A four-legged robot called Spot has been deployed to wander around the ruins of ancient Pompeii, identifying structural and safety issues while delving underground to inspect tunnels dug by relic thieves.
The robot is capable of inspecting even the smallest of spaces while ‘gathering and recording data useful for the study and planning of interventions.
The dog-like robot is the latest in a series of technologies used as part of a broader project to better manage the archaeological park since 2013 when Unesco threatened to add Pompeii to a list of world heritage sites in peril unless Italian authorities improved its preservation.
Spot, made by the US-based Boston Dynamics, is capable of inspecting even the smallest of spaces while “gathering and recording data useful for the study and planning of interventions”, park authorities said.
The aim, they added, is to “improve both the quality of monitoring of the existing areas, and to further our knowledge of the state of progress of the works in areas undergoing recovery or restoration, and thereby to manage the safety of the site, as well as that of workers.”
Until Spot came along, no technology of its kind had been developed for archaeological sites, according to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park.
Park authorities have also experimented with a flying laser scanner capable of conducting 3D scans across the 66-hectare (163-acre) site.
A drone is flown over the Pompeii site.
Zuchtriegel said: “Technological advances in the world of robotics, in the form of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, have produced solutions and innovations typically associated with the industrial and manufacturing world, but which until now had not found an application within archaeological sites due to the heterogeneity of environmental conditions, and the size of the site.”
The spot will also be tested for use in underground tunnels made by tombaroli, or tomb raiders, who for years made a fortune by digging their way into the ruins and stealing relics to sell to art traffickers around the world.
The thieves have been less successful since 2012, when Italy’s art police intensified a crackdown on cultural crime, although tunnels are still being found in the area around Pompeii.
“Often the safety conditions within the tunnels dug by grave robbers are extremely precarious, and so the use of a robot could signify a breakthrough that would allow us to proceed with greater speed and in total safety,” said Zuchtriegel.
Giant mysterious jars that may have been used for burial rituals have been unearthed across four new sites in Assam, India. The discovery comes from a major collaboration involving researchers at The Australian National University (ANU).
The 65 newly discovered sandstone jars vary in shape and decoration, with some tall and cylindrical, and others partly or fully buried in the ground.
Similar jars, some of which span up to three metres high and two metres wide, have previously been uncovered in Laos and Indonesia.
“We still don’t know who made the giant jars or where they lived. It’s all a bit of a mystery,” ANU PhD student Nicholas Skopal said.
Another mystery is what the giant jars were used for. The researchers believe it is likely they were associated with mortuary practices.
“There are stories from the Naga people, the current ethnic groups in north-east India, of finding the Assam jars filled with cremated remains, beads and other material artefacts,” Mr Skopal said.
This theory aligns with findings from the other jar sites in countries including Laos, which are also tied to burial rituals.
Initially, the aim of the new research was to survey the existing sites in Assam. However, as the researchers moved about the landscape they realised there was more to be uncovered.
“At the start, the team just went in to survey three large sites that hadn’t been formally surveyed. From there grids were set up to explore the surrounding densely forested regions,” Mr Skopal said.
“This is when we first started finding new jar sites.
“The team only searched a very limited area so there are likely to be a lot more out there, we just don’t yet know where they are.”
The surveying and reporting of these sites are of great importance in regard to heritage management in India.
“It seems as though there aren’t any living ethnic groups in India associated with the jars, which means there is important to maintain the cultural heritage,” Mr Skopal said.
“The longer we take to find them, the greater chance that they will be destroyed, as more crops are planted in these areas and the forests are cut down.”
The researchers worked with local communities on the ground to uncover potential jar sites, often through areas of mountainous jungle that were difficult to navigate.
“Once the sites have been recorded, it becomes easier for the government to work with the local communities to protect and maintain them so they are not being destroyed,” Mr Skopal said.
The research was led by Tilok Thakuria, from North Eastern Hill University and Uttam Bathari, from Gauhati University.
Unknown symbols are written by the lost ‘painted people’ of Scotland unearthed
What seemed like an eventful evening turned into an emotional discovery for the history books after archaeologists in Scotland came upon a stone covered with ancient geometric carvings. The symbols were etched in stone by the Picts, Scotland’s indigenous people, about 1,500 years ago.
The 5.5-foot-long (1.7 meters) stone is covered with Pictish symbols.
The 5.5-foot-long (1.7-meter) stone artefact was discovered in Aberlemno, a parish and small village in the Scottish council area of Angus. The site was already famous for four previously discovered Pictish carvings from between 500 AD and 800 AD, which exhibit a range of symbols, from Pictish symbols to overtly Christian iconography.
Fierce people who a strong culture
For a very long time, the ancient Roman Empire wanted to seize Scotland, known during Roman times as Caledonia. The province was the site of many enticing resources, such as lead, silver, and gold. It was also a matter of national pride for the Romans, who loathed being denied glory by some ‘savages’.
Despite their best efforts, the Romans never really conquered the whole of Scotland. The farthest Roman frontier in Britain was marked by the Antonine Wall, which was erected in 140 AD between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, only to be abandoned two decades later following constant raiding by Caledonia’s most ferocious clans, the Picts.
The name given to these northern people means ‘Painted Ones’ in Latin. The Picts constituted the largest kingdom in Dark Age Scotland until they disappeared from history at the end of the first millennium, their culture having been assimilated by the Gaels. But although not very much is known about these people who dominated Scotland for centuries, evidence suggests that Pictish culture was rich, perhaps with its own written language in place as early as 1,700 years ago, a 2018 study found.
It’s unclear what the geometric symbols carved in the newly found stone at Aberlemno represent, which include abstract symbols in the shape of a comb and a mirror, a crescent, double discs, and triple ovals. According to Gordon Noble, excavation leader and a professor of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, the most plausible explanation is that the symbols represented Pictish names, although there’s no hard evidence at the moment to back this claim. Some of these symbols overlap with one another, which suggests some were added later in different time periods.
Excavation leader Gordon Noble works at the site.
A tearful discovery
Archaeologists excavate the Pictish-carved stone in Aberlemno, Scotland.
The extraordinary find was made while the archaeologists were surveying the site as part of a five-year investigation into early medieval kingdoms in northern Britain in Ireland. Researchers had deployed geophysical equipment to the area, which they used to look for signs of any potential object of interest beneath the ground without having to dig an inch. The radar eventually picked up an anomaly that looked like it might be something interesting, perhaps the remains of a settlement, and the archaeologists were eager to work.
Unfortunately, this was early 2020 when the pandemic was sweeping Britain and there were still many frightening unknowns. The archaeologists would have to wait a couple of months before they could get back to Aberlemno — and all that anticipation eventually paid off.
At the bottom of the pit they dug, the archaeologists hit a stone, which they expected to be the remnants of some wall. But when they brushed the dirt off, everyone freaked out. The stone was covered in symbols, definitely of Pictish origin.
“There are only around 200 of these monuments known. They are occasionally dug up by farmers ploughing fields or during the course of road building but by the time we get to analyse them, much of what surrounds them has already been disturbed,” Noble said in a statement.
“To come across something like this while digging one small test pit is absolutely remarkable and none of us could quite believe our luck.”
Dr. James O’Driscoll, the researcher who was the first to discover the stone, described his excitement:
“We thought we’d just uncover a little bit more before we headed off for the day. We suddenly saw a symbol. There was lots of screaming. Then we found more symbols and there was more screaming and a little bit of crying!”
“It’s a feeling that I’ll probably never have again on an archaeological site. It’s a find of that scale.”
The researchers recounted their initial reaction to this priceless moment in the video below.
The marvellous carved stone was dated to the 5th or 6th century AD, not that long after the last Roman legionnaires left Britain for good.
Interestingly, the stone was found below the foundation of a huge building from the 11th or 12th century. The researchers aren’t sure why the building was built directly on top of the settlement layers extending back to the Pictish period. Perhaps the stone was simply lost and the people who built the building were simply not aware of its existence. Only 200 Pictish stones have been found in total.
“The discovery of this new Pictish symbol stone and evidence that this site was occupied over such a long period will offer new insights into this significant period in the history of Scotland as well as help us to better understand how and why this part of Angus became a key Pictish landscape and latterly an integral part of the kingdoms of Alba and Scotland,” Professor Noble said.
The 1,000-year-old surgical kit found in Sican tomb, Peru
The remains of an individual who served as a surgeon during the Middle Sican period (900-1050 AD) were found by experts from the Sican National Museum in the southern necropolis at the Mausoleum Temple of Huaca Las Ventanas, located in the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary in the province of Ferreñafe, Lambayeque region.
The funerary bundle No. 77 featured an individual who served as a surgeon. This is the first discovery of this type in the country’s northern region.
Sican National Museum Director Carlos Elera reported that this discovery was made as part of archaeological investigations initiated between 2010 and 2011 in the southern necropolis at Huaca Las Ventanas.
Instrumental recovered from the tomb
“This was a research project carried out by the Museum between 2010 and 2011; the context and part of it, which was covered with soil and sand, were partially removed, and we decided to bring it in a box because the river (La Leche River) was going to destroy part of this Huaca,” Elera told Andina news agency.
“So, taking advantage of the fact that there was a donation from the National Geographic Fund last year, we decided to excavate what had been documented at the funerary bundle of the external middle part,” he added.
The investigation was restarted in October 2021 and ended in January this year at the Sican Museum.
“This individual is of Middle Sican cultural affiliation.
The funerary bundle included a golden mask pigmented with cinnabar, as well as a breastplate and a kind of poncho with copper plates and a gold hair remover,” he explained.
According to the museum’s director, there was a bottle —with two spouts and a bridge handle featuring a figure representing the Huaco Rey (King Huaco)— under the poncho.
“The bundle also included gilt copper bowls and a tumi (a ceremonial knife) (…). The most interesting thing was the set of awls, needles, and knives, several of which with a cutting edge on one side and a blunt edge on the other side; the sizes vary and some have wooden handles,” he added.
Log Boats Recovered from River in Northern Ireland
History lies beneath the riverbeds of northwest Ireland. Every so often, when conditions allow, archaeologists are rewarded with another offering from the distant past.
Two more vessels, known as log boats or dugout boats, were found at a site near the Lifford Bridge
Two more boats understood to be from the medieval era, have emerged from the River Foyle. The boats, known as longboats or dugout boats, were found at a “dugout boat hotspot” near the Lifford Bridge. The bridge connects the towns of Strabane in Northern Ireland and Lifford, in County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.
Marine archaeologist Dr Niall Gregory said the two boats now bring the total number found at this particular section of the river to 15. Overall, 21 such boats have been found at the confluence (meeting point) of the Rivers Mourne and Finn into the River Foyle.
Logboat’s are made from hollowed-out trees and can vary in size depending on the tree trunk used, Dr Gregory told BBC News NI.
About 500 of these dugout boats have been found on the island of Ireland
About 500 log boats have been found across the island of Ireland, he said. One of the largest recorded was found in lower Lough Erne and measured nearly 60ft (18m) long and 3.2ft (1m) wide.
“These two boats found at the Lifford Bridge site were cargo ferry boats,” he said.
“These boats were designed as workhorses, to move and manoeuvre with some degree of agility within a moderate to strong current.
“These two boats are from a dugout boat hotspot where they have appeared over the years, usually after seasonal high-water flows.”
‘Taking a dander’
Logboat’s are “notoriously difficult” to date based upon hull size and shape alone, and carbon dating is the only definitive means of obtaining a conclusive date.
Dr Gregory estimates – based on the hull shape, use of medieval nails, distorted wood grain and remains of sapwood on the exterior – that they are of a medieval era.
Previous boats found at the site have been dated from between 600 AD to 1520 AD, he said. Dr Gregory believes these boats, from their characteristics, are more likely to be later rather than earlier in that range.
Logboat’s are made from a hollowed-out tree and can vary drastically in size
Eamon Logue, from the Strabane-Lifford Anglers Association, was one of the first people to stumble across the uncovered remains.
Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle’s Mark Paterson Show, Mr Logue said one of the boats seemed in such miraculous condition that it looked like someone had parked it there.
Previous vessels found at the Lifford bridge site have dated from about 600 AD to 1520 AD
“Me and a friend were just taking dander down the River Foyle.
“We were about 100 yards down the bank and we have just seen it, at the side of the river, like someone had parked it there.
“There were big floods just a few weeks before, we think it has either been dislodged or the bank has caved away and exposed it.
“We have walked this river for years and found different bits but this was different.”
Nail and timber samples from the boats have now been sent to Dr Rena Maguire of Queen’s University Belfast.
Dr Maguire, who is a metallurgical specialist, will undertake an analysis of the nails and also radio-carbon date the timbers to get a more exact date. Only time will tell if, or rather when, more of these boats will reappear along the banks of the Foyle.
The Search for “Lost” Royal Graves in Britain and Ireland
The graves of dozens of what may have been early British kings, queens, princes and princesses from the era of the mythical King Arthur have been revealed by a new study. It suggests that British royal graves dating from between the fifth and the seventh centuries A.D. have been overlooked until now, possibly because they weren’t elaborate and contained no valuable grave goods.
The new study identifies British Royal graves from the era of the mythical King Arthur. Several places in Britain are claimed to be the location of his burial, but according to some legends, Arthur was taken by a magical boat to the mystical Isle of Avalon after being mortally wounded in battle.
The research reconsiders archaeological evidence from a little-understood period of British history, between the end of Roman rule and the late Anglo-Saxon kingdoms — a time traditionally described by the legends of King Arthur.
The new study by Ken Dark, an emeritus professor of archaeology and history at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, identifies what may be up to 65 graves of post-Roman British kings and their families at about 20 burial sites across the west of England and Wales, including the modern English counties of Somerset and Cornwall.
The British continued to rule in what is now the west of England, Wales, and parts of Scotland in the centuries after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century, while the invading Anglo-Saxons settled in the east.
But while Anglo-Saxon rulers of the time were given elaborate burials with valuable and ornate grave gifts, the Christian British may have viewed this as a pagan practice, Dark said.
The study suggests the “lost” graves of the post-Roman British royalty are the enclosure graves found at several early Christian burial sites throughout the west of England and Wales.
Instead, the British seemed to have buried their royalty without grave goods in simple graves without stone inscriptions alongside the graves of common Christians – although many of the royal graves were enclosed by a rectangular ditch and probably surrounded by a fence that has since rotted away, he said.
Dark, who is now at the University of Navarra in Spain, is the author of the study published this month in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.
“The royal graves are very standardized,” he told Live Science. “They have some variation, just like the ordinary graves do — some are bigger, some are smaller, some have only one grave in the centre while others have two or three.”
Post-Roman Britain
Roman rule in Britain lasted from A.D. 43, following a Roman invasion under the emperor Claudius, until about A.D. 410, when the last Roman troops were recalled to Gaul (modern France) amid internal rebellions in the Roman Empire and invasions by Germanic tribes. (The Roman general Julius Caesar invaded southern Britain in 55 B.C. and 54 B.C., but he didn’t establish a permanent Roman rule.)
Between the fifth and seventh centuries, the Christian British ruled what are now western England and Wales as a patchwork of small kingdoms that tried to continue Christian Roman traditions. In the same period, pagan Germanic tribes — the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who originated in the north of Europe — invaded and settled in the eastern parts of the country.
Graves thought to be of British kings, covered with mounds of earth, were also found at Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall – a site long associated with British royalty, and especially some legends of King Arthur.
The legends of King Arthur, who was supposedly British and Christian, are set in this period, although most historians think Arthur didn’t actually exist. (Dark, however, suggests that a real person or a fictional hero of that name was famous as early as the sixth century because Dark’s previous studies have suggested there was a sudden spike in the use of the name “Arthur” among British and Irish royal families at the time.)
Dark began his investigation to address a long-standing archaeological mystery: while many British kings were known to have lived during this time period, almost none of their graves had ever been found.
Until this study, the burial of only one British king from this era was known after being discovered in the northwest of Wales; an inscription on a gravestone name the person buried there as Catamanus (Cadfan in Welsh) and declares that he was a king (rex in Latin.)
But Cadfan may have retired from the kingship to become a monk before his death, and the phrasing of the inscription implies his grave was being commemorated because of his status as a monk, Dark said.
Meanwhile, the graves of at least nine Anglo-Saxon rulers from the period have been found, including one at the famous ship-burial at Sutton Hoo near the east coast of England.
Royal graves
To get to the bottom of the mystery, Dark reviewed the archaeological work previously done at thousands of burial sites from this period in the west of Britain and Ireland. His study suggests that the British royal graves were placed within early Christian cemeteries; and while they were marked out as those of high-status people, they seem very humble compared to ornate pagan graves and none have stones with inscriptions stating who was buried there.
The outer enclosures vary in size and some contain up to four graves, but they are typically about 15 to 30 feet (4 to 9 meters) across and up to 30 feet (9 m) long.
“We’ve got a load of burials that are all the same, and a tiny minority of those burials are marked out as being of higher status than the others,” Dark said. “When there are no other possible candidates, that seems to me to be a pretty good argument for these being the ‘lost’ royal burials.”
At one site at Tintagel, a fortified peninsula on the coast of Cornwall that’s long been associated with post-Roman British royalty and legends of King Arthur, what are thought to be five British royal graves in an early Christian cemetery take another form. Each was covered by a mound of earth, possibly because Irish royal graves are also covered with mounds called “ferta,” he said. (The post-Roman British had strong links to Celtic Ireland; the ancient Irish and British were both of Celtic origin and had similar languages.)
But the pattern of placing the royal graves at the centre of an enclosure – usually rectangular, but sometimes circular – appears to be a burial style developed by Christians in late Roman Britain, he said.
“The enclosed grave tradition comes straight out of late Roman burial practices,” he said. “And that’s a good reason why we have them in Britain, but not in Ireland — because Britain was part of the Roman empire, and Ireland wasn’t,” he said.
Although previous studies had noted the enclosed graves were thought to hold people of high social status, rather than royals; and archaeologists were expecting royal burials to be covered by mounds of earth or marked with inscriptions on stone, he said. “But I’m suggesting that this burial practice was specifically royal.”
Cats and babies: Thousand-year-old mummies in Turkey’s Aksaray
Cat, baby and adult mummies in Aksaray, the gateway to Cappadocia with its historical cultural riches and known as the first settlement of Central Anatolia, have been enchanting visitors at a museum where they are on display.
Mummies of babies are displayed at the Aksaray Museum, in Aksaray, Turkey, on March 27, 2022.
At the Aksaray Museum, which houses Turkey’s first and only mummy section, there stands on display a total of 13 mummies, consisting of cats, babies and adult humans from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries unearthed in excavations in and around Aksaray.
Aksaray Museum Director Yusuf Altın provided information on the mummies, which are preserved in showcases with special heating and cooling systems.
“With 13 mummies in our Aksaray Museum, we are the only museum in Turkey with a mummy section,” Altın said. “There is one mummy in each of the Amasya and Niğde Museums, but our museum has the only section exhibited in this way … in our country.”
“The mummies in our museum were found as a result of the excavations in the churches in Ihlara Valley. Some of our mummies were found in the churches built about a thousand years ago in Çanlı Church,” he stated.
A mummy of a cat is displayed at the Aksaray Museum, in Aksaray, Turkey, on March 27, 2022.
Altın pointed out that the embalming technique in Turkey was different compared to Egypt.
“Of these mummies, the baby mummy is very technical work in itself. Because the mummification technique in our country is different from the mummification technique in Egypt.
In this technique, after the person dies, the internal organs of the corpse are removed, the wax is melted and the corpse is covered with a layer of glaze. Then it is covered with fabric and shroud.
It is buried in the ground in this way and the corpse remains preserved for centuries after it dries. We bring our mummies from these excavations to our museum and exhibit them. In particular, we also exhibit the embroideries of necklaces, booties and shrouds on them.”
Yusuf stated that a cat loved by its owner was also preserved with the mummification technique and that a cat mummy was found during the excavation efforts.
“We have another mummy, the cat mummy, which especially attracts the attention of our children.
Our cat mummy was covered with wax and preserved, probably because it was loved by its owner. So, we have been displaying it in our museum,” he said.
“All of our mummies are from the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. So, they are almost a thousand years old.”
1,000-Year-Old Gold Mask Found in Tomb Was Painted With Human Blood
A 1,000-year-old mask discovered on the head of an ancient skeleton was painted using human blood, according to a new study.
(Image credit: Adapted from Journal of Proteome Research 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.1c00472)
Archaeologists with the Sicán Archaeological Project unearthed the gold mask in the early 1990s while excavating an ancient tomb in Peru. The tomb, which dates to around A.D. 1000, belonged to a middle-aged elite man from the ancient Sicán culture, which inhabited the northern coast of Peru from the ninth to the 14th centuries.
The skeleton, which was also painted in bright red, was discovered sitting headless and upside down at the centre of a square burial that was 39 feet (12 meters) deep.
The head, which was intentionally detached from the skeleton, was placed right side up and was covered with the red-painted mask. Inside the tomb, archaeologists discovered 1.2 tons (1.1 metric tons) of grave goods and the skeletons of four others: two young women arranged into positions of a midwife and a woman giving birth, and two crouching children arranged at a higher level.
At the time of the excavation, scientists identified the red pigment on the mask as cinnabar, a bright-red mineral made of mercury and sulfur.
A Sicán funerary mask at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is similar to the one recently analyzed by archaeologists.
But despite being buried deep underground for a thousand years, somehow the red paint — a thick, 0.04- to-0.08-inch (1 to 2 millimetres) layer — had managed to remain attached to the mask. “The identity of the binding material, that had been so effective in the red paint, remained a mystery,” the authors wrote.
In the new study, the researchers analyzed a small sample of red paint to see if they could figure out the secret ingredient responsible for the effective binding.
First, with an infrared spectroscopy technique that uses infrared light to identify components of a material, they figured out that proteins were present in the red paint.
They then used mass spectrometry, a method that can sort different ions in a material based on their charge and mass, to identify the specific proteins.
The red paint contained six proteins found in human blood, the researchers found. The paint also contained proteins originating from egg whites.
The proteins are highly degraded, so it’s unclear what bird species the eggs came from, but the researchers hypothesize that it may have been the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), according to a statement.
“Cinnabar-based paints were typically used in the context of social elites and ritually important items,” the authors wrote in the study. While cinnabar was restricted for elite use, non-elites used another type of ochre-based paint for painting objects, the authors wrote.
Archaeologists had previously hypothesized that the skeletons’ arrangement represented a desired “rebirth” of the deceased Sicán leader, according to the statement. For this “desired” rebirth to take place, the ancients may have coated the entire skeleton in this bloody paint, possibly symbolizing red oxygenated blood or a “life force,” the authors wrote.
A recent analysis found that the Sicán sacrificed humans by cutting the neck and upper chest to maximize bleeding, the authors wrote. So “from an archaeological perspective, the use of human blood in the paint would not be surprising.”
