2,000-year-old Roman street unearthed in Turkey’s Diyarbakır
A 2,000-year-old street from the Roman period has been discovered in southeastern Turkey. The historic city of Diyarbakır, situated in southeastern Turkey, is home to innumerable ancient wonders and relics from throughout history.
Archaeological workers continue efforts to unearth a Roman-era street at the ancient Amida Höyük site in Diyarbakır, Turkey.
Currently, excavation to unearth the historical Roman street is being carried out in Amida Höyük, a mound known as the heart of Diyarbakır province while also being the historical Roman name of the city, along with Amed which was what it was called in the Assyrian period and modern-day Kurdish.
Professor Irfan Yıldız from Dicle University is leading the excavation amid strict measures against the coronavirus pandemic.
“Very interesting data continues to come from the west side of the mound we excavated. The street texture and structure of the period has started to emerge,” Yıldız said.
Yıldız noted that over the period of a year they expect to unearth many historical artefacts in the excavation.
Yildiz said by 2022 tourists using the Roman street will be able to visit the historical region of Içkale and be able to see streets from the Roman, Ottoman and Republican periods.
Diyarbakır was historically situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress.
Tigris was one half of the word “Mesopotamia” which translates to “between the rivers” in ancient Greek, a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that helped humanity thrive but also plunged it into some of the bloodiest wars of history.
Many small and large-scale states and empires were built upon the soil which offered plentiful natural resources essential for survival.
The city was conquered by Muslims in 639, only a few years following the conquest of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which stands as the holiest city of Islam.
Today, Diyarbakır is home to the Hevsel Gardens which have been used for agricultural purposes for more than 8,000 years, the Great (Ulu) Mosque, one of the oldest mosques of Anatolia and the Malabadi bridge built during the Artuqid period in the 12th century.
Meanwhile, it is also home to the Hasuni Cave city where pre-historic people lived during the early years of Christianity, and the Zerzevan Castle, which is a Roman military facility containing the temple of Mithraism, a mysterious religion.
The Mainichi reports that a 400-year-old stone wall standing about 13 feet tall has been uncovered at Edo Castle, which was constructed in the mid-fifteenth century A.D. by Ōta Dōkan, a samurai warrior-poet who eventually became a Buddhist monk.
The historic remnants were excavated at the spot where Sannomaru Shozokan (Museum of the Imperial Collections) is undergoing renovation work, in the East Garden of the Imperial Palace, in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.
The stone walls are not thought to have been repaired since they were first built at the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1867). An official at the Chiyoda Ward Government said the finding “allows us to examine stone wall construction techniques at the time.”
Stone walls from the Edo Castle, thought to be about 400-years-old, are seen at a construction site in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward
According to the ward government, the stone walls were found near the Imperial Palace’s Otemon Gate.
They run about 16 meters north to south and measure about 4 meters high — or about seven steps. It seems they were part of the stone wall for the water-filled moat, and a band-shaped white line for indicating the water flow at the time remains on its surface. It is believed water went up to the stone walls’ fourth to fifth steps.
Researchers assume the whole stone walls were buried by the mid-1600s, based on the loss of its top, the condition of soil on the structure, and drawings from the time.
The field excavation survey was conducted from November to December 2020. Researchers are examining and analyzing the excavated relics and soil and will summarize the results in the future. The stone walls will be covered with soil again afterwards.
Stone walls from the Edo Castle, thought to be about 400-years-old, are seen at a construction site in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward
Sannomaru Shozokan is set to greatly expand its storage and exhibition areas and had aimed to open fully to the public in 2025, but the effects of the excavation survey mean a year’s delay is now expected.
17th-Century Mourning Ring Unearthed on the Isle of Man
Manx Radio reports that a metal detectorist on the Isle of Man uncovered a piece of jewellery identified as a Stuart-period mourning ring made of crystal and gold inlaid with black enamel at the time of the English Civil Wars (1642–51) and will soon go on view at a local museum.
The accessory, which is inscribed with the initials “JD”—or possibly “ID”—is a mourning ring of the type given out at funerals during the Stuart period (1603–1714). Its sloping sides are adorned with engravings of leaves inlaid with black enamel.
“The ring is small and quite delicate in form, but of a high quality and intact,” says Allison Fox, an archaeologist at Manx National Heritage, in a statement. “The quality suggests that it was made for, or on behalf of, an individual of high status.”
James Stanley supported the Stuart monarchy during the English Civil Wars, which pitted Royalists against Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians.
Though Fox points out that researchers may never be able to definitively determine the ring’s origins, she says that it could have been connected with the Stanley family, which ruled as the Lords of Man for more than 300 years.
“The initials JD may refer to James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby and Lord of Man, a supporter of the Royalist cause in the Civil War,” adds Fox in the statement. “Letters and documents from the time show that he signed his name as J Derby, so the initials JD would be appropriate for him.”
As the Isle of Man’s legislature, Tynwald, notes on its website, Henry IV granted the island to Sir John Stanley I in 1405.
In exchange for their continued possession of the island, the crown demanded that the Stanleys remain loyal and send two falcons to all future kings of England upon their coronations. John’s grandson Thomas—stepfather to Henry VII, the kingdom’s first Tudor monarch—received the title of Earl of Derby in 1485, and the family continued to rule under that title for centuries.
After James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby was executed in 1651, his wife, Charlotte, worked to preserve his memory.
James Stanley, who was also known as Baron Strange for part of his life, became a Royalist commander in service of Charles I, and later Charles II, during the English Civil Wars, which pitted supporters of the monarchy against Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces.
In 1651, Cromwell’s men captured and executed James. His eldest son, Charles, succeeded him. After James’ death, reports BBC News, his wife, Charlotte, worked to ensure that he was not forgotten.
Metal detectorist Lee Morgan discovered the ring while exploring the south side of the island, which is a British dependency located off the northwest coast of England, last December.
The exact location is being kept secret to protect the site. (That same month, noted BBC News in February, a retired police officer on the Isle of Man unearthed a cache of 1,000-year-old Viking jewellery.)
Morgan, for his part, has previously unearthed two other treasure troves: In 2013, he found a horde of silver coins from the 1300s, and in 2019, he discovered a silver ingot dated to between 950 and 1075, during the island’s Viking period.
The Isle of Man’s coroner of inquests, Jayne Hughes, has declared the Stuart ring treasure under the United Kingdom’s Treasure Act. (Current guidelines define treasure very narrowly, but as Caroline Davies wrote for the Guardian in December 2020, the U.K. government is working to expand these parameters to better protect the country’s national heritage items.)
Per the statement, authorities will display the jewellery at the Manx Museum before sending it to the Treasure Valuation Committee, which meets at the British Museum, for review.
Florida sinkhole discovery suggests humans lived in America 14,500 years ago
A stone knife, mastodon bones and fossilized dung Discovered in an underwater sinkhole show that humans lived in north Florida about 14,500 years ago, according to new research that recommends the colonization of the Americas was far more complex than originally believed.
Archaeologists have known about the sinkhole in the Aucilla River, south of Tallahassee, for years. But they recently dived back into the hole to excavate what they call clear proof that ancient mankind spread throughout the Americas about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.
Almost 200ft wide and 35ft deep, the sinkhole was “as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all”, according to Jessi Halligan, lead diving researcher and a professor at Florida State University at Tallahassee. Halligan dived into the hole 126 times through the course of her research, wearing a headlamp as well as diving gear.
Neil Puckett, from Texas A&M University, surfaces with a limb bone of a juvenile mastodon at a sinkhole in a limestone bedrock site near Tallahassee, Florida.
In the hole, the divers discovered stone tools including an inch-wide, several inch-long stone knife and a “biface” – a stone flaked sharp on both sides. The artefacts were found close to mastodon bones; re-examination of a tusk pulled from the hole confirmed that long grooves in the bone were made by individuals, presumably when they removed it from the skull and pulled meat from its base.
“Each tusk this size would have had more than 15lbs of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity,” said Daniel Fisher, a palaeontologist at the University of Michigan who was a member of a group that once removed a tusk from a mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.
Of the “biface” tool, Halligan told Smithsonian magazine: “There is definitely no way it is not made by people. There is no way that’s a natural artefact in any shape or form.”
When ancient people butchered or scavenged the mastodon, the sinkhole was a shallow pond: a watering hole for men, mastodons, buffalo, bears and apparently dogs. The researchers discovered bones that appear to be canine, suggesting dogs trailed the humans, either as companions or competitors for scraps. The discovery makes the sinkhole the earliest documented site for humans in the south-eastern United States. The specialists published their findings in the journal Science Advances on Friday, writing that the artefacts show “much better” evidence of early humans than previous work at the site.
“The proof from the Page-Ladson site is a major leap forward in shaping a new view of the peopling of the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age,” said Mike Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University.
“In the archaeological network, there’s still a terrific amount of resistance to the idea that individuals were here before Clovis,” he added, referring to the so-called “Clovis people”, a group long thought the first band of humans in the United Nation of America.
Divers investigate the Page-Ladson archaeological site in Florida
Waters said that the watering hole would have made for “easy pickings” for people looking to corner prey. Halligan suggested the ancient hunter-gatherers may have been the first regular nomads of the east coast, travelling south in the winter.
“They were very smart about local plants and local animals and migration patterns,” she said. “This is a big deal. So how could they live? This has opened up a whole new line of inquiry for us as researchers as we try to understand the settlement of the Americas.”
Humans are thought to have crossed into the Americas amid the Ice Age, when land-linked Siberia to Alaska, but the timing of the crossing is an issue of a long dispute. In the 1930s, archaeologists Discovered distinctive spearheads among mammoth bones near Clovis, New Mexico. For decades the Clovis individuals were considered the first to colonize the Americas, around 13,000 years ago. 1000 Clovis spearheads have been found around North America and as far south as Venezuela.
But in the last two decades, archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil, human DNA by way of faeces in a cave in Oregon, evidence of humans in coastal Chile as long as 14,800 years ago, and spearheads in Texas that could date human arrival in the Americas to 15,500 years ago. Most of the manmade artefacts Discovered in these disparate sites lack the signatures of the Clovis people. At the Florida site, the researchers examined twigs in fossilized mastodon dung to date the bones and artefacts, finding them to be about 14,550 years old. The timing casts the Bering Strait theory into doubt, Halligan said: the ice-free land bridge was only open for a few thousand years.
“So the ice-free corridor is not our answer for how the Americas were initially colonized,” she told the Smithsonian.
“The logical way individuals could have come to Florida by 14,600 years ago is if their ancestors entered the Americas by boat along the Pacific Coast,” Waters told Discovery News.
“They could have travelled by boat to central Mexico, crossed and come along the Gulf Coast. They could have entered the Americas via the Columbia River and then travelled inland to the Mississippi waterway and followed it down and entered the Gulf Coast, eventually making their way to Florida.”
Mastodon remains have been found as far north as Kentucky, she said. Fisher added that the discovery that “humans and megafauna coexisted for at least 2,000 years” casts doubt on another theory: that the Clovis hunters quickly made mammoths and mastodons wiped out as they launched a “blitzkrieg” across the continent.
“That means that anyway humans and mastodons interacted, it took at least 2 millennia for the process of extinction to run to completion,” he said at a press conference. The main reason the giant mammals went extinct, he said, was probably the warming atmosphere. Several anthropologists not affiliated with the research said it added to the mounting evidence of a complex, many-staged migration into the Americas.
“I think this paper is a triumph for underwater archaeology and yet another nail in the coffin of the Clovis-first theory,” Jon Erlandson, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, disclosed to Nature magazine.
“I don’t know what else to tell you,” archaeologist Michael Faught, one of the reviewers of the research, told National Geographic. “It’s unassailable.”
Archaeologists discover a medieval skeleton with his boots still on in London
Archaeologists excavating a site along with the Thames Tideway Tunnel—a massive pipeline nicknamed London’s “super sewer”—have revealed the skeleton of a medieval man who literally died with his boots on.
“It’s extremely rare to discover any boots from the late 15th century, let alone a skeleton still wearing them,” says Beth Richardson of the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).
“And these are very unusual boots for the period—thigh boots, with the tops, turned down. They would have been expensive, and how this man came to own them is a mystery. Were they secondhand? Did he steal them? We don’t know.”
Unearthing skeletons amid major construction projects is not unusual in London, where throughout the centuries land has been reused countless times and many burial grounds have been built over and forgotten.
However, archaeologists noticed right away that this skeleton was different. The position of the body—face down, right arm over the head, left arm bent back on itself—suggests that the man was not deliberately buried.
It is also unlikely that he would have been laid to rest in leather boots, which were expensive and highly prized. In light of those clues, archaeologists believe the man died accidentally and his body was never recuperated, although the cause of death is unclear.
Perhaps he fell into the river and could not swim. Or possibly he became trapped in the tidal mud and drowned.
Sailor, fisherman, or “mudlarker”?
500 years ago this stretch of the Thames—2 miles or so downstream from the Tower of London—was a bustling maritime neighbourhood of wharves and warehouses, workshops and taverns.
The river was flanked by the Bermondsey Wall, a medieval earthwork about fifteen feet high built to protect riverbank property from tidal surges.
Given the neighbourhood, the booted man may have been a sailor or a fisherman, a possibility reinforced by physical clues.
Pronounced grooves in his teeth may have been caused by repeatedly clenching a rope. Or perhaps he was a “mudlarker,” a slang term for those who scavenge along the Thames muddy shore at low tide.
Grooves in the teeth of the booted man
The man’s wader-like thigh boots would have been ideal for such work.
The boots discovered on the skeleton of a medieval man during Tideway excavations
“We know he was very powerfully built,” says Niamh Carty, an osteologist, or skeletal specialist, at MOLA.
“The muscle attachments on his chest and shoulder are very noticeable. The muscles were built by doing lots of heavy, repetitive work over a long period of time.”
It was work that took a physical toll. Albeit only in his early thirties, the booted man suffered from osteoarthritis, and vertebrae in his back had already begun to fuse as the result of years of bending and lifting.
Wounds to his left hip suggest he walked with a limp, and his nose had been broken at least once. There is evidence of blunt force trauma on his forehead that had healed before he died.
“He did not have an easy life,” says Carty. “Early thirties was middle age back then, but even so, his biological age was older.”
The examination is continuing. Isotope investigation will shed light on where the man grew up, whether he was an immigrant or a native Londoner, and what kind of diet he had.
“His family never had any answers or a grave,” says Carty. “What we are doing is an act of remembrance. We’re allowing his story to finally be told.”
Shackled Skeletons Unearthed in Greece Could Be Remains of Slaughtered Rebels
Phaleron is a small town just four miles south of Athens that most visitors are unaware of. In addition to being a port of Athens in classical times, Phaleron has one of the largest cemeteries ever excavated in Greece, with over 1,500 skeletons. Phaleron, which dates from the 8th to 5th centuries BC, is critical for our understanding of the growth of the Greek city-state. And, in particular, for comprehending the associated brutality and subjugation.
Mass burial of 12 individuals with their hands tied at their backs, from 8th-5th BC Phaleron, Greece
People were forced face-down into a pit with their hands shackled behind their backs in two mass burials at Phaleron. An international team of archaeologists is cleaning, documenting, and examining the Phaleron skeletons to learn more about these deviant burials and their relationship to the Greek state formation.
Excavation at the site began nearly a century ago, with a mass grave – often referred to as containing the “captives of Phaleron” because of the presence of metal handcuffs – excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service.
But large-scale excavation of almost an acre of Phaleron was carried out between 2012-2016 by the Department of Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, led by archaeologist Stella Chrysoulaki.
The modern excavation garnered massive publicity in Greece because of its scale and funding from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, but little news has trickled out in the English-language media.
An archaeological excavation was careful and detailed, with conservators on-site and with several skeletons removed in blocks for future micro-excavation. Digitization of the archaeological field records, photographs, and maps is done, but this is just the beginning for the skeletons themselves, whose preservation and analysis has to be done by specialists in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology.
Example of a prone burial from 8th-5th BC Phaleron. The prone position and limb disorder indicate some sort of deviant burial
There is significant variation in how people were buried at Phaleron. Most were interred in simple pit graves, but nearly one-third are infants and children in large jars, about 5% are cremations complete with funeral pyres, and there are a few stone-lined cist graves. One individual was even buried in a wooden boat used as a coffin – the fact that this lasted nearly three millennia shows that preservation at the site is remarkably good.
The shackled skeletons, easily the most compelling remains from Phaleron, have received researchers’ attention for decades, as they are among the very few instances of shackled deaths in the ancient world and could indicate punishment, slavery, or a death sentence. But the study of these “captives” has to take place within the context of the entire cemetery, and analyzing 1,500 skeletons is a massive task.
Taking the lead on the Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project are bioarchaeologist Jane Buikstra, founding director of the Center for Bioarchaeological Research at Arizona State University, and geoarchaeologist Panagiotis Karkanas, director of the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Their immediate goal for the skeletons showcases the crucial link between the excavation of human skeletons and analysis: curation.
Burial in an 8th-5th century BC cemetery at Phaleron, Greece. The burial preserves metal shackles at the wrists, a deviant form of burial
Before the 1,500 skeletons can be made available for researchers to study, each set of remains needs to be cleaned, the bones inventoried, their age-at-death and sex estimated, and basic pathologies recorded. Setting up a database of this magnitude takes time and effort, as does correlating the skeletons with their archaeological context, and it takes significant funding too. That’s where the bottleneck is at the moment. Buikstra has a grant for approximately half the funds for curation of the skeletons but needs a match for the project to move forward.
In the long-term, though, Buikstra is sure that the Phaleron skeletons will give us a window into a critical time in ancient Greek history, just before the rise of the city-state. The research team has four main objectives following the conservation of the skeletons:
Overview of part of the Phaleron cemetery, showing the diversity of burial practices in the 8th-5th c BC
1) To thoroughly investigate the shackled and other deviant burials, including the individuals tossed into mass graves. Are they a casualty of the political upheaval that preceded the rise of Athenian democracy?
2) To study the burials of children, made primarily in pots, to learn more about infancy and childhood in the ancient world. Since children don’t often make it into the historical record, studying their skeletons helps reveal their brief lives.
3) To learn more about people’s diet at this ancient port city, and to find out if its inhabitants succumbed to diseases easily passed through sailors and other travellers from distant lands.
4) To go beyond the analysis of elite individuals buried with elaborate grave goods by focusing on the more simple burials, to shed light on all social classes of ancient Athens.
Buikstra and her team plan to make the project accessible through a website sponsored by the Ephoreia of Piraeus, Western Attica, and the Islands, Ministry of Culture, Greece, and the ASCSA. This website will also include summary blog posts, photos, and preliminary results. Public talks around the U.S. are planned, as well as Wiener Laboratory open-house, school, and museum events in Athens.
Making the database available to researchers around the world is also part of Buikstra’s plan. This will allow bioarchaeologists to use cutting-edge analytical methods, such as ancient DNA and isotope chemistry, in order to tell the important stories of the people of ancient Phaleron.
1,000-year-old shoe in the River Thames that was ‘last worn in the run-up to the Battle of Hastings’
A 1,000-year-old shoe has been found intact in the muddy river bed of the River Thames. Steve Tomlinson, 47, was exploring the estuary when he stumbled across the unassuming object protruding from the mudflats. The amateur archaeologist was unaware of its historical significance and was urged by his peers to send it off for expert analysis.
A Scottish institute carefully carbon-dated the shoe and found it be from between 1017 and 1059AD, during the era Anglo-Saxons and Vikings inhabited the British Isles before William the conqueror toppled King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
The finding may be one of the last surviving relics from the Viking occupation of Britain before the successful invasion of the French. Results of the laboratory tests found there was a 95.4 per cent probability that the shoe is from between 1017-1059AD.
A Scottish institute carefully carbon dated the shoe (pictured) and found it be be from between 1017 and 1059AD, during the era Anglo-Saxons and Vikings inhabited the British Isles before William the conqueror toppled King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066
Mr Tomlinson, from Birchington, Kent, made the discovery of the leather moccasin in October last year while searching in the estuary and the results have just been returned.
He said: ‘I was out and about just up that area and it was sticking out of a bit of clay mud so I pulled it out.
‘I first thought it was a bit of that but the history of the Thames goes through all the ages so I put the call out to archaeologist and groups and they said ‘oh my God preserve it straight away.’
Mr Tomlinson says he ‘can’t quite believe’ the outcome.
Mr Tomlinson, from Birchington, Kent, made the discovery of the leather moccasin in October last year while searching in the estuary and the results have just been returned. Heel and toe marks are so well preserved they can be seen on the shoe
Steve Tomlinson, 47, (pictured) was exploring the estuary when he stumbled across the unassuming object protruding from the mudflats. The amateur archaeologist was unaware of its historical significance and was urged by his peers to send it off for expert analysis
He added: ‘It is a rare find and amazingly it is still in superb preserved condition, probably due to the fact it was very well preserved in clay along with the sea, keeping it constantly waterlogged.
‘It is so well preserved that the original toe and heel marks can be seen.
‘It just goes to show you never know what lies beneath.
‘I am over the moon with the result.’
The shoes may soon be on display in a museum from a ‘well-known museum’.
When Did Vikings Invade Ireland?
In the 10,000 years since Stone Age cavemen first arrived, the Irish have established distinct cultural regions. Researchers have recently found 23 distinct genetic clusters, separated by geography by comparing mutations from almost 1,000 Irish genomes with over 6,000 from Britain and mainland Europe.
These are most distinct in western Ireland, but less pronounced in the east, where historical migrations have erased the genetic variations. They also detected genes from Europe and calculated the timing of the historical migrations of the Norse-Vikings and the Anglo-Normans to Ireland, yielding dates consistent with historical records.
The Vikings left their genetic footprint in Ireland when they invaded the island, launching their first attack in 795 AD by raiding an island monastery. By the 840s, the Vikings began to establish permanent ship bases along the coastline
The study paints a new and more complex picture of the genetic landscape of Ireland and demonstrates the signatures that historical migrations have left on the modern Irish genome. The Vikings left their genetic footprint in Ireland when they invaded the island, launching their first attack in 795 AD by raiding an island monastery.
The Vikings continued to stage small-scale attacks on unprotected coastal monasteries before sailing to River Shannon in the 830s to steal from inland religious settlements. By the 840s, the Vikings began to establish permanent ship bases along the coastline from which they could plunder all year.
Norse influence in Ireland began to decline by the time of the rise of king Brian Boru (pictured in an imagined depiction)
The Vikings also enslaved some of the Irish people and were able to raid the land by taking advantage of the fact that Ireland was particularly politically fractured.
The Vikings, however, did not conquer the island – by the middle of the 10th century, they failed to control the territory in Ireland. The fractured political system in Ireland worked in the island’s favour – if one ruler was killed, it did not destabilize the entire island.
Norse influence in Ireland began to decline by the time of the rise of king Brian Boru. He sacked the Viking town in Limerick in 968 AD and became the overlord of Cork, Wexford and Waterford. In 1014, the king’s army routed the Vikings and their allies at the Battle of Clontarf outside Dublin, but a small group of Norseman killed the elderly kind as he was praying in his tent after the battle.
The Viking remained in Ireland after agreeing to pay a tribute, but the Viking Age in Ireland didn’t come to a definitive end until the Norman invasion in the 1170s and the last Norse king of Dublin escaped to the Orkney Islands.
Roman Coins discovered in (U.S) Texas burial Mound
Finds of Roman coins in the United States, including one in an Indian mound in Texas, are most likely lost souvenirs of World Wars I and II rather than proof of ancient transoceanic contact, an expert says.
A study of some 40 reported finds of Roman coins in the United States has convinced Dr. Jeremiah Epstein, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, that “if Romans ever got to America, we haven’t got any evidence of them yet.”
Dr. Epstein reported his findings to American and British experts at a symposium on ancient coins that ended here Tuesday. Roman coins were reported found in the New World as early as 1530, the research says, although it appears that that report and many others since have been in error.
The only documented pre‐Columbian European contact with the New World is the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, dating to about 1000 A.D.
Recently a London coin dealer and expert, Peter Seaby, identified a coin found at Blue Hill Lane as a Norse penny from the reign of Olaf Kyrre, 1067 to 1093 A.D. The coin was reportedly excavated from an Indian midden.
The finding of a Roman “follis” of Emperor Constantin the Great (306‐337 A.D.) in an Indian mound prompted Dr. Epstein to begin his study of reports of Roman coin discoveries. But other artefacts from the mound 1,000 years or older than the coins have been found.
It appears, Dr. Epstein says, that the coin is an example of “reverse stratigraphy,” a phenomenon known from other archaeological sites, of which later objects are carried down below earlier ones, often by animals’ burrowing activities.
As part of his investigations, Dr Epstein advertised in coin publications for people who had found or lost Roman coins.
One correspondent from Africa reported losing a coin while skiing in Colorado. A conference member reported that a coin dealer lost a number of coins, still unrecovered, in an accident on a Houston freeway.
Finds were reported from various areas, including what Dr Epstein describes as “obviously historical contexts,” such as a Baton Rouge, La., bus station and the Abilene, Tex., Air Force base officers’ club.
Others that were investigated turned out to be cases of mistaken identities, such as one “Roman” coin that was actually a token from the 1893 Colombian Exposition. An “ancient Jewish shekel” turned out to be a commemorative token given Jewish immigrants to the New World.
Research on reported finds shows the number increasing after 1914, apparently from returning G.I.’s losing coins picked up on foreign lands. Experts at the conference reported that that situation had occurred in many other places, including Australia, where Roman contact has not been hypothesized.
Accidental Contact Suggested
Dr Epstein agrees that, apart from deliberate attempts at colonization, conquest or trade, there is a possibility of accidental contact by Romans from a “drift voyage” by a disabled ship.
However, there is no evidence, he says, to indicate that any such voyage occurred. Coin finds are not concentrated in coastal areas, nor do they correspond to peak periods of Roman shipping, he explained.
There is evidence on the West Coast for “drift voyages” by Japanese junks, with documented reports, and coin concentration for 18th and 19th-century contact by Chinese fur traders with coastal tribes there, Dr Epstein says.
