EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Remains of Two Killed in Vesuvius Eruption Are Discovered at Pompeii

Remains of Two Killed in Vesuvius Eruption Are Discovered at Pompeii

Massimo Osanna, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, announced the discovery of the remains of two men lying close together in a villa corridor on the outskirts of the ancient city, according to a BBC News report. 

This month, excavations at a suburban villa outside ancient Pompeii recovered the bodies of two original dwellers frozen in time nearly 2,000 years ago by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius one fateful morning.

The discovery of the two victims, tentatively recognised by archaeologists as a wealthy Pompeian landowner and a younger enslaved person, gave fresh insight into the eruption that buried the ancient Roman city, which has been a subject of widespread fascination since its rediscovery in the 18th century.

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of two men who died in the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.

“Massimo Osanna, the departing director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, said in a video released on Saturday by the Ministry of Culture that the finding is an “incredible source of information for us. “He noted that it was a touching discovery with considerable emotional impact as well.

For one thing, the two were dressed in woollen clothing, adding credence to the belief that the eruption occurred in October of 79 A.D. rather than in August of that year as had previously been thought, Mr Osanna said later in a telephone interview.

The Vesuvius eruption was described in an eyewitness account by the Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger as “an extraordinary and alarming scene.” Buried by ash, pumice and rocks, Pompeii and neighbouring cities lay mostly dormant, though intact, until 1748, when King Charles III of Bourbon commissioned the first official excavations of the site.

Since then, much of the ancient city has been unearthed, providing archaeologists and historians with a wealth of information about how its ancient dwellers lived, from their home décor to what they ate to the tools they used.

Using a method refined by the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863 and further honed with modern technology, archaeologists last week made plaster casts of the two newly discovered victims. That brings the ranks of Pompeii’s posthumous effigies to more than 100.

In addition to being the first time in half a century that archaeologists created such casts linked to Pompeii — an attempt using cement in the 1990s was not successful — the new casts are also remarkable in the surprising details they captured, including what Mr Osanna described as the “extraordinary drapery” of their woollen clothing.

“They really seem like statues,” he said.

Archaeologists posit that the two victims had sought refuge in an underground cryptoporticus, or corridor, before being engulfed by a shower of pumice stones, ash and lapilli.

“They very likely died by thermal shock, as the contracted limbs, hands and feet would suggest,” Mr. Osanna said in the video, adding that DNA testing was being carried out on the recovered bones. Pompeii officials believe the older man to have been 30 to 40 years old, and the younger between 18 and 23.

The villa where the discovery was made is in Civita Giuliana, an area about 750 yards northwest of Pompeii’s ancient walls, which has already yielded important finds, including a purebred horse with a bronze-plated saddle uncovered in 2018.

Although the archaeological park closed to visitors on Nov. 6 because of coronavirus restrictions, excavations at the site have continued.

The villa at Civita Giuliana was first excavated briefly in 1907 and 1908. But because it is on private property, the sort of government-commissioned excavations typically carried out on public land did not take place. That changed in 2017, when prosecutors in nearby Torre Annunziata charged a group of people with robbing tombs and looting the site using underground tunnels.

The culture ministry is in the process of buying the land where the villa is situated, and Mr. Osanna said he hoped it could eventually open to the public.

With more than 50 acres still to be excavated, Pompeii continues to be “an incredible site for research, study and training,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said in a statement on Saturday. It is, he said, a mission for the “archaeologists of today and the future.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

‘Oldest tattoo’ found on 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies

‘Oldest tattoo’ found on 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies

The village of Deir el-Medina in ancient Egypt, 3,000 years ago, housed a community of artisans, all of whom lived and worked together on tombs in the Kings’ Valley. But new evidence has emerged that tombs were not their only creative outlet.

A number of tattoos on the previously unstudied mummified bodies of seven women have been discovered by infrared imaging. The ink was scattered across their bodies, with a range of different motifs.

This is evidence that in ancient Egypt, the art of tattooing might have been more common than we understood, according to University of Missouri anthropologist Anne Austin. At the American Schools of Oriental Science annual meeting in November, she discussed her findings.

The work has been several years in the making. It started in 2014 when Austin and her colleague Cedric Gobeil noticed markings on the neck of a female Deir el-Medina mummy. Closer inspection revealed that the marks were not, as she first thought, painted on – they were tattoos.

But, as we saw with the 5,000-year-old mummies from Gebelein, which had been sitting in a museum for over 100 years before their tattoos were discovered, tattoos on mummies aren’t always easy to see.

Mummified skin becomes discoloured and darkened, especially with mummification resins added to the mix; and tattoos can lighten over time.

Such hidden tattoos can, however, be revealed with infrared photography, which works in wavelengths usually invisible to the human eye.

So, that’s what the researchers did. On that initial female mummy, they catalogued a whopping 30 tattoos, most of which would not have been hidden by clothing, and would have required a second person to perform the tattooing – placed on the neck, back, and behind the shoulders.

The subject of the tattoos included sacred motifs such as Wadjet eyes, baboons, cobras, cows, scarab beetles, and lotus flowers. This combination of motifs and visibility led the researchers to the conclusion that the woman could have been a healer or a priestess of some kind.

But that mummy was just the first. By 2016, Austin had identified three more tattooed mummies from Deir el-Medina. Now, as reported by Science News, she’s added another three to that count, bringing the total to seven.

“The distribution, display, and content of these tattoos reveal how they were used both in religious practice and to forge permanent, public identities,” Austin wrote in her abstract.

“The extensive tattoos on one female mummy demonstrates the use of tattoos for identifying and enabling this woman to act as a key religious practitioner to the Deir el-Medina community. Additional tattoos found and analysed during the 2016 and 2020 seasons using infrared photography indicate that many more individuals were likely tattooed at Deir el-Medina.”

This is pretty significant. Although evidence for tattooing exists in the archaeological record from ancient Egypt, it’s primarily in art and figurines. Actual mummies that have tattoos have been found rarely; in addition to the seven Deir el-Medina mummies, only six other tattooed Egyptian mummies have been identified.

What this research shows is that maybe we haven’t been looking with the right tools.

It also shows that – just like people who get tattooed today – maybe there’s no one single reason the ancient Egyptians tattooed themselves. In addition to the woman’s inferred religious role, some of the motifs on the other mummies suggest healing or protection. (And, well, maybe they just thought the ink looked badass.)

Tattoos have been found on other mummies around the world. The Siberian Ice Maiden and unnamed warrior who died 2,500 years ago on the Ukok Plateau, for instance, had tattoos that anthropologists think signified age and status.

And evidence suggests the 61 tattoos found on Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified man who lived in Europe between 3400 and 3100 BCE, could have been a form of prehistoric acupuncture.

We can learn more about the tattooing practices of ancient Egypt by uncovering more tattooed mummies. And who knows – maybe they’re already sitting in museums, waiting for someone with an infrared camera to find them.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

World’s oldest leather shoe which is 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid.

World’s oldest leather shoe which is 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid.

In a cave in Armenia, a fully preserved shoe has been discovered, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK.

A team of global archaeologists found the 5,500-year-old shoe, the world’s oldest leather shoe, and their findings will be published in the online science journal PLoS ONE.

The cow-hide shoe dates back to ~ 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer’s foot.

It contained grass, although the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, a precursor to the modern shoe-tree perhaps? “It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man or woman,” said lead author of the research, Dr Ron Pinhasi, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland “as while small (European size 37; US size 7 women), the shoe could well have fitted a man from that era.”

The cave is situated in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, on the Armenian, Iranian, Nakhichevanian and Turkish borders, and was known to regional archaeologists due to its visibility from the highway below.

The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional preservation of the various objects that were found, which included large containers, many of which held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants.

The preservation was also helped by the fact that the floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal over the objects, preserving them beautifully over the millennia!

“We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old because they were in such good condition,” said Dr Pinhasi.

“It was only when the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, UK, and in California, the US that we realised that the shoe was older by a few hundred years than the shoes worn by Ötzi, the Iceman.”

Three samples were taken in order to determine the absolute age of the shoe and all three tests produced the same results.

The archaeologists cut two small strips of leather off the shoe and sent one strip to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford and another to the University of California -Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility. A piece of grass from the shoe was also sent to Oxford to be dated and both shoe and grass were shown to be the same age.

The shoe was discovered by an Armenian PhD student, Ms Diana Zardaryan, of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, in a pit that also included a broken pot and wild goat horns.

“I was amazed to find that even the shoe-laces were preserved,” she recalled. “We couldn’t believe the discovery,” said Dr Gregory Areshian, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, US, co-director who was at the site with Mr Boris Gasparyan, co-director, Institute of Archaeology, Armenia when the shoe was found. “The crusts had sealed the artefacts and archaeological deposits and artefacts remained fresh dried, just like they were put in a can,” he said.

The oldest known footwear in the world, to the present time, are sandals made of plant material, that were found in a cave in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri in the US. Other contemporaneous sandals were found in the Cave of the Warrior, Judean Desert, Israel, but these were not directly dated so that their age is based on various other associated artefacts found in the cave.

Interestingly, the shoe is very similar to the ‘pampooties’ worn on the Aran Islands (in the West of Ireland) up to the 1950s.

“In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region,” said Dr Pinhasi.

“We do not know yet what the shoe or other objects were doing in the cave or what the purpose of the cave was,” said Dr Pinhasi. “We know that there are children’s graves at the back of the cave but so little is known about this period that we cannot say with any certainty why all these different objects were found together.” The team will continue to excavate the many chambers of the cave.

The team involved in the dig included; lead author and co-director, Dr Ron Pinhasi, Archaeology Department, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland; Mr Boris Gasparian, co-director and Ms Diana Zardaryan of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia; Dr Gregory Areshian, co-director, Research Associate at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, US; Professor Alexia Smith, Department of Anthropology of the University of Connecticut, US, Dr Guy Bar-Oz, Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel and Dr Thomas Higham, Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, UK.

A researcher holds the ancient shoe at the Armenian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography.

The research received funding from the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation (Los Angeles), US, Mr Joe Gfoeller of the Gfoeller Foundation of US, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, US, the Boochever Foundation, US, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, US.

AFRICA, WORLD

A Lost Roman City Has Been Found 1,700 Years After a Tsunami Sank It

A Lost Roman City Has Been Found 1,700 Years After a Tsunami Sank It

After several years of archaeological discovery in quest of the ancient city of Neapolis, a vast 1,700-year-old Roman settlement has been found off the coast of Tunisia.

As mentioned by a Roman soldier and historian, Ammien Marcellin, Neapolis is believed to have been drowned after a tsunami in the 4th century AD destroyed much of it. Alexandria in modern Egypt and the Greek island of Crete were both severely affected by the natural catastrophe.

Very little has been recorded about the city because the citizens of Neapolis sided with Carthage rather than Rome during the Third Punic War in 149–146 BC, which ultimately destroyed the rival civilisation and brought its territory under Roman control.

A Lost Roman City Has Been Found 1,700 Years After a Tsunami Sank It
A handout picture released by the Tunisian National Heritage Institute and the University of Sassari shows archaeologists diving off the coast of Nabeul in northeastern Tunisia at the site of the ancient Roman city of Neapolis.

There are so few references to Neapolis over an extended period of Roman literature it is thought the city was punished for its allegiances.

A joint Tunisian-Italian archaeological mission has been looking for evidence of Neapolis since 2010. Their work was finally rewarded after good weather conditions this summer allowed divers in Nabeul to glimpse the more than 20 hectares site for the first time in centuries.

“It’s a major discovery,” the mission’s leader Mounir Fantar told AFP, which confirms Marcellin’s theory about the city’s fate.

Ancient Roman estate found in Jerusalem

The team not only found streets and monuments showing the city’s sophistication and wealth but 100 tanks which were used to make garum, a fish-based fermented condiment which was a delicacy in the ancient Roman world, the AFP said.

“This discovery has allowed us to establish with certainty that Neapolis was a major centre for the manufacture of garum and salt fish, probably the largest centre in the Roman world,” Mr Fantar added.

“Probably the notables of Neapolis owed their fortune to garum.”

Founded by the Phoenicians in the 9th Century BC in what is now modern Tunisia, the ancient civilisation of Carthage developed into a great trading empire.

Over the course of the three Punic Wars with Rome, its power was eventually weakened and ultimately submitted to Roman control in the 2nd Century AD.

WORLD

Medieval soldier found with sword and knives at the bottom of a Lithuanian lake

Medieval soldier found with sword and knives at the bottom of a Lithuanian lake

Middle Ages more than 500 years ago The soldiers’ bodies settled on the bottom of a lake in Lithuania, covered beneath mud for decades. Well, those submerged ruins have finally been discovered.

During the underwater inspection at the old Dubingiai Bridge on Asbeya Lake in eastern Lithuania, the skeleton was found. But skeleton Archaeologist Elena Plankenaite, a researcher at Klaipeda University in Klaipeda, Lithuania, said the scene was not a burial because it lay beneath a layer of sand and silt.

According to Baltic News Service (BNS). Rather, the stream may have deposited sediments covering the ruins over time.

Scientists at the Vilnius University School of Medicine in Vilnius, Lithuania, examined the body and reported that the person was a man and died in the 16th century, but according to BNS, it is still unknown why he died.

Weapons and other items recovered from the bottom of the lake near the body suggest the military status of the dead man, Pranckėnaitė told Live Science in an email.

War-related human burials were previously excavated throughout the region, but this is the first time medieval soldiers have been found underwater in Lithuania, said Pranckėnaitė.

The Dubingiai Bridge, one of the longest wooden bridges still in use in Lithuania, was built in 1934 and its deteriorated beams are now the representative of the TEC infrastructure that oversees the Lithuanian Department of Transportation repair projects. It has been replaced with a pillar made of. communication, Said in a statement.

Divers excavate the medieval remains and weapons from the bottom of Lake Asveja, near the Dubingiai Bridge.

According to the statement, archaeologists worked with amateur divers to conduct a survey, which found the ruins at a depth of 30 feet (9 meters) while inspecting the support system for the wooden bridge.

Divers excavate medieval ruins and weapons from the bottom of Lake Asbeya near the Dubingiai Bridge.  Earlier research in 1998 revealed that another bridge dating back to the 16th or 17th century was once in the same place. Pranckėnaitė added when a medieval soldier died.

“For now, we believe that these discovered human bodies may be associated with the former bridge leading to Dubingiai Castle on the hills on the shores of Lake Asbeja.” She said.

Finding the remains of a soldier was a great surprise, but equally surprising was the amazing preservation of the skeleton and relics.

The diver recovered the leather boots with spurs. Leather belt with buckle. Iron sword; “And two knives with a wooden handle,” Pranckėnaitė wrote in an email.

A team of archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians at the Lietuvos National Museum is currently working on the preservation and interpretation of objects.

The findings and data are “really” fresh “and still need to be analyzed carefully,” said Pranckėnaitė. “I hope to’tell the story of this soldier within at least a year.”

BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Wall In Bolivia Contains More Than 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

Wall In Bolivia Contains More Than 5,000 Dinosaur Footprints

Cal Orko, an immense limestone slab 1.5 km (0.9 miles) long and over 100 meters high (328 ft), is situated 5 km (3 miles from downtown Sucre, Bolivia. Visitors will look through time on this steep face (72 degrees inclination) to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth more than 68 million years ago.

You will find 462 different dinosaur tracks from at least 8 different species at Cal Orko, totaling an astounding 5,055 individual dinosaur footprints. So how do thousands of dinosaur footprints come to be, on a seemingly vertical rock face hundreds of feet high? You’ll have to scroll down to find out. 

Cal Orko: A Paleontologist’s Dream… Inside a Quarry

 Believe it or not, Cal Orko is situated entirely within a limestone quarry owned by FANCESA, Bolivia’s National Cement Factory.

Located in the ‘El Molino’ formation, the sight of heavy mining machinery (one could argue they are today’s ‘land giants’) set against a backdrop of 68 million-year-old dinosaur footprints (Earth’s prehistoric ‘land giants’) creates an intriguing parallel.

Further up the hill is Parque Cretácico. Opened in 2006, the dinosaur museum features 24 life-sized dinosaur replicas, various exhibitions, and a viewing platform 150 meters (~500 ft) from the rock face. It’s from this vantage point that you truly grasp the sheer scale and magnitude of Cal Orko.

So Dinosaurs Can Climb Walls Now?

 Not quite. We’re looking at something 68 million years in the making. The footprints at this site were formed during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous Period in the Mesozoic Era. As Ian Belcher of The Guardian explains:

“It was unique climate fluctuations that made the region a palaeontological honey pot. The creatures’ feet sank into the soft shoreline in warm damp weather, leaving marks that were solidified by later periods of drought. Wet weather then returned, sealing the prints below mud and sediment.

The wet-dry pattern was repeated seven times, preserving multiple layers of prints.

The cherry on the cake was added when tectonic activity pushed the flat ground up to a brilliant viewing angle – as if nature was aware of its tourism potential.”

Cal Orko is one of the few locations in the world where you will find a concentration of footprints from a wide variety of dinosaurs that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. The sheer size, geological significance, biodiversity, and social behavior that can be studied here makes Cal Orko a special place.
 
Take the trail of Johnny Walker for example. Johnny Walker was the name given to a baby Tyrannosaurus rex whose 367 meters (~1200 ft) path can be traced and observed here.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Archaeologists Discovered An Ancient City Buried 30 Miles Outside Rome Without Ever Digging It Up

Archaeologists Discovered An Ancient City Buried 30 Miles Outside Rome Without Ever Digging It Up

To figure out what they look like, archaeologists no longer have to excavate submerged villages. The entire ancient city of Falerii Novi, some 30 miles outside Rome, has recently been mapped by a group of Belgian and UK researchers, using radar technology that scans beneath the soil.

As the electromagnetic waves of a radar enter an underground structure, they bounce back as a measurement that can be used to produce a 3D image.

The researchers were able to recognise new buildings for the first time, such as an elegant bathhouse and a large public monument that had never been seen before. They were also able to determine how the city was organized compared to other Roman towns.

Though Falerii Novi wasn’t nearly as grand as Pompeii — a wealthy city buried under volcanic ash in 79 AD — the town had its own unique features. Its aqueduct, for instance, ran underneath its city blocks, as well as along the streets (the more common design for that time period). The researchers also found temples at the edge of the city, suggesting a sacred use of the land.

“Although we are yet to understand how this sacred landscape functioned, the survey provides new insights into the variety of planning concepts underlying what are sometimes incorrectly considered to be ‘standardized’ Roman town plans,” the researchers wrote. “By providing a contrast with more familiar towns such as Pompeii, this work also raises important questions about the planning of Roman towns more generally.”

Falerii Novi contained hidden shops, baths, and temples

Falerii Novi was built around 241 BCE. By the first century AD, it was one of around 2,000 cities in ancient Rome. Many of these towns were buried over time as the ground level steadily began to rise, or intentionally buried so Romans could build new settlements on top.

The city’s last human inhabitants left during the early medieval period in around 700 CE. The discoveries from the Belgian and UK researchers, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Antiquity, represent the first use of ground-penetrating radar to map an entire city below ground.

The researchers determined that Falerii Novi is about half the size of Pompeii: around 75 acres. Documenting each one of these acres took around eight hours, leaving them with more than 28 billion data points by the end of the survey.

While the team wasn’t able to analyze every single data point, they did outline the site’s major landmarks — shown on the map below. The map paints a picture of life more than 1,300 years ago, filled with theatre performances, shopping, worshipping, exercising, and bathing.

A massive public monument sits near the north gate, surrounded on three sides by a covered passageway with a central row of columns. The researchers estimated that the passageway is more than 550 feet long and opens out to the street. On the inside of the monument, a pair of structures (each with their own alcove) face toward one another.

“We know of no direct parallel to this structure,” the researchers wrote.

To the south-east are a market building and a public bathhouse. Both of these are new discoveries.

“While these buildings fall within the expected repertoire of a Roman city, some are architecturally sophisticated — more elaborate than would usually be expected in a small town,” the researchers wrote.

A temple directly south of the bathhouse straddles the edge of the city. To its west is a housing complex, consisting of two or three homes with atria. The researchers found evidence that the homes had been remodelled over time.

Some of the walls had been removed by stone robbers. The complex also includes a plunge bath, vaulted rooms with central heating, and a U-shaped area that likely served as an exercise room.

A second housing complex, located to the south at the foot of a slope, is lined with decorative passageways. Water pipes below this building connected to the town’s aqueduct.

These detailed discoveries, often obscured by rubble, were “previously only possible through excavation,” the researchers wrote. Their new survey method, they added, “has the potential to revolutionize archaeological studies of urban sites.”

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

A medieval victim still in his chainmail discovered in Sweden

A medieval victim still in his chainmail discovered in Sweden

The Battle of Visby was a violent Medieval battle near the town of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland, fought between the inhabitants of Gotland and the Danes, with the latter emerging victorious.

The battle left a lasting archaeological legacy; masses of slaughtered soldiers and citizens lay scattered across what was once a bloody battlefield.

Slashed and broken bones, skeletons still in their chain mail and armour, and smashed skulls, some still with spears and knives protruding out of them. One can only imagine what they endured before they breathed their last breaths.

Visby, A Merchant’s Dream

During the Middle Ages, the island of Gotland, which lies off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea, played an important role in the trade between Europe and Russia. As a result of this, the city of Visby flourished.

Since the late 13th century, Visby was a member of a confederation of North-western and Central European merchant towns later known as the Hanseatic League. This league protected the commercial interests of its members and was also a defensive pact.

Greedy King Sets His Sight on Visby

As the Hanseatic League grew in influence, it was seen as a threat by some rulers. One of these was Valdemar IV, the King of Denmark. The Danish ruler is said to have not been satisfied with the fact that the Hanseatic League was a rival to his kingdom’s trade interests.

In addition, Valdemar desired to get his hands on the wealth of the League’s towns. By the middle of the 14th century, Visby, although still a member of the Hanseatic League, is said to have decreased in importance, causing Valdemar to set his eyes on it.

Additionally, it is rumoured that the inhabitants of the town sang drinking songs mocking the king, thus causing him to hold a personal vendetta against them.

Valdemar Atterdag holding Visby to ransom, 1361 by Karl Gustaf Hellqvist

The Danes Invade

In the summer of 1361, a Danish army set sail for Gotland. The inhabitants of Visby had been warned about the invading Danish force and prepared themselves for the battle. In late July 1361, Valdermar’s army landed on the west coast of Gotland.

The Danish army numbered between 2000 and 2500 men and consisted mainly of experienced Danish and German mercenaries. The defending Gotlanders, on the other hand, numbered around 2000 and were militiamen with little or no experience of battle.   

The Battle of Visby  

The Gotlanders first tried to halt the advance of the Danish army at Mästerby, in the central part of the island. The defenders were crushed, and the Danes continued their march towards Visby. The Battle of Visby was fought before the walls of the town.

Although the militiamen were fighting for their lives and fought as best as they could, they were simply no match for the professional Danish army. As a result, the majority of the defenders were killed, and the town surrendered to Valdemar.

Mass Graves and Fallen Soldiers

Those who fell during the battle were buried in several mass graves and were left in peace until the 20 th century. Between 1905 and 1928, the mass graves were discovered and subsequently excavated.

More than 1100 human remains were unearthed, and these provide us with much detail about the battle. As an example, the types of weapons used during the Battle of Visby could be determined based on the injuries left on these remains.

About 450 of these wounds, for instance, were inflicted by cutting weapons, such as swords and axes, whilst wounds inflicted by piercing weapons, such as spears, and arrows, numbered around 120.

By studying the bones, it was also found that at least a third of the defenders of Visby were the elderly, children, or the crippled, an indication that the situation was very dire indeed for townsfolk.

Victim of invasion of Visby in 1361.
Victim of invasion of Visby in 1361.

It is assumed that the dead were buried quickly after the battle, and therefore were interred with the equipment they had during the battle, which included their armour and weapons.

Thanks to their excellent state of preservation, these remains are a unique archaeological find. Although not many of the defenders were well-equipped for the battle, there are several examples of chainmail shirts, coifs, gauntlets, and a variety of weapons.

These incredible remains, along with the human remains, are today displayed in the Gotland Museum and remain as a lasting legacy to the defenders of Visby.

Armored glove found at Visby. 

All In One Magazine