Animal Mummies
Thousands of mummified animals have been recovered in Egypt over the past hundred years. They include gazelles, shrews, rams, crocodiles, hawks, fish, dung beetles, and of course, cats. In the early days of excavation, they were considered unimportant, as things to be pushed aside in order to get to the treasure. Scientists are now studying them in detail for clues about the way ancient Egyptian humans lived. National Geographic looks at how the animals were preserved, and why. Link
(image credit: Richard Barnes)
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Immense Anglo-Saxon Gold and Silver Hoard Discovered
Experts in Great Britain are overwhelmed by both the magnitude and the quality of the objects, which include not only coins but beautifully-crafted works of art. There are 1,500 items, most of which are warfare-related (sword pommel caps, hilt plates) and jewelry, crosses, and decorative items designed to be worn by males rather than females. It appears to be a collection of trophies, perhaps from a battle or the accumulation of a military career.
The Staffordshire Hoard contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries.
“(It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”
Some of the gold pieces are inlaid with precious stones such as garnets. The hoard appears to date from the 7th century; at present there is no indication of who owned it or why it was buried in the Staffordshire field.
Link to BBC article and slideshow of 12 photos.
Link to a gallery of photos at The Guardian.
Photo credit to The Stafforshire Hoard, which appears to be a sort of “home page” for the find.
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Archaeologists Found Maya Ruins Frozen in Time
Photo: Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project
Archaeologists have found new clues from the Maya ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it’s a frozen moment in time." [..]
When the team started exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates (muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back."
Let’s tell the archaeologists to hurry up. 2012 is just around the corner …Here’s an interesting article by Dan Vergano for USA Today: Link
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Mysterious Code on an Ancient Cup
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have found a 2,000-year-old stone cup. The leader of the excavation team Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina says this kind of cup was common in Jewish households of the time, but this particular cup is different.
What sets the newfound cup apart is its inscription, which is still sharply etched but so far impossible to understand.Similar to intentionally enigmatic writing in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the cup’s script appears to be a secret code, written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, the two written languages used in Jerusalem at the time (see video of a village where the language of Jesus is still spoken).
“They wrote it intending it to be cryptic,” Gibson said.
The inscription will eventually be posted online. Link
(image credit: S. Pfann/UHL)
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The Virtual Museum of Iraq
Six years after the invasion (and subsequent liberation) of Iraq, the country is still too dangerous for normal tourism. This is too bad since Iraq is literally a treasure trove of archaeological artifacts.
To accommodate armchair tourists too timid to risk life and limbs, the Italian government funded the creation of The Virtual Museum of Iraq, showcasing pieces dating from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian eras and more.
Check it out: Link – via Neal Ungerleider’s True/Slant blog
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3,000-year-old Butter Found
An oak barrel of butter has been found in a bog near Gilltown, Ireland. Two workers, John Fitzharris and Martin Lane, noticed a white streak in the peat and uncovered the barrel, estimated to be 3,000 years old. Pádraig Clancy and Carol Smith of the National Museum of Ireland took charge of the barrel.
“It’s rare to find a barrel as intact as that,” Mr. Clancy explained, “especially with the lid intact, and attached. It’s a really fine example.”
He estimates that the barrel is approximately 3,000 years old, from the Iron Age.
At the moment it is being dried out by staff at the Conservation Department. Once dry it will be soaked in a wax-like solution which preserves it.
“At 35ks, it’s a pretty big one,” Ms. Smith explained. Other examples of bog butter they showed tended to be less intact and much smaller.
Link -via Unique Daily
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Ancient Well Found, Complete with Skeleton
Archaeologists have unearthed a well in Cyprus that is believed to be between 9,000 and 10,500 years old, making one of the earth’s oldest water wells. Debris at the bottom of the well includes the skeleton of a woman.
Pavlos Flourentzos, the nation’s top antiquities official, said the 16-foot deep cylindrical shaft was found last month at a construction site in Kissonerga, a village near the Mediterranean island nation’s southwestern coast.
After the well dried up it apparently was used to dispose trash, and the items found in it included the poorly preserved skeleton of the young woman, animal bone fragments, worked flints, stone beads and pendants from the island’s early Neolithic period, Flourentzos said.
(image credit: Cyprus Antiquites Department/AP)
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Misconceptions About Neanderthals
Thanks to movies and a series of insurance ads, we tend to think of the extinct hominids known as Neanderthals as hairy, stooped, club-wielding caveman. Modern science knows a lot more about Neanderthals now, but the old stereotypes persist. You may be surprised at how like us the Neanderthals really were. Link -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Reconstruction by Kennis & Kennis/Photograph by Joe McNally, National Geographic)
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17th-century Witch Bottle
A bottle has been unearthed in Greenwich, England that contains urine and objects believed to have been put there to combat witchcraft. It was completely corked, so the contents were available for analysis, unlike other bottles found from the period.
An Old Bailey court record from 1682 documents that a husband, believing his wife to be afflicted by witchcraft, was advised by a Spitalfields apothecary to “take a quart of your Wive’s urine, the paring of her Nails, some of her Hair, and such like, and boyl them well in a Pipkin.”
The excavated bottle appears to have been made according to those, or similar, instructions.
CT scans and chemical analysis, along with gas chromatography conducted by Richard Cole of the Leicester Royal Infirmary, reveal the contents of the bottle to include human urine, brimstone, 12 iron nails, eight brass pins, hair, possible navel fluff, a piece of heart-shaped leather pierced by a bent nail, and 10 fingernail clippings.
So far, they’ve found the urine was from someone who smoked, and the fingernails were in good shape, indicating a person of high status. Link -via Unique Daily
(image credit: Mike Pitts/British Archaeology)
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Did Crazy Cavemen Make Those Cave Drawings?
Photos: otisarchives2 (left), modcult (right)
Are cave paintings signs of intelligence of ancient cave dwellers or are they just scribbles of crazy cavemen?
Take a look at the two photos above. The one to the left is a painting made by a patient at St. Elizabeth’s hospital. The patient had a case of dementia praecox (eventually classified as schizophrenia) and used a pin or fingernail to scratch paint from the wall, creating pictures symbolizing past events in the patient’s life and represent a mild state of mental regression.
Jeb of Modcult made this intriguing observation:
You know, everyone assumes cave paintings were made for some sort of vaunted religious or technical purpose, but maybe in olden times they just sent their crazy people into a cave. I mean, that’s basically what we do now.
Link – via Cliff Pickover’s Reality Carnival
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35,000-year-old Human Figurine: Oldest Ever?
It appears men had voluptuous women on their minds about 10,000 years earlier than we previously thought. A new archeological find is the oldest known representation of a human being. Ed Yong reveals the new art piece, and its implications on how we see prehistoric man and our own cultural evolution.
This sculpture may look a little bit like a roast chicken, but don’t let that distract you – it’s an incredibly important artistic find. This small figurine is arguably the oldest representation of the human body yet discovered.
(image credit: Nicholas Conard)
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The World's Most Famous Archaeological Underworld
Archaeology is a religion for illuminated individuals, however if you cross the Gods you will suffer the consequences. Many men have risked their lives in pursuit of historical relics, many have never returned.
The Valley of the Kings in Egypt is located on the West bank of the Nile River within “the heart of the Theban Necropolis”. This illuminated place is said to hold the wealth of Egypt where Kings and Queens were laid to rest and their treasure was buried with them. Many men have died risking their lives to discover the mysteries of this sacred place, some have never returned.
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Blackbeard Relics Found
A ship discovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1997 has been identified by experts as the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a ship used by the pirate Blackbeard. The ship was originally named Le Concorde before the pirate seized it from its French crew in 1717. Artifacts, such as this apothecary weight featuring two fleurs-de-lis, helped to identify the ship as Blackbeard’s.
Le Concorde’s surgeon, who was forced to serve briefly in Blackbeard’s crew, may have owned the weights, designed for pharmaceuticals. Pirates could have also used the weights to measure gold dust, experts say.
See more pictures at National Geographic. Link
(image credit: Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources)
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Egyptian Queen's Perfume to Be Resurrected
The favorite perfume of powerful Egyptian "she king" Hatshepsut may be resurrected from residue found in a 3,500-year-old perfume bottle.
X-ray photographs of the 4.7-inch-tall (12-centimeter-tall) bottle, from the permanent collection of Bonn University’s Egyptian Museum, reveals remnants of the ancient oil. Scientists plan to identify the substance and, possibly within a year, re-create the perfume.
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Vampire Found in Italy
An exhumation of a mass grave of plague victims in Venice, Italy yielded the skeleton of a woman who was probably considered a vampire in her time. She was buried with a brick in her mouth. The skeleton was found by Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence.
At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.
The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.
(image credit: Matteo Borrini)
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Gobekli Tepe: Is it the Garden of Eden?
On a summer day in 1994, a Kurdish shepherd stumbled upon a strange stone in the rolling plains of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. Little did he know then that he had just made what could be the greatest archaeological discovery ever: the possible site of the Garden of Eden.
Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.
Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past. [...]
Over glasses of black tea, served in tents right next to the megaliths, Klaus Schmidt told me that, in his opinion, this very spot was once the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. More specifically, as he put it: ‘Gobekli Tepe is a temple in Eden.’
Tom Cox of the Mail Online has more on this fascinating story: Link
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Treasures Found in One Year
Here’s an end-of-the-year list you haven’t seen a dozen versions of -ten discoveries of money and treasure in 2008. Gold and silver coins, jewelry, antiquities, things that make you say. “I wish I’d found that!” Shown are gold coins bearing the image of Carausius, who declared himself the emperor of of Northern Gaul and Britain (AD 286-93). They were found by Derrick Fretwell in a field in Ashbourne. England. Link -Thanks, Brand!
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Stone Age String: "An Important Piece of Technology"
Archaeologists examining an undersea site in Britain have discovered something wonderful: an 8,000-year-old piece of string!
Our ancestors made it by twisting together what seem to be fibres of honeysuckle, nettles, or wild clematis, and used it in their struggle for survival as the last ice age ended.
This early piece of technology, measuring about 41/2in must have been a revolutionary advance at the time, useful for binding together weapons or tools.
But in case you don’t believe me that it’s a wonderful find, here’s what British Archaeology mangazine editor Mike Pitts said about the discovery:
‘It is a fantastic find. I don’t think the average person realises what an important piece of technology string has been over the ages.’
Indeed. Link – via Scribal Terror
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Ancient Pot Stash
A 2,700-year-old grave unearthed in the Gobi Desert near Turpan, China revealed the world’s oldest marijuana stash! The grave belonged to a blue-eyed Caucasian man buried with a number of valuable items.
Scientists originally thought the plant material in the grave was coriander, but microscopic botanical analysis of the bowl contents, along with genetic testing, revealed that it was cannabis.
The size of seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their color and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, which are less psychoactive, so Russo and his team believe there is little doubt as to why the cannabis was grown.
Nearly two pounds of pot were found in the grave. No, it’s not fresh enough to get anyone high. Link -Thanks, Jorge Garcia!
(image credit: David Potter/Oxford University Press)
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Archaeologists Found the Lost City of the Mysterious Cloud Forest People of the Amazon
Archaeologist Benedicto Perez Goicochea and colleagues discovered something fantastic in a remote mountainside in the Amazonian jungle: the village of the mystical "Cloud Forest People."
The buildings found on the Pachallama peak are in remarkably good condition, estimated to be over 1,000 years old and comprised of the traditional round stone houses built by the Chachapoya, the ‘Cloud Forest People’. [...]
Archaeologist Benedicto Pérez Goicochea said: "The citadel is perched on the edge of an abyss.
"We suspect that the ancient inhabitants used this as a lookout point from where they could spot potential enemies."
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What is This Mysterious Stone Age Object?
Archaeologists digging at Zaraysk, Russia, unearthed a trove of Stone Age figurines and carvings, including something puzzling: a cone-shaped object whose function remains a mystery:
Also among the finds was an object carved from mammoth ivory, shaped like a cone with its top removed. The cone is densely ornamented and has a hole running through its centre.
The authors note that the object is unique among Palaeolithic artefacts. "The function of this decorated object remains a puzzle," they say.
Since you guys are experts at guessing in our weekly What is it? game, let’s try this one for size: what do you think the mystery object is for?
(Photo: Amirkhanov/Lev/Antiquity)
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