Intact Brandy Bottles and 200-Year-Old Pub Discovered Under Building Site in Manchester
An unexpected discovery was made when works began for a 13-storey skyscraper for apartments and shops in Manchester, England. Archaeologists brought in to the construction site found the remains of a forgotten 200-year-old pub and neighboring houses.
The Manchester Evening News reports that the archaeologists even know the name of the old pub- the Astley Arms. One of the interesting finds they made inside the rubble is the discovery of about 200-year-old booze bottles.
Some of the bottles still contain brandy. James Alderson, site developer of Mulbury City which is carrying out the build, told the Manchester Evening News “We opened the cork on a few and you can still smell it.
It’s amazing knowing there’s so much history at this site and it’s really exciting. I never expected this kind of thing to be found but we are really fascinated by it all.”
The archaeologists were also able to find the name of the Astley Arm’s 1821 owner, Thomas Evans, on some personalized plates. Aidan Turner, supervisor at the site and senior archaeologist, told the Manchester Evening News that the team managed to track down descendants of the pub’s owner. He said that they discovered one living relative is now living in Texas, USA.
It was found that the Astley Arms had its name changed in 1840. Then owner, Thomas Inglesent, called the pub the Paganini Tavern. However, the name returned to Astley Arms in the 1850s. Historians say that part of the building was rebuilt in 1986, but it was demolished later on.
Keys, pots for quills, and pipes were amongst other artifacts found at the site. The pottery has been dated to the early 1800s and at least some of the bottles are from the late 1900s.
All of these everyday items have a special value for the archaeologists. As Turner said “It’s brilliant because you can suddenly connect it to the local people in the area. It’s nice to be able to connect it directly to living people and their families.”
Alderson added “Part of Manchester’s vast history is being captured in these findings which is really interesting. It really takes you back to the time when they would have been outside of the pub drinking.”
The Manchester Evening News reports that some of the artifacts that have been discovered at the site will be displayed in the future at the Museum of Science and Industry.
A Pompeiian taberna for eating and drinking. The faded painting over the counter pictured eggs, olives, fruit and radishes.
The Roman tavern is also said to have served “as an invaluable indicator of the changing social and economic infrastructure of the settlement and its inhabitants following the Roman conquest of Mediterranean Gaul in the late second century B.C.”
Before the Romans’ arrived in the ancient town, called Lattara, it was an area made up of farmers. The Roman presence created a more diverse economy, and the need for places to eat outside the home.
Two ancient skeletons found holding hands in medieval chapel
Archaeologists have discovered two skeletons holding hands at an ancient site of pilgrimage, in the newly-discovered Chapel of St Morrell in Leicestershire England.
According to a news release in the Leicester Mercury , the remains are that of a man and a woman of a similar age, although researchers are not sure of their identity.
The medieval Chapel of St Morrell was only recently rediscovered after it had become long lost to the pages of history. However, local historian John Morrison, was able to track down its location through researching old historical records, and geophysicists were then called in to take images of the land to locate the exact spot to begin digging. Excavations at the site have now been ongoing for the last four years.
Volunteers Lotty Wallace and Ken Wallace work on a small section of the excavation.
Old records refer to the chapel as being dedicated to Saint Morrell, the 4th Bishop of Anjou, France, who lived in the 5 th century AD.
The earliest mention of the chapel was in a will of 1532, and in 1622, a writer notes that multitudes travelled to the chapel to be healed. However, archaeological remains at the site go back as early as the Roman period, some 2,000 years ago.
“This ground has been used as a special sort of place by people for at least 2,000 years,” said archaeologist Vicky Score, of the University of Leicester, who is leading the project.
Along with the two skeletons holding hands, researchers also found seven other sets of remains dating back to the 14 th century AD, each ‘held down’ by a large stone placed on top of their bodies.
“This was a tradition popular in eastern Europe with the idea of keeping the dead down,” said Score.
It is not the first time that archaeologists have unearthed couples holding hands in death. In 2011, archaeologists found the skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple holding hands in a tomb located in Modena, Italy; in 2012, dozens of tombs uncovered in Siberia contained the skeletal remains of couples in loving embrace ; and in 2013, researchers discovered the remains of a medieval couple holding hands in a former Dominican monastery in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
“Whoever buried these people likely felt that communicating their relationship was just as important in death as it was in life,” said Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, who was involved in the Modena finding.
The skeletal remains of a young couple found in a former Dominican monastery in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The discovery of skeletons holding hands has often perplexed researchers, who have questioned how they came to die at around the same time.
While the first assumption usually made is that one died and then the other committed suicide, this is unlikely because suicide was regarded as a sin in the Medieval Ages, so anyone who killed themselves would not have been buried in a holy place.
Such findings shine a light on the humanity behind ancient discoveries and lead us to wonder about who they were, how they died, and what their lives may have been like.
Archaeologist Donato Labate, the director of the excavation in Modena, Italy, said that the discovery evokes an uplifting tenderness. “I have been involved in many digs, but I’ve never felt so moved.”
Tollund Man – the preserved face from Prehistoric Denmark and the tale of ritual sacrifice
Tollund Man is the naturally mummified body of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was hanged as a sacrifice to the gods and placed in a peat bog where he remained preserved for more than two millennia.
The face of the Tollund Man is as preserved as the day he died. The look upon his face is calm and peaceful, as though looking upon a sleeping man.
It was 6 th May, 1950, when two brothers cutting peat in the Bjaeldskov bog, an area about 10 kilometres west of the Danish town of Silkeborg, came upon the lifeless body of a man. The man’s physical features were so well-preserved that he was mistaken at the time of discovery for a recent murder victim and the police were called.
Puzzled by the appearance of the remains and recalling the discovery of two other ‘bog bodies’ in the same bog in 1927 and 1938, the police asked an archaeologist named P. V.
Glob to come and view the discovery. Recognizing that this was an ancient burial, Glob began efforts to remove the body for further study.
The examination of the Tollund Man at the National Museum of Denmark in 1950 revealed an unusually well-preserved body of an adult male who was slightly over five feet tall and approximately 40 years old when he died.
The stubble on his chain, eyelashes, and the wrinkles in his skin can still be observed in minute detail. His last meal was porridge made from 40 different kinds of seeds and grains.
Head of Tollund Man on the left and a restoration image on the right
Tollund Man was naked apart from a leather cap and a wide belt around his waist. Around his neck was a braided leather rope tightened in a noose.
It was clear that he had been hanged – but why? Was he a criminal, a victim of crime, or part of a ritual sacrifice? Archaeologists embarked on an investigation to find out.
The Tollund Man as he appears today.
Like all the other ‘bog bodies’ that have been found, Tollund Man showed no signs of injury or trauma, apart from that caused by the hanging. It was clear that he had also been buried carefully in the bog – his eyes and mouth had been closed and his body placed in a sleeping position – something that wouldn’t have happened if he were a common criminal.
When somebody died in the Iron Age, the body was cremated in a funeral pyre and the ashes placed in an urn, but Tolland Man was buried in a watery place where the early people of Europe believed they could communicate with their many gods and goddesses. He was also killed in the winter or early spring, a time that human sacrifices were made to the goddess of spring.
Taking into account all of these factors, archaeologists believe that Tollund Man was ritually sacrificed. He may have been an offering to the gods in return for peat that was taken from the bog.
The incredible discovery of Tollund Man has brought to life in vivid detail the lives and deaths of the people of prehistoric Denmark. He now resides in a special room of the Silkeborg Museum.
The Huldremose Woman: One of the best preserved and best dressed bog bodies
More than 500 bodies and skeletons were buried in the peat bogs in Denmark between 800 B.C. and A.D. 200.
In 1879, Niels Hanson, a school teacher in Ramten, was digging peat turfs from a peat bog near Ramten, Jutland, Denmark. While doing this, he recovered a bog body of an elderly Iron Age woman. The body became known as “Huldremose Woman” or “Huldre Fen Woman”.
The upper body of the Huldremose Woman.
The woman was more than 40 years old when she ended up in the bog.
Supposedly, the woman had passed away sometime between 160 B.C. and 340 A.D. It is believed that she lived at least 40 years, which to the standards of the time was a very long life. Like most of the bog bodies found in Denmark, the woman from Huldremose was fully clothed.
More than 130 years after its discovery, it remains one of the best preserved and best-dressed bog bodies. This discovery offered a rare opportunity to understand the clothing of the Iron Age in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
The clothing of Huldremose Woman.
The clothes are well preserved, despite being almost 2000 years old.
She was dressed in a costume consisting of a woollen skirt (tied at the waist with a thin leather strap inserted into a woven waistband), a woollen scarf (139-144 cm in length and 49 cm in width, wrapped around the woman’s neck and fastened under her left arm with a pin made from a bird bone) and two skin capes.
The fur coats she was wrapped in were made from the skin of 14 sheep. The sewn-in objects have probably functioned as amulets. Not only was her costume of high quality; it was also colored in a multitude of colors. olor analysis has shown that originally the skirt was blue and the scarf was in red color.
The finding of the woman has encouraged many different debates and interpretations over the years. Medical analysis revealed that she had received a cut to her upper arm, removing her arm from the rest of her body before she was deposited in the peat.
A violent cut with a sharp tool had almost severed her right upper arm before she died.
It was previously believed that the cut to the arm was the cause of death and the woman died as a result of a subsequent loss of blood.
However, later forensic analysis found evidence of strangulation, her hair was tied with a long woolen rope, which was also wrapped around her neck several times.
Mystery messages engraved in Scotland’s rocks up to 5,000 years ago might soon be decoded using 3D scans
About 6,000 rocks that display distinctive “cup and ring” carvings, alongside other ancient engravings, dot the landscape of Britain, with at least one-third of them found in Scotland. Archaeologists have offered several explanations as to what these strange symbols mean. Some have said the ancients inscribed them for ritual ceremonies.
Others believe the carvings served much more practical purposes, that possibly these were territorial markers on ancient trade routes or mapped the stars in the sky.
However, in the words of George Currie, an amateur archaeologist who discovered some 670 rock carvings in Scotland, “many have symbolism that dates back thousands of years and we know little about why they were created.”
A spokesperson from Historic Environment Scotland (HES) noted that “the purpose and significance of rock art to prehistoric and more recent communities is poorly understood.” In 2022, HES was awarded £807,000 (around $1.1 million in U.S. dollars) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to carry out a five-year-long project to reestablish this lost link to Scotland’s prehistoric past.
Cup and ring marks, Source: Historic Environment Scotland
We may never discover the full meanings of the engravings, but the project, making use of 3D scanners, will seek answers by documenting and analyzing a great number of rock carving examples. A result is expected probably by 2021: a database with 2D and 3D models of some of the decorated stones will be created, and perhaps some theories will follow too.
Experts from both the University of Edinburgh and the Glasgow School of Art are involved in the project activities, and scanning is expected to reveal new connections between the symbols, previously overlooked, between the rock carvings. Some are said to go as far back as to the Neolithic days.
Currie has also been invited to participate in the activities. Over a period of more than a decade, he has managed to discover, photograph, and GPS locate 670 rocks alone. While cups and rings are among the most recurring symbols of all, there are others that appear frequently, such as horseshoe shapes or some that remind of human footprints.
The Achnabreck Cup-and-Ring-Marked Rock. Source: Historic Environment Scotland
In statements in Mail Online, Currie, who comes from Dundee, said that “the idea is to cover the whole of Scotland to record all of the rock art in 3D where ever possible.” However, he remarks, challenges are certain to haunt the team as it is uncertain how scanning equipment will be brought to some of the locations of interest. Not all rocks are laid to rest in favorable terrains.
Potentially, the project could answer many other questions, such as why people have revisited the rocks, inscribing new symbols over rocks that had already had engravings. Meanwhile, new findings of rock carvings are still being encountered, with one major discovery of a “previously unrecorded example” being reported by BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporters in 2014.
Archaeologists stumbled upon new rock art with cup and ring engravings while trying to relocate one rock in the county of Ross-shire. As they examined the rock, the team was dazzled by corresponding marks on the other side of the rock as well. The discovery counted as a rare find.
Cup and ring marks survive in large numbers from Scotland and have offered a variety of meanings.
Although Britain is the focus of the interest in cup and ring rock carvings, these symbols are not exclusively found only on the island. Differing from place to place, examples have been documented overseas, with many being located in Ireland and Scandinavia, one example being Hartola, Finland, where researchers point out that the cup markings are notably wider compared to the Scottish ones.
More can be seen in the Italian region of Piedmont, but also across Switzerland, on Sardinia, or in Israel. Similar forms can be seen as far away as Gabon and Australia.
2,000-Year-Old Roman Road Uncovered in British Field is Like No Other–And of ‘Global Importance’
Workmen have uncovered a suspected Roman road in a field dating back 2,000 years that could be the only one of its kind in Britain and of ‘world importance.’
Archeologists say the cobbled ford uncovered in Worcestershire could be the finest Roman example of its type in the UK. In fact, the only existing roads in such a state of preservation are found in Pompeii and Rome.
The stretch, measuring 32-ft by 9.6 feet wide (10 x 2.9 meter), was discovered during routine utility work by Severn Trent Water a few weeks ago in an area called Evesham.
The exact location of the discovery is being concealed but it was found by a river where a Roman-era villa complex was previously uncovered four years ago.
Excavations are now taking place to find out more about the site, but experts say everything points to it being a genuine Roman structure—built 1,900 years ago.
“At the moment everything is ticking the boxes for it to be Roman but it still feels too good to be true so we are keeping an open mind,” said Aidan Smyth, archeology officer from Wychavon District Council where the water works were being dug, adding that seeing it first hand “took his breath away.”
The owners of the property contacted Wychavon District Council and a team from Historic England is now expected to analyze the excavations.
The road is a ‘ford,’ or a small river crossing, and also has ruts in the stones indicating it was was used by carts for a long time.
“If it is a first-century Roman feature it is the only one of its kind to be found in Britain to date,” said Smith, who noted no one was building roads like this during the Medieval Period.
Aidan Smyth investigates the Roman road
“If it was to be a Roman feature, with its only comparisons in Rome and Pompeii, you could argue it’s of world importance, not just of national importance. The stonework is absolutely perfect.”
Smith explains in the video below how the Romans were the only road builders to ever build their roads like they built walls. During excavations Smith explains the team found “batted” stone curbs, meaning to be laid at a steep angle rather than vertically. They were made of a different stone than the flat cobbles passersby would walk upon.
“Now I’ve lots of evidence in this part of Evesham for Medieval batted stone walls, my problem is I’ve not got anything Roman to compare it with,” Smith said. “So it’s not that it isn’t Roman, it just could have a Medieval phase to it.”
The native Picts, a Celtic-language speaking tribe, once populated the Scottish Islands, similar to the natives that live on what is now Scotland.
Archaeologists and volunteers are working to preserve human bones exposed by recent storms in an ancient cemetery above a beach on the Orkney Islands.
Several powerful storms on Scotland’s Orkney Islands have now revealed ancient human remains in a Pictish and Viking cemetery dated back to about 1,500 years ago.
To order to protect the damage to the former Newark Bay cemetery on Orkney’s largest island, volunteers are now placing sandbags and clay around. The site dates from the middle of the sixth century when ancient Pictish people inhabited the Orkney Islands.
The site is currently being protected by sandbags.
Picts or Norse?
The cemetery was used for about 1,000 years, and numerous burials from the ninth to the 15th century were Norsemen or Vikings who had seized the Orkney Islands from the Picts. Now, storm waves are destroying the low cliff where the ancient site is located, Peter Higgins from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology (ORCA), said.
“Every time we have a storm with a bit of a south-easterly [wind], it really gets in there and actively erodes what is just soft sandstone,” Higgins explained.
Approximately 250 skeletons were taken out of the cemetery about 50 years ago, but researchers do not know how far the site extends from the beach. They believe that hundreds of Pictish and Norse bodies are still buried there.
“The local residents and the landowner have been quite concerned about what’s left of the cemetery being eroded by the sea,” Higgins said.
Uncovered bones are usually either coated with clay to protect them or removed from the site after their positions are thoroughly labeled, so it is rather unusual for bones to end up on the beach, he explained.
Researchers do not know yet of the exposed bones belong to Picts or Vikings, as no burial objects or funeral clothes were spotted, and the bodies were buried four of five layers under the surface.
Cultural Transition
Historians claim that the first Norse immigrants to the Orkney Islands established there in the late eighth century, leaving a rising new monarchy in Norway. They used the Orkney Islands to begin their own voyages and Viking raids, and ultimately, all the islands were ruled by the Norse, according to The Scotsman.
The relationship between the Picts and the Norse on the Orkney Islands is highly argued by scholars. They cannot know for sure whether the Norse took over by force, or were settlers who traded and entered marriage with the Picts. However, now, the ancient cemetery at Newark Bay may help researchers answer their questions.
“The Orkney Islands were Pictish, and then they became Norse,” Higgins said. “We’re not really clear how that transition happened, whether it was an invasion, or people lived together. This is one of the few opportunities we’ve got to investigate that.”
A part of the scientific work on the remains would require testing genetic material from the ancient bones, which might demonstrate that some people living on the Orkney Islands today are successors of people who lived there more than 1,000 years ago.
The scientific study of bones from the ancient cemetery at Newark Bay could reveal clues to the cultural transition from Pictish to Norse domination of the Orkney Islands.
“We’re fairly confident that we’re going to find that some local residents are related to people in the cemetery,” Higgins said.
Two Viking Ships Unearthed Reveal Extremely Rare Viking Burial Practices
Incredibly revealing burials found inside two viking ships have been unearthed in Sweden. Archaeologists are never entirely certain what they will find when they begin digging in any given location.
History lends them clues, of course, about the settlements established nearby and what may be found deep within the earth. But it’s always something of a science-based lottery, one that sometimes rewards their dedication to discovery, but just as often does not.
That wasn’t the case for a team in Sweden recently, who knew precisely what they were going to find under a section of modern homes in this rural area. This past summer, a team of experts were thrilled to come upon unique Viking burial ships near the village of Gamla Uppsala.
When a nearby parish decided to build a new hall for the community, they discovered, instead, extremely rare Viking burial remains. Experts were called in, and a dig proceeded immediately.
Imprint of one of the Viking ships.
The team discovered two burial boats, a unique burial ritual used by the Vikings during the period from 550 — 1000 A.D. One boat was in remarkably good shape, although the other was less well preserved.
Nonetheless, Anton Seiler, a spokesman for the dig, was delighted by the items recovered. He told CNN that the folks buried belonged to a select few in the community, probably well-off individuals who were respected.
“It’s a small group of people who were buried in this way,” he explained in an interview last July. “You can (assume) that they were distinguished people in the society of the time, since burial ships in general are very rare.”
The horse skeleton.
The one boat that was in good shape contained within it — and beneath it — important objects from the period, including a spear and pieces of one shield. Also discovered in the boat were the remains of a dog, a horse, and other animals and birds, including falcons and pigs.
“This is a unique excavation,” said Anton Seiler of Swedish archaeology firm The Archaeologists. “The last excavation of this grave type in Old Uppsala was almost 50 years ago.”
Excavating the horse and dog skeletons.
These finds were even more striking, the experts said. Seiler told CNN, “It is exciting for us since boat burials are so rarely excavated. We can now use modern science and methods that will generate new results, hypotheses, and answers.”
The site was kept out of the news initially, said Johan Anund, a member of The Archaeologists, part of the state-run National Historical Museums, because the team was concerned about vandalism.
In a July interview with the New York Times, Anund confirmed that the find was highly significant in part, because the remains proved that the common custom at the time, cremation, wasn’t undertaken.
“Uncremated boat graves are extremely rare,” he stated in the interview, “and the chance to excavated them is even scarcer.” He added that the dig represents a “once in a lifetime opportunity for archaeologists.”
He added that Gamla Uppsala was an important place during the Viking era, one of political and economic importance.
Anund went on to explain why animal remains were buried. Although the burials were “very pagan,” he said, the fact that they were not cremated, demonstrates that the edicts of Christianity were taking hold.
“It was a message to the ‘other side’ about who was coming there,” he continued. Burying the man with his animals was a way of telling the ‘powers that be’ that a man of significance was resting there. (To strict Catholics, cremation is not an accepted practice even today.)
ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER THE BURIAL OF SCYTHIAN AMAZON WITH A HEAD DRESS ON DON
“Such head dresses have been found a bit more than two dozen and they all were in ‘tzar’ or not very rich barrows of the steppe zone of Scythia. We first found such head dress in the barrows of the forest steppe zone and what is more interesting the head dress was first found in the burial of an Amazon”, says Valerii Guliaev.
Cemetery Devitsa V which was called so after the name of the local village has been known since 2000s. It consists of 19 mounds part of which is almost hidden as this region is an agricultural zone which is currently plowed. Since 2010 the site has been studied by the specialists of the Don expedition of IA RAS.
By the time of the excavation works the barrow ¹ 9 of the cemetery Devitsa V was a small hill of 1 m height and 40 m in diameter. Under the center of the mound the archaeologists found the remains of the tomb where the narrow entrance-dromos from the eastern side led to.
In ancient times the tomb was covered by oak blocks which were laid crisscross and rested on 11 strong oak piles. The grave pit was surrounded by the clay earthwork taken from the ground during the construction of the grave.
Right: Details of calathos on the mistress’s skull. Left: Graphic calathos’s reconstruction.
In the barrow four women of different age were buried: two young women of 20-29 years old and 25-35 years old, a teenage girl of 12-13 years old and a woman of 45-50 years old. The burial was made simultaneously as one of the piles supported the floor of the tomb was in the dromos and completely overlaid the entrance so that it would be absolutely impossible to overtake it during next burials.
The burial was robbed in ancient times. The robbers broke into the tomb from the north when the floor had already fallen and the sepulcher was buried i.e. in 100 or 200 years after the barrow was filled. However, only northern and eastern parts of the tomb had been robbed where there were the remains of the teenager and one of the young women.
Apart from the spread remains we found in the northern part of the pit more than 30 iron arrow heads, an iron hook in the shape of a bird, fragments of horse harness, iron hooks for hanging harness, iron knives, fragments of molded vessels, multiple animals’ bones. In filling the robbers’ passage the broken black lacquer lacythus with red figure palmette dated back to the second –third quarter of the 4th c BC was found.
At the southern and western wall there were two untouched skeletons laid on the wooden beds covered by grass beddings. One of them belonged to a young woman buried in a “position of a horseman”.
As the researches of the anthropologists have shown to lay her in such way the tendons of her legs had been cut. Under the left shoulder of a “horsewoman” there was a bronze mirror, on the left there were two spears and on the left hand there was a bracelet made of glass beads.
In the legs there were two vessels: a molded cassolette and a black lacquer one hand cantharos which was made in the second quarter of the 4th c BC.
The second buried was a woman of 45-50 years old. For the Scythian time it was a respectable age as the life expectancy of a woman was 30-35 years old.
She was buried in a ceremonial head dress, calathos, the plates of which were preserved decorated with the floral ornament and the rims with the pendants in the shape of amphorae.
As the researches have shown the jewelry was made from the alloy where approximately 65-70% was gold and the rest is the pollution of copper, silver and a small per cent of iron.
This is quite a high per cent of the gold for Scythian jewelry which was often made in the workshops of Panticapaeum from electrum, the alloy of gold and silver whereas the gold could be approximately of 30%.
“Found calathos is a unique find. This is the first head dress in the sites of Scythian epoch found on Middle Don and it was found in situ on the location on the skull. Of course, earlier similar head dresses were found in known rich barrows of Scythia.
However, only few were discovered by archaeologists. They were more often found by the peasants, they were taken by the police, landowners and the finds had been through many hands when they came to the specialists. That is why it is not known how well they have been preserved. Here we can be certain that the find has been well preserved”, noted Valerii Guliaev.
Along with the older woman an iron knife was laid wrapped into a piece of fabrique and an iron arrow head of quite a rare type, tanged with forked end.
These finds and also many details of the weapon and horse harness allow suggesting that the Amazons, women-warriors whose institution was in the Scythian epoch among Iranian nomadic and semi nomadic tribes of Eastern Europe, were buried in this barrow. Such horse women probably were cattle, belonging and dwelling guardians while the men went to long-term warpaths.
“The Amazons are common Scythian phenomenon and only on Middle Don during the last decade our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women.
Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them. However, we come across burials with four Amazons of such different age for the first time”, said Valerii Guliaev.
The burial was made in autumn at the end of the warm period. The researches done by paleozoologists of IA RAS helped to figure it out. In the grave pit the bones of six-eight months old lamb were found which some time ago had been in a bronze cooking pot dag into the ground in the center of the grave.
The robbers took the pot which was of great value and the bones greened from being rested in a bronze dish for a long time had been thrown away. Since the sheep usually lamb in March-April it was concluded that the burial which the barrow had been filled for was done not later than November.
Remarkable ‘Sewn’ Roman Shipwreck is Croatia’s Biggest Find of 21st Century
The remarkably well-preserved wreck of a 2,000-year-old Ancient Roman ‘sewn ship’ that was stitched together using ropes and wooden nails has been found in Croatia.
The remarkably well-preserved wreck of a 2,000-year-old Ancient Roman ‘sewn ship’ that was stitched together using ropes and wooden nails, pictured, has been found in Croatia
The vessel was unearthed from the Porta de Mar archaeological site on the ancient waterfront of the town of Poreč, where it had sunk near an ancient pier.
Two thousand years ago, Poreč was part of the Roman province of Dalmatia and the town’s shielded harbour made it ideal for both defence and maritime trade.
Experts are calling the ship Croatia’s greatest archaeological discovery of the century — one that is shining light on ancient ship-building practices.
Found embedded in the mud, the 16 feet (5 metres) -long and 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) wide wreck of the sailboat retained many of its original timbers.
The vessel was unearthed from the Porta de Mar archaeological site on the ancient waterfront of the town of Poreč, where it had sunk near an ancient pier
‘It was well preserved because it was at a certain depth in the soil and could not be penetrated by oxygen,’ archaeologist Klaudia Bartolić Sirotić told Croatia Week.
Much of the ship’s ‘formwork, ribs, and keel’ have survived, Ms Bartolić Sirotić told Archaeology.org — and the researchers were able to observe the imprint that the rest of the vessel had left in the mud to determine the type of ship it was.
The team believe that the vessel had a single sail — and was likely a small private fishing boat.
So-called ‘sewn ships’ are characteristic of the boatwrights of the northern Adriatic back in the first century AD — and featured planks in the outer hull that were essentially stitched together, using ropes and wooden nails known as ‘spots’.
‘Every stitch that is made is recorded [in the wreck],’ Ms Bartolić Sirotić told Croatia Week.
Large wooden nails were then used to attach the outer hull to the inner frame.
The Porta de Mar find is not unique to Croatia — however, most of the sewn ships from the country date back to earlier periods and were unearthed by marine archaeologists underwater, making them much harder to study.
‘This specimen from Poreč is one of three boats found on land that are not part of an underwater archaeological survey,’ Ms Bartolić Sirotić added.
The vessel was unearthed as a result of a redevelopment project that will see the Poreč renovated and made more pedestrian-friendly.
The vessel was unearthed as a result of a redevelopment project that will see the Poreč renovated and made more pedestrian-friendly
In the meantime, the archaeologists are working to complete their study of the boat where it was found, before the remains are removed and conserved with a mind towards being displayed to the public at the Poreč museum.
