Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

8,000-year-old female figurine uncovered in central Turkey

8,000-year-old female figurine uncovered in central Turkey

An 8,000-year-old statuette of what could be a fertility goddess has been unearthed at a Neolithic site in Turkey, according to archaeologists.

July 10, 2016 file photo shows a woman figurine uncovered in Konya, Turkey. Scientists have uncovered a rare stone figurine of a woman dating back 8,000 years at an archaeological dig in Turkey's central province of Konya that an expert says is one of only handful of statuettes of the era ever found in one piece. Stanford University Professor Ian Hodder told the AP in an email that the 17 cm (7 inch) figurine, found at the Catalhoyuk site, is unique because it is carved from stone, unlike most which are made from clay.
July 10, 2016 file photo shows a woman figurine uncovered in Konya, Turkey. Scientists have uncovered a rare stone figurine of a woman dating back 8,000 years at an archaeological dig in Turkey’s central province of Konya that an expert says is one of only a handful of statuettes of the era ever found in one piece. Stanford University Professor Ian Hodder told the AP in an email that the 17 cm (7 inches) figurine, found at the Catalhoyuk site, is unique because it is carved from stone, unlike most which are made from clay.

The figurine, discovered at Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, was wrought from recrystallized limestone between 6300 and 6000 B.C. That material is rare for an area where most previously discovered pieces were sculpted from clay, the researchers said.

The archaeologists think this figurine, which is conventionally associated with fertility goddesses, is also representative of an elderly woman who had risen to prominence in Çatalhöyük’s famously egalitarian society.

Goddess figurines were common in the Neolithic period, with those found at Çatalhöyük usually depicting a plump woman with her hair tied in a bun, sagging breasts and a pronounced belly, they said.

The newfound figurine differentiates itself from similar statuettes not only in its material and quality but also in its craftsmanship, according to Ian Hodder, a professor of anthropology at Stanford University who is overseeing the Çatalhöyük site. Hodder said that he “realized immediately that it was a very special find.”

At 6.7 inches tall (17 centimetres) and 4.3 inches (11 cm) wide, the figurine has fine details such as elaborate fat rolls on the limbs and neck.

Unlike other goddess statuettes, the limestone figurine also depicts the woman with her arms separated from her torso and an undercut below the belly to separate it from the rest of the body.

These finer details would have only been possible with thin tools, like flint or obsidian, the researchers said, which suggests that the carving could only have been made by a practised artisan.

With its fine artistry and its discovery in the newer, shallower parts of the site (meaning that it was likely buried later), Hodder said that the figurine might signal a shift from a sharing economy to an exchange economy, where resources could be accumulated unevenly.

“We think society was changing at this time, becoming relatively less egalitarian, with houses being more independent and more based on agricultural production,” Hodder said in a statement.

READ ALSO: 8,000 YEARS OF HISTORY TO RESURFACE AT TURKEY’S TAVŞANLI MOUND

The archaeologists think that the figurine was made after Neolithic Çatalhöyük, where resources were often pooled, changed toward a more stratified society.

The fatness of the goddess statue could represent high status rather than an elevated place in a society of equals, Hodder said.

Whatever the shift, it did not happen overnight. Humans first settled in Çatalhöyük around 7500 B.C., with the society reaching its peak around 7000 B.C., according to archaeologists. The ancient settlement was abandoned around 5700 BC.

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

In Germany, a rare hoard of 2000-year-old Curved Celtic gold coins was discovered

In Germany, a rare hoard of 2000-year-old Curved Celtic gold coins was discovered

A volunteer archaeologist has discovered an ancient stash of Celtic coins, whose “value must have been immense,” in Brandenburg, a state in northeastern Germany. The 41 gold coins were minted more than 2,000 years ago, and are the first known Celtic gold treasure in Brandenburg,  Manja Schüle, the Minister of Culture in Brandenburg announced in December 2021.

In Germany, a rare hoard of 2000-year-old Curved Celtic gold coins was discovered
A selection of the 41 Celtic coins was discovered in Brandenburg, Germany.

The coins are curved, a feature that inspired the German name “regenbogenschüsselchen,” which translates to “rainbow cups.” Just like the legend that there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, “in popular belief, rainbow cups were found where a rainbow touched the Earth,” Marjanko Pilekić, a numismatist and research assistant at the Coin Cabinet of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation in Germany, who studied the hoard, told Live Science in an email. 

Another piece of lore is that rainbow cups “fell directly from the sky and were considered lucky charms and objects with a healing effect,” Pilekić added. It’s likely that peasants often found the ancient gold coins on their fields after rainfall, “freed from dirt and shining,” he said.

The hoard was discovered by Wolfgang Herkt, a volunteer archaeologist with the Brandenburg State Heritage Management and Archaeological State Museum (BLDAM), near the village of Baitz in 2017.

After Herkt got a landowner’s permission to search a local farm, he noticed something gold and shiny. “It reminded him of a lid of a small liquor bottle,” Pilekić said. “However, it was a Celtic gold coin.”

After finding 10 more coins, Herkt reported the discovery to the BLDAM, whose archaeologists brought the hoard’s total to 41 coins.

“This is an exceptional find that you probably only make once in a lifetime,” Herkt said in a statement. “It’s a good feeling to be able to contribute to the research of the country’s history with such a find.”

The first 11 coins were discovered in Brandenburg, Germany.

By comparing the weight and size of the coins with those of other ancient rainbow cups, Pilekić was able to date the hoard’s minting to between 125 B.C. and 30 B.C., during the late Iron Age.

At that time, the core areas of the Celtic archaeological culture of La Tène (about 450 B.C. to the Roman conquest in the first century B.C.) occupied the regions of what is now England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, southern Germany and the Czech Republic, Pilekić said. In southern Germany, “we find large numbers of rainbow cups of this kind,” he noted.

However, Celts did not live in Brandenburg, so the discovery suggests that Iron Age Europe had extensive trade networks.

A selection of the cup-shaped Celtic gold coins from Brandenburg, Germany.
A 2,000-year-old Celtic gold coin in the field where it was found.

What was in the hoard?

Of the 41 gold coins, 19 are coins known as staters, which have a diameter of 0.7 inches (2 centimetres) and an average weight of 0.2 ounces (7.3 grams), and 22 are 1/4 staters, which have a smaller diameter of 0.5 inches (1.4 cm) and an average weight of 0.06 ounces (1.8 g). The entire stash is imageless, meaning they are “plain rainbow cups,” said Pilekić, who is also a doctoral candidate of the archaeology of coinage, money and the economy in Antiquity at Goethe University, Frankfurt.

READ ALSO: HOARD OF 1,800-YEAR-OLD SILVER COINS DISCOVERED IN GERMANY

Because the coins in the stash are similar, it’s likely that the hoard was deposited all at once, he said. However, it’s a mystery why this collection — the second largest hoard of “plain” rainbow cups of this type ever found — ended up in Brandenburg. 

“It is rare to find gold in Brandenburg, but no one would have expected it to be ‘Celtic’ gold of all things,” Pilekić said. “This find extends the distribution area of these coin types once again, and we will try to find out what this might tell us that we did not yet know or thought we knew.”

ASIA, SYRIA, WORLD

Hybrid animal in the 4500-year-old tomb is earliest known bred by humans

Hybrid animal in 4500-year-old tomb is earliest known bred by humans

Mesopotamians were using hybrids of domesticated donkeys and wild asses to pull their war wagons 4,500 years ago — at least 500 years before horses were bred for the purpose, a new study reveals.

Hybrid animal in 4500-year-old tomb is earliest known bred by humans
The animal bones at Umm el-Marra were thought to be from kungas because their teeth had marks from bit harnesses and wear patterns that showed they had been fed, rather than left to graze.

The analysis of ancient DNA from animal bones unearthed in northern Syria resolves a long-standing question of just what type of animals were the “kungas” described in ancient sources as pulling war wagons.

“From the skeletons, we knew they were equids [horse-like animals], but they did not fit the measurements of donkeys and they did not fit the measurements of Syrian wild asses,” said study co-author Eva-Maria Geigl, a genomicist at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris. “So they were somehow different, but it was not clear what the difference was.”

The new study shows, however, that kungas were strong, fast and yet sterile hybrids of a female domestic donkey and a male Syrian wild ass, or hemione — an equid species native to the region. Ancient records mentioned kungas as highly prized and very expensive beasts, which could be explained by the rather difficult process of breeding them, Geigl said.

Because each kunga was sterile, like many hybrid animals such as mules, they had to be produced by mating a female domesticated donkey with a male wild ass, which had to be captured, she said.

That was an especially difficult task because wild asses could run faster than donkeys and even kungas, and were impossible to tame, she said. 

“They really bio-engineered these hybrids,” Geigl told Live Science. “There were the earliest hybrids ever, as far as we know, and they had to do that each time for each kunga that was produced — so this explains why they were so valuable.”

War donkeys

The war panel from the “Standard of Ur,” a 4500-year-old Sumerian mosaic now in the British Museum, shows teams of kungas drawing four-wheeled wall wagons.

Kungas is mentioned in several ancient texts in cuneiform on clay tablets from Mesopotamia, and they are portrayed drawing four-wheeled war wagons on the famous “Standard of Ur,” a Sumerian mosaic from about 4,500 years ago that’s now on display at the British Museum in London.

Archaeologists had suspected that they were some sort of hybrid donkey, but they didn’t know the equid it was hybridized with, Geigl said.

Some experts thought Syrian wild asses were much too small — smaller than donkeys — to be bred to produce kungas, she said.

The bones of the kungas were excavated about 10 years ago from a burial mound at Tell Umm el-Marra in northern Syria by University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Jill Weber.

The species is now extinct, and the last Syrian wild ass — not much more than a meter (3 feet) tall — died in 1927 at the world’s oldest zoo, the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna in Austria; its remains are now preserved in that city’s natural history museum.

In the new study, the researchers compared the genome from the bones of the last Syrian wild ass from Vienna with the genome from the 11,000-year-old bones of a wild ass unearthed at the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe, in what is now southeastern Turkey.

That comparison showed both animals were the same species, but the ancient wild ass was much larger, Geigl said. That suggested that the Syrian wild ass species had become much smaller in recent times than it had been in antiquity, probably due to environmental pressures such as hunting, she said.

Ancient Mesopotamia

Historians think that the Sumerians were the first to breed kungas from before 2500 B.C. — at least 500 years before the first domesticated horses were introduced from the steppe north of the Caucasus Mountains, according to a 2020 study in the journal Science Advances by many of the same researchers. 

Ancient records show the successor states of the Sumerians — such as the Assyrians — continued to breed and sell kungas for centuries — and a carved stone panel from the Assyrian capital Nineveh, now in the British Museum, shows two men leading a wild ass they had captured.

The kunga bones for the latest study came from a princely burial complex at Tell Umm el-Marra in Northern Syria, which has been dated to around the early Bronze Age between 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C.; the site is thought to be the ruins of the ancient city of Tuba mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions.

Study co-author Jill Weber, an archaeologist at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, excavated the bones about 10 years ago. Weber had proposed that the animals from Tell Umm el-Marra were kungas because their teeth had marks from bit harnesses and patterns of wear that showed they had been purposefully fed, rather than left to graze like regular donkeys, she said. 

Kungas could run faster than horses, and so the practice of using them to pull war wagons probably continued after the introduction of domesticated horses into Mesopotamia, she said.

But eventually, the last kungas died and no more were bred from donkeys and wild asses, probably because domesticated horses were easier to breed, Geigl said.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Mosaic with slave thanking God for his freedom unearthed in Turkey

Mosaic with slave thanking God for his freedom unearthed in Turkey

A close-up of peacocks depicted in the mosaic at the Church of the Holy Apostles, Hatay, southern Turkey

A mosaic made by a freed slave to thank God for his emancipation was unearthed during the excavation at the 6th-century Church of the Holy Apostles in southern Hatay province.

A close-up of the Church of the Holy Apostles, Hatay, southern Turkey

The Church of the Holy Apostles was found in an orange grove in the Arpaçiftlik neighbourhood by Mehmet Keleş in 2007.

After Keleş recognized historical artefacts while planting orange saplings in the grove, archaeological digs were launched in the area.

With the disclosure of mosaics, animal figures, stone graves and bone remains, expert teams, determined that the area was a church and its name was the Church of the Holy Apostles.

While digs continue in the historical church, archaeologists have recently found an area with a mosaic. The mosaic with a peacock figure also features an inscription in which a slave thanked God after being freed.

An aerial view of the mosaic, the Church of the Holy Apostles, Hatay, southern Turkey.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Director of Hatay Archaeology Museum Ayşe Ersoy said that Hatay stands out with its history, nature and culture and the Arsuz district has had an important place in history as a port city since the first century A.D.

READ ALSO: EUROPE’S FIRST FARMERS CAME FROM TURKEY CONFIRMED BY DNA

Noting that the Church of the Holy Apostles and its mosaics are of great importance as they reveal the period between the 6th and 12th centuries in the city, Ersoy continued: “During this year’s excavations at the church, another mosaic area was discovered.

This mosaic made by a slave pictures peacocks and depictions of heaven.”

A close-up of the inscription of the mosaic, the Church of the Holy Apostles, Hatay, southern Turkey.
ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Rare Roman wooden figure uncovered by HS2 archaeologists in Buckinghamshire

Rare Roman wooden figure uncovered by HS2 archaeologists in Buckinghamshire

A waterlogged ditch in Buckinghamshire has yielded the most unexpected find — a rare, extremely well-preserved wooden figure dating back to Roman times. The discovery — the first of its kind in 100 years — was initially dismissed as a piece of degraded wood when it was found in Twyford during work on HS2 last July.

However, closer analysis revealed that it bears the shape of a human, seemingly dressed in a knee-length tunic tied at the waist and sporting either a hat or hair.

The figure is 26 inches (67 cm) tall — having lost the lowest part of its legs, not to mention its arms below the elbow — and is 7 inches (18 cm) wide.

Archaeologists said that the lack of oxygen in the trench in which the figure was found was what prevented it from rotting — preserving it for some 2,000 years. 

While its exact purpose is unknown, experts believe that the wooden representation may have been carved for the gods as a form of religious offering.

Rare Roman wooden figure uncovered by HS2 archaeologists in Buckinghamshire
A waterlogged ditch in Buckinghamshire has yielded the most unexpected find — a rare, extremely well-preserved wooden figure (pictured) dating back to Roman times
The wooden figure (pictured) is 26 inches (67 cm) tall — having lost the lowest part of its legs, not to mention its arms below the elbow — and is 7 inches (18 cm) wide

‘This is a truly remarkable find that brings us face to face with our past,’ said Historic England’s senior science advisor, Jim Williams.

‘The quality of the carving is exquisite and the figure is all the more exciting because organic objects from this period rarely survive.’

In the same ditch from which the wooden figure was recovered, archaeologists also found shards of pottery dating back to around 43–70 AD.

To provide a precise age for the figure itself, researchers are planning to conduct radiocarbon dating on a small fragment of the wood that was already broken off of the carving before it was unearthed from the ditch.

‘Not only is the survival of a wooden figure like this extremely rare for the Roman period in Britain, but it also raises new questions about this site,’ said archaeologist Iain Williamson of HS2’s Enabling Works Contractor, Fusion JV. 

Outstanding questions, he added include: ‘Who does the wooden figure represent, what was it used for and why was it significant to the people living in this part of Buckinghamshire during the 1st century AD?’

The figure is currently being further examined and conserved in the laboratory by experts from York Archaeology. It is extremely rare for carved wooden figures from Britain’s prehistoric and Roman periods to survive into the present day.

The last such discovery — the ‘Dagenham Idol‘, which has been dated to 2250 BC — was recovered from the north bank of the Thames back in 1922.

In 2019 a Roman-era wooden arm that was thought to have been carved as a religious offering was found at the bottom of a well in Northampton.

The story of the figure’s discovery will feature on the episode of BBC Two’s ‘Digging for Britain’ programme airing on Thursday, January 13th.

BELGIUM, EUROPE, WORLD

Painted Medieval Burial Vaults Uncovered in Bruges

Painted Medieval Burial Vaults Uncovered in Bruges

Excavations at a cemetery in the centre of Bruges have yielded an extraordinary find.  Archaeologists have discovered three painted burial vaults dating from the 14th century.

Painted Medieval Burial Vaults Uncovered in Bruges

The find was made last May during works in a street in the vicinity of the Church of Our Lady in Bruges (West Flanders).  The best-preserved burial vault is being paced in the church today.

The three medieval burial vaults were discovered during works on the construction of a filling station.

“The find is unique in Flanders” says culture alderman Nico Blontrock.

It’s taken a while for one of the burial vaults to be moved into the church as removing it from the soil required special equipment.

There’s little experience here with the removal of burial vaults and Alderman Blontrock says that in the past this has often failed: “These are fragile constructions, often consisting of brickwork.  

Taking them out of the ground often means the painting is damaged.  

We wanted to avoid this and established a special commission of experts.  I’m so happy the vault has now been saved for posterity.

The best-preserved burial vault is now receiving a temporary home in the Church of Our Lady before it is moved to the church museum.  

The paintings show classical medieval representations: “The paintings on a layer of plaster feature angels, crosses and other Christian themes.  The vault can be viewed in 3D on the Raakvlak website” says Blontrock.

ASIA, OMAN, WORLD

An Old Classic Bronze Age board game ‘played 4,000 years ago’ uncovered in the Oman desert

An Old Classic Bronze Age board game ‘played 4,000 years ago’ uncovered in the Oman desert

While innovative and artistic board games may hold our attention today, settlers four millennia ago in the Arabian Peninsula whiled away the time on a stone board game.

An Old Classic Bronze Age board game ‘played 4,000 years ago’ uncovered in the Oman desert
The stone board game featured a grid-like pattern and cup holes to hold game pieces.

Last month, archaeologists discovered a stone slab carved with a grid and cup holes to hold game pieces at a prehistoric settlement in the Qumayrah Valley, located in modern-day Oman, reports Samuel Kutty for the Oman Daily Observer.

The team, led by Piotr Bieliński of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology and Sultan al-Bakri, Oman’s director-general of antiquities, found the large stone board in a structure near the village of Ayn Bani Saidah.

In a statement, Bieliński said that similar kinds of games have been found in “areas stretching from India, through Mesopotamia even to the eastern Mediterranean.” She cited, as an example, one of the earliest-known game boards found in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur’s royal cemetery in 1922, dated around 4,500 years ago. Known today as the Royal Game of Ur, the two-player strategy game was similar to backgammon.

Archaeologists search for Bronze and Iron age artefacts at the Oman dig site, located in the Arabian Peninsula.

Board games have been played across the world for thousands of years. In Jerusalem, bored Roman soldiers were believed to have carved a grid for a board game on the steps of the Damascus Gate some 1,800 years ago, possibly an early form of modern-day checkers, as reported by Ruth Schuster for the Jerusalem Post in November.

The stone board game in Oman was just one of several discoveries made at the excavation site, reports Ashley Cowie for Ancient Origins.

Archaeologists also unearthed the remains of stone towers—one of which is believed to have been 60 feet tall—and evidence of copper production all dated to the Bronze Age, from 3200 to 1200 B.C.E.

“The settlement is exceptional for including at least four towers: three round ones and an angular one,” says Agnieszka Pieńkowska of the Polish Center, who is analyzing the site’s artefacts and stone structures.

Researchers at Ayn Bani Saidah dated the settlement to the Umm an-Nar period, between 2600 to 2000 B.C.E. They discovered several copper items and smelting remains at the site, indicating the site was involved in the early copper trade, reports the Jerusalem Post.

An archaeologist examines a copper artefact found at an exvacation site in the village of Ayn Bani Saidah in Oman.

“This shows that our settlement participated in the lucrative copper trade for which Oman was famous at that time, with mentions of Omani copper present in the cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia,” says Bieliński in the statement.

The team also found evidence that the region remained an important trade and production site through the second phase of the Iron Age, dating from 1100 to 600 B.C.E.

Per the Oman Observer, the Qumayrah Valley has yielded many archaeological finds, likely due to serving as a major trade route between several Arab cities.

“This abundance of settlement traces proves that this valley was an important spot in Oman’s prehistory,” Bieliński tells Ian Randall of the Daily Mail. “Ayn Bani Sadah is strategically located at a junction of [trade] routes.”

The team plans to continue its excavations this year, focusing on areas surrounding the settlement and other parts of the Qumayrah Valley.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Vast Roman town and hundreds of artefacts uncovered during rail excavation

Vast Roman town and hundreds of artefacts uncovered during rail excavation

The remains of a vast Roman trading settlement have been discovered by a team of archaeologists working along a future high-speed railway route in England.

Hundreds of Roman coins, jewellery, pottery and a pair of shackles were among the artefacts to be discovered at the site near a village in Northamptonshire, according to a press release from High Speed 2 (HS2) Tuesday.

HS2 is a large-scale project intended to create high-speed rail links between London and major cities in central and northern England.
The site, known as Backgrounds, dates back to around 50 AD, although it initially housed an Iron Age village dating back to around 400 BC, HS2 said.

Vast Roman town and hundreds of artefacts uncovered during rail excavation
The site is known as Backgrounds.

As an Iron Age road and more than 30 roundhouses were found near the Roman remains, archaeologists believe the Iron Age village developed into a wealthy Roman settlement. The area is believed to have developed over time and become wealthier, with new roads and stone buildings being constructed.

A Roman pot is shown as HS2 archaeologists uncover a vast Roman trading settlement in Northamptonshire

A huge Roman road around 10 meters in width (33 feet) runs through the settlement, far exceeding the normal maximum of around four meters (13 feet), said James West, site manager for MOLA Headland Infrastructure, which oversaw the excavation.

Badger leads archaeologists to a hoard of Roman coins in Spain
Experts believe this road — described as “exceptional in its size” — indicates the settlement was once a busy area with carts going in and out with goods.

“Uncovering such a well-preserved and large Roman road, as well as so many high quality, finds has been extraordinary and tells us so much about the people who lived here,” West said in the press release.

A lead weight, cast into the shape of a head, was found at the site.

“The site really does have the potential to transform our understanding of the Roman landscape in the region and beyond.”

Giant 180 million-year-old ‘sea dragon’ fossil found in UK reservoir
Unearthed workshops, kilns and several wells suggest the town would have been a “bustling and busy area” at its peak, the press release says. In addition to industrial practices, the foundations of buildings used for domestic purposes were also uncovered.

More than 300 Roman coins were found, suggesting a significant volume of commerce passed through the area. Glass vessels, highly decorative pottery, jewellery and evidence of cosmetics — as the mineral galena, which was crushed and mixed with oil to create makeup — was also discovered.

This coin depicting Marcus Aurelius from the reign of Emperor Constantine was one of more than 300 unearthed.

The quality of the soil, which is a fiery red colour in some parts, suggest activities involving burning took place in the area, such as bread making, metalwork or pottery.

The soil is a fiery red colour in parts, suggesting activities involving burning.

A pair of shackles discovered could also be evidence of either slave labour or criminal activity, the press release says.

The artefacts will be cleaned and examined by specialists, while the layout of the area and details of the buildings are being mapped.
Backgrounds are one of more than 100 archaeological sites between London and Birmingham that HS2 has examined since 2018.

HS2 has unearthed a number of interesting archaeological finds, such as rare Roman statues found at a church in Buckinghamshire and a Roman mosaic at a farm in Rutland in the East Midlands.