2,100-year-old burial of woman lying on bronze ‘mermaid bed’ unearthed in Greece
A photo of the burial of a woman lying on a bronze bed. She lived sometime during the first century B.C.
Archaeologists have unearthed the ancient burial of a woman lying on a bronze bed near the city of Kozani in northern Greece. It dates to the first century B.C.
Depictions of mermaids decorate the posts of the bed. The bed also displays an image of a bird holding a snake in its mouth, a symbol of the ancient Greek god Apollo.
The woman’s head was covered with gold laurel leaves that likely were part of a wreath, Areti Chondrogianni-Metoki, director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Kozani, told Live Science in an email. The wooden portions of the bed have decomposed.
Gold threads, possibly from embroidery, were found on the woman’s hands, Chondrogianni-Metoki said. Additionally, four clay pots and a glass vessel were buried alongside the remains. No other people were buried with her.
This image shows how the bed would have looked before the burial. It is made largely of bronze but had some wooden parts that have since decayed away.
Archaeologists are now analyzing the skeleton to determine the woman’s health, age when she died and possible cause of death.
The artifacts found with her suggest that she likely came from a wealthy background, and may have belonged to a royal family.
“We do not know much about the history of this area [during the first century B.C.],” Chondrogianni-Metoki told .
Thousands of years ago, Kozani was near an important city called Mavropigi (the site is now a village) that housed a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo, Chondrogianni-Metoki said.
This mermaid head was found on the bed.
Historical records show that during the first century B.C., Roman control and influence in Greece was on the rise. The Romans destroyed the city of Corinth in 146 B.C. and sacked Athens in 86 B.C.
In 48 B.C. a crucial battle in northern Greece known as the Battle of Pharsalus saw the army of Julius Caesar defeat a force led by Pompey; the victory resulted in Caesar becoming the de facto ruler of Rome.
It’s unclear when exactly in the first century B.C. this woman lived or if she would have witnessed or heard of any of those historic events. The woman’s remains are currently housed at the Archaeological Museum of Aiani in Greece.
contacted scholars not affiliated with the research for further insights on the discovery, but none were available to offer comment at the time of publication.
The bronze bed burial was found in 2021. In 2022, another bed burial was found in a nearby cemetery that had an elderly man buried on the remains of a bed made of iron and wood. That burial dated to the fourth century B.C.
Stunning 700-year-old giant cave found behind a rabbit hole in the British countryside.
An apparently ordinary rabbit’s hole in a farmer’s field leads to an underground sanctuary said to have been used by devotees of a medieval religious order – but is everything what it seems?
According to local legend, the Caynton Caves, near Shifnal, in Shropshire, were used by followers of the Knights Templar in the 17th Century.
Located less than a metre underground, they appear to be untouched structurally.
Their original purpose is shrouded in mystery, but Historic England, which describes the caves as a “grotto”, believes they were probably built in the late 18th or early 19th Century – hundreds of years after the Templar order was dissolved.
In its report, it said the caves appear to be used for “black magic rites” by modern-day visitors.
Michael Scott, from Birmingham, went to photograph the caves after seeing a video of them online.
He said: “I traipsed over a field to find it, but if you didn’t know it was there you would just walk right past it. Considering how long it’s been there it’s in amazing condition, it’s like an underground temple.”
The tunnel leads to a network of walkways and arches carved out of sandstone, as well as a font.
Mr Scott said the cave was “quite cramped” and those nearing 6ft (1.8m) tall would have to bend down to fit in. Some chambers are so small that those exploring have to enter them on hands and knees.
“I had to crouch down and once I was in it was completely silent. There were a few spiders in there but that was it. It was raining so the slope down was quite sludgy but inside the cave was bone dry,” he added.
Huge Celtic Iron Age tomb with stunning artifacts discovered in France!
There’s a massive funerary chamber in France where Archaeologists are doing a research for what they believe was a 5th century BC Celtic Prince holding his chariot, a bronze made cauldron, a vase with a Greek god of wine and ecstasy painted on it, a huge knife and few other artifacts.
These treasure worth found artifacts in the Champagne region are “fitting for one of the highest elite of the end of the first Iron Age”, according to the French archaeological agency INRAP in the French-English “The Connexion” newspaper.
These Archaeologists, from the French National agency – INRAP, dug 40m (131feet) underground to find these valuables on the edge of a park near Lavau.
The tomb is bigger than the cathedral in nearby Troyes, the article reported. It covered nearly 7655sq. yards and was surrounded by a palisade and ditch when found in tumulus (tumulus is a burial mound or barrow).
Their page on Facebook claims that the center of the almost 44-yard diameter tumulus has his chariot “at the heart of a vast funeral chamber” of 15,3 yards squared.
Even though they’ve found only some parts of a skeleton, the Archaeologists haven’t still identified the princes’ remains. They only think that they’ve found a body of a princes’ relative among with some funeral urns and other graves, and claim that they’ve already dated some of the ashes in the urns to 1400 BC.
The tomb was found when they were inspecting the ground in order to explore it and prepare it for a new commercial center construction. The president of INRAP, Dominique Garcia, said they were sure the tomb was a princes’ because of the big knife they’ve found in it.
As reported, the Archaeologists consider the most important find was the 1meter-diameter bronze cauldron. Its 4 handles were decorated with Achelous’ head (Achelous is the river god of ancient Greeks). It also had 8 lionesses’ heads, and a ceramic oinochoe wine jug with Dionysus under a grapevine painted in it.
They assume that the wine set was a centerpiece of an aristocratic Celtic banquet. As INRAP reported, it is a “Greco-Latin” wine set which confirms that the Celts and folks from the Mediterranean region were making exchanges.
“At the time [of the burial] Mediterranean traders were extending their economic range, seeking slaves and precious metals and jewels. The Celts, who controlled the main communication routes along the Seine, Rhône, Saône, Rhine and Danube, benefited from the exchanges to get prestigious objects,” the Connexion article reported.
The Celtic peoples are in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland.
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology says: “At one time, however, the Celts were spread over a large part of the [European] continent, and in 278 BC one roving band even penetrated as far east as Asia Minor, where they gave their name to Galatia.
Until the rise of the Roman power, the Celts were a force to be reckoned with. Rome itself had been sacked by them in 385 BC, a historical fact not forgotten by the legionnaires who gave Julius Caesar victory between 59 and 49 BC over the Celtic tribes living in Gaul, present-day France.
Although largely incorporated into the Roman Empire, the Celts continued to worship their own gods and goddesses right up to the time of the official adoption by the Romans of the Christian faith.”
Cuchulainn of Ireland was one of the most important Celtic heroes. Died at an early age he was slain in a heroic defense of Ulster.
Dagda (means “the good god”) was the chief Celtic God of the Irish, apparently, was very wise, knowledgeable and a great magician. As it is known, Dagda could slay his enemies with one end of his club and heal and resurrect his allies with the other. An inexhaustible bounty could’ve been served up by his magical cauldron.
During a truce before the second battle of Magh Tuireadh, Dagda visited the enemies camp – Fomorii. As the Fomorii required, he was supposed to eat a porridge of flour, fat, milk, pigs and goats, that all together could’ve fed up to 50 men, or instead, they would’ve kill him.
Galloway Hoard: Rare and unique Viking-age treasure goes on display at National Museum of Scotland
It was the day that an amateur metal-detecting enthusiast unearthed one of the largest discoveries of Viking treasure in Scotland.
In September , retired businessman Derek McLennan was scanning an area of church land in Dumfries and Galloway with two local ministers when he stumbled across more than 100 objects including solid gold jewellery, arm bands and silver ingots.
Pectoral cross from the Galloway Hoard before being cleaned
The artefacts, thought to have been buried between the mid-ninth and 10th century, included an early Christian cross made of solid silver, with unusual enamelled decorations.
At first, Derek failed to recognise the significance of his find.
However, to his amazement, the more he kept digging, the more he found.
After turning over what he thought was a silver spoon and wiping it with his thumb, he saw a saltire-type of design and knew instantly it was Viking.
Conserved bird pin from the Galloway Hoard
“Then my senses exploded!” he revealed in an interview at the time, as further digging revealed a second layer of artefacts, including an intact Carolingian (western European) pot with its lid still in place.
In 2022, the treasure trove now known as the Galloway Hoard was acquired by National Museums Scotland for £1.98 million with the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Art Fund and the Scottish Government as well as a major public fundraising campaign.
Since then, it has been undergoing extensive conservation and research at the National Museums Collection Centre in Edinburgh.
In 2022 the Scottish Government announced funding to enable National Museums Scotland to tour the Galloway Hoard to museums
Now, this internationally significant collection is going on public display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for the first time, offering the chance to see intricate details hidden for over 1000 years, revealed by expert conservation, painstaking cleaning and cutting-edge research.
The new and free entry exhibition, Galloway Hoard: Viking-age Treasure, which opens on May 29, aims to transform visitors’ understanding of Scotland’s connections with the wider world during the Viking period, and to give a fascinating insight into archaeology in progress.
Amazing discovery and so much more
County Durham-raised professional archaeologist Dr Martin Goldberg, Senior Curator, Medieval Archaeology & History at National Museums Scotland, laughs that “diggers never find anything” when asked if he discovered anything of note during the 10 years he was a “jobbing archaeologist” in the early 2000s.
He’s delighted, however, to be working so closely with the Galloway Hoard which is the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland.
Buried around 900 AD, as well as silver, gold and jewelled treasures, the hoard includes rarely surviving textiles including wool, linen and Scotland’s earliest examples of silk which raises intriguing questions about trade with Europe and Asia during the time the Vikings were known to be raiding, and settling, parts of Scotland.
“For me what’s amazing about the Galloway Hoard is it’s not just about that initial discovery – there were so many things in it there we’ve never seen before, and it had a very unusual preservation of organic materials,” he says.
A pot with its lid removed, which is amongst the Viking treasure in the Galloway Hoard
“What the exhibition is trying to show people is the ongoing process of discovery that we’re engaged in.
“There are things with the conservation process – the cleaning and the preserving of the objects – that are being revealed to us for the first time, and probably the big icon of that is this Anglo Saxon cross that we are using as the marketing piece for the exhibition.
“Sure enough the 50 hours of conservation time it took my colleague Mary Davis to clean the cross has revealed this really stunning Christian iconography on it.
Pectoral cross from the Galloway Hoard after being cleaned
“That’s one of the unusual items – it’s the type of thing you wouldn’t expect in a stereotypical Viking hoard and at every turn when you look through this material, there is always something unexpected.”
Buried in layers
The exhibition shows how the hoard was buried in four distinct parcels.
The top layer was a parcel of silver bullion and a rare Anglo-Saxon cross, separated from a lower layer of three parts.
Silver bullion from the upper layer of the Galloway Hoard
The first of these was another parcel of silver bullion wrapped in leather and twice as big as the one above.
The second was a cluster of four elaborately decorated silver ‘ribbon’ arm-rings bound together and concealing in their midst a small wooden box containing three items of gold.
The third was a lidded, silver gilt vessel wrapped in layers of textile and packed full of carefully wrapped objects that appear to be have been curated like relics or heirlooms.
Glass beads, from the 10th-century treasure trove, known as the Galloway Hoard
They include beads, pendants, brooches, bracelets, an elaborate belt-set, a rock crystal jar and other curios, often strung or wrapped with silk.
Martin explains that discovering and decoding the secrets of the Galloway Hoard is a multi-layered process.
Conservation of the metal objects has revealed decorations, inscriptions and other details that were not previously visible.
Anglo-saxon metalwork from Galloway Hoard
Research into many aspects of the hoard continues and will take many years.
Some items are too fragile to be displayed, particularly those with rare textile survivals.
The exhibition is using AV and 3D reconstructions to enable visitors to understand these objects and the work that is being done with them.
Comparison with other collections and consultation with specialists around the world has enabled deeper understanding of the hoard.
Disc brooch from the Galloway Hoard
Yet at the same time, it raises many unanswered questions.
For example, an Anglo-Saxon runic inscription on an arm-ring fragment has revealed the name ‘Egbert’, perhaps a person associated with the hoard’s burial.
However, the Old English name, rather than a Scandinavian one, causes experts to question simple stereotypes about the identities of those involved with the hoard’s accumulation and burial.
Preliminary studies
Scientific analysis is enabling greater precision about the date and composition of the material, which in turn offers clues to where the individual objects may have come from.
Four arm-rings and gold from the Galloway Hoard
A research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, starting the Monday after the exhibition opens, aims to look into the origins of some of these materials.
Preliminary studies have already revealed incredible international connections with materials sourced from Ireland, England and Viking-age Scandinavia, as well as objects of some antiquity from ancient Rome, and others travelling thousands of miles from as far away as Central Asia.
The vessel in which the hoard was contained also appears to have originated somewhere in Central Asia.
Silver bullion from the lower layer of the Galloway Hoard
“The silver bullion is part of an economy that has grown around the Irish Sea in the 9th century,” says Martin.
“There’s a sudden influx of silver and some of that silver is coming from as far away again as Asia, the Islamic Caliphates.
“We know that that material is being made in the Irish Sea but we know that the silver is coming from elsewhere.
“Say for instance if you find amber, that has to come from the Baltic, or the silk that’s in the hoard – we know that has to travel somewhere from Asia.
Gold objects from the Galloway Hoard
“You get this picture of regional economy through the silver bullion.
“But then the other materials that are unusual for a Viking hoard, and particular to this hoard, are telling us about much wider connections.”
Who did the hoard belong to?
Martin says it would be “pure speculation” to suggest who the hoard belonged to or why it was buried.
However, there is evidence of there being a group of people involved with some older objects looking like heirlooms passed down through generations.
Dr Martin Goldberg
“You get this picture of regional economy through the silver bullion.
“But then the other materials that are unusual for a Viking hoard, and particular to this hoard, are telling us about much wider connections.”
“There are runic inscriptions on four arm-rings, and those runic inscriptions would normally tell us that they are names, they are identifiers of people,” he says.
“Then there’s another group of arm-rings that are all sort of knotted together almost like a contract, but there’s four of them.
“So there seems to be these signals in various parts of the hoard that we are looking at four owners at least for the bullion.”
Multi-hinged strap from the Galloway Hoard
The Viking Age
Martin explains that the burial dates to the earliest part of the Viking age.
The first Viking attacks are recorded on Lindisfarne in 793 AD, and this hoard is probably buried 100 years after that around 900 AD.
For context, the first mention of the Gaelic kingdom of Alba is around 900 AD, while the first time that Alfred the Great’s descendants start talking about England as a political entity is when they are pushing back against the Vikings, and that’s also around 900 AD or certainly in the 10th century.
Martin says that while there isn’t a huge amount of material evidence of Viking activity in South West Scotland at this time, there is a lot of place name evidence all around the Irish Sea coasts where the seafaring Vikings raided, settled and then named settlements.
What a big find like the Galloway Hoard does is make archaeologists re-assess other evidence already linked to the area.
The Galloway Glens place name project, for example, is studying the interface between Brittonic, Anglo Saxon, Gaelic and Norse place names and trying to establish patterns left on the landscape.
Objects from the Viking Galloway Hoard
It’s a “real challenge” for Martin to pinpoint a stand-out item because the hoard contains so many new things.
From the discovery of more gold than any other Viking age hoard that survives from Britain or Ireland, to the 5kg of silver and the mystery of the vessel from somewhere in Central Asia, there’s plenty to fascinate.
However, it’s two balls of dirt found right at the bottom of the vessel, nestled in amongst the silks and the gold and the rock crystal, that intrigue Martin most.
Ball of dirt from the Galloway Hoard
Normally they wouldn’t survive. They’d turn to dust, or if they got wet they would dissolve away.
But because the vessel had a lid on it and because the vessel was wrapped, they’ve been protected.
It also suggests the balls of dirt were curated – that somebody looked after them and somebody thought they were special enough to place in amongst all these treasures. The question is – why?
Stand-out item
“For me they stand out because they are so mundane,” says Martin.
“They are literally balls of dirt. You can see how they were formed as a kid would with Plasticine – like two sausages of dirt material being rolled into a ball about the size of a Malteser.
“But again my colleague Mary Davis who’s the conservator, she microscopically picked up traces of gold in the dirt and minute traces of bone. So you think, ‘right it’s not just any old dirt then!’
“It’s possible these were reliquary earth relics – balls of dirt rolled by people on pilgrimages to holy shrines then kept as sacred relics.”
It’s the solving of mysteries about the past that got Martin into archaeology in the first place, and he hopes visitors to the hoard, which he describes as an “incredible gift”, will be inspired by this ongoing process of discovery.
Pectoral cross from the Galloway Hoard after being cleaned
Mysterious Shipwreck Artifacts Found Off England’s Coast To Be X-Rayed
Tons of items retrieved from the wreck of a sailing boat from the Dutch East India company will be scanned by new X-ray equipment to reveal hidden details.
In January 1740, after landing on Goodwin Sands, the Rooswijk [ a so-called ‘ retrochip ‘ built on long travels ] sank off Kent Coast. Archaeologists visited the wreck and recovered many artifacts — including silver coins and ingots, wooden chests, and a brass wine pot — between 2021 and 2022.
Due to a £150,000 grant from the Wolfson Foundation to upgrade Historic England X-ray equipment, many of these objects will now be examined in more detail.
Originally destined for Batavia — modern-day Jakarta — the merchant ship Rooswijk sank around 5 miles (8 kilometers) off of the British coast on its second voyage to the East, with none of its believed 237-strong crew surviving the accident.
Its wreck was first discovered at a depth of 79 feet (24 metres) by an amateur diver back in 2021 — with the bulk of recovery efforts taking place between 2021 and 2022, with the objects from the vessel legally belonging to the Dutch state. Among the artefacts recovered from the wreck were bars of silver, gold coins, knives, scabbards, human remains, pots, jars and thimbles.
The grant from the Wolfson Foundation charity will be used to upgrade the power and resolution of the equipment at at Historic England’s large, walk-in X-ray facility for scientific and archaeological analysis at Fort Cumberland, Portsmouth.
The existing facility has been at that centre of the organisation’s archaeological assessment, analysis and conservation work.
When the upgrade is complete, Rooswijk artefacts will be among the first to be scanned by the revamped facility, in a collaboration between Historic England and Rijksdienst Voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, the Netherlands’ cultural heritage agency.
Many of the finds from the wreck are covered with hard concretions of matter that will require the extra power of the new equipment to be successfully scanned.
The Rooswijk — a so-called ‘retourschip’ built for long journeys — sank off of the coast of Kent in January 1740 after running aground on Goodwin Sands. Pictured, thimbles covered in hard concretions that were recovered from the wreck of the vessel
Archaeologists visited the wreck and recovered many artifacts — including silver coins and ingots, wooden chests, and a brass wine pot — between 2021 and 2022. Pictured, an X-ray image taken of one of the wooden chests from The Rooswijk, which contained thimbles
Many of the finds from the wreck are covered with hard concretions of matter that will require the extra power of the new equipment to be successfully scanned. Pictured, pewter jugs recovered from The Rooswijk
‘This generous investment will place Historic England at the forefront of heritage X-radiography for many years to come,’ said Historic England head Duncan Wilson.
‘With this new technology, we will be able to analyse, conserve and better understand many more objects recovered from historic shipwrecks or excavated from archaeological sites.’
‘We are very grateful to The Wolfson Foundation for their support to this vital grant.’
The new X-ray machinery will also ‘greatly improve’ the analysis of Roman-era artefacts, Historic England said — as the scanner will be able to penetrate dirt and debris build-ups around such objects without the risk of damaging them.
‘We are excited to support this important piece of equipment – bringing together Wolfson’s longstanding interests in science and heritage,’ said Wolfson Foundation chief executive Paul Ramsbottom.
‘The beauty of X-ray technology is the way in which it reveals hidden secrets of the past as well as helping with conservation.’
‘We are particularly delighted to be supporting the heritage sector at this challenging moment for us all.’
Its wreck was first discovered at a depth of 79 feet (24 meters) by an amateur diver back in 2021 — with the bulk of recovery efforts taking place between 2021 and 2022, with the objects from the vessel legally belonging to the Dutch state. Pictured, coins from the wreck
The new X-ray machinery will also ‘greatly improve’ the analysis of Roman-era artefacts, Historic England said — as the scanner will be able to penetrate dirt and debris build-ups around such objects without the risk of damaging them. Pictured, top, a piece of Roman armour covered in concretion and, bottom, the interior of such revealed by X-ray imaging.
Well-Preserved Iron Age Butter Found At The Bottom Of Lake In Scotland
The replica crannog on Loch Tay, where the butter was found.
Now, the wooden butter dish remains one of the most evocative items left behind by Scotland’s ancient water dwellers who made their homes on Loch Tay.
The dish was recovered during earlier excavations on the loch where at least 17 crannogs, or Iron Age wooden houses, were once dotted up and down the water.
Built from alder with a life span of around 20 years, the structures simply collapsed into the loch once they had served their purpose, with an incredible array of objects taken with them.
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The 2,500-year-old butter dish and the remains of the butter.
Among them was the dish which, remarkably, still carried traces of butter made by this Iron Age community.
Rich Hiden, the archaeologist at the Scottish Crannog Centre, said the item had helped to illuminate the everyday life of the crannog dwellers who farmed the surrounding land, and grew barley and ancient wheats such as spelt and emmer, and reared animals.
The crannogs were probably considered high-status sites which offered good security as well as easy access to trading routes along the Tay and into the North Sea.
Mr Hiden said conditions at the bottom of the loch had offered the perfect environment to preserve the butter and the dish.
He said: “Because of the fantastic anaerobic conditions, where there is very light, oxygen or bacteria to break down anything organic, you get this type of sealed environment.
“When they started excavating, they pulled out this square wooden dish, well around three-quarters of a square wooden dish, which had these really nice chisel marks on the sides as well as this grey stuff.”
Liped analysis on this matter found that it was dairy material, with experts believing it likely originated from a cow. Holes in the bottom of the wooden dish further suggest that it was used for the buttering process.
Cream would have been churned until thickened until it splits to form the buttermilk, with a woven cloth – possibly made from nettle fibres – placed in the dish with the clumps of cream and then further pushed through to separate the last of the liquid.
The butter then may have been turned into cheese by adding rennet, which naturally forms in a number of plants, including nettles.
Mr Hiden said: “This dish is so valuable in many ways. To be honest, we would expect people of this time to be eating dairy. In the early Iron Age, they had mastered the technology of smelting iron ore into to’s so mastering the technology of dairy we would expect.
“So while it may not surprise us that they are eating dairy, what is so important about this butter dish is that it helps us to identify what life was like in the crannogs and the skills and the tools that they had
“To me, that is archaeology at its finest. It is using the object itself to unravel the story. The best thing about this butter dish is that is so personal and offers us such a complete snapshot of what was happening here.
He added: “It is not just a piece of wood. You look at it and you start to extrapolate so much. If you start to pull one thread, you look at the tool marks and you see they were using very fine chisels to make this kind of object. They were probably making their own so that gives another aspect as to how life was here.”
It is believed that 20 people and animals lived in a crannog at any one time. Many trees were used to fashion the homes, with the Iron Age residents having a solid knowledge of trees with their houses thatched with reed and bracken.
Hazel was woven into panels to make walls and partitions.
Plans are underway to relocate the Scottish Crannog Centre to a bigger site at Dalerb, with three to four crannogs to be built in the water there.
2,000-Year-Old Roman Face Cream With Visible, Ancient Fingermarks
The world’s oldest cosmetic face cream, complete with the finger marks of its last user 2,000 years ago, has been found by archaeologists excavating a Roman temple on the banks of London’s River Thames.
Measuring 6 cm by 5 cm, the tightly sealed, cylindrical tin can was opened yesterday at the Museum of London to reveal a pungent-smelling white cream.
“It seems to be very much like an ointment, and it’s got finger marks in the lid … whoever used it last has applied it to something with their fingers and used the lid as a dish to take the ointment out,” museum curator Liz Barham said as she opened the box.
The superbly made canister, now on display at the museum, was made almost entirely of tin, a precious metal at that time. Perhaps a beauty treatment for a fashionable Roman lady or even a face paint used in temple ritual, the cream is currently undergoing scientific analysis.
“We don’t yet know whether the cream was medicinal, cosmetic or entirely ritualistic.
The jar of Roman cosmetics uncovered beneath London’s streets (Museum of London)
We’re lucky in London to have a marshy site where the contents of this completely sealed box must have been preserved very quickly – the metal is hardly corroded at all,” said Nansi Rosenberg, a senior archaeological consultant on the project.
“This is an extraordinary discovery,” Federico Nappo, an expert on ancient Roman cosmetics of Pompeii. “It is likely that the cream contains animal fats. We know that the Romans used donkey’s milk as a treatment for the skin. However, it should not be very difficult to find out the cream’s composition.”
The pot, which appears to have been deliberately hidden, was found at the bottom of a sealed ditch in Southwark, about two miles south of central London.
Placed at the point where three roads meet near the river crossing – Watling St from Dover, Stane St from Chichester and the bridgehead road over the Thames – the site contains the foundations of two Roman-Celtic temples, a guest house, an outdoor area suitable for mass worship, plinths for statues and a stone pillar.
The complex, which last year revealed a stone tablet with the earliest known inscription bearing the Roman name of London, dates to around the mid-2nd century.
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It is the first religious complex to be found in the capital, with rare evidence of organized religion in London 2,000 years ago.
“The analysis and interpretation of the finds have only just begun, and I’ve no doubt there are further discoveries to be made as we piece together the jigsaw puzzle we’ve excavated,” Rosenberg said. “But it already alters our whole perception – Southwark was a major religious focus of the Roman capital.”
Since excavation work was completed, the site will now become a residential development housing 521 apartments.
Her 3,000-Year-Old Bones Showed Unusual Signs of Wear. It Turns Out, She Was a Master Ceramicist
Back in 2022, archaeologists at Eleutherna—an ancient city-state located on the Greek island of Crete—discovered a woman’s skeleton that showed unusual signs of wear.
The master female ceramicist likely created large vases, known as pithoi, similar to these
As Michael Price writes for Science magazine, in comparison to the other females at the site, the muscles on the right side of her body were notably developed, while the cartilage on her knee and hip joints was worn away, leaving the bones smooth and ivory-like.
Initial analysis of the woman’s remains, as well as the pottery found in similar graves at the Orthi Petra burial site, indicated that the approximately 45 to 50 year old lived between 900 B.C.. and 650 B.C. By this point in Crete’s history, the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations—rivals best known for the labyrinthine palace complexes that inspired the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and the gold mask of Agamemnon, respectively—had long since collapsed, ushering the region into a tumultuous period later dubbed the Greek Dark Ages.
Despite determining these demographic details, researchers were unable to ascertain why the woman’s bones showed such unique signs of wear.
The team, led by Adelphi University anthropologist Anagnostis Agelarakis and site excavator Nikolaos Stampolidis, created digital and physical models that allowed them to judge the physical effects of routine tasks such as spinning wool, planting and harvesting crops, weaving on a loom, and bread baking, but none of the actions yielded a match.
Then, as Cara Giaimo reports for Atlas Obscura, the team chanced upon a master ceramicist who lived near the Eleutherna site. The woman demonstrated how she created her large artisan vases—describing the sets of muscles used and subsequent strain experienced—and provided researchers with a key breakthough in the frustrating case.
Her movements and the physical toll exacted by the process, Giaimo writes, closely mirrored that of her 3,000-year-old predecessor.
“Constantly flexing her leg to turn the kick wheel would have worn out her joints,” Science’s Price notes, while “repeatedly leaning to one side of the spinning clay to shape and sculpt it would have developed the muscles on that side of her body.”
The researchers confirmed their hypothesis with the help of medical imaging and anatomical models, according to Archaeology’s Marley Brown, and concluded the woman must have been a master ceramicist, honing her craft over a lifetime of arduous physical labor.
These findings, which were first reported at a May conference hosted by the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna, mark the first time researchers have identified an expert female ceramicist working in the world of ancient Greece.
It makes sense that such a figure should emerge in Eleutherna, Brown writes, as the city-state has long been associated with powerful women. In fact, archaeologists previously unearthed the graves of four priestesses in the same Orthi Petra site where the master artisan was found.
Agelarakis explains that the find is, therefore, somewhat “unsurprising given the importance and privileged social position of the Eleuthernian matriline.”
In an interview with Atlas Obscura’s Giaimo, Agelarakis states that the team’s research represents.
He concludes, “It signifies that women … held craft specialization roles in antiquity, which I think is very important.”
7,000-Year-Old Forest and Footprints Uncovered in the Atlantis of Britain
The surge and flood of the North Sea have uncovered an archeological mystery of the Britain past – the remains of hunter-gatherers chasing wildlife through a long-lost wood. An ancient woodland, dating more than 7,000 years and submerged under the sand for centuries, is slowly uncovered by the ocean.
The North Sea has eroded the shore of a Northumberland beach to reveal the remnants of an ancient forest dating back 7,000 years. Archaeologists believe the preserved tree stumps and felled tree trunks lining a 200-meter stretch of coastline south of Amble would have stretched to Europe before the water mass formed
Tree stumps and felled logs, which have been preserved by peat and sand, are now clearly visible along with a 650 feet (200 meters) stretch of coastline at Low Hauxley near Amble, Northumberland.
Studies of the ancient forest, which existed at a time when the sea level was much lower and Britain had only recently separated from what is now mainland Denmark, have revealed it would have consisted of oak, hazel and alder trees.
The forest first began to form around 5,300 BC but by 5,000 BC the encroaching ocean had covered it up and buried it under the sand. Now the sea levels are rising again, the remnants of the forest are becoming visible and being studied by archaeologists.
Rather than a continuous solid landmass, archaeologists believe Doggerland was a region of low-lying bogs and marshes that would have been home to a range of animals, as well as the hunter-gatherers which stalked them.
But the relatively rapid change in the surrounding environment would have gradually confined animals and humans in the region to Europe and the UK as the bogs and marshes became flooded, making them impassable.
Doctor Clive Waddington, of Archaeology Research Services, said: ‘In 5,000 BC the sea level rose quickly and it drowned the land. The sand dunes were blown back further into the land, burying the forest, and then the sea receded a little.
Among the remnants of the ancient forest are tree stumps jutting out of the beach, which have been preserved in a layer of peat
The sea level is now rising again, cutting back the sand dunes, and uncovering the forest. The forest existed in the late Mesolithic period, which was a time of hunting and gathering for humans.
In addition to tree stumps, archaeologists say they have uncovered animal footprints, highlighting the diverse wildlife which would have roamed the ancient Doggerland forest.
Dr. Waddington, who says evidence has been discovered of humans living nearby in 5,000 BC, added: ‘On the surface of the peat we have found footprints of adults and children.
‘We can tell by the shapes of the footprints that they would have been wearing leather shoes.
‘We have also found animal footprints of red deer, wild boar, and brown bears.’
A similar stretch of ancient forest was uncovered in 2014 near the village of Borth, Ceredigion, in Mid Wales after a spate of winter storms washed away the peat preserving the area.
Rather than a continuous solid landmass, archaeologists believe Doggerland was a region of low-lying bogs and marshes connecting the British Isles to Europe and stretching all the way to the Norwegian trench (pictured left). The area, which would have been home to a range of animals, as well as the hunter-gatherers which stalked them, became flooded due to glacial melt, with some high-lying regions such as ‘Dogger Island’ (pictured right, highlighted red) serving as clues to the regions ancient past
Peat is able to preserve trees and even the bodies of animals so well because it is so low in oxygen, effectively choking the microbes which break down organic matter, so preserving their organic contents for thousands of years.
But in coastal regions where ancient forests have been long preserved in peat, such as in Wales and Northumberland, the rising seas are washing away this layer and exposing remnants from Britain’s past.
The uncovered forest has drawn interest from members of the public walking along the coast as they stop to inspect the preserved trees
Ancient dental plaque sheds new light on the diet of Mesolithic foragers in the Balkans
The study of dental calculus from Late Mesolithic individuals from the site of Vlasac in the Danube Gorges of the central Balkans has provided direct evidence that Mesolithic foragers of this region consumed domestic cereals already by c. 6600 BC, i.e. almost half a millennium earlier than previously thought.
The team of researchers led by Emanuela Cristiani from The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge used polarised microscopy to study micro-fossils trapped in the dental calculus (ancient calcified dental plaque) of 9 individuals dated to the Late Mesolithic (c. 6600-6450 BC) and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition phase (c. 6200-5900 BC) from the site of Vlasac in the Danube Gorges. The remains were recovered from this site during excavations from 2006 to 2009 by Dušan Borić, Cardiff University.
“The deposition of mineralised plaque ends with the death of the individual, therefore, dental calculus has sealed unique human biographic information about Mesolithic dietary preferences and lifestyle,” said Cristiani.
“What we happened to discover has a tremendous significance as it challenges the established view of the Neolithization in Europe,” she said.
“Microfossils trapped in dental calculus are a direct evidence that plant foods were an important source of energy within Mesolithic forager diet. More significantly, though, they reveal that domesticated plants were introduced to the Balkans independently from the rest of Neolithic novelties such as domesticated animals and artefacts, which accompanied the arrival of farming communities in the region”.
These results suggest that the hitherto held notion of the “Neolithic package” may have to be reconsidered. Archaeologists use the concept of “Neolithic package” to refer to the group of elements that appear in the Early Neolithic settlements of Southeast Europe: pottery, domesticates and cultigens, polished axes, ground stones and timber houses.
This region of the central Balkans has yielded unprecedented data for other areas with a known Mesolithic forager presence in Europe. Dental tartar samples were also taken from three Early Neolithic (c. 5900-5700 BC) female burials from the site of Lepenski Vir, located around 3 km upstream from Vlasac.
Although researchers agree that Mesolithic diet in the Danube Gorges was largely based on terrestrial, or riverine protein-rich resources, the team also found that starch granules preserved in the dental calculus from Vlasac were consistent with domestic species such as wheat (Triticum monococcum, Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum distichon), which were also the main crops found among Early Neolithic communities of southeast Europe.
Domestic species were consumed together with other wild species of the Aveneae tribe (oats), Fabaeae tribe (peas and beans) and grasses of the Paniceae tribe.
These preserved starch granules provide the first direct evidence that Neolithic domestic cereals had already reached inland foragers deep in the Balkan hinterland by c. 6600 BC.
Their introduction in the Mesolithic societies was likely eased by social networks between local foragers and the first Neolithic communities.
Archaeological starch grains were interpreted using a large collection of microremains from modern plants native to the central Balkans and the Mediterranean region.
“Most of the starch granules that we identified in the Late Mesolithic calculus of the central Balkans are consistent with plants that became key staple domestic foods with the start of the Neolithic in this region” said Cristiani.
Anita Radini, University of York added, “In the central Balkans, foragers’ familiarity with domestic Cerealia grasses from c. 6500 BC, if not earlier, might have eased the later quick adoption of agricultural practices.”
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
