ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Bronze Age and Roman-era settlements unearthed in Newquay

Bronze Age and Roman-era settlements unearthed in Newquay

Bronze Age and Roman-era settlements unearthed in Newquay

Archaeologists from the Cornwall Archaeological have uncovered ancient dwellings from the Bronze Age and a Roman period settlement in Newquay, England.

The discovery was made at the site of a new housing development in Newquay.

The excavations team found three Bronze Age roundhouses and a Roman-period settlement – consisting of an oval house, a large processing area (thought to be used for cereals), and two rectangular buildings (probably former barns).

The discovered dwellings, on the site of a new housing development in Newquay, include large quantities of Bronze Age Trevisker ware pottery, Roman-period imported pottery, and worked stone tools from both periods.

According to the researchers, Bronze Age structures have been found at various sites across Cornwall over the past 30 years, however, the discovery of a cluster of roundhouses in such a small area is still a rare find.

Bronze Age Trevisker ware pottery was uncovered during the dig.

Sean Taylor, Senior Archaeologist at the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, said: “Although quite a few of these Bronze Age structures have been found at various sites around the county over the last 30 or so years starting with Trethellan at Newquay in 1987, it’s still rare to find so much in one small area.

“The Roman house is similar to buildings found at Trethurgy Round near St Austell in the 1970s and are of a type unique to Cornwall. The rectangular agricultural buildings on the other hand are fairly common throughout Roman Britain but this is the first time that they have been discovered in Cornwall.\“It’s starting to look like this part of Newquay, alongside the River Gannel, was a very important and densely populated area from the Neolithic (c 4000BC) onwards. The estuary undoubtedly formed an important link with the outside world throughout prehistory.”

The Cornwall Archaeological Unit completed their work at the end of March. The site will now be handed over to the developer, Treveth.

Many of the finds, which include large quantities of Bronze Age Trevisker ware pottery, Roman-period imported pottery, and worked stone tools from both periods, are expected to be housed in a local museum.

ASIA, WORLD

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

Deer stone discovered in Kyrgyzstan

A deer stone was found in the Tarmal-Sai settlement in the Kochkor district of the Naryn region in eastern Kyrgyzstan. Deer stones, also known as reindeer stones, are ancient megaliths with symbols carved into them.

Mongolia is rich with stone sculptures such as deer stones and complex heritage sites that belong to Bronze Age culture.

Deer stones name comes from their carved depictions of flying deer. Deer stones are a distinctive feature of the Saka era. A few deer stones have been discovered in Chui valley and Issyk-Kul Lake.

Deer stones will usually be found together with extraordinary monuments called khirgisuur, with slab burials or in some cases with petroglyphs forming a complex site.

Joldoshbek Butoshev, a resident of Tarmal-Sai, noticed a round stone with drawings while doing irrigation work and brought it home, thinking it might have historical significance.

Butoshev showed the discovery to a team of archaeologists visiting the region in 2022 under the direction of Oroz Soltobaev for research. The archaeologists determined that the stone was around 2000-2500 years old and suggested handing it over to a historical museum.

The stone is 1 meter long and weighs approximately 40-50 kilograms. On both sides of the stone, there are ritual sun signs, which are associated with the Saka and Wusun, who worshipped the sun.

According to the historian and founder of the historical museum in Kara-Suu village Bolot Boobek, the find is a deer stone that dates to between 2000 and 2500 years ago.

Deer stones are unique Bronze Age and Early Iron Age monuments found primarily in Mongolia and some Central Asian countries.

Deer stones represent the Bronze Age funeral practice, sacrificial ritual and ideology, and animal-style art that spread among ancient nomads.

Researchers believe these statues were dedicated to leaders and great warriors of a tribe.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Marble inlay floors were found in a Sunken Roman villa in Baia, the Las Vegas of the ancient world

Expansion of research activities in the Terme del Lacus area in the sunken Baia park, known as the ‘Las Vegas’ of the ancient world, has revealed new elements of ancient Roman luxury villas.

In the Gulf of Naples, a few kilometers from Pompeii, Baia was a vacation city for the capital’s rich and powerful during the Roman era, drawn to its natural volcanic vents and medicinal hot springs.

Some of the most important names in Roman history such as Caesar, Cicero, Mark Antony, Brutus, and Nero had villas in Baia.

The luxurious town was abandoned in the 8th century after being raided by a Muslim army, and in the 16th century, the underlying volcanic magma chamber emptied, a process known as bradyseism.

The land dropped about 20 feet below sea level, drowning more than half of Baia beneath shallow bay waters.

A section more than 260 feet long with visible remains, including a stone colonnade with collapsed columns made of fine imported Portasanta marble from Chios in Greece, was discovered during an exploration of the Baths of Lacus, a private thermal bath built inside a domus.

A large section of opus sectile (marble inlay) flooring was also discovered.

A large piece of marble opus sectile flooring has also been identified, still rendered in Portasanta in chromatic alternation with white or gray marble slabs. This currently appears as the most indicative dating element, being the typology and implementation referable to the Late Antiquity age.

The Lacus Baths site, which opened in 2020, allows scuba divers and snorkelers to explore the bath’s exceptional mosaic floors made of white, pink, red, green, grey, and black tiles.

It was a spa complex, most likely of a private residence, overlooking Baia’s ancient port, the Lacus Baianus.

In addition to the perimeters of various rooms and the thermal baths, three apses walls, which once supported large windows overlooking the Lacus Baianus, can be seen.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Archaeologists discovered an enigmatic complex of rooms, interiors of which covered with figural scenes unique to Christian art

Archaeologists discovered an enigmatic complex of rooms, the interiors of which were covered with figural scenes unique to Christian art

Archaeologists discovered an enigmatic complex of rooms, the interiors of which were covered with figural scenes unique to Christian art

Archaeologists of the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw discovered an enigmatic complex of rooms made of sun-dried brick, the interiors of which were covered with figural scenes unique to Christian art.

The discovery was made at the Old Dongola medieval monastery on the banks of the Nile, more than 500 km north of Khartoum.

Old Dongola (Tungul in Old Nubian) was the capital of Makuria, one of the most prominent medieval African states. It had converted to Christianity by the end of the sixth century, but Egypt was conquered by Islamic armies in the seventh century.

An Arab army invaded in 651 but was repulsed, and the Baqt Treaty was signed, establishing relative peace between the two sides that lasted until the 13th century.

The discovery was made during the exploration of houses dating from the Funj period (16th-19th century CE). Within the main monastic complex, the Polish mission unearthed now a second, well-preserved church with vivid mural paintings and inscriptions in Greek and Old Nubian.

The scene with King David. Photo: Adrian Chlebowski

Surprisingly, beneath the floor of one of the houses was an opening leading to a small chamber with walls decorated with unique representations.

The paintings inside depicted the Mother of God, Christ, and a scene with a Nubian king, Christ, and Archangel Michael. This was not, however, a typical depiction of a Nubian ruler under the protection of saints or archangels.

The king bows and kisses the hand of Christ, who is seated in the clouds. The ruler is aided by Archangel Michael, whose spread wings protect both the king and Christ. Such a scene finds no parallels in Nubian painting.

The representation’s dynamism and intimacy contrast with the hieratic nature of the figures depicted on the side walls. Similarly, the figure of the Virgin Mary on the north wall of the chamber does not fit into the standard repertoire of Mary depictions in Nubian art.

The Mother of God is dressed in dark robes and strikes a dignified pose. She has a cross and a book in her hands. On the opposite wall, Christ is depicted. His right hand is shown in a blessing gesture, and his left hand is holding a book, which is only partially preserved.

Dr. Agata Deptua of PCMA UW is currently studying the inscriptions that accompany the paintings. A preliminary reading of the Greek inscriptions revealed that they were texts from the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

The main scene is accompanied by an inscription in Old Nubian that is extremely difficult to decipher. The researchers learned from a preliminary reading by Dr. Vincent van Gerven Oei that it contains several references to a king named David as well as a prayer to God for the protection of the city.

Restoration work on the wall paintings. Photo: Dawid Szymanski

The city mentioned in the inscription is most likely Dongola, and the royal figure depicted in the scene is most likely King David. David was one of Christian Makuria’s last rulers, and his reign signaled the beginning of the kingdom’s demise. For unknown reasons, King David attacked Egypt, which retaliated by invading Nubia, resulting in Dongola being sacked for the first time in its history.

Researchers think that the painting may have been made while the Mamluk army was approaching or the city was under siege.

The complex of rooms where the paintings were discovered, however, is what stumps people the most. The actual spaces, which are made of dried brick and covered in vaults and domes, are quite small. Although the painted room that depicts King David is seven meters above the medieval ground level, it looks like a crypt.

The structure is next to a sacred structure known as the Great Church of Jesus, which was likely Dongola’s cathedral and the most significant church in the Makurian kingdom.

According to Arab sources, the Great Church of Jesus instigated King David’s attack on Egypt and the capture of the ports of Aidhab and Aswan.

These and other inquiries about the enigmatic structure may be answered by further excavations. However, safeguarding the distinctive wall paintings was the main goal for this season. Following the discovery, conservators got to work under the supervision of Magdalena Skaryska, MA.

The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, the University of Warsaw, and the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw collaborated to operate the conservation team.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

Roman girl adorned with 1800-year-old jewelry found in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus

“After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the exodus of the Jewish population, late Roman Jerusalem—renamed Aelia Capitolina—had a mixed population. During this period, some young girls were buried and adorned with fine gold jewelry.

The jewelrys was discovered in a lead coffin on Mount Scopus during excavations led by late archaeologist Yael Adler of the Israel Department of Antiquities.

The find included gold earrings, a hairpin, a gold pendant, gold beads, carnelian beads, and a glass bead, according to the IAA.

The jewels were discovered in 1971, in an excavation carried out by Yael Adler (deceased) of the Israel Department of Antiquities but the finds were not published.

The jewels were recently located as part of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s “Publication of Past Excavations Project,” which aims to publish previously incomplete excavation reports.

Impressive gold jewelry discovered in previous excavations in Jerusalem burial caves will be on display for the first time to the public at the 48th Archaeological Congress, organized by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Exploration Society, and the Israel Archaeological Association.

The congress will take place at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel, now inaugurated in Jerusalem.

“The location of the original reports that gathered dust over the years in the Israel Antiquities Authority archives, and physically tracing the whereabouts of the items themselves, has shed light on long-forgotten treasures,” says Dr. Ayelet Dayan, Head of the Archaeological Research Department, who heads this project. “The beautiful jewelry that we researched is an example of such treasures.”

Researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Ayelet Dayan, Dr. Ayelet Gruber, and Dr. Yuval Baruch, believe that the priceless objects bearing the symbols of Luna, the Roman moon goddess, accompanied the girls during their lifetimes and were buried with them after they passed away to continue to protect them in the afterlife.

Their investigation revealed that Prof. Vassilios Tzaferis had found two pairs of identical gold earrings in a previous excavation on the Mount of Olives for the Department of Antiquities in 1975.

The finds, according to researchers, are from a time after Jerusalem had almost entirely been destroyed following the siege of 70 CE.

The pagan Roman deities Jupiter and others received special honors in Hadrian’s new city. At that time, Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem under penalty of death because the city was occupied by Roman legionaries.

“It seems that the girl was buried with an expensive set of gold jewelry that included earrings, a chain with a lunula pendant (named after the goddess Luna), and a hairpin,” say the researchers.

“These items of jewelry are known in the Roman world, and are characteristic of young girl burials, possibly providing evidence of the people who were buried at these sites,” the researchers said.

“Late Roman Jerusalem—renamed Aelia Capitolina—had a mixed population that reached the city after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the evacuation of the Jewish population.

People from different parts of the Roman Empire settled in the city, bringing with them a different set of values, beliefs, and rituals. The pagan cult of the city’s new population was rich and varied, including gods and goddesses, among them the cult of the moon goddess Luna.”

According to researchers, gold jewelry was used as an amulet against the evil eye by young pagan girls nearly 1,800 years ago. The jewelry was buried with the girls to continue protecting them in the afterlife.

“The interring of the jewelry together with the young girl is touching,” said IAA Director Eli Escusido. “One can imagine that their parents or relatives parted from the girl, either adorned with the jewelry or possibly lying by her side and thinking of the protection that the jewelry provided in the world to come.

This is a very human situation, and all can identify with the need to protect one’s offspring, whatever the culture or the period.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Researchers use 21st century methods to record 2,000 years of ancient graffiti in Egypt

Researchers use 21st-century methods to record 2,000 years of ancient graffiti in Egypt

Researchers use 21st-century methods to record 2,000 years of ancient graffiti in Egypt
SFU geography professor Nick Hedley. Photo Credit: Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti—and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti—as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.

Working with the University of Ottawa, the researchers published their early findings in Egyptian Archaeology and have returned to Philae to advance the project.

“It’s fascinating because there are similarities with today’s graffiti,” says SFU geography professor Nick Hedley, co-investigator of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded project.

“The iconic architecture of ancient Egypt was built by those in positions of power and wealth, but the graffiti records the voices and activities of everybody else. The building acts like a giant sponge or notepad for generations of people from different cultures for over 2,000 years.”

As an expert in spatial reality capture, Hedley leads the team’s innovative visualization efforts, documenting the graffiti, their architectural context, and the spaces they are found in using advanced methods like photogrammetry, raking light, and laser scanning. “I’m recording reality in three-dimensions — the dimensionality in which it exists,” he explains.

Photo Credit: Simon Fraser University

With hundreds if not thousands of graffiti, some carved less than a millimeter deep on the temple’s columns, walls, and roof, precision is essential.

Typically, the graffiti would be recorded through a series of photographs — a step above hand-drawn documents — allowing researchers to take pieces of the site away and continue working.

Sabrina Higgins, an SFU archaeologist and project co-investigator, says photographs and two-dimensional plans do not allow the field site to be viewed as a dynamic, multi-layered, and evolving space.

“The techniques we are applying to the project will completely change how the graffiti, and the temple, can be studied,” she says.

Sabrina Higgins, SFU archaeologist and project co-investigator. Photo Credit: Simon Fraser University

Hedley is moving beyond basic two-dimensional imaging to create a cutting-edge three-dimensional recording of the temple’s entire surface.

This will allow the interior and exterior of the temple, and the graffiti, to be viewed and studied at otherwise impossible viewpoints, from virtually anywhere— without compromising detail.

This three-dimensional visualization will also enable researchers to study the relationship between a figural graffito, any graffiti that surrounds it, and its location in relation to the structure of temple architecture.

While this is transformative for viewing and studying the temple and its inscriptions, Hedley points to the big-picture potential of applying spatial reality capture technology to the field of archaeology, and beyond.

“Though my primary role in this project is to help build the definitive set of digital wall plans for the Mammisi at Philae, I’m also demonstrating how emerging spatial reality capture methods can fundamentally change how we gather and produce data and transform our ability to interpret and analyze these spaces. This is a space to watch!” says Hedley.

WORLD

Drug Use Detected in Hair Found in Mediterranean Island Cave

Drug Use Detected in Hair Found in Mediterranean Island Cave

Drug Use Detected in Hair Found in Mediterranean Island Cave
Hair strands found among a stash of objects in this cave on the island of Menorca have provided Europe’s oldest direct evidence of psychoactive drug use, dating to about 3,000 years ago.

Human hair recovered in a Mediterranean island cave has yielded Europe’s oldest direct evidence of people taking hallucinogenic drugs, researchers say.

By around 3,000 years ago, visitors at Es Càrritx cave on Menorca — perhaps shamans who performed spiritual and healing rituals — consumed plants containing mind-altering and vision-inducing substances, say archaeologist Elisa Guerra-Doce of the University of Valladolid in Spain and colleagues.

Signs of human activity at the cave, including more than 200 human graves arrayed in a chamber at the entrance, were previously dated to between around 3,600 and 2,800 years ago.

Researchers had also found a hoard of objects in a small pit within an inner cave chamber, including six wooden containers, each containing locks of human hair.

Chemical analyses of one container’s locks, possibly from more than one person, detected three psychoactive plant substances that had been ingested and absorbed into the hair over nearly a year, the scientists report on April 6 in Scientific Reports.

A chemical analysis of human hairs, shown here entangled with bits of animal bones after removal from a wooden container found in a Mediterranean island cave, revealed the presence of mind-bending plant substances.

Two substances, atropine, and scopolamine from nightshade plants, induce disorientation, hallucinations, and altered physical sensations. Another, ephedrine, boosts energy and alertness.

Shamans would have known how to handle and consume these potentially toxic plants safely, the investigators say.

Individuals intent on preserving ancient traditions hid hair and other ritually significant objects at Es Càrritx as Menorca’s growing population spurred social changes between 3,000 and 2,800 years ago, the researchers speculate.

Burial rituals included dyeing strands of hair on corpses a reddish color and later cutting off some locks to be put in containers left near graves.

Other hair analyses have found that Inca kids slated for sacrifice more than 500 years ago ingested hallucinogenic drinks and coca leaves and alcohol (SN: 5/13/22; SN: 7/29/13).  And a 2005 study found chemical signs of coca-leaf chewing in the hair of two human mummies from Chile dating to around 3,000 years ago. Indirect evidence of drug use in various parts of the world, such as artistic depictions, go back further.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Researchers Study Severed Hands Uncovered in Egypt

Researchers Study Severed Hands Uncovered in Egypt

Researchers Study Severed Hands Uncovered in Egypt
Severed hands found outside an ancient Egyptian palace confirm accounts of a trophy-taking custom called the “gold of honor.”

In 2011, archaeologists excavating a site in northern Egypt known as Tell el-Dab’a came across a grisly scene. As they probed a series of pits outside the city’s palace walls, 12 skeletal hands reached back at them.

The dismembered hands, researchers reported last week in Scientific Reports, are likely a cache of battlefield trophies—prizes lopped from enemies’ bodies and exchanged for gold in a ritual known as the “gold of honor.” Egyptian texts and wall carvings describe the custom, the researchers note, but these hands represent the first physical evidence of it.

“It’s very nice evidence,” says Isabelle Crevecoeur, a physical anthropologist at CNRS, the French national research agency, who was not involved with the study. “From the biological and anthropological evidence, there’s no doubt it was part of a ritual.”

The hands were dated to 1500 B.C.E., when Tell el-Dab’a was known as Avaris and briefly served as the capital of ancient Egypt. When Manfred Bietak, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who has led digs at Tell el-Dab’a for decades, first saw the remains, he immediately thought of the trophy-taking ritual.

According to ancient accounts, Egyptian warriors presented the hands of slain enemies to the pharaoh, who rewarded them with gold necklaces or golden pendants in the shape of flies.

Some researchers had an alternative explanation: that the severed appendages represented a brutal punishment for criminals, perhaps thieves. There is no written or pictorial evidence of such punishments in ancient Egypt, however, and the new analysis of the Tell el-Dab’a hands supports the trophy-ritual hypothesis. For one, the hands were carefully cut from the arm. Any bones below the wrist had been removed, leaving just the hand and fingers.

“They were all prepared properly to look just like a hand should,” says German Archaeological Institute paleopathologist Julia Gresky, who led the study.

She and colleagues found no cutmarks on the bones, suggesting an almost surgical effort went into preparing them. That makes a convincing case for ritualistic amputation, not barbaric punishment, Crevecouer says. “No signs of cutting is a sign that they did it very carefully, not with an ax or something. It’s delicate work. That, for me, is a good argument they did it for a ritual.”

The care also suggests the hands were removed after death, not hacked from living prisoners. They were probably severed after rigor mortis–a tightening of the tendons in the hours after death–had passed, Gresky argues. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to cut the tendons connecting hand to arm without leaving marks on the bones.

After they were removed and modified, eight of the hands were placed carefully in a shallow pit, with several more hands laid into another pit less than 1 meter away. “If it was punishment, the hand would have just been thrown away,” Gresky says. “But they really took care with them and placed them nicely.” Located just in front of the city’s central palace, the pits would have been visible from the throne room, suggesting the pharaoh prized the hands—and supporting the notion that they were a war trophy, the researchers note.

Fingers are among the first parts of the body to decompose and fall apart, so finding intact hands suggests they were all deposited in a single event or ceremony, rather than one at a time. “Finding articulated bones means the deposits must have been made very quickly, and then protected,” Crevecoeur says. “The hand was still fleshy when it was buried–otherwise it would have fallen apart.”

The “gold of honor” ritual was probably introduced to Egypt by interlopers known as the Hyksos, Bietak says. These invaders–who perhaps came from the eastern Mediterranean–conquered Egypt around 1640 B.C.E. and controlled the region for about a century, ruling from Avaris. They introduced Egyptians to chariots and new types of weapons, such as slings and distinctive battleaxes.

Bietak thinks they also introduced the custom of taking enemies’ hands as trophies. Later in Egypt, the ritual appears to have become standard practice. Ahmose I, the pharaoh who eventually forced the last of the Hyksos out of Egypt, “had a heap of hands depicted on the wall of his temple at Abydos,” Bietak says.

The custom both honored the pharaoh and inflicted punishment beyond the grave. Since the ancient Egyptians believed one’s body had to be intact in order to pass into the next world, severing the right hand would have disfigured their enemies’ souls as well as their bodies, barring them from the afterlife.

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