different phases of use and the precise architectural appearance of the temple in more depth, in order to learn more about the religion of the Etruscans, the social structures in Vulci and what the lives of the city’s inhabitants were really like.

Fritz Thyssen Foundation and Gerda Henkel Foundation are funding the excavation

The project is being funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (2020-2022) and the Gerda Henkel Foundation (2022-2023) along with the University of Mainz’s research area “40,000 Years of Human Challenges: Perception, Conceptualization and Coping in Premodern Societies”.

The departments of classical archaeology at the University of Freiburg and at the University of Mainz are working together with the Vulci Foundation, which administers the archaeological park “Parco Naturalistico Archeologico di Vulci”, and the Italian national monument authority, Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la provincia di Viterbo e per l’Etruria meridionale.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

A 3200-year-old trepanned skull was discovered in eastern Turkey’s Van province

A 3200-year-old trepanned skull was discovered in eastern Turkey’s Van province

Trepanated skull of a woman-Tumb 3 Corseaux-En Seyton-on display 6, Cantonal Museum of Archeology and History.

A 3,200-year-old skull was recently uncovered in Turkey’s eastern Van province. This find was made even more intriguing by the skull’s clearly man-made triangle-shaped hole, indicating that the deceased owner had undergone an ancient medical procedure now called preparation.

Trepanation, a procedure that involves drilling a hole into the patient’s skull, is one of the oldest known surgical procedures in human history and a practice used by ancient humans all over the world.

Archaeologists have found trepanned skulls in Europe, the Americas, Africa and China. 

Skull-drilling in the 21st century

The practice is still used today to treat subdural hematomas, but surgeons have refined the process and now refer to it as a craniotomy or a burr hole. 

Burr holes tend to be used in emergency situations after a traumatic head injury to relieve pressure due to fluid buildup in the skull which puts undue pressure on brain tissue.

Craniotomies, per the National Cancer Institute, resemble ancient trepanation more so than burr holes; the surgeon removes a small piece of the skull in order to gain access to the brain.

This is sometimes used to relieve pressure, but can also be used to remove a tumour or a tissue sample, as well as to repair a skull fracture or brain aneurysm (a bulge in a blood vessel wall). 

Unlike in ancient trepanation practices, modern surgeons nearly always replace the removed piece of the skull once they have finished their procedure. 

Detail from The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch depicting trepanation (c.1488–1516).

What was the practice used for in ancient times?

According to the science news website Live Science, trepanation was used in ancient times to treat head injuries and pain, and some scientists believe it was used to ritually remove evil spirits from the body. 

A 2013 article published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology concluded that often, patients did survive the procedure and would heal after surgery.

Researchers found scarring from trepanation, but the injury to the skull had healed. 

Researchers have not yet determined whether the skull found recently in Turkey belonged to a survivor or a victim of trepanation. They also do not yet know – and perhaps never will find out – whether the procedure was performed in order to treat a medical issue or exorcise demons. 

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Roman-Era Odeon Uncovered in Crete

Roman-Era Odeon Uncovered in Crete

Roman-Era Odeon Uncovered in Crete
Ancient odeons like this one in Crete were used for lectures, literary and musical contests, or theatrical performances.

Tucked into a mountain-ringed cove in southwest Crete are the ruins of Lissos, an ancient town whose archaeological remains are accessible only by sea or a long hike. Because of its isolation, Lissos had not been investigated by archaeologists for several decades. New work at Lissos, though, has uncovered an odeon, similar to a modern auditorium and indicative of the prosperity of the town.

Previous research showed that Lissos was inhabited long before its name made it into history books in the fourth century B.C. Its location across the Mediterranean Sea from Cyrene, a major ancient Greek city in present-day Libya, likely meant that Lissos was an important stop on Mediterranean trade routes.

Structures from various time periods at Lissos are relatively well preserved, including a unique temple to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine; a residential area; an impressive cemetery with two-story tombs; Roman baths; and Christian churches.

Archaeologists have now added an odeon to this list of structures following the first excavation at Lissos in more than half a century.

Katerina Tzanakaki, deputy head of the Department of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and Museums at the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania, directed the new project and told Live Science in an email that odeons “were used for lectures, literary and musical contests or theatrical performances.” 

During excavations, archaeologists found part of the odeon’s stage, 14 rows of seats and two vaulted side chambers.

In the first phase of the odeon’s excavation, Tzanakaki and her team found part of the stage, 14 rows of seats and two vaulted side chambers.

The odeon dates to the Roman period, roughly the first to fourth centuries A.D., a time when the sanctuary to Asclepius at Lissos was transformed into a political centre with a new mosaic floor and portraits of the Roman emperors Tiberius and Drusus. 

Unfortunately, the odeon was heavily damaged in antiquity by large falling boulders, likely as the result of a powerful earthquake in A.D. 365.

Jane Francis, a classical archaeologist at Concordia University in Montreal who was not involved in this project, explained in an email to Live Science that “a tsunami with destructive force as far away as Alexandria, Egypt, was associated with the earthquake.

The whole site of Lissos was uplifted by several meters, so the town would have been larger than today and the theatre thus closer to the coast.”

The ancient ruins of Lissos in Crete are accessible only by boat or a lengthy hike.
The new excavation is the first one at Lissos in more than half a century.

As the odeon was adjacent to the city center, Tzanakaki thinks it also might have operated as a bouleuterion, a building for meetings of the city council. Francis and her husband, George W. Harrison, a classical archaeologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, told Live Science by email that the size and date of the building mean that it was most likely an odeon, but the fact that “it was designed and used as a covered theatre does not preclude secondary use as a council house.”

While the precise definition of the newly uncovered building may have to wait for future work, “the discovery of a public service building at a central point of the ancient city, near the temple to Asclepius, adds new information to the archaeological and historical horizon of the area,” according to a translated statement from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. Francis and Harrison agree that the discovery is rare. “There aren’t many well-preserved theatres on Crete and even fewer bouleuteria,” they said.

Future work will help Tzanakaki determine whether there was an outside wall supporting the odeon, and that finding will influence the restoration work. In the meantime, the archaeological site of Lissos remains open to the public; it is accessible by a short boat trip or a two-hour hike from the nearby town of Sougia.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

A trove of Ancient Bronzes Unearthed in Italy

A trove of Ancient Bronzes Unearthed in Italy

Among the well-preserved statues were five almost a metre in height.

An “exceptional” trove of bronze statues preserved for thousands of years by mud and boiling water has been discovered in a network of baths built by the Etruscans in Tuscany.

The 24 partly submerged statues, which date back 2,300 years and have been hailed as the most significant find of their kind in 50 years, include a sleeping ephebe lying next to Hygeia, the goddess of health, with a snake wrapped around her arm.

Archaeologists came across the statues during excavations at the ancient spa in San Casciano dei Bagni, near Siena. The modern-day spa, which contains 42 hot springs, is close to the ancient site and is one of Italy’s most popular spa destinations.

A trove of Ancient Bronzes Unearthed in Italy
The ancient Etruscan spa was developed by the Romans and visited by emperors including Augustus.

Close to the ephebe (an adolescent male, typically 17-18 years old) and Hygeia was a statue of Apollo and a host of others representing matrons, children and emperors.

Believed to have been built by the Etruscans in the third century BC, the baths, which include fountains and altars, were made more opulent during the Roman period, with emperors including Augustus frequenting the springs for their health and therapeutic benefits.

Alongside the 24 bronze statues, five of which are almost a metre tall, archaeologists found thousands of coins as well as Etruscan and Latin inscriptions. Visitors are said to have thrown coins into the baths as a gesture for good luck for their health.

Massimo Osanna, the director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry, said the relics were the most significant discovery of their kind since two full-size Greek bronzes of naked bearded warriors were found off the Calabrian coast near Riace in 1972. “It is certainly one of the most significant discoveries of bronzes in the history of the ancient Mediterranean,” Osanna told the Italian news agency Ansa.

The ancient spa was active until the fifth century when the pools were sealed with heavy stone pillars, which the archaeologists removed.

The excavation project at San Casciano dei Bagni has been led by the archaeologist Jacopo Tabolli since 2019. In August, several artefacts, including fertility statues that were thought to have been used as dedications to the gods, were found at the site. Tabolli, a professor at the University for Foreigners of Siena, described the latest discovery as “absolutely unique”.

The Etruscan civilisation thrived in Italy, mostly in the central regions of Tuscany and Umbria, for 500 years before the arrival of the Roman Republic. The Etruscans had a strong influence on Roman cultural and artistic traditions.

Initial analysis of the 24 statues, believed to have been made by local craftsmen between the second and first centuries BC, as well as countless votive offerings discovered at the site, indicates that the relics perhaps originally belonged to elite Etruscan and Roman families, landowners, local lords and Roman emperors.

The discovery of the well-preserved statues has been hailed as the most significant of its kind in 50 years.

Tabolli told Ansa that the hot springs, rich in minerals including calcium and magnesium, remained active until the fifth century, before being closed down, but not destroyed, during Christian times. The pools were sealed with heavy stone pillars while the divine statues were left in the sacred water.

The treasure trove was found after archaeologists removed the covering. “It is the greatest store of statues from ancient Italy and is the only one whose context we can wholly reconstruct,” said Tabolli.

The recently appointed Italian culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said the “exceptional discovery” confirms once again that “Italy is a country full of huge and unique treasures”.

The relics represent an important testament to the transition between the Etruscan and Roman periods, with the baths being considered a haven of peace.

“Even in historical epochs in which the most awful conflicts were raging outside, inside these pools and on these altars the two worlds, the Etruscan and Roman ones, appear to have coexisted without problems,” said Tabolli.

Excavations at the site will resume next spring, while the winter period will be used to restore and conduct further studies on the relics.

The artefacts will be housed in a 16th-century building recently bought by the culture ministry in the town of San Casciano. The site of the ancient baths will also be developed into an archaeological park.

“All of this will be enhanced and harmonised, and could represent a further opportunity for the spiritual growth of our culture, and also of the cultural industry of our country,” said Sangiuliano.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Giant 1,100 Pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France

Giant 1,100 Pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France

The femur of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French palaeontologists at an excavation site in southwest France where, since 2010, remains of some of the largest animals ever to live on land have been excavated.

Maxime Lasseron inspects the femur of a Sauropod (AFP/Getty Images)
Maxime Lasseron inspects the femur of a Sauropod.

The thigh bone of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French palaeontologists at an excavation site in southwestern France where remains of some of the largest animals that ever lived on land have been dug up since 2010.

The two-meter-long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, an herbivorous dinosaur with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.

“This is a major discovery,” Ronan Allain, a palaeontologist at the National History Museum of Paris told Reuters. “I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur.”

“These are animals that probably weighed 40 to 50 tonnes.”

Allain said scientists at the site near the city of Cognac had found more than 7,500 fossils of more than 40 different species since 2010, making it one of the largest such finds in Europe.

Scientists believe that the bones are from a sauropod, which is the largest herbivorous dinosaur and first appeared in the late Triassic Period.

These reptiles were the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that have ever lived, they had a small head a long neck and a very long tail.

Scientists believe they would spend their time wallowing in shallow water that would help support their bodies.

The dinosaur bone was found covered in clay by volunteers from the National Museum of Natural History.