‘Rare and significant’ brooch found at site linked to KING ARTHUR
A 1,500-year-old brooch has been found at the site linked to King Arthur
Archaeologists stumbled across the “rare and significant” piece of jewellery and hailed it as the first evidence that the area was home to the rich and powerful during the time. The Romano-British brooch was discovered in a field at St Mabyn, Cornwall, less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort, previously identified as the origin of Arthur’s Camelot.
The discovery has now raised the prospect that the brooch might once have belonged to his queen, Guinevere.
The hill fort is today known as Castle Killibury and has not previously yielded much interest after being ploughed for centuries.
The brooch was found in a meadow known as Chapelfield, where developers are now seeking planning permission to build 14 houses.
The piece of jewellery is made of a copper alloy and archaeologists think it dates from the 5th or 6th century – around the time a real King Arthur might have lived.
The trench where the brooch was found in St Mabyn
Although many sites claim to be associated with Arthur, what makes the Castle Killibury hill fort of potential significance is that the connection was first suggested by Welsh writers.
Usually, claims are made to serve more parochial interests.
Romano-British copper alloy brooches signify that the people who lived here had some importance
The artefact is currently undergoing recording and conservation at the Royal Cornwall Museum.
The owners of the brooch, who also own the field where it was found, live in Malaysia.
But the publicly-available archaeological report attached to Cornwall Council’s planning documents says: “The brooch is a rare and significant find, suggestive of a reasonably ‘well-healed’ Romano-British farmstead settlement.”
The trench is located less than a mile from Castle Killibury hill fort
The discovery gives weight to the argument that the area was home to the rich and powerful
The archaeologists were surprised by the discovery, as they had been expecting only medieval finds.
Some Arthurian scholars claim that the 11th-century Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen – thought to be the very first literary reference to a legendary King Arthur – placed his headquarters at “Celliwig in Cornwall”.
They suggest that the similarity of the name, and the fact that it is a hill fort from the right period in history, place the site at Castle Killibury.
Other scholars dispute this and say the Culhwch and Olwen story places Arthur’s headquarters in Wales.
The St Mabyn brooch was found in May and is described in a report written last month.
It comes just weeks after archaeologists, commissioned by English Heritage found evidence of an important Romano-British castle at Tintagel, long celebrated by poets as King Arthur’s birthplace.
The “Pompeii” Of Bronze Age Houses Was Just Uncovered In Britain
In the marshy fens of Cambridgeshire, archaeologists have uncovered what is being described as the “best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found” in Britain.
The dwellings are preserved exactly as they were when they collapsed into a river.
The incredible find provides a snapshot into the everyday life of those living in the marshes around 3,000 years ago. Following a fire, the circular houses and their contents collapsed into an underlying river and became enveloped in a thick layer of silt, perfectly frozen in time.
The houses show an astonishing level of preservation. Not only have the posts that supported the floors and beams of the roof survived in situ but an array of objects from everyday life have also been spectacularly preserved.
From textiles and tools to cooking pots that still contain their last meal, the incredible conditions have led some to compare it to a Bronze Age Pompeii.
The extent of domestic objects found sandwiched between the roof and the floor when the house collapsed is unprecedented from any British site.
“It feels almost rude to be intruding,” explained Mark Knight, director of the site that is being excavated by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, to The Guardian.
“It doesn’t feel like archaeology anymore, it feels like somebody’s house has burned down and we’re going in and picking over their goods.” These goods were not just everyday objects either, many were precious and expensive at the time.
A bronze sickle has been found, for example, as have glass beads that may once have formed a necklace.
The dwellings were originally discovered in 1999 when a series of poles were noticed sticking out of the edge of the fen. But it wasn’t until 2006 when extensive excavations revealed the true extent of what had been preserved in the waterlogged ground, that the significance of the site really became apparent.
The settlement was built on a series of poles sunk deep into the river channel over which they sat. At the time they were standing, the region would have been a watery network of rivers winding their way through the marshes before emptying out into the Northern Sea.
And yet despite residing in the marshes, it seems that the people were not living off them. The researchers were surprised to find that they were not eating fish, eels or clams, nor were they using reeds to make things with. Instead, it seems they were eating domestic animals such as pigs and sheep.
The spine of a cow was even found in one of the smaller buildings, leaving some to suggest that the meat may have been left to hang before the fire destroyed everything.
Considering the closest dry land where grazing could have occurred at the time was around half a kilometre (0.3 miles) away, this completely changes how archaeologists thought Bronze Age people utilized the landscape and resources surrounding them.
This could imply that the location of the settlement had less to do with food, and more to do with control.
During this time, the rivers would have been the main transport links, so perhaps by controlling these, the inhabitants could have gained wealth, power, and status, an idea supported by the variety of food found buried in the buildings.
Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) form part of a team of Chinese, Spanish, and French scientists that has just published a study of what may prove to be China’s most ancient human fossil, in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Remains of jawbone and teeth of Gongwangling skull/Xing Song
The researchers employed microCT, geometric morphometry, and classical morphology techniques to investigate the remains of the maxillary and five teeth from the skull unearthed at the Chinese site of Gongwangling.
This site is on the vast plains on the northern slopes of the Quinling Mountains (province of Shaanxi, in central China) and was discovered by the scientist Woo Ju-Kang in 1963.
The age of the site was reevaluated in 2015 through regional palaeomagnetism studies.
Those data suggest that the Gongwangling remains date from something over 1.6 million years ago, and so they could belong to one of the first human beings to colonize what is now China.
According to the new study, there exist similarities between the Gongwangling teeth and those from rather more recent Chinese sites: Meipu and Quyuan River Mouth; but some variability is also presented, suggesting a certain diversity among the populations of H. Erectus that colonized Asia during the Pleistocene.
The importance of this new work lies in the scarcity of information about the early colonisation of Asia.
The Dmanisi site (Republic of Georgia) has furnished very significant evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia, who arrived from Africa around two million years ago. But much more information is needed to connect Dmanisi with the classic H. erectus populations of China (Hexian, Yiyuan, Xichuan, or Zhoukoudian), who lived in this great continental mass between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago.
“The Gongwangling site helps to plug this enormous lapse of time and it suggests that Asia might have been settled by successive populations of the species H. Erectus at different moments of the Pleistocene”, comments José María Bermúdez de Castro, coordinator of the Paleobiology Program at the CENIEH.
Characteristics of Homo erectus
The Gongwangling skull presents all the characteristics described for H. Erectus: low and very long cranium, with very thick bones that protected a brain of some 780 cubic centimetres; steeply inclined frontal, with pronounced superciliary arches that form a sort of twin visor above the eyes; flattened parietals which rise at the top to produce a sagittal keel; maximum parietal thickness at the skull base.
The Gongwangling occipital is incomplete, but the reconstruction shows how this bone turns abruptly to comprise the skull base.
Close collaboration between Chinese scientists, led by Liu Wu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), and the Spanish scientists at the CENIEH who, in alphabetical order, were Bermúdez de Castro, Laura Martín-Francés, and María Martinón-Torres, has been essential to this new study of the fossil teeth from China.
The Black Death, the biggest pandemic in our history, was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and lasted in Europe between the years 1346 and 1353.
Despite the pandemic’s immense demographic and societal impacts, its origins have long been elusive.
Now, a multidisciplinary team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the University of Tübingen, in Germany, and the University of Stirling, in the United Kingdom, have obtained and studied ancient Y. pestis genomes that trace the pandemic’s origins to Central Asia.
View of the Tian Shan mountains. Studying ancient plague genomes, researchers traced the origins of the Black Death to Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan.
In 1347, the plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the territories of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. The disease then disseminated across Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa claiming up to 60 per cent of the population in a large-scale outbreak known as the Black Death.
This first wave further extended into a 500-year-long pandemic, the so-called Second Plague Pandemic, which lasted until the early 19th century.
The origins of the Second Plague Pandemic have long been debated. One of the most popular theories has supported its source in East Asia, specifically in China. On the contrary, the only so-far available archaeological findings come from Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what is now Kyrgyzstan. These findings show that an epidemic devastated a local trading community in the years 1338 and 1339.
Specifically, excavations that took place almost 140 years ago revealed tombstones indicating that individuals died in those years of an unknown epidemic or “pestilence”. Since their first discovery, the tombstones inscribed in the Syriac language, have been a cornerstone of controversy among scholars regarding their relevance to the Black Death of Europe.
In this study, an international team of researchers analysed ancient DNA from human remains as well as historical and archaeological data from two sites that were found to contain “pestilence” inscriptions.
The team’s first results were very encouraging, as DNA from the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, was identified in individuals with the year 1338 inscribed on their tombstones.
“We could finally show that the epidemic mentioned on the tombstones was indeed caused by plague”, says Phil Slavin, one of the senior authors of the study and historian at the University of Stirling, UK.
Researchers found the Black Death’s source of strain
Excavation of the Kara-Djigach site, in the Chu-Valley of Kyrgyzstan within the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains. This excavation was carried out between the years 1885 and 1892.
But could this have been the origin of the Black Death? Researchers have previously associated the Black Death’s initiation with a massive diversification of plague strains, a so-called Big Bang event of plague diversity. But the exact date of this event could not be precisely estimated and was thought to have happened sometime between the 10th and 14th centuries.
The team now pieced together complete ancient plague genomes from the sites in Kyrgyzstan and investigated how they might relate to this Big Bang event.
“We found that the ancient strains from Kyrgyzstan are positioned exactly at the node of this massive diversification event. In other words, we found the Black Death’s source strain and we even know its exact date [meaning the year 1338]”, says Maria Spyrou, lead author and researcher at the University of Tübingen.
Plague inscription from the Chu-Valley region in Kyrgyzstan. The inscription is translated as follows: “In the Year 1649 [= 1338 CE], and it was the Year of the tiger, in Turkic Bars. This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence”.
But where did this strain come from? Did it evolve locally or did it spread in this region from elsewhere? Plague is not a disease of humans; the bacterium survives within wild rodent populations across the world, in so-called plague reservoirs. Hence, the ancient Central Asian strain that caused the 1338-1339 epidemic around Lake Issyk Kul must have come from one such reservoir.
“We found that modern strains most closely related to the ancient strain are today found in plague reservoirs around the Tian Shan mountains, so very close to where the ancient strain was found. This points to an origin of Black Death’s ancestor in Central Asia”, explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The study demonstrates how investigations of well-defined archaeological contexts and close collaborations among historians, archaeologists and geneticists can resolve big mysteries of our past, such as the infamous Black Death’s origins, with unprecedented precision.
Archaeologists Unearthed the tomb of a Giant Warrior, horses and a witch in Germany
Close to a burial ground in Theiben, a little town in Germany an unbelievable revelation was made. Two bodies were found close to each other with one being of a goliath and the other being of a young lady accepted to be a witch.
Authorities on the matter agree, these all date back to the Merovingian period which endured from the fifth to the eighth century and this could possibly be confirmation of Giants and witches living in old times.
As a matter of first importance, we should address the Giant. He was 7 feet tall, which probably won’t seem like much at the time yet the vast majority were 4 feet or so around that time so he’d be totally overshadowing any other individual.
A sword was found close to his body which means the way that he was a hero, doubtlessly the head of his clan. He was obviously either guarding the woman close to him or he was ensuring she doesn’t get away.
She then again was restricted and had an iron bar in her chest which is an obvious indicator that she was accepted to be a witch at that point. She was accepted to be 18 years of age and she was covered with her face down.
Three ponies’ skeletons were additionally found at the entryway, which was extremely normal for antiquated human advancements to do. They would kill the ponies so the dead could ride them into life following death.
Among the most amazing remaining parts are those of a lady matured somewhere in the range of 16 and 18, covered face-down “with her options limited and an iron bar penetrating her chest. It appears to be that she was covered this way so her spirit wouldn’t forsake the burial place. Purposes behind this might be that she was incapacitated or twisted, had unique, maybe baffling and accordingly alarming capacities, or that she was essentially viewed as a witch,” as made sense of by the lead prehistorian Nexus News Feed.
Paleologist accept that the iron bar puncturing the chest through her back was to forestall a restoration. Her head confronting the earth and situated toward the east – normally west – was to point the ‘perishing soul’ away from the living.
The grave of a GIANT middle age hero
Archaeologists likewise uncovered the body of a 2-meter-high man – exceptionally tall for the time span – with a blade and a lance. The remaining parts of the goliath man are likely those of a champion, maybe a pioneer.
Monster Germany prehistoric studies, Giant fighter found in Germany old goliath Germany
He holds an iron sword with his left hand and stays of a lance sits to his right side. His garments were shut with a pin
Three pony internments and a lot of bones
3 ponies have additionally uncovered almost a graveyard in Germany.
In the interim 3 pony skeletons have been uncovered. Archaeologists accept there is no connection with the dead, in spite of the fact that they should be visible as a means to head out to the next world while checking other antiquated civilisations out.
What’s more, the archaeologists uncovered a grave in which human bones were stacked up. They haven’t tracked down any conceivable clarifications for this mass grave.
Ancient Humans Tamed Fire as Early as 1 Million Years Ago, Study Suggests
The heat of a fire can make lasting changes to nearby stones
An artificial intelligence tool has revealed hidden evidence of ancient fire at a 1-million-year-old archaeological site in Israel. Applying the technology at other sites could revolutionise our understanding of when and where humans first began controlling fire, which is widely considered to be one of the most significant innovations of all time.
Archaeologists already have a few techniques for identifying whether ancient humans used fire. For instance, you can look for signs that prehistoric bones are discoloured – or that stone tools are warped – in a way that is consistent with exposure to temperatures of 450°C or more.
But this sort of evidence is rarely found at sites that are more than 500,000 years old.
The team trained the algorithm by gathering chunks of flint from non-archaeological sites in the Israeli countryside, heating them to particular temperatures in the lab and then tasking the AI with identifying subtle changes in the flint’s response to UV light.
Now, the team, working with Michael Chazan at the University of Toronto in Canada, has used the algorithm to look at flints from a 1-million-year-old ancient human site called Evron Quarry in Israel.
“The reason we chose Evron Quarry was that it uses the same kind of flint they had used in the previous study,” says Chazan. “But there was just no reason to think there would be evidence of burning there.”
To Chazan’s surprise, the AI tool suggested that many of the flint tools at the site had been heated, mostly to temperatures of about 400°C.
Flint tools found at the Evron Quarry.
The team then took a closer look at chunks of bone recovered from the site and, using existing techniques, confirmed that they had been heated too.
Chazan says no one would have bothered testing the bones for heat exposure without the flint results from the AI.
The clustering of the heated stones and bones hints that ancient humans had control over the fire at Evron Quarry, rather than this being evidence of natural wildfire.
A metal detectorist has discovered a small silver coin marked with the name of a famous Viking king. However, it was unearthed not in Scandinavia, but in southern Hungary, where it was lost almost 1,000 years ago.
The small silver coin was found near the Hungarian village of Várdomb. It dates to between 1046 and 1066 and is inscribed with the name of the Norwegian king.
The find has baffled archaeologists, who have struggled to explain how the coin might have ended up there — it’s even possible that it arrived with the travelling court of a medieval Hungarian king. The early Norwegian coin, denominated as a “penning,” was not especially valuable at the time, even though it’s made from silver, and was worth the equivalent of around $20 in today’s money.
“This penning was equivalent to the denar used in Hungary at the time,” Máté Varga, an archaeologist at the Rippl-Rónai Museum in the southern Hungarian city of Kaposvár and a doctoral student at the Hungary’s University of Szeged, told Live Science in an email. “It was not worth much — perhaps enough to feed a family for a day.”
An 1865 engraving of the Harald Hardrada penning coin. (Image credit: By Zeichner: C. I. Schive, Lithograf Bucher in Bergen – C. I. Schive: Norges Mynter i Middelalderen. Christiania 1865.
Metal detectorist Zoltán Csikós found the silver coin earlier this year at an archaeological site on the outskirts of the village of Várdomb, and handed it over to archaeologist András Németh at the Wosinsky Mór County Museum in the nearby city of Szekszárd.
The Várdomb site holds the remains of the medieval settlement of Kesztölc, one of the most important trading towns in the region at that time. Archaeologists have made hundreds of finds there, including dress ornaments and coins, Varga said.
There is considerable evidence of contact between medieval Hungary and Scandinavia, including Scandinavian artefacts found in Hungary and Hungarian artefacts found in Scandinavia that could have been brought there by trade or travelling craftsmen, Varga said.
But this is the first time a Scandinavian coin has been found in Hungary, he said.
Who was Harald Hardrada?
The coin found at the Várdomb site is in poor condition, but it’s recognizable as a Norwegian penning minted between 1046 and 1066 for King Harald Sigurdsson III — also known as Harald Hardrada — at Nidarnes or Nidaros(opens in new tab), a medieval mint at Trondheim in central Norway.
The description of a similar coin(opens in new tab) notes that the front features the name of the king “HARALD REX NO” — meaning Harald, king of Norway — and is decorated with a “triquetra,” a three-sided symbol representing Christianity’s Holy Trinity.
The other side is marked with a Christian cross in double lines, two ornamental sets of dots, and another inscription naming the master of the mint at Nidarnes.
Harald Hardrada (“Hardrada” translates as “hard ruler” in Norwegian) was the son of a Norwegian chief and half-brother to the Norwegian king Olaf II, according to Britannica(opens in new tab). He lived at the end of the Viking Age and is sometimes considered the last of the great Viking warrior-kings.
This is a photo showing the Kirkwall Cathedral’s stained glass window of Harald Hardrada.
Traditional stories record that Harald fought alongside his half-brother at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, where Olaf was defeated and killed by the forces of an alliance between Norwegian rebels and the Danish; Harald fled in exile after that, first to Russia and then to the Byzantine Empire, where he became a prominent military leader.
He returned to Norway in 1045 and became its joint king with his nephew, Magnus I Olafsson; he became the sole king when Magnus died in battle against Denmark in 1047.
Harald then spent many years trying to obtain the Danish throne, and in 1066 he attempted to conquer England by allying with the rebel forces of Tostig Godwinson, who was trying to take the kingdom from his brother, King Harold Godwinson.
But both Harald and Tostig were killed by Harold Godwinson’s forces at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in northern England in 1066; whereupon the victor and his armies had to cross the country just a few weeks before the Battle of Hastings against William of Normandy — which Harold Godwinson lost, and with it the kingdom of England.
Medieval travels
The penning found at Várdomb could have been lost more than 100 years after it was minted, but it’s more likely that it was in circulation for between 10 and 20 years, Varga and Németh said. That dating gives rise to a possible connection with a medieval Hungarian king named Solomon, who ruled from 1063 to 1087.
According to a medieval Hungarian illuminated manuscript known as the “Képes Krónika” (or “Chronicon Pictum” in Latin), Solomon and his retinue (a group of advisors and important people) encamped in 1074 “above the place called Kesztölc” — and so the archaeologists think one of Solomon’s courtiers at that time may have carried, and then lost, the exotic coin.
“The king’s court could have included people from all over the world, whether diplomatic or military leaders, who could have had such coins,” Varga and Németh said in a statement.
Another possibility is that the silver coin was brought to medieval Kesztölc by a common traveller: the trading town “was crossed by a major road with international traffic, the predecessor of which was a road built in Roman times along the Danube,” the researchers said in the statement.
“This road was used not only by kings, but also by merchants, pilgrims, and soldiers from far away, any of whom could have lost the rare silver coin,” they wrote.
Further research could clarify the origins of the coin and its connection with the site; while no excavations are planned, Varga said, field surveys and further metal detection will be carried out at the site in the future.
A trove of 13,000 Artifacts Sheds Light on Enigmatic Chinese Civilization
Bronze sacrificial altar unearthed at the Sanxingdui archaeological site
For hundreds of years, the Sanxingdui culture flourished in what is now southwest China, producing ornate bronze masks and precious wares before vanishing abruptly around 1100 or 1200 B.C.E.
Believed to be part of the broader Shu state, the civilization continues to fascinate more than 3,000 years after its demise. As state-run news agency Xinhua reports, a trove of 13,000 artefacts unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins site over the past two years is poised to offer new insights into the mysterious Bronze Age culture.
Found in six sacrificial pits, according to China Daily’s Wang Kaihao, the cache includes 1,238 bronze wares, 543 gold artefacts and 565 jade objects.
Among the highlights of the discovery is a bronze box with a tortoise-shaped lid, dragonhead handles and bronze ribbons. Green jade is tucked inside the container, which appears to have once been wrapped in silk.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vessel is one of its kind, given its distinctive shape, fine craftsmanship and ingenious design,” Li Haichao, an archaeologist at Sichuan University, tells Xinhua. “Although we do not know what this vessel was used for, we can assume that ancient people treasured it.”
Bronze head with gold mask excavated at the Sanxingdui archaeological site
Other key finds include a bronze sacrificial altar, a giant bronze mask, and a bronze statue with a human head and a snake’s body. Per the Global Times’ Ji Yuqiao, the hybrid figure rests its hands on a lei drinking vessel; another type of vessel known as a zun is painted on the statue’s head in vermillion hues.
The sculpture’s blend of artistic styles reflects the “early exchange and integration of Chinese civilization,” says Ran Honglin, a researcher at the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, to Xinhua. It’s human and snake components are typical of the Shu state, while the lei is more commonly associated with the pre-Western Zhou Dynasty. The zun is historically found in the Zhongyuan region.
“These three factors are now blended into one artefact, which demonstrates that Sanxingdui is an important part of Chinese civilization,” Ran adds.
According to an official government FAQ, a farmer stumbled onto the Sanxingdui Ruins in 1929. The first archaeological excavation at the site took place in 1934, but work soon drew to a halt amid the political tumult of the mid-20th century.
It was only in 1986 that scholars recognized the significance of the ruins: As Live Science’s Tia Ghose wrote in 2014, archaeologists found two pits filled with 1,000 artefacts, including eight-foot-tall bronze sculptures whose artistry points to an “impressive technical ability that was present nowhere else in the world at the time.” Because the objects were broken or burned before burial, experts concluded that they’d been placed in the pits as part of a sacrificial ritual.
A large bronze head with protruding eyes is believed to be a depiction of Cancong, the semi-legendary first king of Shu
In addition to the towering figurines, excavators discovered oversized bronze masks with exaggerated facial features. Measuring around three feet wide, the masks share several key characteristics, per the Saxingdui Museum: “knife-shaped eyebrows, protruding eyes in [a] triangle shape, big stretching ears, snub nose and fine mouth.” Experts posit that the masks may have memorialized their creators’ ancestors or gods.
No written records or human remains associated with the Sanxingdui survive today, reports Kathleen Magramo for CNN. But scholars generally agree that the culture was part of the kingdom of Shu, which thrived on the Chengdu Plain until its defeat by the state of Qin in 316 B.C.E. The exact reasons for the Sanxingdui’s decline are unknown, but theories abound, with earthquakes, war and flooding all proposed as possible explanations.
Based on the discovery of similar artefacts at Jinsha, about 30 miles away from the Sanxingdui Ruins, some archaeologists argue that the Sanxingdui moved to Jinsha and rebuilt their community there.
Between 2020 and 2022, a renewed slate of excavations uncovered six additional pits at the Sanxingdui site. Last year, archaeologists revealed fragments of a gold mask, traces of silk, bronzeware adorned with depictions of animals, ivory carvings and other artefacts.
The current round of excavations is slated to conclude in October. As Ran tells the Global Times, “The number of unearthed cultural relics will keep increasing with further work.”
