EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Hercules’ head found in the treasure hoard of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck

Hercules’ head found in the treasure hoard of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck

The Roman ship is thought to have sunk near Antikythera, a Greek island in the southern Aegean Sea in the second quarter of the first century B.C. While divers first found a number of stunning artefacts from the wreck 100 years ago, a wealth of new treasures has been discovered after experts created the first phases of a precise digital 3D model of the shipwreck.

Scientists used made the model using thousands of underwater photographs of the seafloor site in a technique known as photogrammetry.

And more discoveries are likely on the way thanks to this new model, but this is not the only thing that helped experts to uncover the treasure trove.

An earthquake is thought to have occurred sometime after the sinking of the ship, and archaeologists had to remove several large boulders that were strewn over the wreck as a result of the event.

In May and June this year, experts used underwater lifting equipment of pressurised airbags to remove the boulders, some of which weighed about 9.5 tons (8.5 metric tonnes).

Hercules' head found in the treasure hoard of a 2,000-year-old shipwreck
A marble model depicting Hercules’ head has been found in a 2000-year-old Roman shipwreck
“It’s a most impressive marble piece”

After this, the huge wealth of treasure that was contained within what was once the ship’s hull was then revealed. While carrying this out, the marine archaeologists were reportedly working at depths of 50 metres so they could access the areas that had never been explored before.

The ship is thought to have once been around 180ft long, but experts say the wooden hull has since rotted away. Amongst the treasure was a huge marble head of a sculpture likely depicting the Greek/Roman demigod Hercules.

Prof Lorenz Baumer, an archaeologist at the University of Geneva, said: “It’s a most impressive marble piece. 

Archaeologists had to remove several large boulders that were strewn over the wreck

“It is twice lifesize, has a big beard, a very particular face and short hair. There is no doubt it is Hercules.”

Experts suspect that this head was once attached to a sculpture with the rest of Hercules’ body that was in fact first found by divers way back in 1900.

During this time, they also discovered the Antikythera Mechanism – a mechanical model of the sun, moon and planets that is now on display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Prof Lorenz Baumer said that both finds were likely made in the same area of the ship.

He told Live Science: “The site is quite big.

The research team also discovered two human teeth inside marine deposits

“It’s some 50 meters [164 feet] across, and it’s covered by rocks. It’s possible that [more fragments] are hiding in the rocks, but they could be anywhere.”

The ship also contained Greek artworks, a number of bronze statues, and over 38 marble sculptures. The research team also discovered two human teeth inside marine deposits and fragments of copper and wood.

Now, experts are hoping to analyse isotopes in the enamel of the teeth as this can help to uncover the geochemistry of the environment at the time that the teeth were formed.

Experts suspect that the head was once attached to a sculpture with the rest of Hercules’ body

This can help to reveal things such as a person’s diet or place of origin, and they can also contain DNA.

Stratos Charchalakis, the mayor of Kythira, said: “The ship could have gone down anywhere but, that said, every discovery puts us on the map and is exciting.

“The truth is that for an island with just 30 inhabitants, the wreck has had a huge social and economic impact. It has helped keep its shops and people going.”

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Archaeologists track the Scottish whisky story from the black market to the global export

Archaeologists track the Scottish whisky story from the black market to the global export

Archaeologists have returned to the site of the first legal distillery in Speyside to track how whisky went from a black market operation woven into the fabric of Scotland’s rural communities to one of the country’s biggest exports.

The original Glenlivet site, which was operated by farmer George Smith from 1824 after he made his underground whisky-making operation legal, is being excavated by archaeologists from National Trust for Scotland (NTS), who are working in conjunction with the distillery.

The site is around one kilometre from today’s home of Glenlivet, which Smith opened in 1859 to expand production and take advantage of a greater run of water off the hill.

Archaeologists track the Scottish whisky story from the black market to the global export
© Derek Alexander, Head of Archaeology at National Trust for Scotland and Alan Winchester, Glenlivet’

The Pioneering Spirit project is now focusing on the original Glenlivet distillery after archaeologists spent months examining sites of illegal stills across the Highlands.

Derek Alexander, head of archaeological services at NTS, said: “The distillery we are working on here is a nice bridge between the small-scale illicit distilling and large-scale industrial production.”

Today’s Glenlivet site is modelled on Smith’s original distillery, which was set up on his farm.

Such was Smith’s unpopularity in the local community after he was granted a legal distilling licence under the 1823 Excise Act, which sanctioned distilling for a £10 licence fee and set payment per gallon of proof spirit, that he acquired two pistols to defend his property.

Mr Alexander said the aim of the dig was to find archaeology for each stage of the distilling process, with the operation set up around a courtyard.

Earlier, a piece of exciseman’s padlock was found at the site with pieces of the barrel now recovered.

Mr Alexander said: “We have also found the outline of the fireplaces where the stills were sitting.”

One may have been used for the wash still and the other for the spirit still, it is believed, with hopes that remain of grain drying still will also be found. Pieces of copper sulphite, a waste product of the distilling process, have been discovered.

The excavation will run for two weeks and will be assisted by NTS volunteers and members of the surrounding community, including schoolchildren.

Mr Alexander said: “It’s much easier to dig this site than those much harder to reach places, where we are carrying our equipment up a hill track for maybe an hour and then into a gully. These places are quite inaccessible by their nature and not that safe.

“We were using the same techniques as the excisemen would when they were out looking for illicit stills. You basically follow the burn line.”

Robert Athol, the newly appointed archivist for Chivas Brothers, which owns Glenlivet, said Smith risked “life and liberty” to produce whisky at his farm.

“His courage and conviction not only defined the path for The Glenlivet but was also influential on the development of Scotch whisky in general.”

NTS estimates there are at least 30 illicit stills across its 129 sites, including at Torridon, Kintail, Grey Mare’s Tail and the Mar Lodge Estate in western Aberdeenshire.

ASIA, IRAN, WORLD

Archaeologists unearth ‘great’ Sassanid fire temple in northeast Iran

Archaeologists unearth ‘great’ Sassanid fire temple in northeast Iran

Archaeologists have unearthed the ruins of what they believe was one of the greatest fire temples in Iran during the Sassanid age.

“We have probably discovered the third greatest fire temple that existed in ancient Iran,” ILNA quoted archaeologist Meysam Labbaf-Khaniki as saying on Wednesday.

Labbaf-Khaniki leads the fifth season of an areological survey, which is currently underway in a valley near the village of Robat-e Sefid/Bazeh Hur, northeast Iran.

“During this archaeological season, we have gathered considerable evidence such as engraved plasterwork and inscriptions that suggest the ruins are related to an important fire temple.”

Inscriptions and their fragments that bear Pahlavi scripts should first be arranged and categorized till they could be read (and deciphered) by linguists and cultural heritage experts, he explained.

These fresh discoveries are expected to open a new chapter in the history of Iranian arts during the Sassanid epoch, the archaeologist said.

Exquisite stuccoworks embellish capital columns that support the main hall of the fire temple, he said.

Since 2014, Labbaf-Khaniki has taken part in previous excavations conducted at the ancient site. In 2018, a joint Franco-Iranian mission was tasked to study the whole valley, its human occupations, its geomorphology, and its implication in the large territory of Khorasan Razavi province.

The Sassanid age is of very high importance in the history of Iran. Under Sassanids, Persian architecture in addition to arts experienced a general renaissance.

Architecture often took grandiose proportions such as palaces at Ctesiphon, Firuzabad, and Sarvestan which are amongst the highlights of the ensemble.

Sassanid archaeological designs typically represent a highly efficient system of land use and strategic utilization of natural topography in the creation of the earliest cultural centres of the Sassanid civilization.

READ ALSO: PRESERVED BY NATURE: STUDYING THE SPECTACULAR SALT MUMMIES OF IRAN

In 2018, an ensemble of Sassanian historical cities in southern Iran, titled “Sassanid Archaeological Landscape of Fars Region”, was named a UNESCO site. The ensemble is comprised of eight archaeological sites situated in three geographical parts of Firuzabad, Bishapur, and Sarvestan.

The World Heritage reflects the optimized utilization of natural topography and bears witness to the influence of Achaemenid and Parthian cultural traditions and of Roman art, which later had a significant impact on the architecture and artistic styles of the Islamic era.

Aside from architecture, crafts such as metalwork and gem-engraving grew highly sophisticated, yet scholarship was encouraged by the state. In those years, works from both the East and West were translated into Pahlavi, the language of the Sassanians.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Pre-Roman Settlement Excavated in Southern England

Pre-Roman Settlement Excavated in Southern England

Archaeology students from Bournemouth University have found the remains of prehistoric people and animal sacrifices in a recently discovered Iron Age settlement in Dorset.

Pre-Roman Settlement Excavated in Southern England

The site, which consists of typical Iron Age round houses and storage pits was discovered by archaeology students last September in Winterborne Kingston, Dorset. It dates from around 100 years BC, well before the Roman invasion of Britain.

Over the course of the last three weeks, a team of 65 students from the university have been excavating the site. During this time, they uncovered the bodies of women and men as well as animal body parts in storage pits originally used to hold grain.

“Sites across Dorset in the Late Iron Age are unique because the communities here buried their dead in defined cemeteries,” explained Dr Miles Russell, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University who is leading the dig. “Elsewhere in the country they would either be cremated or placed in rivers, but in Dorset, it seems they did things rather differently.”

The bodies were found in crouched positions in oval-shaped pits and had been buried with joints of meat and pottery bowls originally containing drinks.

The discovery of prehistoric people who lived on the site and items from their everyday lives is providing the team with fascinating new clues about the Iron Age lifestyle.

“We know a lot about life in Britain during and after the Roman invasion because so much has been written down,” said Dr Russell. “But we do not have anything written about life before, the answers to how they lived come solely from what we find in the ground.”

Teams of students and staff from the University have been surveying and excavating sites in the local area for several years.

In 2015 they carried out an excavation of a large iron age town which they named “Duropolis” after the Durotriges tribes who lived in the region. The settlement they are working on today is situated about half a mile to the north of Duropolis.

A cow skull with vertebrae and separated jaw bones uncovered in an oval pitt

In particular, the latest discoveries will help archaeologists understand more about religious practices in communities at the time.

“The animal remains that we’re finding placed in the bottom of pits would have provided weeks of food for this settlement, so it’s a significant sacrifice to their gods to bury so much in the ground. In some pits, animal parts had been placed onto and together with other animals, for example, we found a cow’s head on the body of a sheep.

“We don’t know why they would have done this, to us it’s frankly bizarre, but it’s a fascinating new insight into their belief systems,” explained Dr Russell.

Animal bones uncovered and cleaned

Archaeology student Nathan Sue has been cleaning and preserving the finds from the settlement, including pottery, animal bones and items of jewellery.

“Some of the most exciting finds we have excavated from the dig include a ring that we found on someone’s finger in an associated burial. It is a copper alloy, perhaps bronze and it’s nice to find that as rings of this age are not common,” Nathan said.

Sarah, also studying Archaeology at Bournemouth University, is part of the dig team. She said, “We’ve learnt that the people who lived here two thousand years ago back filled these storage pits with their rubbish and we have found pottery, bone, charcoal and flint. We know that they were burying their dead here and all their limbs are articulated, so they’ve been placed in the ground with care, and they bury their dead in a very specific way so they are very identifiable”.

The excavation will continue for another week and the human bone will be analysed at Bournemouth University before eventually being returned to the ground. The University team will then continue to survey and scan the area of East Dorset for further settlement activity that could reveal more secrets about life in pre-Roman Britain.

Watch the video above to hear more from students and staff on the site

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

People Are Saying This Ancient Greek “Laptop” Is Proof of Time Travel

People Are Saying This Ancient Greek “Laptop” Is Proof of Time Travel

A conspiracy theorist’s YouTube video about how this ancient Greek grave marker depicts a laptop more than 2,000 years before personal computers were even a thing has resurfaced and went viral over the weekend. 

We obviously don’t need to tell you that this definitely is not a laptop, and no, the ancient Greeks didn’t possess the technology to go time travelling in search of a better way to communicate with the Oracle of Delphi – a divine being who acted as the official conduit between man and the gods – but what the hell is it?

Currently on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, the marble carving entitled “Grave Naiskos of an Enthroned Woman with an Attendant” has been dated to around 100 BC, and sourced possibly to Delos – a tiny island to the east of the Greek mainland with enormous mythological, cultural, and archaeological importance.

Stretching 94 cm high and more than 120 cm across, the carved funerary relief depicts a wealthy woman reclining on an armchair, reaching out to an object being offered up by a servant girl.

“The depiction of the deceased reaching out for an item held by a servant has a long history in Greek funerary art and probably alludes to the hope of continuing earthly pleasures in the afterlife,” the Museum notes.

People Are Saying This Ancient Greek "Laptop" Is Proof of Time Travel

The official description of the laptop-like item is a “shallow chest”, and despite YouTuber StillSpeakingOut (he sure is) insisting that a tourist’s picture taken from a different angle shows that the object is too wide and narrow to be a jewellery box, US-based classical archaeologist Dorothy Lobel told Discovery News what we’re all thinking.

“The claim is ridiculous as it is clearly a box,” she says. 

Another well-known classical archaeologist, Janet Burnett Grossman, told Discovery that the object is likely a flat box or a mirror, while others have suggested that it’s a wax writing tablet, which was used to record official documents at the time, such as birth certificates.

“If we look at other similar depictions in Greek art, we can see that a tablet – of the ancient variety, not the modern kind – looks a lot like a small laptop, and like the object in this grave marker,” Kristina Killgrove writes for Forbes. 

“Usually it is men who are depicted with a wax tablet, though, so why this wealthy woman? There is also evidence of the goddess Athena being shown with a writing tablet and stylus, so the association between the wealthy deceased woman and Athena via a wax tablet makes some sense.”

Red figure vase by the Douris painter (dated to around 500 BC), housed by Germany’s Museum Berlin.

Okay sure, but what about those USB ports with weird holes on the side?

As Killgrove notes, conspicuous holes aren’t uncommon in ancient Greek sculpture work, as they were sometimes embellished with perishable materials, such as holes drilled into the fists of soldiers or the heads of horses to allow for realistic reigns to be added in. Maybe the box had an elaborately carved wooden face that slotted into the two holes.

“This particular stele shows evidence of reworking,” adds Killgrove. “It was originally a three-sided grave marker, but it is now missing the top pediment, the wall on the left side, and an inscription on the bottom. The holes could relate to any of the pieces that are now missing.”

So there you have it – the conspiracy theory that didn’t need debunking: debunked.

If nothing else, it’s a nice excuse to pay attention to an incredibly beautiful and skilful work created by humans more than two millennia ago, and for archaeologists to take some time out of their busy day to deliver a sick burn or two, like this one from Lobel King:

“Any time traveller would know that laptops are powered by electricity, whilst the Greeks did not have sockets.”

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Norway’s Medieval Monks Discussed Their Meals in Silence

Norway’s Medieval Monks Discussed Their Meals in Silence

Mealtime peace is a well-known concept in many Norwegian homes: You should sit still at the table and enjoy the food you are served. Monks back in the day took this to a new level. Speaking during meals was forbidden, and so a new sign language was born.

Norway’s Medieval Monks Discussed Their Meals in Silence
The two daily meals were important to the monks. They were to be enjoyed in silence.

The monastery on a small Oslo island

Marianne Vedeler is a professor of Archeology at the Museum of Cultural History. She says that the silent meals took place on Hovedøya, a small island in the Oslofjord.

“A small group of monks came here in the 12th century. They had travelled from Kirkstead in England and wanted to establish a monastery here in Norway. They were Cistercian monks and had a very strict monastic order,” she says.

Marianne Vedeler is a professor of Archeology at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo.

The rules covered all aspects of how they should live and were regulated down to how much bread they could eat per day.

“The rules were written down, so we know a lot about how these monks lived in the Middle Ages,” Vedeler says.

The regulations for Cistercian monks were international and thus followed them to Hovedøya in Oslo.

“Here they were to live like the Cistercian monks in monasteries in France and England. And the monasteries were to be designed according to the same template,” Vedeler says.

She has examined ruins, food remains, and fish bones that remain after the monks on the island Hovedøya.

The remaining ruins of the Cistercian monastery on Hovedøya in the Oslofjord.

Silent since the 6th century

The Monastic monks’ motto was “Ora et labora” – to pray and work. This was to occupy most of the day. It was generally desirable to minimise talking as much as possible. Their thoughts were to be turned towards God.

The two daily meals were also important. Everyone sat on one side of the table. By doing this, they avoided a possible conversation partner in front of them.

According to an article in the scientific journal Gastronomica, the rules of silent meals were introduced as early as the 6th century with ‘The Rule of Saint Benedict’. Saint Benedict encouraged the monks to communicate in other ways than using their voices during meals.

To accomplish this, monks at the mighty and prosperous Monastery of Cluny in France began remaining silent throughout their meals. The article in Gastronomica makes references to a biography in which Vikings captured a group of monks that they tried to force to speak. They were unsuccessful.

Hovedøya in the Oslofjord by night. The small island can be accessed by ferries during the daytime and is a popular place to visit for outings and swimming during the summer.

Monk sign language

Vedeler says that the ban on talking may have led to the monks enjoying their meals more. It was important for the monks to find a place to live where they could sustain themselves by fishing and growing fruit and vegetables. They were pescatarians and ate seafood in addition to a largely vegetarian diet.

“This is why Hovedøya was an ideal place to set up the monastery,” she says.

In addition to what could be captured in the sea, the monks constructed a fish farm on land where they could keep freshwater fish. These species of fish have their own specific signs in the sign language.

To be sent a piece of pike during mealtime, the monks had to move their hands quickly like a fishtail.

Kirk Ambrose, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, has created a list of how different foods were communicated through sign language. The monks had signs for, amongst other things, honey, beans, eggs, and seven different species of fish.

To signal fish, the monks moved their hands like a fishtail in water. For squid, they would spread their fingers and wave them. If you wanted an eel, your hands had to be held together as if you were holding an eel. Pike could be communicated using the same sign as for fish, but with a faster movement because the pike is a fast swimmer.

Ambrose further writes that some of the signs are used by Cistercian monks even to this day.

EUROPE, NETHERLANDS, WORLD

Researchers Examine Neolithic Grave Goods in the Netherlands

Researchers Examine Neolithic Grave Goods in the Netherlands

New archaeological research into grave goods and skeletal material from the oldest grave field in the Netherlands shows that male-female roles 7,000 words ago were less traditional than was thought.

The research was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Archol, the National Museum of Antiquities and Leiden University.

New analyses of male-female goods

A team of chemical analysts, physical anthropologists and archaeologists studied the Elsloo grave field (Municipality of Stein, Limburg). Dr Luc Amkreutz, curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Antiquities and Professor by Special Appointment of Public Archaeology at Leiden University, was closely involved.

The researchers examined the grave goods and skeletal remains. They could determine the sex and age of some of the deceased from the cremation remains. This enabled them to conclude that flint arrowheads and stone axes, which are traditionally attributed to men, are also frequently found in women’s graves in the Elsloo field.

Researchers Examine Neolithic Grave Goods in the Netherlands

This casts new light on the traditional idea that grave goods, as personal possessions, are representative of the daily life and sex of the deceased. They turn out to be less gender-specific than previously thought.

Objects not linked to sex or age

The graves of the elderly, especially those of women, were richly furnished. There appears to be a certain status associated with age. There also seems to be a ‘burial tradition’ with specific grave goods and rituals, which are often related to hunting, food preparation, woodworking and body decoration.

Many of the deceased were sprinkled with red ochre, for example.

And almost all of the grave goods had been intensively used, regardless of the sex and age of the deceased.

The goods seem to be specific utensils that belonged to the deceased’s relatives and were deliberately placed in the grave. This gives a good impression of the role of the living, their choices and the rituals surrounding death.

The research reveals a clear nuance in the roles of prehistoric men as hunters, herders, warriors and builders, and women as caregivers and potters.

Oldest known burial field in the Netherlands

The Neolithic burial field at Elsloo belonged to the Linear Pottery culture, the first farming communities in the Netherlands and large parts of Europe over 7,000 years ago.

READ ALSO: 18TH-CENTURY BONES OF SICK SOLDIERS IDENTIFIED IN THE NETHERLANDS

The Elsloo burial field is the oldest known burial field in the Netherlands (circa 5100-4950 BC). It was excavated by the Cultural Heritage Agency under the leadership of prehistorian Pieter Modderman (1959) and Leiden University (1966).

The finds have since been in the care of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.

This research was carried out within the Cultural Heritage Agency’s Knowledge of Archaeology project. A selection of the finds from the burial field will be on display for a year from 24 June 2022 at Historiehuis van de Maasvallei in Elsloo.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

1,300-year-old shipwreck found in France

1,300-year-old shipwreck found in France

Archaeologists have discovered the wreck of a ship that navigated the Garonne river in southwestern France in the 7th-8th century. The wooden ship was unearthed buried under the bed of the Estey de Lugan, a silted-over stream outside the city of Bordeaux.

The thick, water-logged clay has preserved the organic materials of the ship, including some rope fittings, for 1,300 years.

There is almost no surviving written history chronicling navigation methods from the period, so the survival of this shipwreck is a unique testimonial to naval design in early medieval France.

1,300-year-old shipwreck found in France

The wreck is about 40 feet long, out of an estimated original length of about 50 feet when it was intact.

The keel and dimensions indicate it was a cargo ship capable of both river and coastal navigation. It has a flat floor that would have allowed it to carry bulk goods. Both oak and softwood were used to construct it.

INRAP archaeologists will first document the ship in meticulous detail with photogrammetry, a 3D virtual model numbering and recording every individual piece of wood.

The planks will be dismantled and numbered so that they can be reconstructed once stabilized and conserved.

The removal of the wreck will give archaeologists the unprecedented opportunity to study how it was constructed and how it navigated the waterways.

The team will also be able to study the waterways themselves.

The ship was found in a relatively remote area, a stream that was already non-navigable when it was documented in the 18th century. That a cargo vessel would take to a small stream off the Garonne attests to how these marshy areas near major waterways were used by trade vessels.

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