EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization

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This 3,500-Year-Old Greek Tomb Upended What We Thought We Knew About the Roots of Western Civilization

They had been digging for days, shaded from the Greek sun by a square of green tarpaulin slung between olive trees. The archaeologists used picks to break the cream-colored clay, baked as hard as rock, until what began as a cluster of stones just visible in the dirt became four walls in a neat rectangle, sinking down into the earth.

The warrior was buried in an olive grove outside the acropolis of Pylos. Though archaeologist Carl Blegen explored the olive grove in the 1960s, he did not find anything.

Little more than the occasional animal bone, however, came from the soil itself. On the morning of May 28, 2015, the sun gave way to an unseasonable drizzle. The pair digging that day, Flint Dibble and Alison Fields, waited for the rain to clear, then stepped down into their meter-deep hole and got to work. Dibble looked at Fields. “It’s got to be soon,” he said.

The season had not started well. The archaeologists were part of a group of close to three dozen researchers digging near the ancient Palace of Nestor, on a hilltop near Pylos on the southwest coast of Greece. The palace was built in the Bronze Age by the Mycenaeans—the heroes described in Homer’s epic poems—and was first excavated in the 1930s.

The dig’s leaders, Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, husband-and-wife archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati, in Ohio, had hoped to excavate in a currant field just downslope from the palace, but Greek bureaucracy and a lawyers’ strike kept them from obtaining the necessary permits. So they settled, disappointed, on a neighboring olive grove.

They cleared the land of weeds and snakes and selected a few spots to investigate, including three stones that appeared to form a corner. As the trench around the stones sank deeper, the researchers allowed themselves to grow eager: The shaft’s dimensions, two meters by one meter, suggested a grave, and Mycenaean burials are famous for their breathtakingly rich contents, able to reveal volumes about the culture that produced them.

Still, there was no proof that this structure was even ancient, the archaeologists reminded themselves, and it might simply be a small cellar or shed.

Dibble was clearing earth from around a large stone slab when his pick hit something hard and the monotony of the clay was broken by a vivid flash of green: bronze.

The pair immediately put down their picks, and after placing an excited call to Davis and Stocker they began to carefully sweep up the soil and dust. They knew they were standing atop something substantial, but even then they did not imagine just how rich the discovery would turn out to be.“It was amazing,” says Stocker, a small woman in her 50s with dangling earrings and blue-gray eyes. “People had been walking across this field for three-and-a-half-thousand years.”

Yet remarkably little is known of the beginnings of Mycenaean culture. The Pylos grave, with its wealth of undisturbed burial objects and, at its bottom, a largely intact skeleton, offers a nearly unprecedented window into this time—and what it reveals is calling into question our most basic ideas about the roots of Western civilization.

Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker, husband-and-wife archaeologists from the University of Cincinnati, discovered the warrior’s grave.

In The Iliad, Homer tells of how Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, led a fleet of a thousand ships to besiege the city of Troy. Classical Greeks (and Romans, who traced their heritage to the Trojan hero Aeneas) accepted the stories in The Iliad and The Odyssey as a part of their national histories, but in later centuries scholars insisted that the epic battles fought between the Trojan and Mycenaean kingdoms were nothing more than myth and romantic fantasy. Before the eighth century B.C., archaeologists argued, societies on the Greek mainland were scattered and disorganized.

Today, Blegen’s work at Pylos is continued by Stocker and Davis (his official title is the Carl W. Blegen professor of Greek archaeology). Davis walks with me to the hilltop, and we pause to enjoy the gorgeous view of olive groves and cypress trees rolling down to a jewel-blue sea.

Davis has white-blond hair, freckles and a dry sense of humor, and he is steeped in the history of the place: Alongside Stocker, he has been working in this area for 25 years. As we look out to sea, he points out the island of Sphacteria, where the Athenians beat the Spartans during a fifth-century B.C. battle of the Peloponnesian War.

Behind us, Nestor’s palace is surrounded by flowering oleander trees and is covered with an impressive new metal roof, completed just in time for the site’s reopening to the public in June 2016 after a three-year, multimillion-euro restoration. The roof’s graceful white curves protect the ruins from the elements, while a raised walkway allows visitors to admire the floor plan.

The stone walls of the palace now rise just a meter from the ground, but it was originally a vast two-story complex, built around 1450 B.C., that covered more than 15,000 square feet and was visible for miles. Visitors would have passed through an open courtyard into a large throne room, Davis explains, with a central hearth for offerings and decorated with elaborately painted scenes including lions, griffins and a bard playing a lyre.

The Linear B tablets found by Blegen, deciphered in the 1950s, revealed that the palace was an administrative center that supported more than 50,000 people in an area covering all of modern-day Messenia in western Greece. Davis points out storerooms and pantries in which thousands of unused ceramic wine cups were found, as well as workshops for the production of leather and perfumed oils.

This era, extending until the construction of palaces at Pylos, Mycenae and elsewhere, is known to scholars as the “shaft grave period” (after the graves that Schliemann discovered). Cynthia Shelmerdine, a classicist and renowned scholar of Mycenaean society at the University of Texas at Austin, describes this period as “the moment the door opens.”

It is, she says, “the start of elites coming together to form something beyond just a minor chiefdom, the very beginning of what leads to the palatial civilization only a hundred years later.” From this first awakening, “it really takes a very short time for them to leap into full statehood and become great kings on a par with the Hittite emperor. It was a remarkable thing to happen.”

Yet partly as a result of the building of the palaces themselves, atop the razed mansions of early Mycenaeans, very little is known of the people and culture that gave birth to them. You can’t just tear up the plaster floors to see what’s underneath, Davis explains. The tholos itself went out of use around the time the palace was built. Whoever the first leaders here were, Davis and Stocker had assumed, they were buried in this plundered tomb. Until, less than a hundred yards from the tholos, the researchers found the warrior grave.

Aerial view of the warrior’s grave
The later site of 14th-century B.C. Nestor’s Palace
A bronze sword with a gold-coated hilt was among 1,500 items buried with Pylos’ “griffin warrior.”
Today known as Voidokilia, the omega-shaped cove at “sandy Pylos” is where Homer recounted that Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, was welcomed by Nestor while searching for his father.
Bull sacrifice was practiced by the Mycenaeans at Pylos, as recounted in The Odyssey. The autumn olive harvest is an ancient ritual that survives today.
The tholos tomb at Pylos

Davis and Stocker disagree on where they were when they received Dibble’s call from the dig site. Stocker remembers they were at the team’s workshop. Davis thinks they were at the local museum. Dibble recalls that they were in line at the bank. Whichever it was, they rushed to the site and, Stocker says, “basically never left.”

About a week in, Davis was excavating behind the stone slab. “I’ve found gold,” he said calmly. Stocker thought he was teasing, but he turned around with a golden bead in his palm. It was the first in a flood of small, precious items: beads; a tiny gold birdcage pendant; intricately carved gold rings; and several gold and silver cups.

“Then things changed,” says Stocker. Aware of the high risk of looting, she organized round-the-clock security, and, apart from the Ministry of Culture and the site’s head guard, the archaeologists agreed to tell no one about the more valuable finds. They excavated in pairs, always with one person on watch, ready to cover precious items if someone approached.

The largest ring discovered was made of multiple finely soldered gold sheets.

And yet it was impossible not to feel elated, too. “There were days when 150 beads were coming out—gold, amethyst, carnelian,” says Davis. “There were days when there was one seal stone after another, with beautiful images. It was like, Oh my god, what will come next?!” Beyond the pure thrill of uncovering such exquisite items, the researchers knew that the complex finds represented an unprecedented opportunity to piece together this moment in history, promising insights into everything from religious iconography to local manufacturing techniques.

The discovery of a golden cup, as lovely as the day it was made, proved an emotional moment. “How could you not be moved?” says Stocker. “It’s the passion of looking at a beautiful piece of art or listening to a piece of music. There’s a human element. If you forget that, it becomes an exercise in removing things from the ground.”

Fragments of Ancient Life

From jewelry to gilded weapons, a sampling of the buried artifacts researchers are using to fill in the details about the social currents in Greece at the time the griffin warrior lived

Like any momentous archaeological find, the griffin warrior’s grave has two stories to tell. One is the individual story of this man—who he was, when he lived, what role he played in local events. The other story is broader—what he tells us about the larger world and the crucial shifts in power taking place at that moment in history.

Analyses of the skeleton show that this 30-something dignitary stood around five-and-a-half feet, tall for a man of his time. Combs found in the grave imply that he had long hair. And a recent computerized facial reconstruction based on the warrior’s skull, created by Lynne Schepartz and Tobias Houlton, physical anthropologists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, shows a broad, determined face with close-set eyes and a prominent jaw. Davis and Stocker are also planning DNA tests and isotope analyses that they hope will provide information about his ethnic and geographic origins.

And this has been the scholarly consensus ever since: The Mycenaeans, now thought to have sacked Knossos at around the time they built their mainland palaces and established their language and administrative system on Crete, were the true ancestors of Europe.

Significantly, weapons had been placed on the left side of the warrior’s body while rings and seal stones were on the right, suggesting that they were arranged with intent, not simply thrown in. The representational artwork featured on the rings also had direct connections to actual buried objects.

“One of the gold rings has a goddess standing on top of a mountain with a staff that seems to be crowned by a horned bull’s head,” says Davis. “We found a bull’s head staff in the grave.” Another ring shows a goddess sitting on a throne, looking at herself in the mirror. “We have a mirror.” Davis and Stocker do not believe that all this is a coincidence. “We think that objects were chosen to interact with the iconography of the rings.”

Horns, which symbolize authority, appear on this bronze bull’s head and three gold rings.

In their view, the arrangement of objects in the grave provides the first real evidence that the mainland elite were experts in Minoan ideas and customs, who understood very well the symbolic meaning of the products they acquired. “The grave shows these are not just knuckle-scraping, Neanderthal Mycenaeans who were completely bowled over by the very existence of Minoan culture,” says Bennet. “They know what these objects are.”

“I think we should all care about that,” says Shelmerdine. “It resonates today, when you have factions that want to throw everybody out [of their countries]. I don’t think the Mycenaeans would have gotten anywhere if they hadn’t been able to reach beyond their shores.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

9,000-yr-old Site near Jerusalem is the “Big Bang” of Prehistory Settlement

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9,000-yr-old Site near Jerusalem is the “Big Bang” of Prehistory Settlement

A huge 9,000-year-old Neolithic settlement — the largest ever discovered in Israel, say archaeologists — is currently being excavated outside Jerusalem, researchers said in mid  2019.

This site, located near the town of Motza, is the “Big Bang” for prehistory settlement research due to its size and the preservation of its material culture, said Jacob Vardi, co-director of the excavations at Motza on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, according to The Times of Israel.

Among the many important findings is that 9,000 years ago, the people of the settlement practiced religion. “They carried out rituals and honored their deceased ancestors,” Vardi, an archaeologist, told Religion News Service.

Dwelling foundations unearthed at Tell es-Sultan in Jericho

Perhaps 3,000 people lived in this settlement near where Jerusalem is today, making it quite a large city for the period that is sometimes called the New Stone Age. The site has “yielded thousands of tools and ornaments, including arrowheads, figurines and jewelry,” said CNN.”

The findings also provide evidence of sophisticated urban planning and farming, which may force experts to rethink the region’s early history, said archeologists involved in the excavation.”

Although the area has long been of archeological interest, Vardi said the sheer scale of the site — which measures between 30 and 40 hectares — only emerged in 2015 during surveys for a proposed highway.

Ashkelon Pre-Pottery Neolithic C site.

“It’s a game changer, a site that will drastically shift what we know about the Neolithic era,” said Vardi in an interview with The Times of Israel. Already some international scholars are beginning to realize the existence of the site may necessitate revisions to their work, he said.

“So far, it was believed that the Judea area was empty, and that sites of that size existed only on the other bank of the Jordan river, or in the Northern Levant. Instead of an uninhabited area from that period, we have found a complex site, where varied economic means of subsistence existed, and all this only several dozens of centimeters below the surface,” according to Vardi and co-director Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily in an IAA press release.

Israelite Temple at Tel Motza.

This site predates the first known settlement in Jerusalem by about 3,500 years. Experts had not thought that people lived in such a concentrated fashion during this time in the region.

During the 16-month excavation, archaeologists discovered large buildings, separated by well-planned alleys, used for residential and public purposes. Some of the buildings contained plaster remnants.

Archaeological excavations near Motza, Israel.

Pieces of jewelry, including bracelets made of stone and mother of pearl, as well as figurines, locally made flint axes, sickle blades, knives, and thousands of arrowheads were also unearthed, said Religion News.

Vardi said the residents buried their dead with care in designated burial locations and placed “either useful or precious objects, believed to serve the deceased” after they died, inside the graves.

“We have decorated burial sites, with offerings, and we also found statuettes and figurines, which indicate they had some sort of belief, faith, rituals,” Vardi said. “We also found certain installations, special niches that might have played a role in ritual.”

Sheds held a large number of well-preserved legume seeds, something the archaeologists called “astonishing” given how much time has passed.

“This finding is evidence of an intensive practice of agriculture. Moreover, one can conclude from it that the Neolithic Revolution reached its summit at that point: animal bones found on the site show that the settlement’s residents became increasingly specialized in sheep-keeping, while the use of hunting for survival gradually decreased,” the antiquities authority said.

ASIA, IRELAND, WORLD

THE DISCOVERY OF A MASS BABY GRAVE UNDER A ROMAN BATHHOUSE IN ASHKELON, ISRAEL

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The discovery of a mass baby grave under a Roman bathhouse in Ashkelon, Israel

In the seaport of Ashkelon, along the coast of the Israeli Mediterranean coast, archaeologist Ross Voss made a bizarre discovery, while exploring one of the sewers of the area, he found a significant amount of bones.  At first, the bones were accepted to be chicken bones. Later, it was found that the bones were that of human.

Remains of Roman bathhouse in Israel

Newborn child bones from the Roman period. With the remaining parts adding up to in excess of 100 children, it was the biggest disclosure of babies remains to date.

Why were these roman babies killed?

As curious as you are, so was the Archaeologist while he found out the bones of the newborns. Voss took the remaining parts to forensic anthropologist Professor Patrician Smith. Smith analyzed the baby remains and established that there was no indication of the chances of survival of the babies longer than a week before being killed.

She used a technique of forensic testing that enabled her to confirm that none of the newborn children was healthy when they died.

During the era of Romans, it was normal for babies to be murdered as a type of birth control. It wasn’t a crime, as babies were seen as being ‘not completely human.

As a rule, a Roman lady who did not need an infant would take part in the act of “exposure” as she would desert the newborn child, either to be found and taken care of by another person or to die.

As per the convictions at the time, it was up to the gods to decide if the newborn child would be saved or not.

According to Roman mythology, the most popular record of close child murder, in which Romulus and Remus, two newborn children of the war god, Mars, were surrendered in the forested areas yet were raised by wolves and later established the city of Rome.

The most famous account of attempted infanticide, in which babies were left exposed to the elements, is the story of Romulus and Remus

Research showed that the newborn children at Ashkelon did not seem to have been “exposed”. Rather, it shows up they were deliberately murdered. One piece of information into the purpose behind their murder lies in the area of the bodies.

Investigations uncovered that the sewer where the remaining parts were found was straight underneath a previous bathhouse. It is conceivable that the babies were born to prostitutes or workers who worked at the bathhouse. However, this remains a mystery as there is no additional information on this theory.

While Ashkelon bathhouse was not the only place the bodies of the Roman infants were found.

Hambleden(the site of a former Roman villa) mass killing

In 1912, Alfred Heneage Cocks, the guardian of the Buckinghamshire County Museum in England, made a stunning disclosure. While driving an unearthing in Hambleden, Cocks revealed the remains of 103 people.

Of those 103 people, 97 were newborn children, 3 were children, and 3 were adults. While this frightful find delivers inquiries of how and why these babies had been slaughtered, Cocks neglected to conduct any further examination with regards to the roots of the bodies.

Hambleden – site of mass baby grave, Buckinghamshire, England.

Jill Eyers, archaeologist and director of Chiltern Archeology in England, found the remaining in a historical centre file, the bones spent near a century in 35 little boxes intended to hold free cigarettes and shotgun cartridges, each container sufficiently enormous to hold the total skeleton of one baby.

“It was quite heart-rending, really, to open all these little cigarette boxes and find babies inside,” said Eyers.

Then he chose to look into the reason for the mass killing. People believed that the Hambleden site is another area where prostitutes would give birth to an unwanted child that was consequently murdered. The site was not a region of poverty, so an absence of resource couldn’t clarify the mass executing.

There were additionally no recorded diseases in the region at the time that could represent the huge volume of death. People believe that the main sensible clarification is that the site once housed a brothel.

Because of the absence of birth control at that time, there were restricted choices for the who needed to abstain from having a baby or bringing up the child. So, child murder may have been the main decision they trusted they had.

Dr Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at English Heritage, has examined the Hambleden Roman infant bones

However, the reasons for the death may be any, but the mass graves of newborn child remains are genuinely heartbreaking. The history behind the roman era living is a big mystery. In time, it is trusted that we may discover more responses to precisely how and why these newborns were killed.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Intact Brandy Bottles and 200-Year-Old Pub Discovered Under Building Site in Manchester

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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.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Two ancient skeletons found holding hands in medieval chapel

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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.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

5,000-year-old wooden boat used by the pharaohs is discovered by French archaeologists

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5,000-year-old wooden boat used by the pharaohs is discovered by French archaeologists

French archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old wooden boat in an expedition in Egypt, it has emerged.

The significant discovery was made in Abu Rawash, west of Cairo, the antiquities ministry in Egypt said.

Mohammed Ibrahim, the antiquities minister, said: ‘It goes back to the era of Pharaoh Den, one of the First Dynasty kings’.

French archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old pharaonic solar boat in an expedition in Egypt, it has emerged

The six-metre long and 1.5-metre wide pharaonic solar boat ‘is in good condition,’ he added.

Its planks are now undergoing renovation before it is put on display in a museum.

The pharaohs believed that solar boats, buried close to them at death, would transport them in the afterlife.

According to Middle East Online, the boat’s wooden sheets were transported to the planned  National Museum of Egyptiamn Civilisation were they will be restored. 

One the museum is finished, it is expected they will be put on display at some point next year.

The group of French archeologists were working for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO).

The discovery was made in Abu Rawash, west of Cairo
An archaeologist is seen working on the skeleton of the newly discovered wooden boat. The pharaohs believed that solar boats, buried close to them at death, would transport them in the afterlife

The group first started its excavation work in Abu Rawash in the early 1900s.

In 1954 an Egyptian archaeologist discovered what may be the Pharaoh Khufu’s 43-metre solar ship, made of cedar, in a Giza pyramid.

The 4,500 year-old intact vessel is on display near the pyramid.

It is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved vessels from antiquity and has been identified as the world’s oldest intact ship.

It is known as a ‘solar barge’, a ritual vessel to carry the resurrected king with the sun god Ra across the heavens.

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Tollund Man – the preserved face from Prehistoric Denmark and the tale of ritual sacrifice

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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.

ARMENIA, ASIA, WORLD

Unraveling the Mystery of the “Armenian Stonehenge”

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Unraveling the Mystery of the “Armenian Stonehenge”

The misty and mountainous valleys of the south Caucasus have been host to human activity continuously for thousands of years, but only recently has the Western archaeological world had access to them.

From the cave in which researchers found the world’s oldest shoe and the oldest winemaking facility, to traces of an Urartian city with hundreds of wine-holding vessels buried in the ground, the last four decades have witnessed extraordinary interest from scholars and tourists alike in the smallest republic in the former Soviet Union. None, however, are as quite as tantalizing as the 4.5 hectare archaeological site whose name is as contested as its mysterious origins.

Helicopter image of Karahundj

Located in Armenia’s southernmost province, Zorats Karer, or as it is vernacularly known, Karahundj, is a site which has been inhabited numerous times across millennia, from prehistoric to medieval civilizations.

It consists of a prehistoric mausoleum and nearby, over two hundred neighboring large stone monoliths, eighty of which have distinctive, well-polished holes bored near their upper edge.

In recent years, to the dismay of local scientists, the monoliths have garnered the interest of the international community after some pre-emptive research emerged drawing comparisons between the astronomical implications of Zorats Karer and that of the famous Stonehenge monument in England.

Many touristic outlets responded to the comparison by branding Zorats Karer colloquially as the ‘Armenian Stonehenge’ and the resulting debate between the scientific community and popular culture has been a fierce one.

The first scholarly account of Zorats Karer took place in 1935 by ethnographer Stepan Lisitsian, who alleged that it once functioned as a station for holding animals. Later, in the 1950s, Marus Hasratyan discovered a set of 11th to 9th century BCE burial chambers.

But the first investigation which garnered international attention to the complex was that of Soviet archaeologist Onnik Khnkikyan, who claimed in 1984 that the 223 megalithic stones in the complex may have been used, not for animal husbandry, but instead for prehistoric stargazing. 

He believed the holes on the stones, which are two inches in diameter and run up to twenty inches deep, may have been used as early telescopes for looking out into the distance or at the sky.

Intrigued by the astronomical implications, the next series of investigations were conducted by an astrophysicist named Elma Parsamian from the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory, one of the main astronomy centers of the USSR.

She and her colleagues observed the position of the holes according to an astronomical calendar and established that several of them aligned with the sunrise and sunset on the day of the summer solstice.

Image of Karahundj at Sunset, from Elma Parsamian’s investigations in 1984

She is also responsible for suggesting the name Karahundj for the site, after a village 40km away by the same name. Prior to her investigations, locals referred to the site as Ghoshun Dash, which meant ‘Army of Stones’ in Turkic.

Folk myth suggests the stones were erected in ancient times to commemorate soldiers killed in war. After the 1930s, locals transitioned to the Armenian translation, Zorats Karer. But Karahundj, Parsamian said, offered a more interesting name because Kar, means stone and hundj, a peculiar suffix which has no meaning in Armenian, sounds remarkably similar to the British ‘henge’.

In recent years, this name has received extreme criticism from scholars and in scientific texts, the name Zorats Karer is used nearly exclusively.

Several years later, a radiophysicist named Paris Herouni performed a series of amateur studies branching off from Parsamian’s, using telescopic methods and the precession laws of Earth. He argued that the site actually dates back to around 5500 BCE., predating its British counterpart by over four thousand years.

He strongly pioneered for a direct comparison to Stonehenge and even went so far as to etymologically trace the name Stonehenge to the word Karahundj, claiming it really had Armenian origins. He was also in correspondence with the leading scholar of the Stonehenge observatory theory, Gerald Hawkins, who approved of his work. His claims were quick to catch on, and other scholars who strongly contest his finding have found them difficult to dispel.

A figure from Herouni’s book Armenians and Old Armenia where he points out this group of stones as an astronomical tool.

The problem with the “Armenian Stonehenge” label, notes archaeo-astronomer Clive Ruggles in Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth, is that analyses that identify Stonehenge as an ancient observatory have today largely been dispelled. As a result, he says, the research drawing comparisons between the two sites is “less than helpful.”

According to Professor Pavel Avetisyan, an archaeologist at the National Academy of Sciences in Armenia, there is no scientific dispute about the monument. “Experts have a clear understanding of the area,” he says, “and believe that it is a multi-layered [multi-use] monument, which requires long-term excavation and study.” 

In 2000, he helped lead a team of German researchers from University of Munich in investigating the site. In their findings, they, too, criticized the observatory hypothesis, writing, “… [A]n exact investigation of the place yields other results. [Zora Karer], located on a rocky promontory, was mainly a necropolis from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Enormous stone tombs of these periods can be found within the area.” Avetisyan’s team dates the monument to no older than 2000 BCE, after Stonehenge, and also suggested the possibility that the place served as a refuge during times of war in the Hellenistic period.

“The view that the monument is an ancient observatory or that its name is Karahundj is elementary charlatanism, and nothing else. All of that,” says Avetisian, “has nothing to do with science.”

Unfortunately for Avetisyan, dispelling myths about Zorats Karer is difficult when so few resources exist in English to aid the curious Westerner. Richard Ney, an American who moved to Armenia in 1992, founded the Armenian Monuments Awareness Project and authored the first English-language resource to the site from 1997, has witnessed over two decades of back-and-forth.

He believes Karahundj is “caught between two different branches of science with opposing views on how to derive fact. Both are credible,” he says, “and I feel both can be correct, but will never admit it.”

Despite all the controversy and whatever you end up deciding to call it, the monument itself is stunning and located in an area of Armenia well-endowed with natural beauty, making it an attractive journey for many tourists each year.

It’s even become an object of contemporary interest to young urbanites and neo-Pagans from Yerevan, who are known to celebrate certain solstices there. In many ways, Zorats Karer is a testament to the elusive nature of archaeology, and it’s perhaps the case that the mystery is–and will remain–part of its appeal.

ROMAN, WORLD

The Italian hill made entirely of 53 million Roman olive oil jars

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The Italian hill made entirely of 53 million Roman olive oil jars

Monte Testaccio is a mound made up of shards of broken pottery covering about 220,000 square feet, holding 760,000 cubic yards of broken pottery vessels, known as amphorae, which were used to transport olive oil.

Excavations are still in progress, but the most recent finds indicate it may have originated as early as 140 A.D.  Archaeologists agree future excavations could reveal that it could have been even earlier.

Monte dei Cocci

The easternmost side is the oldest of the triangular shaped, terraced mound. Paths were constructed by using smaller shard pieces throughout the four stepped terrace levels to enable the continuation of amphorae disposal and the height of the hill.

Most of the pottery shards are those of a Dressel 20, the one gallon sized amphorae from Baetica in what is now the Guadalquivir region of Spain, but remains from Tripolitania, now Libya, and Byzacena , now Tunisia, have also been found.

broken amphorae at Monte Testaccio

It has been established that these were bulk containers used for shipping olive oil, but why were no other types of shipping containers added to the mound?

Monte Testaccio

The Romans also imported grain and wine, but as of yet, very few of these types of containers have been found. The Dressel 20 amphora did not easily break into the small pieces needed for recycling into concrete, which could be the reason they were simply discarded.

Another possibility is that the residual oil left on the shards would have reacted poorly with the lime content used when making the concrete. José Remesal of the University of Barcelona and co-director of the Monte Testaccio  excavations believes the hill contains the remains of over twenty-five million amphora, and his team is recovering over a ton of pottery every day.

Testaccio
Monte Testaccio, Rome

They are searching for any type of identification that could be stamped, painted or carved into the clay.

Most amphorae used during the time noted the weight, information about where the oil originated and names of the people who bottled and weighed the shipment which is indicative of a stringent inspection system used to control trade.

The empty weight, as well as the full weight, was recorded and the names found give insight into the Roman commercial structure. Many list family businesses such as “the two Aurelii Heraclae, father and son” and “the two Junii, Melissus and Melissa” as well as small groups of men “the partners Hyacinthus, Isidore and Pollio”  and “L. Marius Phoebus and the Vibii, Viator and Retitutus”, who were most likely members of  joint ventures of skilled freedmen.

The team is also able to identify that the state authorized the shipment of the oil and if the oil was for the military or civilian use.The search has already yielded inscriptions indicating oil shipments delivered to the Praefectus Annonae, the leading official of the state run food distribution services. According to Remesal, “There’s no other place where you can study economic history, food production and distribution, and how the state controlled the transport of a product. It’s really remarkable.”

Around the 260s, a new type of amphora was being used and the mound ceased growing.The area was abandoned after the fall of Rome and was used for jousting tournaments and pre-Lent festivals during the Middle Ages, and was still in use for celebrations by the end of the 19th century.

Roman tituli picti from amphorae found at Monte Testaccio, Rome. From H. Dressel, Ricerche sul Monte Testaccio, Annali dell’Instituto di Correspondenza Archeologica

In 1827 Marie-Henri Beyle, a 19th-century French writer known by his pen name, Stendhal, attended a festival at the hill’s summit and had this to say: “Each Sunday and Thursday during the month of October, almost the whole population of Rome, rich and poor, throng to this spot, where innumerable tables are covered with refreshments, and the wine is drawn cool from the vaults.

It is impossible to conceive a more animating scene than the summit of the hill presents.Gay groups dancing the saltarella, intermingled with the jovial circles which surround the tables; the immense crowd of walkers who, leaving their carriages below, stroll about to enjoy the festive scene …”

The New Plan of Rome by Giambattista Nolli

The vaults to which Stendhal refers are excavations made when it was discovered that the porous structure of the interior provided a cooling effect, leading to the construction of wine cellars to keep the drink cool in the warmer months. In 1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi, the commander of an Italian gun battery successfully defended Rome against an attack from the French army at the mound.

Catholics use the hill as a representation of Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified.The Pope leads a procession to the top of the hill where they place crosses to memorialize those of Jesus and the two thieves crucified with him.

Monte Testaccio

In 1872 German Archaeologist Heinrich Dressel began the first archeological study of Monte Testaccio and published his findings in 1878. Archaeologists Emilio Rodríguez Almeida and José Remesal Almeida also worked at the site during the 1980s.

After World War II developers came in and built middle class homes prompting stores and restaurants to open in the area. Velavevodetto, a popular pizza restaurant, was actually built into the side of the hill.Locals generally don‘t pay much attention to the mound and some don’t even realize the historical significance attached.

Up until August of this year Remesal’s web site www.archaeospain.com was taking applications for twenty-four volunteers at the geological site for two weeks during the month of September and describe the project as “Located in the heart of Rome, the Monte Testaccio project is one of the most important research programs on Roman epigraphy, economy, and commerce today.

The project, overseen by the University of Barcelona and ArchaeoSpain, studies the pottery shards from an artificial mound created by centuries of discarded amphorae‚ many of which still have the maker’s seal stamped on their handles, while others retain markings in ink relating the exporter’s name and indicating the contents, the export controls, and consular date.

Once an ancient pottery dump, Monte Testaccio is now one of the largest archives of Roman commerce in the world.”

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

The Huldremose Woman: One of the best preserved and best dressed bog bodies

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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.