An Astonishingly Small Stone Carving That Has the Power to Change Art History
A new discovery by researchers at the University of Cincinnati is upending the way we think about the development of Western Civilization. More than one year after discovering the 3,500-year-old tomb of a Bronze age warrior in Greece, an incredible piece of carved stone could rewrite art history.
Known as the Griffin Warrior tomb, the Greek government hailed it as “most important to have been discovered in 65 years.” Located in Pylos, Greece the tomb dates to about 1500 B.C., right around the time that the Mycenaeans overtook the culturally dominant Minoans, who were based on the island of Crete.
The tomb was filled with riches, but perhaps its most spectacular find took longer to emerge.
The Pylos Combat Agate is a miniature stone carved with a deft hand that shows incredible skill. It took conservationists more than a year to clean the limestone-encrusted seal to unearth the incredible imagery of a warrior in battle.
Etched on a piece of stone just over 1.4 inches (3.6 centimetres) long, some details are so small they require a microscope to view.
The Pylos Combat Agate, an intricately carved 3,500-year-old sealstone discovered in the tomb of a Greek warrior.
“What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” shares Jack Davis, the University of Cincinnati’s chair in Greek archaeology and co-project director on the excavation. “It’s a spectacular find.”
Sharon Stocker, who directs the project with Davis, and is a senior research associate in the university’s Department of Classics, concurs.
“Looking at the image for the first time was a very moving experience, and it still is,” says Stocker. “It’s brought some people to tears.”
But just why is this miniature masterpiece such an important find? Scholars have commonly thought that the Mycaneans simply appropriated iconography from Minoan culture, but the Pylos Combat Agate, combined with other artefacts found in the tomb, point to a greater cultural exchange that previously believed.
And due to the rich anatomical details and refined skill of the seal, art historians must re-evaluate their timeline for how Western art developed.
Greek art is broken into a distinct timeline, with famous sculptures like the Nike of Samothrace coming during the 4th-century BC Hellenistic era, the apex Greek artistry.
Instead, the Bronze Age, during which the spoils found inside the Griffin Warrior tomb were produced, is known for much less refined artwork. But now, the seal could completely change how prehistoric art is viewed.
“It seems that the Minoans were producing art of the sort that no one ever imagined they were capable of producing,” shares Davis.
“It shows that their ability and interest in representational art, particularly movement and human anatomy, is beyond what it was imagined to be. Combined with the stylized features, that itself is just extraordinary.”
A 46,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Site Was Just Deliberately Destroyed in Australia
The mining company was permitted to blow Juukan Gorge Cave, which provided traditional owners with a 4000-year old genetic link. An extension of an iron ore mine destroyed a sacred site in Western Australia which has been continuously inhabited for 46,000 years and provides a 4,000-year-old genetic link to traditional owners today.
One of the oldest in the western Pilbara region, the cave-in Juukan Gorge in the Hammersley Ranges, about 60km from Mt Tom Price, is the only inland site in Australia to display evidence of sustained human occupancy since the last Ice Age. It, along with another sacred site, was blasted.
Under WA’s obsolete Aboriginal heritage rules, which were drafted in 1972 to benefit mining supporters, mining firm Rio Tinto obtained ministerial permission to destroy or damage the site in 2013.
This cave in the Juukan Gorge, dubbed Juukan 2, was destroyed in a mining blast on Sunday. Consent was given through outdated Aboriginal heritage laws drafted in 1972. Photograph: The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation.
One year after consent was granted, an archaeological dig intended to salvage whatever could be saved discovered the site was more than twice as old as previously thought and rich in artefacts, including sacred objects.
Most precious was a 4,000-year-old length of plaited human hair, woven together from strands from the heads of several different people, which DNA testing revealed were the direct ancestors of Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners living today.
But the outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act does not allow for a consent to be renegotiated on the basis of new information. So despite regular meetings with Rio Tinto, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) Aboriginal Corporation were unable to stop the blast from going ahead.
“It’s one of the most sacred sites in the Pilbara region … we wanted to have that area protected,” PKKP director Burchell Hayes told Guardian Australia.
Burchell Hayes says his people are devastated the lessons from the site can never be passed onto future generations.
“It is precious to have something like that plaited hair, found on our country, and then have further testing link it back to the Kurrama people. It’s something to be proud of, but it’s also sad. Its resting place for 4,000 years is no longer there.”
Hayes said the site had been used as a campsite by Kurrama moving through the area, including in the memory of some elders.
“We want to do the same, we want to show the next generation,” he said. “Now, if this site has been destroyed, then we can tell them stories but we can’t show them photographs or take them out there to stand at the rock shelter and say: this is where your ancestors lived, starting 46,000 years ago.”
Rio Tinto was given permission to blast Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 under Section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act.
The Aboriginal Heritage Act has been up for review, in some form, since 2012. Draft legislation put forward by the former Liberal government in 2014 was rejected after even a National party MP argued it was unfair to traditional owners and did not allow for adequate consultation.
Rewriting the act was listed as a priority for Labor before their election win in 2017, and last month WA’s Aboriginal affairs minister Ben Wyatt pushed back the final consultation on his draft bill until later this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The new legislation will provide options to appeal or amend agreements to allow for the destruction of heritage sites, Wyatt said. He wasn’t aware of the risk to the Juukan site, or its destruction.
“It will provide for agreements between traditional owners and proponents to include a process to consider new information that may come to light, and allow the parties to be able to amend the agreements by mutual consent,” he said. “The legislation will also provide options for appeal should either party not be compliant with the agreement.”
In its submission to the legislative review, Rio Tinto said it was broadly supportive of the proposed reform but that consent orders granted under the current system should be carried over, and that rights of appeal should be fixed, not broad or subject to extensions, lest it “prolong approvals or appeals processes at a critical point in the project.”
A spokesman from Rio Tinto said the company had a relationship with the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people dating back three decades, “and we have been working together in relation to the Juukan area over the past 17 years”.
“Rio Tinto has worked constructively together with the PKKP People on a range of heritage matters and has, where practicable, modified its operations to avoid heritage impacts and to protect places of cultural significance to the group,” the company said.
The mining company signed a native title agreement with the traditional owners in 2011, four years before their native title claim received formal assent by the federal court. They facilitated the salvage dig in 2014, which uncovered the true age of the site.
Archaeologist Dr Michael Slack, who led that dig, said it was a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. An earlier 1-metre test dig, conducted in 2008, dated the site at about 20,000 years old, but the salvage expedition uncovered a “very significant site” with more than 7,000 artefacts collected, including grid stones that were 40,000 years old, thousands of bones from middens which showed changes in fauna as the climate changed, and sacred objects.
The flat floor of the cave allowed for a significant depth of soil and sand to build up, creating a layer almost two metres deep in parts. Most archaeological digs in the Pilbara hit the rock at 30cm.
Indigenous rock art in the Spear Valley region shows a turtle carved into a rock.
Most significantly, the archaeological records did not disappear during the last Ice Age. Most inland archaeological sites in Australia show that people moved away during the Ice Age between 23,000 and 19,000 years ago, as the country dried up and water sources dried up. Archaeological evidence from Juukan Gorge suggests it was occupied throughout.
“It was the sort of site you do not get very often, you could have worked there for years,” he said. “How significantly does something have to be, to be valued by wider society?” he said.
Archaeologists believe they have found Cleopatra’s tomb
One of history’s most famous love stories may finally be getting its ending — after more than 2,000 years. Archaeologists have teased a key breakthrough in finding Egyptian Queen Cleopatra’s final resting place — a hidden tomb where she is assumed to have been buried with ill-fated lover Mark Antony after their suicides.
The discovery was made during a “meticulous” dig in Taposiris Magna, a temple “honeycombed with hidden passages and tombs” on Egypt’s Nile delta, according to the Science Channel.
The scientists uncovered an “undisturbed tomb decorated in gold leaf” that a new documentary suggests “could be the answer to the 2,000-year-old mystery of Cleopatra’s final resting place” in 30 B.C.
Archaeologists digging at Taposiris Magna, where they believe the tomb of Cleopatra to be.
“Their findings revolutionize our understanding of who she was and how she lived,” claimed the channel of the findings to be revealed in a two-hour special, “Cleopatra: Sex, Lies, and Secrets,”
The show follows the team led by Dr. Kathleen Martinez, who describes herself as a “Dominican archaeologist in search of Cleopatra” and has teased numerous breakthroughs on social media.
Sally-Ann Ashton admires one of the statues of Cleopatra at the launch of a new exhibition at The British Museum in London.
Cleopatra was the last queen of Egypt — having been crowned at just 18 — and is one of history’s most famous female rulers.
Yet she is “synonymous with seduction, beauty, and scandal,” the Science Channel noted, calling her “an icon of popular culture and one of the most elusive yet significant female figures in history.”
As well as the history books, her story is the subject of one of William Shakespeare’s greatest works, “Antony and Cleopatra,” as well as one of Elizabeth Taylor’s most iconic big-screen performances, with 1963’s “Cleopatra,” the most expensive movie of its age.
Even before her tragic love-story with Antony, she had a string of historic flings — having married and had a son with Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, according to History.com.
After Caesar was murdered in 44 B.C., Cleopatra went back to Egypt but was summoned to meet Roman general Antony to explain any role she may have had in the assassination.
She supposedly arrived on a golden barge rowed by silver oars, made to look like the goddess Aphrodite as she sat beneath a gilded canopy fanned by staff dressed as cupid, according to folklore.
Antony was instantly seduced, leading to three children — and the pair’s ultimate downfall.
Antony had been forced to prove his loyalty to Caesar’s successor as Roman Emperor, Octavian, by marrying his half-sister, Octavia — but soon dumped her to return to Cleopatra in Egypt, History says.
It sparked a war, which Octavian’s forces easily won in the Battle of Actium.
Antony famously fell on his sword when told his lover had killed herself — dying just as news arrived that it was not true.
Roman troops soon captured Cleopatra, and Octavian wanted to keep her alive to display her as a prize during a victory parade, according to llis Roxburgh, the author of “Cleopatra vs. the Roman Empire.”
Refusing to be used, Cleopatra killed herself — and is widely assumed to have done so by letting a snake poison her.
Dead at 39, she is believed to have been buried with her lover — sparking the more than 2,000-year mystery over the exact location of their tomb.
Sunken Medieval Village is Eerily Emerging from an Italian Lake
At the bottom of a lake, a forgotten medieval town that has been ‘frozen in time’ looks ready to resurface, probably giving tourists a direct glimpse back into the past.
The streets of the village are usually submerged under 34 million cubic meters of water
Since 1947, the Italian village of Fabbriche di Careggine has been submerged under the waters next to a hydroelectric dam, but for the intervening years, it has remained in remarkably good condition under the man-made lake.
A group of blacksmiths founded the small community in Tuscany in the 13th century and soon became well-known for the ironwork produced there.
Now, the town – which is near to another settlement called Vagli di Sotto – could re-emerge as the dam is drained for maintenance works.
This has happened four times since the dam created Lake Vagli, and each time as the waters receded, the church and several buildings from the old village creep eerily from the past into the present day.
It is hoped that tourists will be able to visit the ghost village in 2021, after Lake Vagli is emptied again
The most recent time the village was at surface level was in 1994, and thousands of tourists flocked to the site to catch a glimpse of 13th-century life.
Pictures taken back then show that the church, the cemetery, and the bridge in and out of town are still standing.
According to the daughter of the ex-mayor of Municipality of Vagli di Sotto – a fairly tenuous source, admittedly – the works could see the submerged settlement dragged out of the depths and into the 21st century.
Lorenza Giorgi, whose father Domenico Giorgi was the mayor back in 1994, said on Facebook that the plan is to drain the lake next year.
She wrote: “I inform you that from certain sources I know that next year, in 2021, Lake Vagli will be emptied.
“The last time it was emptied in 1994 when my father was mayor and thanks to his commitment and to the many initiatives that, with effort, had managed to put up in one summer the country of Vagli welcomed more than a million of people.
“In 1994 my father tells me that it was difficult to attract such a large number of people and that everything was done without burdens on the administration, besides those of ordinary representation of a small municipality.”
But every once in a while, the lake is emptied and the medieval village resurfaces
She continued: “I hope that next year, strong of the past experience of which everyone has a beautiful memory and with the help of social networks, we will be able to repeat and overcome the great success, with just as much attention.”
It has also been reported that the energy company that owns the dam (ENEL) is considering draining the lake in order to boost the ailing tourism industry in the area.
The human skulls date back between 9,500 and 9,000 years ago, (on which) lifelike faces were modeled with clay earth.
DAMASCUS: Archaeologists said on Sunday they had uncovered decorated human skulls dating back as long as 9,500 years ago from a burial site near the Syrian capital Damascus.
“The human skulls date back between 9,500 and 9,000 years ago, (on which) lifelike faces were modelled with clay earth … then coloured to accentuate the features,” said Danielle Stordeur, head of the joint French-Syrian archaeological mission behind the discovery.
Located at a burial site near a prehistoric village, the five skulls were found earlier this month in a pit resting against one another, underneath the remains of an infant, said Stordeur.
The French archaeologist described as “extraordinary” the find at the Neolithic site of Tell Aswad, at Jaidet al-Khass village, 35 kilometers from Damascus.
The discovery was not the first of its kind in the Middle East, but “the realism of two of these skulls is striking,” stressed Stordeur, in charge of the excavation along with Bassam Jamous, the chief of antiquities of Syria’s National Museum.
“They surprise by the regularity and the smoothness of their features,” Stordeur said of the skulls.
“The eyes are shown as closed, underlined by black bitumen. The nose is straight and fine, with a pinched base to portray the nostrils.
The mouth is reduced to a slit,” said Stordeur, of the Asian research house of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France’s largest scientific establishment.
The decorated skulls were devoted “only to important individuals, chosen according to social or religious criteria,” she added.
Skeleton of Teen Girl Found Buried Next to Mysterious Pyramid in Egypt
Egyptian archaeologists excavating the ruins of a pyramid 60 miles outside of Cairo have discovered the skeletal remains of a 13-year-old girl huddled inside a tomb.
Exactly how or when she died is a mystery, though the experts say the site itself dates back to the end of the Third Dynasty roughly 4,600 years ago.
The tomb was empty apart from the skeleton, which was buried in the squatting position, but the team also found two animal skulls and three ceramic vessels nearby that were likely placed as funerary offerings.
At least part of the Meidum pyramid, located south of Cairo in Egypt, was built for the pharaoh Snefru.
The skull offerings appear to have come from bulls, according to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities.
Researchers came across the burial during work on the partially-collapsed Meidum pyramid, where the team is excavating a cemetery built near the end of the Third Dynasty.
It’s thought that construction on the Meidum period began at the command of the Third Dynasty’s last pharaoh, Huni, and was continued by Sneferu, the first pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty.
Previous efforts at the site uncovered the tomb of Prince Nefar-Maat, Sneferu’s oldest son.
While the newly-discovered bones indicate the remains belong to a girl who was around 13 years old when she died, much about the burial and the offerings are still unclear.
The skeleton of a 13-year-old girl was discovered in a cemetery next to a 4,600-year-old pyramid in Egypt.
Researchers do not know the identity of the buried teenager.
The latest burial was found surrounded by a partially intact brick wall, and the team is now working to restore and reinforce the structures.
Elsewhere, in the Sinai Peninsula, the Antiquities Ministry says it discovered an ancient workshop that was used to build and repair ships thousands of years ago.
The site dates back to the Ptolemaic era (332 B.C.-30 B.C) and was found during excavations in the Tel Abu Saifi archaeological site, which is said to have once been the location of the Roman fortress Silla.
The find includes two dry dockyards where the ancient ships were worked on.
Researchers say it dates to the Greco-Roman period in Egypt, which lasted from the arrival of Alexander the Great in the 4th century until the 7th century when the Islamic conquest swept the region.
Mysteries of the 2,500-year-old butter found at the bottom of a loch
In Perth and Kinross, butter dated back 2,500 years was discovered at the bottom of a loch. Within a wooden butter bowl, manufactured by an Iron Age culture, traces of milk content were found preserved.
Archaeologists at the bottom of Loch Tay uncovered the wooden dish, where at least 17 crannogs, or Iron Age wooden houses, once stood.
Built from alder with a lifespan of around 20 years, the structures simply collapsed into the loch once they had served their purpose, taking the objects inside with them.
The replica crannog on Loch Tay, where the butter was found
The crannogs were considered high-status sites which offered good security as well as easy access to trading routes along the Tay and into the North Sea.
Rich Hiden, the archaeologist at the Scottish Crannog Centre, said conditions at the bottom of the loch had offered the perfect environment to preserve the butter and the dish.
He said: “Because of the fantastic anaerobic conditions, where there is very light, oxygen or bacteria to break down anything organic, you get this type of sealed environment.
“When they started excavating, they pulled out this square wooden dish, well around three-quarters of a square wooden dish, which had these really nice chisel marks on the sides as well as this grey stuff.”
Analysis on the matter found it was dairy material, with experts believing it likely originated from a cow. Holes in the bottom of the wooden dish suggest it was used for the buttering process.
The butter then may have been turned into cheese by adding rennet, which naturally forms in a number of plants, including nettles.
Mr Hiden added: “This dish is so valuable in many ways.
“To be honest, we would expect people of this time to be eating dairy.
The 2,500-year-old butter dish and the remains of the butter.
“In the early Iron Age, they had mastered the technology of smelting iron ore into to’s so mastering the technology of dairy we would expect.
“So while it may not surprise us that they are eating dairy, what is so important about this butter dish is that it helps us to identify what life was like in the crannogs and the skills and the tools that they had.
“To me, that is archaeology at its finest. It is using the object itself to unravel the story.
“The best thing about this butter dish is that it is so personal and offers us such a complete snapshot of what was happening here.
“It is not just a piece of wood. You look at it and you start to extrapolate so much.
“If you start to pull one thread, you look at the tool marks and you see they were using very fine chisels to make this kind of object.
“They were probably making their own so that gives another aspect as to how life was here.”
It is believed that 20 people and animals lived in a crannog at any one time. Many trees were used to fashion the homes, with hazel woven into panels to make walls and partitions.
Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that an unidentified medieval settlement has been discovered in northwestern Bulgaria by a team of researchers, led by Elena Vasileva of Bulgaria’s National Archaeological Institute with Museum, who were investigating the path of a road construction project.
Near the Danube city of Vidin in Northwest Bulgaria, a previously unknown settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages and a layer from an early Bronze Age settlement from the 3rd millennium BC were uncovered.
The ruins previously unknown medieval settlement from the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396/1422) and structures from an Early Bronze Age settlement have been found near the town of Tarnyane, 12 kilometres away from Vidin, on the banks of the Voynishka River, which forms two waterfalls before flowing into the Danube.
The discoveries have been during rescue excavations for the construction of the Vidin – Ruzhintsi – Montana road (E79 road) in Northwest Bulgaria, bTV reports citing lead archaeologist Assist. Prof. Elena Vasileva from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia.
Vasileva, who points that construction project often provides invaluable opportunities to study otherwise neglected or unknown archaeological monuments, has been in charge of archaeological site No. 7 out of a total of eight archaeological sites slated for rescue excavations along the route of the road in question. The digs were carried out from September until November 2020.
The previously unknown medieval settlement near Vidin and Tarnyane existed in the 11th – 14th century on an area of a total of 54 decares (nearly 14 acres) on both banks of the Voynishka River.
The previously unknown medieval settlement has been discovered during the construction of a local road.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The previously unknown medieval settlement was inhabited at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, between the 11th and the 14th century.
The restoration of a Bronze Age vessel found at the site by restorer Ekaterina Ilieva from the Vidin Regional Museum of History.
The archaeological team has excavated there a total of 47 structures from the 11th – 14th century AD.
These include 23 pits with an average depth of 2.5 meters; a moat which is 1 meter deep and 5 meters wide; eight kilns, six dwellings, including three dugouts, and one human grave.
According to the lead archaeologist, the newly discovered site is one of the few open-type settlements, i.e. with no fortifications, from the period of the Second Bulgarian Empire to have ever been researched in today’s Bulgaria.
“It contains all elements of a settlement, namely, dwellings, pits, production kilns, and a necropolis,” Vasileva says.
“Of structures, the most interesting ones are some of the pits that we’ve explored, which have a large diameter and depth, and contain animals remains – of houses and less so of smaller animals – sheep, goats, and poultry.
This practice is typical of such structures from earlier periods, i.e. the time of the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680 – 1018) but not of the later periods,” she explains.
During the medieval settlement’s excavations, the archaeological team has found a total of 350 artefacts, including coins, arrow tips, tools such as knives, chisels, awls, scrapers, loom weights, parts of copper vessels, pottery vessels such as pots and jugs, adornments such as rings, metal and glass bracelets, parts from earrings, buckles, crosses, and medallions.
Towards the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century, today’s Northwest Bulgaria and part of Eastern Serbia were part of the Vidin Tsardom, a rump state of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which was the last part of Bulgaria to be conquered by the invading Ottoman Turks.
A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century.
A map of the Second Bulgarian Empire during its height in the first half of the 13th century. The city of Vidin is noted on the map.
A map showing the decline and breakup of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the second half of the 14th century, with some of the rump states, including the Vidin Tsardom.
In addition to the medieval settlement from the Second Bulgarian Empire in the High Middle Ages, the archaeological site near Tarnyane on the Voynishka River also yielded a layer from the Early Bronze Age, from the so-called Magura – Cotofeni Culture, from the 3rd millennium BC. From it, the researchers have excavated one dwelling and one grave.
“The drilling surveying shows that in the 3rd millennium BC the convenient tall bank of the Voynishka River had a settlement, and later, in the 2nd millennium BC, to the south of it there was a necropolis,” Vasileva is quoted as saying.
Both the Early Bronze Age layer and the medieval settlement from the High Middle Ages will be excavated further in 2021.
The rescue excavations in 2020 have included archaeologists and archaeology students from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology in Sofia, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Veliko Tarnovo University “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”, and experts from the National Institute of Morphology, Pathology, and Anthropology, and the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia.
