ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Archaeologists were left baffled by a grim Roman discovery made in Wales: ‘Quite peculiar’

Archaeologists were left baffled by a grim Roman discovery made in Wales: ‘Quite peculiar’

Archaeologists were left baffled by a grim Roman discovery made in Wales: 'Quite peculiar'
This decapitated man, whose head was placed at his feet, was found in a Romano-British burial.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a possible Roman mercenary buried with his sword and the skeleton of another Roman-period man whose decapitated head lay at his feet in Wales, in the United Kingdom. 

Investigations into these two distinct burials are ongoing, as is an examination of the other burials at the site, which has been used by humans since the Stone Age. One spot, for instance, has hundreds of burials from two different time periods; people who lived during the early medieval period (A.D. 410 to 1169) chose to bury their dead within a mound that had been used as a burial ground during the Bronze Age (2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.), the team found.

“[The early medieval people] went back to the prehistoric site to make this burial mound, even though it was a Christian period, and you would expect them to be buried around a chapel or a church,” excavation project director Mark Collard, an archaeologist and director of Rubicon Heritage, an Ireland-based archaeological firm, told Live Science. 

Archaeologists first discovered the site in the 1960s, upon finding the remains of Iron Age roundhouses (800 B.C. to A.D. 43) and the Whitton Lodge Roman Villa built on a farmstead dating to the Roman period (A.D 43 to 410).

However, it wasn’t until recently that, during an archaeological survey ahead of a road construction project, archaeologists realized the site preserved far more history.

The Whitton Lodge Roman Villa was first discovered in the 1960s.

From 2017 through most of 2018, Rubicon Heritage excavated the site and since then has been working on a monograph or a detailed, peer-reviewed description of the site. In March, Rubicon Heritage released an eBook and an online interactive map of the site, known as 5 Mile Lane.

The earliest evidence at 5 Mile Lane is hunter-gather flint tools dating to the Mesolithic, or the Middle Stone Age (8000 B.C. to 4000 B.C.), Collard said. “It shows that Mesolithic people are going through the area” and hunting animals such as aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct cattle species, he said. 

People living there during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age (4000 B.C. to 2500 B.C.), built some type of communally-used ritual structure, according to several large pits or postholes that archaeologists found. “It basically looks like a large post alignment running across the countryside,” Collard said.

The team also unearthed the remains of a person in a crouched position buried nearby, suggesting that the burial was tied to this ritual landscape, he said.

A late Bronze Age crouch burial at the base of the monument.
A late Bronze Age crouch burial at the base of the monument.

Archaeologists found the remains of several roundhouses and mound burials dating to the Bronze Age. But it wasn’t until the Iron Age that the landscape became more settled with small, timber-built and thatched round houses and cultivated farmland, Collard said. These farms were close together — less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) apart — and had domesticated animals and grain processing.

“It shows how dense the settlement was,” Collard said. These people were also producing iron tools, such as knives, he noted. Eventually, people switched from round houses to rectangular stone Roman buildings.

“We don’t know if it was the same owners or the same family, but we like to think that the continuity was there. And they just took on with new fashions and assimilated into the Roman Empire,” he said.

Collard and his colleagues plan to test whether there actually was continuity by examining preserved DNA found in the human burials, especially the roughly 450 burials found in the mound used by both the Bronze Age and early medieval peoples. 

It’s likely that this gently sloped area at 5 Mile Lane was well-used because “it’s very rich farming land around there,” Collard said. “It’s good for growing crops but also for keeping animals” pastured and had “access to the sea, which is a couple of miles away,” he said. It was also “close to the highway” — a nearby Roman road that was heavily trafficked.

An aerial view of the Bronze Age burial monument that was reused during medieval times.
Binoculars found at 5 Mile Lane date to World War II.

The mercenary and the decapitated man

The possible mercenary had a “quite peculiar” burial, Collard said. “It’s in the middle of a field near the Roman villa looking out over the valley and over the sea … It’s a great place to be buried.” The deceased was buried prone, or face down, with a long iron sword, a silver crossbow brooch and hobnail boots inside a coffin closed with iron nails. The sword and brooch are indicative of Roman military regalia dating to the late fourth to early fifth centuries A.D., the researchers found.

It’s not certain how the man — who stood up to 5 feet, 9 inches (1.75 meters) tall and was in his early 20s — died, but he may have suffered from a middle-ear infection that spread to his skull, the team found.

During the late Roman period, when this man was alive, Roman control broke down in what is now the United Kingdom, leading the empire to take on mercenaries to fight off invaders, Collard said. So, it’s possible that this man, whose brooch looks like those found in continental Europe, was a Roman mercenary or possibly even an invader who took over the Roman villa, Collard said. Genetic analysis of the man’s remains will hopefully shed light on his roots, Collard added.

The decapitated man was also in his 20s when he died during the Roman period. His skull had been removed and placed at the feet, and the remains of wood and iron nails indicate that he was buried in a coffin or a board that had a shroud over it, the team found.

About 2% to 3% of burials at Roman sites include decapitated people, likely from executions, according to a 2021 study in the journal Britannia. This practice may have been used to separate the soul from the body or to prevent the body from rising again, Collard said.

CHILE, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Drowned Stone Age fishermen were examined with a forensic method that could rewrite prehistory

Drowned Stone Age fishermen were examined with a forensic method that could rewrite prehistory

Human bones dating to the Stone Age found in what is now northern Chile are the remains of a fisherman who died by drowning, scientists have discovered.

Drowned Stone Age fishermen were examined with a forensic method that could rewrite prehistory
Archaeologists unearthed the skeleton in a coastal area near Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The man lived about 5,000 years ago, and he was around 35 to 45 years old when he died. Scientists found the skeleton in a mass burial in the coastal region of Copaca near the Atacama Desert, and the grave held four individuals: three adults (two males and one female) and one child. 

The man would have been about 5 feet, 3 inches (1.6 meters) tall when alive, and his remains showed signs of degenerative diseases and metabolic stress, researchers reported in the April 2022 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The bones revealed traces of osteoarthritis in his back and both elbows; the back of his skull had evidence of healed injuries from blunt trauma; his teeth and jaws were marred by tartar, periodontal disease and abscesses; and lesions in his eye sockets hinted at an iron deficiency caused by ingesting a parasite found in marine animals, according to the study. 

Other marks on the arm and leg bones where muscles were once attached told of repetitive activities related to fishing, such as rowing, harpooning and squatting to harvest shellfish. If the individual was a fisherman, perhaps he died by drowning, the researchers proposed.

When forensic teams examine modern skeletons that were found without any soft tissue attached, experts can confirm drowning as the cause of death by looking inside large bones for delicate microscopic algae, called diatoms, which live in watery habitats and soil.

When a person drowns, inhaled water can enter the bloodstream and travel throughout the body after the lungs rupture, even reaching the “closed system” of bone marrow through capillaries, the authors reported. Looking at diatom species in bone marrow can thereby reveal if the person ingested saltwater. However, this method had never been used to examine ancient bones.

Algae, sponge spines and parasitic eggs

For the new study, the scientists decided that the modern diatom test was too “chemically aggressive,” and in removing bone marrow from samples, it also destroyed small particles and organisms that weren’t diatoms. Such particles could be highly significant for analyzing Stone Age bones, according to the study.

The researchers, therefore, adopted “a less aggressive process” that eliminated residual bone marrow in their samples, while preserving a wider range of microscopic material absorbed by the marrow, which could then be detected by scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Their SEM scans revealed a microorganism jackpot. While there was no marine material clinging to the outside of the bones, the scans showed that the marrow contained plenty of tiny ocean fossils, including algae, parasitic eggs and broken sponge structures called spicules. This variety of marine life deep inside the man’s bones suggests that he died by drowning in saltwater. 

It’s possible that the cause of death was a natural disaster, as the geologic record in this coastal region of Chile preserves evidence of powerful tsunamis dating to around 5,000 years ago, the scientists reported. But with ample skeletal evidence that the person was a fisherman, the more likely explanation is that he died during a fishing accident, they said.

Damage to the skeleton — missing shoulder joints, cervical vertebrae that were replaced with shells and a broken ribcage — could have happened when waves pummeled the drowned man’s body and then washed it ashore, the researchers explained.

Interior analysis of the man’s bones revealed traces of microscopic sea life, such as parasite eggs and algae. This image shows a degraded unicellular green alga that lives in marine ecosystems.

As to why the man was buried in a mass grave, “what we can assess from similar contexts is that they probably belonged to the same family group,” said lead study author Pedro Andrade, an archaeologist and a professor of anthropology at the University of Concepción in Chile.

The individuals likely shared an ancestor but weren’t immediate family members, as the dates of the skeletons spanned about 100 years, Andrade told Live Science in an email. 

By expanding the range of the modern diatom test to include a broader selection of microscopic marine life in their search through the interior cavities of prehistoric bones, “we’ve cracked open a whole new way to do things,” study co-author James Goff, a visiting professor in the School of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. 

“This can help us understand much more about how tough it was living by the coast in prehistoric days — and how people there were affected by catastrophic events, just as we are today,” Goff said.

Applying this method across other archaeological sites in coastal areas with mass graves could offer game-changing insight into how ancient people survived — and often died — while living under potentially perilous conditions, Andrade told Live Science.

While there are many coastal mass burial sites worldwide that have been investigated by scientists, “the fundamental question of what caused so many deaths has not been addressed,” Goff added. 

WORLD

Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor

Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor

People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. Before then, there were no blue eyes.

Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
Reese Witherspoon.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen.

The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin.

“A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes,” Eiberg said.

The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue. If the OCA2 gene had been completely shut down, our hair, eyes and skin would be melanin-less, a condition known as albinism.

“It’s exactly what I sort of expected to see from what we know about selection around this area,” said John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, referring to the study results regarding the OCA2 gene. Hawks was not involved in the current study.

Baby blues

Eiberg and his team examined DNA from mitochondria, the cell’s energy-making structures, of blue-eyed individuals in countries including Jordan, Denmark and Turkey. This genetic material comes from females, so it can trace maternal lineages.

They specifically looked at sequences of DNA on the OCA2 gene and the genetic mutation associated with turning down melanin production.

Over the course of several generations, segments of ancestral DNA get shuffled so that individuals have varying sequences. Some of these segments, however, that haven’t been reshuffled are called haplotypes.

If a group of individuals shares long haplotypes, that means the sequence arose relatively recently in our human ancestors. The DNA sequence didn’t have enough time to get mixed up.

“What they were able to show is that the people who have blue eyes in Denmark, as far as Jordan, these people all have this same haplotype, they all have exactly the same gene changes that are all linked to this one mutation that makes eyes blue,” Hawks said in a telephone interview.

Melanin switch

The mutation is what regulates the OCA2 switch for melanin production. And depending on the amount of melanin in the iris, a person can end up with eye colours ranging from brown to green.

Brown-eyed individuals have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production. But they found that blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. 

“Out of 800 persons we have only found one person which didn’t fit — but his eye colour was blue with a single brown spot,” Eiberg told LiveScience, referring to the finding that blue-eyed individuals all had the same sequence of DNA linked with melanin production.

“From this, we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” Eiberg said. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Eiberg and his colleagues detailed their study in the online edition of the journal Human Genetics. 

That genetic switch somehow spread throughout Europe and now other parts of the world.

“The question really is, ‘Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 per cent of Europeans having blue eyes now?” Hawks said. “This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids.”

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Bone Analysis Offers a Glimpse of 19th-Century Working Mothers

Bone Analysis Offers a Glimpse of 19th-Century Working Mothers

A 19th-century rural Dutch village had unusually low rates of breastfeeding, likely because mothers were busy working, according to a study published April 13, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrea L. Waters-Rist of the University of Western Ontario and colleagues.

Artificial feeding of infants, as opposed to breastfeeding, is considered a fairly modern practice, much rarer before the advent of commercially available alternatives to breast milk.

However, studies of past populations in Europe have found that breastfeeding practices can vary significantly with a regional cultural variation. In this study, researchers examine a 19th-century dairy farming rural village in the Netherlands to explore factors linked to lower rates of breastfeeding.

Bone Analysis Offers a Glimpse of 19th-Century Working Mothers
(Frederick Bloemaert (printmaker), Abraham Bloemaert (designer), Nicolaes Visscher (publisher)/Rijks Museum

Breastfeeding leaves its mark in the bones of infants in the form of altered ratios of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes. In this study, researchers tested isotopic signatures in the remains of 277 individuals, including nearly 90 infants and children, from Beemster, North-Holland.

They found little to no evidence of breastfeeding, surprising given that this community exhibit features commonly associated with breastfeeding communities of the time, such as a Protestant population of moderate socioeconomic status, and mothers commonly working in or near the home.

Since other evidence indicates that mothers in 19th century Beemster were commonly working as dairy farmers, the researchers suspect that a high workload and a ready supply of cow’s milk as an alternative infant food source were important factors contributing to these low rates of breastfeeding.

At a few urban archaeological sites, mothers who worked long factory shifts have been found to have low rates of breastfeeding, but a similar phenomenon has not been found in a rural population until now.

Future studies on more sites will help elucidate how regional cultural practices impacted rates of breastfeeding over time, and in turn, how these factors have impacted infant health over recent centuries.

The authors add: “Artificial feeding of infants is not just a recent phenomenon.

Female dairy farmers from 19th century Netherlands chose to not breastfeed, or to wean their infants at a young age, because of the availability of fresh cow’s milk and high demands on female labour.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Possible 18th-Century Tavern Uncovered in Eastern Virginia

Possible 18th-Century Tavern Uncovered in Eastern Virginia

After three years of searching, archaeologists think they may have found the remnants of an 18th-century tavern.

“We found a substantial rubble deposit of handmade brick and oyster shell mortar with some evidence of burning [that may be chimney soot],” said Fairfield Foundation lead archaeologist Dan Brown. “We think it might be the Quarles Tavern.”

Although not much is known about the tavern other than what is recorded in historical documents, the tavern was owned at one time by a man named John Quarles.

Possible 18th-Century Tavern Uncovered in Eastern Virginia
Volunteers Tom Hawkins, Bonnie Pearsall, Elcke Erb, T’ziyon Levi-Shackleford, Marc Reynolds and Marshall Pearsall work with Fairfield Foundation staff archaeologist Oliver Mueller-Heubach at the site believed to be the location of an 18-century tavern in King William County’s courthouse area.

Now that archaeologists have identified what they think is the tavern, Brown said they will conduct additional tests to “find the edge of the deposit, hoping it will confirm the width of the building’s foundation … and delineate the building’s outline and dimensions” to verify it is the tavern.

The King William Historical Society sponsored the project after Alonso Dill’s map of the historic courthouse area, based on old records, piqued the society’s interest. It soon joined forces with the Fairfield Foundation, an archaeological preservation organization based in Gloucester.

Fairfield Foundation staff archaeologists Oliver Mueller-Heubach and Ned Rose work with volunteers Marc Reynolds, Mike Crombie, Charles Van Fossen and Marshall Pearsall at a site believed to have been the location of an 18th-century tavern in King William County’s courthouse area.

According to Brown, Dill’s map provided approximate locations of several buildings that no longer exist, including Hill’s Hotel (located across Courthouse Road in the green triangle lot), the Quarles Tavern (located east of the short brick wall area) and the brick stables (located in the asphalt overflow parking lot on Horse Landing Road).

Using Dill’s map and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) performed by Bob Chartrand, of Chartrand Geoarchaeological Solutions, LLC, in Williamsburg, they were able to search the entire courthouse area. GPR uses subsurface mapping of the earth using radio waves that create a picture.

“It saves us a lot of time and tells us where exactly to dig,” Brown said.

With GPR, Chartrand located many of the buildings’ foundations and even one not on Dill’s map, including a large brick building with a full cellar within the short-bricked wall area of the courthouse, just south of the King William Historical Society Museum, Brown said.

“That area was privately owned up until the early 20th century, and the building was destroyed around the time the county bought the property but, what was the building?” he asked. “We’re still trying to find that out.”

Although his team is at the preliminary stages of understanding what exactly the archaeology says about King William’s society in the 18th century, Brown said that he can confirm that “the tavern hosted a very high-class clientele, [as] seen in the variety of relatively rare and expensive ceramic fragments, personal items and other artefacts found to date.”

Artefacts recovered from the upper layers above the brick rubble include (l-r) an oyster shell, two iron nails (potentially 18th-century wrought nails), a 19th-century white glass button, and an 18th-century slipware rim fragment and an unidentified iron object.

Brown has also deduced that the courthouse area was busy at that time. In fact, busier relative to today. Also, Brown said every part of society, from enslaved Africans and Indigenous people to wealthy individuals and families came to the courthouse area.

Although he has learned a lot about King William County through artefacts, Brown keeps digging up more questions.

This hole shows what archaeologists believe to be the foundation of an 18th-century tavern in King William County’s courthouse area.

“Did Indigenous people live here? When they built the courthouse, what other buildings were built alongside it and when and where? Over the 18th and 19th centuries, what government buildings came and went?”

Brown has a theory as to why business eventually slowed down in the King William courthouse area: urban development.

“There was an increase in state governments, development in West Point and more stores to choose from,” he said. “People had less of a need to go to the courthouse for things.”

Since the project is ongoing, the King William Society and Fairfield Foundation will continue to use GPR and dig around the courthouse area in hopes of finding new buildings and answering more questions.

According to Brown, the group also aims to “preserve the county’s precious cultural resources” by making them available for viewing in the King William Historical Society Museum and “sharing this process with the public.”

“Plans are in the works for us to host all 273 fourth and fifth graders in the county and that is a remarkable honour,” said Brown. “They would get to see the remarkable museum exhibits put together by the museum council, the architectural complexities and mysteries of our courthouse buildings, and get to dig too.”

Brown said he is also looking forward to hosting the public a few days every month to visit and participate in a dig.

Artifacts recovered from the upper layers above brick rubble include (top to bottom) a 19th-century whiteware handle fragment, a mid-18th-century white salt-glazed stoneware plate base fragment and a 19th-century colourless bottle fragment.
ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

‘Rare’ 14th Century gold coin found in a secret drawer in Derbyshire

‘Rare’ 14th Century gold coin found in a secret drawer in Derbyshire

A 14th-century French gold coin was discovered inside one of three hidden drawers in a bureau inherited by a woman who lives in Derbyshire, England.

The mother of three, Amy Clapp, 37, told reporters she had no idea the 650-year-old coin — or the secret drawers — existed after being left a 20th-century bureau by her distant cousin.

Don Collins of Hansons Auctioneers said the 22-carat coin was “very unusual” and he had “never seen one exactly like it” in more than 50 years, according to the BBC.

Edward Rycroft with the coin and the tiny drawer he found it in.

Experts believe the Raymond IV Prince of Orange Franc A Pied, dating back to 1365, could fetch double the guide price of £1,200 to £1,800 when it is auctioned this spring.

The princes of Orange lived in France in the 14th century. The principality originated as a fiefdom in the Holy Roman Empire in the kingdom of Burgundy.

Hansons furniture valuer Edward Rycroft with coin and Amy Clapp.

Clapp said to the Daily Mail, “I can’t even remember meeting my great cousin, but I received a letter from a solicitor before Christmas informing me that I’d been left various items of furniture. Apparently, the will was written when I was 13 years old.”

Read also: The ‘Field of Dreams Movie Site is Getting a Huge Upgrade

The bureau’s owner didn’t even find the coin herself. She’d sent the bureau to Derbyshire’s Hansons Auctioneers to sell after examining it, believing that it was empty. But three secret drawers existed in the bureau, and they were found by the furniture auctioneers.

The secret drawer behind this visible drawer.

Edward Rycroft, the furniture valuer at Hanson’s, was the one who made the discovery. The gold coin was hidden in a secret drawer. It turned out to be rare, and highly valuable. Rycroft told the Derbyshire Times: “I know bureaus like this often have tiny, secret drawers — sometimes called coin drawers — so I always check them just in case. But in 10 years of valuing furniture, I have never found anything in them  … until now.”

Clapp said she “would never have found that in a million years” and hoped to donate some of the proceeds of the coin sale to a charity.

The wooden bureau itself is estimated at being worth less than $100.

Rycroft said, “I’m delighted for the family. The coin’s worth a small fortune. I knew straight away it was gold and really special. It’s the most amazing thing I have ever found by chance.”

As for Clapp, a family support worker, she said: “I’m delighted. I was working in London when Edward phoned me. As a family, we’ve had some bad luck in the last two years, so for something like this to happen to us is amazing.”

Rycroft suggested everyone be sure to search their furniture carefully. “If you’ve got an old bureau at home do check for secret drawers — you never know, you may be sitting on a windfall too.”

EUROPE, NORWAY, WORLD

Who Was the Exceptionally Powerfully Built Viking Buried in the Gokstad Ship?

Who Was the Exceptionally Powerfully Built Viking Buried in the Gokstad Ship?

Ever since the publication of a scientific article in 1883, “everyone” has known that the skeleton found in the magnificent Gokstad ship in Eastern Norway belonged to Olaf Geirstad-Alf, the legendary Viking king of the House of Yngling. In recent years, however, research has shown that this must be wrong.

The clinker-built Gokstad ship dating back to the year 890 AD is currently on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Dendrochronological datings show that the Gokstad ship was built about the year 890 AD, i.e. the height of Norwegian expansion in the British Isles, and in the year 901, it was buried in the so-called “King’s Mound” (Gokstad Mound) in Vestfold, Eastern Norway.

The vessel largely is constructed of oak and is 23.22 meters (76.18 ft) long and 5.18 meters (17 ft) wide. On each side, there are sixteen oar holes, and the ship was built to carry thirty-two oarsmen. With a steersman (the ship’s owner) and lookout, the crew consisted of thirty-four people but could carry a maximum of seventy men with some equipment.

The Gokstad ship was both flexible and fast with a top speed of more than 12 knots (14 mph) propelled by the sail of about 110 square meters (1,200 square feet). Recent tests have shown that the vessel worked very well with both sail and oars, and it may have been used for trade, Viking raids and explorations. There have not been found any thwarts, and the oarsmen probably have been sitting on chests that also contained their personal equipment.

Model of the Gokstad Viking ship.

Grave Findings

When the Gokstad ship was excavated, sixty-four shields were discovered (thirty-two on each side) and every second was painted in yellow and black. In the front part of the ship, there were discovered fragments of white wool fabric with sewn red stripes that probably were parts of the sail. Behind the mast, a burial chamber was discovered with the remains of a beautifully woven carpet decorating the walls. Inside the burial chamber, there was found a made bed containing the buried person.

In addition to the Gokstad ship itself, there were among other objects found a gaming board with gaming pieces made of horn, fish hooks, harness fittings of iron, lead and gilded bronze, kitchenware, and six beds, one tent, one sled and three smaller boats. There were also discovered a large number of animal bones that had belonged to twelve horses, eight dogs, two northern goshawks and two peacocks.

Animals in the Gokstad ship grave.

When the excavation took place in 1880, it soon became clear that parts of the grave goods had been plundered in ancient times: there were no jewellery or any precious metals in the grave, nor any weapons that in the Viking Age were an important part of a warrior’s grave goods preparing him for his journey to the Afterlife. Just south of the Gokstad burial mound, a major trading centre has recently been discovered. The items excavated tell different stories and document the close connection between Vestfold and the rest of the world at the time. Weights found in the trading centre show that hectic trading activities took place at about the same time as the Gokstad ship burial.

Human Bones

In 2007, bones from a human skeleton found in the grave were thoroughly examined by Professor Per Holck at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo.

The examination proved that the bones had belonged to a man who died in his 40s. He was between 178 (5ft 10 in) and 184 centimetres tall (6ft), something that was significantly taller than the average height of the period (165 cm / 5ft 5in) and the Viking was exceptionally powerfully built. The man in the Gokstad ship grave has mainly eaten terrestrial food [food coming from land and not the sea, like meat and corn] showing that he has belonged to the Norse community’s social elite.

Professor Holck found clear marks of five or six different cuts from an axe, knife and sword: one on each of the thigh bones, two or three on the left and one on the right calf bone. It is likely that the Gokstad man did not survive these injuries, something proved by the fact that there are no signs that his wounds have healed.

Cut on the leg (tuberositas tibiae), probably from a sword.

Although none of the injuries has been fatal (perhaps with the exception of a cut on the inside of the right thigh bone, which may have damaged the femoral artery), it cannot be excluded that this particular Viking has had other cuts that did kill him, for example in the head (only parts of the skull was discovered).

Aiming for the enemy’s legs was a common fighting technique in the Middle Ages. The legs were not covered by chain mails and were vulnerable, a fact documented from many examples in Norse sagas.

Professor Holck concluded that there must have been at least two people, with three different weapons, who have killed the Gokstad man, and that the cuts indicate that he most likely was wearing armour and killed in battle.

Not King Olaf Geirstad-Alf

The theory is that the skeleton from the Gokstad mound has belonged to Olaf Geirstad-Alf (Old Norse: Ólaf Geirstaða Álfr, the elf of Geirstad) was already described in a scientific article by anatomy professor Jacob Heiberg back in 1883, and the man’s identity has since been widely accepted. In the first section of the Heimskringla King’s Sagas written down in 1225 by Snorri Sturloson, Olaf  «Geirstad-Alf» Gudrødsson is mentioned with a couple of lines: Olaf was a petty king in Vestfold, and the half brother of Halfdan the Black (c. 810 – c. 869 AD). Olaf was allegedly Halfdan’s nineteen years older brother, and thus probably born around the year 800. Since the ship’s grave can be dated back to the year 901, about half a century after Olaf Geirstad-Alf’s death, researchers can safely say that this is not Olaf’s grave.

The Gokstad burial mound in Vestfold, Eastern Norway.

However, who was the exceptionally powerfully built Viking found in the Oseberg grave chamber?

If we take a close look at the large and versatile Oseberg ship and the rich discoveries, and how the person in the grave was killed – it is quite certain that this was a powerful and respected Viking warrior from Vestfold. The peacocks discovered show that this was a man with an international network and that he did belong to the Norse upper class. Perhaps the birds were a gift from an English king or trophies he brought back home from a Viking raid in Spain?

In Medieval Europe peacocks, a bird species originally brought back from Asia, were considered a symbol of power among kings and aristocrats. Maybe the Gokstad man was a powerful Viking petty king, earl or chieftain who had accumulated enormous wealth abroad?

However, he may also have been an elite warrior, a berserker, one of the king’s loyal elite soldiers who received the funeral he deserved when he was killed in battle. If he was killed in Dublin, London, York– or in Novgorod (Russia), and was brought home to be buried, we do not know. Either way – it is certain that the human bones buried in the Gokstad ship did not belong to King Olaf Geirstad-Alf.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

East Bay’s mysterious rock walls: Paranormal? American Stonehenge? Theories abound

East Bay’s mysterious rock walls: Paranormal? American Stonehenge? Theories abound

If walls could speak, what a tale these mysterious huge boulders would tell. Perched high atop the lonely, windswept ridges of the Diablo Range, chains of stacked stones stand sentry above East Bay cities — yet they delineate nothing.

Long the subject of intrigue — Who built them? Why? How? — the walls are now being mapped by a San Francisco State archaeologist who believes they hold important clues to early California history and deserve our attention and protection.

“They are historic sites,” said Jeffrey Fentress, who is measuring and mapping them for the East Bay Regional Park District, then submitting his findings to the California Office of Historic Preservation. “By recording the walls, they become a permanent part of the state archive and are protected — as well as they can be — from future development.”

There are no written or photographic records of their construction in a landscape that has been inhabited by humans for at least 7,000 years. So, like the fabled crop circles of England, the walls have inspired theories ranging from the paranormal to the historically bizarre.

“There is no definitive answer on its origins, which further delights the public, who can take it to new levels of speculation,” said Mark Hylkema, archaeologist for the Santa Cruz District of California State Parks.

New Age mystics have declared that their builders were creatures from a vanished Pacific island; amateur historians suggest that they were Mongols or West Africans. Some theorize that the walls offered defence from intruders; others believe they played a peaceful and spiritual or astronomical role, perhaps serving as a “solstice site” like Stonehenge.

Sections of walls are scattered atop Santa Clara County’s Ed Levin County Park, the Russian Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, several parks within the East Bay Regional Park District and a few private ranches in the Livermore Valley. Some also can be seen in the Sierra foothills, along state Highway 50 past El Dorado Hills.

A pile of rocks form a segment of “Mystery Walls” at Ed Levin County Park in Santa Clara County on Oct. 10, 2015.
A pile of rocks form a segment of “Mystery Walls” at Ed Levin County Park in Santa Clara County on Oct. 10, 2015.

While well known to the region’s hikers, park officials are reluctant to disclose precise locations because they fear they will attract vandals. A large stone circle on Pleasanton Ridge was destroyed by real estate development in the 1990s.

Standing 3- to 4-feet high and wide, they’re sturdy yet unsecured by mortar. They seem too low to offer much protection, or confine horses. Some rocks are melon-size. The larger ones weigh up to a ton. Lifting them no doubt required the effort of several men.

“Some go in a straight line, others twist like a demented snake up a steep hillside, others come in a spiral two hundred feet wide and circle into a boulder,” amateur wall historian Russell Swanson wrote in 1997. Over 12 years, he visited more than 40 miles of the stone structures. The walls seem out of place in California’s wild golden hills, evoking instead memories of tidy New England fields memorialized by poet Robert Frost, or the rich green pastures of Ireland.

One of many old stone walls found around the southern and eastern San Francisco Bay in California.

Why, in such a vast landscape, didn’t builders simply use barbed wire? Or wood? Instead, they’re built of coarse-grained sandstone, abundant in these hills, called graywacke.

Native Americans say they historically had little interest in erecting boundaries. “In general, our ancestors did not believe in scarring or altering Mother Earth,” said Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. In 1904, John Fryer, a UC Berkeley professor of Oriental languages and literature, asserted that they were “undoubtedly the work of Mongolians. … The Chinese would naturally wall themselves in.”

Several years later, ethnologist Henry C. Meyers agreed they were the product of strong and ancient civilizations: “Neither man nor men of the present day could possibly put large stones of these walls in place without appliances of some kind.”

Dr. Robert F. Fisher, the founder of the Mission Peak Heritage Foundation, told the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1984 that he was mystified: “They predate the Indians. They predate the Spaniards. It doesn’t fit in with any of the later histories.”

More recently, lichen analyses date the walls back to the 1850s to 1880s — the post-Gold Rush era, when California was swelling with newcomers anxious to lay their claim on acreage. While imperfect, the technique dates inanimate objects by measuring the diameter of growing lichens.

That evidence hasn’t stopped the internet from spawning its own theories, crediting mythical Lemurians — tall people who breathed through scaly aqua skin and sought refuge in California after the disappearance of the Pacific continent of Mu. Much more likely is an explanation put forth by a consensus of experts like Fentress; State Parks archaeologist Hylkema; and Beverly Ortiz, cultural services coordinator of the East Bay Regional Park District.

The walls were likely built to contain cattle by new European immigrants in the post-Gold Rush era, perhaps using unpaid or low-paid Native American, Chinese or Mexican labour, they believe. The stones stand as a legacy of our once-rural culture, poignant reminders of people long gone. Unlike the railroad or mining tycoons — the Crockers, Stanfords, Huntingtons and Floods — these early ranchers left no mansions, antiques or jewellery. Only rocks.

“The rock walls throughout the East Bay are neither ancient nor mysterious, even if the specific individuals who made them are unknown to us today,” Ortiz said. “They are associated with historic Euro-American ranching, dairy and dry farming activities.”

The historians note that cattle and sheep don’t need tall walls to be managed; they’re docile and don’t jump. The rocks, Fentress and Ortiz said, also could have been used to help catch or drain water or establish boundaries between ranches.

But which ethnic group built the walls?

The Portuguese were among the early ranchers, said Robert Burrill and Joseph Ehardt, of the Milpitas Historical Society. But other immigrants, such as Italians, Irish and Spaniards, may have brought wall-building skills from their homelands.

These post-Gold Rush settlers, who were not wealthy, likely built walls with their own hands, Fentress said. But they also may have enlisted low-cost labour from other ethnic groups, such as Mexicans — who had been displaced from their ranchos — and Chinese, who build the railroads and projects like Oakland’s Lake Chabot dam. Or perhaps they were built by Native Americans during an era that authorized the forced apprenticeship of native peoples, a practice not banned until the 1860s.

Archaeologists say the walls are a ghostly elegy of their builders.

“They are essentially the archaeology of the working class, the common people who came here and made a living,” Fentress said. “It is the only evidence we have of these people’s lives — and it is important to tell that story as well as we can.”

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