4,500-year-old burial found in prison sewer construction

An archaeological dig at the site of a sewer for a new prison currently being built in Full Sutton, East Yorkshire, has unearthed a 4,500-year-old grave and funerary monument. The individual was buried in the crouched position (knees bent and drawn up towards the chest) in a pit grave surrounded by a ring ditch and topped with a mound of stones. This type of mound is known as a round barrow, a common burial monument in Late Neolithic Britain.

Interestingly, the round barrow was constructed very close to, but not over, what archaeologists call a ‘burnt mound’. These enigmatic prehistoric sites are relatively common in upland areas where they survive as mounds of burnt stone and charcoal, but the lowland examples are less obvious due to being flattened by later ploughing. Little is known about what burnt mounds were used for, and their excavation is seen as an important research priority. […]

Previous excavations of similar sites in the UK and Ireland have shown that water was an important part of the process with water troughs lined with wood or clay being discovered. Other sites include earth-ovens or roasting pits and the combined evidence has led to several theories about what activities were carried out. The main theory is that stones were heated up and placed in the troughs to heat water, either during the process of dyeing cloth or cooking. Alternatively, some burnt mound sites include structures that could have been used as saunas.

The round barrow was disturbed by later agricultural activity, but the burial fortunately was not damaged. The skeletal remains were found in unusually good condition. The acidic soil of the area is harsh on bones, but in this case the grave had been backfilled with burned stone and charcoal from the adjacent burnt mound, helping to preserve the skeleton.

A small earth oven and a deep pit believed to have been a well were also found near the barrow. Heating stones were left in the oven from its last use and soil samples will be analyzed for traces of what might have been cooked there. The bottom of the well was still waterlogged, preserving part of its prehistoric wooden lining, a particularly exciting find. The waterlogged fill at the bottom of the well will also be sampled and analyzed for plant, animal and insect remains.

Ruby Slippers theft saga: now with revenge porn

The saga of the Ruby Slippers stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005 has just gotten even weirder. First 76-year-old Terry Martin admitted to the theft and said in his plea agreement that he thought the shoes were festooned with real rubies rather than sequins and glass beads. Now a second man has been charged with the theft plus another count of witness tampering for having threatened to release a sex tape of a woman if she told authorities he had the shoes.

The second man, Jerry Hal Saliterman, also 76 years old, was busted after a search of his home on December 20th, 2023. When the FBI showed up at his door with a search warrant in hand, Saliterman admitted that he had stolen goods in his home, but insisted they were all the products of old crimes. You’ll be shocked to read that statement was less than fully honest.

In a padlocked, fenced-off area under the stairs, agents found name-brand electronics, digital grills and wine pourers, all new and still in their boxes. A storage shed out back had expensive artworks. The raid also found disposable food storage containers full of an estimate $30,000 cash wrapped with foil to hide their contents.

A woman involved with the crimes confessed to the FBI that Saliterman led a retail theft ring that operated undeterred for 15 years, hitting such august locations as William Sonoma and the Apple Store hundreds of times each. The theft ring ceased operations only in 2021 or 2022.

It was this woman who knew about the Ruby Slippers because Saliterman had shown them to her in a grocery bag. He then put them in a plastic tub and buried them in the yard for seven years. According to the indictment, Saliterman had the shoes from the theft in 2005 until their recovery in 2018. Apparently he and his gang put the shoes in an ultraviolet sanitizer cabinet in a risible attempt to destroy any DNA evidence they left on them. He also threatened the woman with revenge porn and that he would “take her down with him” should she tell the authorities what she knew.

Saliterman has not yet entered a plea, but his attorney claimed he was not guilty. The FBI has not divulged the details of the investigation that located the shoes, just that they were recovered in Minneapolis in July 2018, but given the timeline in the indictment, presumably he kept them hidden until the very end.

While the perpetrators wend their ways through the court system, the Ruby Slippers were returned to their owner, collector Michael Shaw, last month. Shaw had loaned them to the museum where they were on display at the time of the theft and now that he has them back, he has decided to sell them. The shoes will be exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo before going under the hammer at Heritage Auctions in December. The Judy Garland Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society are itching to acquire them for Judy Garland’s hometown museum, but with a pre-sale estimate of $3-5 million, they’re going to need a huge infusion of cash to beat the private bidders.

Roman wall, tower found in Narbonne

A preventative archaeology excavation at a real estate development site in the historic center of Narbonne, southern France, has uncovered the remains of an early imperial-era Roman wall and tower. Preliminary estimates based on the measurements and construction style of the wall and tower date them to the last decades of the 1st century B.C. The discovery came as a surprise as this is the first evidence that the ancient city of Narbo Martius, the first Roman colony established outside of Italy, had defensive walls of any kind.

The excavation unearthed a section of wall 100 feet long. It is an enclosing wall connected to a round masonry tower. The tower was constructed in an unusual fashion: the base of the round tower is inset in a square foundation. This was likely done to give the massive walls additional stability.

Colonia Narbo Martius was founded by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus in 118 B.C., two years after he and Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus defeated the Arverni and the Allobroges and conquered all of southern Gaul. As proconsul of Gaul, Gnaeus Domitius built the first Roman road in Gaul, the Via Domitia, running from Spain to Italy through his new colony. He then built the second Roman road in Gaul, the Via Aquitania, that ran from Narbo through the Aquitaine province to the Atlantic Ocean. The city was also located at the mouth of the Aude river at that time, situating it at a strategic crossroads for trade, agriculture, travel and Roman military expansion.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, in his oration in defense of Marcus Fonteius, the former praetor of Gallia Narbonensis who was accused by Gallic tribespeople of financially exploiting the province for his own gain, describes Narbo Martius as “a citizen-colony, which stands as a watch-tower and bulwark of the Roman people, and a barrier of defense against these tribes.” Cicero made that speech in 69 B.C., and after that Narbo’s importance only grew. Julius Caesar refounded it in 46-45 B.C. as a colony for the veterans of his Tenth Legion, then Augustus made it the capital of the province of Gallia Narbonensis in 22 B.C.

The area of Narbonne currently under excavation was on the outskirts of the ancient city. It was built around 50 A.D. to store trade goods. The excavation revealed three or four warehouses on the site, three streets, an alley and a system of intersecting canals that managed rain and waste water evacuation. One of the warehouses had an unusual design: the ground floor, used for storage, was kept clean by a drainage crawl space made out of recycled amphorae. The upper floor was a either a home or office, and a rather nice one at that, with concrete floors, mosaics and mud brick walls painted to look like marble panels. This warehouse and another one were severely damaged in the same fire event, but were reconstructed.

These discoveries are linked to the urban port of Narbo Martius , located along the ancient arm of the Aude. This constitutes, with the maritime outer port whose remains have been observed at several points (Île Saint-Martin in Gruissan, Mandirac, La Nautique), a complex port system whose importance is attested in particular in the texts and ancient inscriptions. This excavation contributes to the identification of the ancient route of the river, the course of which was partly artificialized during the canalization of the Robine in the 18th century .

The structures, which would usually be reburied or, quel dommage, allowed to be destroyed when construction at the site resumed, are so significant that the developers have decided to integrate the finds into their new construction.

Sole surviving ancient Greek funerary relief of twin babies unveiled

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens has unveiled a fragment of a funerary stele that is the only surviving carving of a pair of twin babies in arms from ancient Greece. The marble infants cradled in a pair of female hands date to the 4th century B.C. and were likely part of a tomb marker of a woman who died in childbirth.

The “stele of the twin babies” was discovered in a stream in Menidi, a municipality a few miles north of downtown Athens, by a shell collector in 2008. He swaddled the marble infants in an old cloth and brought them to the National Archaeological Museum. They have now gone on display as part of the museum’s Unseen Museum initiative. The exhibition puts the spotlight on objects in the museum’s vaults, pulling antiquities out of storage and in front of the public for the first time.

The heads of the twins are standing out from their swaddling clothes and the mother’s hands are seen holding their little bodies next to each other. […]

This is the only surviving funerary relief of the ancient Greek world depicting twin babies in the same arms, which indicates their common fate as orphans, the museum says in a statement.

The museum published a collage image of the stele of the twin babies with the relief of Philonoe, suggesting a reconstructed image of what the tombstone might have looked like as a whole.

The stele of the twin babies went on display Thursday, March 21st, and will be in the museum’s Altar Hall through Monday, May 13th. On eight days during the course of the exhibition, museum archaeologists will share the history of the stele of the twin babies, its discovery, its context, the significance of twins in Greek mythology and the lives and deaths of children in ancient Greece.

Section of Roman 3rd century wall found in Aachen

The remains of a 3rd century Roman fortification have been unearthed in Aachen, Germany. An excavation in concert with infrastructure work on the Pontstrasse uncovered the foundation of a large masonry wall of Roman construction. The excavation has so far revealed a 23-foot section of wall three feet thick. The full length and maximum width of the surviving segment have not yet been uncovered.

Fames as the capital of Charlemagne’s empire (800-814 A.D.) and the city where subsequent kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors were crowned until 1531, Aachen’s history long predates the Middle Ages. It was a Celtic settlement before the Roman legions occupied it in the early 1st century, developing its natural sulfur thermal springs into a bath complex and sanctuary. The Roman military presence ended in the 370s under pressure from migrating Germanic tribes. Frankish rule was established a hundred years later.

Scholars have believed since the 1880s that there was a late Roman fort in Aachen, but its location was unknown and it was only in 2011 and 2014 that excavations found remnants of the castrum at the bottom of the market hill.

After Aachen was destroyed in the course of Frankish raids around 275/276 AD, the entire market hill was reinforced with a wall with round towers that was five meters wide at the foundation. In front of it was a ditch around six meters wide. The latter was discovered on the Katschhof in 2011. Comparable forts are known from Jülich, Bitburg and Jünkerath. The late Roman defensive wall was continued to be used by Charlemagne. Its King’s Hall (today’s town hall) was built on its southern flank. The fort walls were not demolished until the 12th century.

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa demolished the ancient walls when he built new defensive walls between 1172 and 1176, but obviously he didn’t obliterate every trace of them. One notable section of wall with the base of one of the round towers has been preserved under a plexiglass floor in front of the restrooms of the Five Guys restaurant in the Markt 46 building.

The remains of the wall that have now been encountered run parallel to Pontstrasse. “It could be the remains of a gate,” suspect Schaub and Kyritz. The experts suspect further gates along Jakobsstrasse at the junction with the market and at the beginning of Großkölnstrasse. However, there are no concrete findings for this.

The aim is to preserve the remarkable current archaeological find as best as possible. Intensive discussions are currently underway on this. After the archaeological finds have been assessed and documented, construction work at the site will continue as planned. Basically, the excavation work in Pontstrasse is already continuing under archaeological supervision.