The History Blog

The epigonion is the harp-like instrument you’ve seen on a million Grecian vases. (Not the little lyre; the huge 40-stringed beast.)

They stopped being made centuries ago, but we do have some fragments of medieval epigonions and some descriptions in the historical record.

Using those clues and computer modeling technology, researchers at the Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application (ASTRA) have recreated the dulcet tones of the epigonion.

The physical modelling sound synthesis technique aims in fact to use a set of equations and algorithms that describe the physical materials used in the ancient instruments to generate physical source of sound. In other words, the basic idea is to recreate a model of the musical instrument and produce the sound by simulating its behaviour as a mechanical system.

For example, to model the sound of a drum, there would be a formula for how striking the drumhead injects energy into a two dimensional membrane. Thereafter the properties of the membrane (mass density, stiffness, etc.), its coupling with the resonance of the cylindrical body of the drum, and the conditions at its boundaries (a rigid termination to the drum’s body) would describe its movement over time and thus its generation of sound.

It actually sounds pretty damn good. I thought it would be more midi/computery sounding, but if I didn’t know it was virtually produced I wouldn’t have guessed.

For more music played on digitally-recreated historical instruments including Bach fugues complete with string profiles, see ASTRA’s download page.

Her name is Johanka and she’s 7000 years old. Archaeologists digging in the southern Czech Republic uncovered her in the same area they found another similar statuette lest summer.

The woman’s statue found in the area last summer was given the name “Hedvika of Masovice,” while “her sister” is called Johanka, “according to the female names in the calendar on the days when the artifacts were found, head of the archaeological research Zdenek Cizmar said.

“Though the statues come from the same period, each of them is different and exceptional,” Cizmar said.

They’re most like fertility symbols, although Johanka’s boobies seem to me a bit small for that job.

Srsly, Gumby’s mom, am I right?

The vaunted Shelby White and Leon Levy collection has gotten a little smaller again. Earlier this year Shelby White returned nine looted artifacts to Italy.

Now it’s Greece’s turn to get a little of its own back.

The upper part of a marble funerary stele and a bronze krater, or large cup, dated to the 5th and 4th century BCE, were returned by collector Shelby White in August under a deal in which Greece pledged not to legally pursue the matter, it said.

“The culture ministry recognises that the antiquities were acquired by Ms White in good faith, and for this reason…no demands will be raised against (her),” a ministry statement said.

But Greece reserves its legal rights over other potential claims regarding items in White’s collection, it added.

Good call, because odds are there are a lot more goodies where these two came from. The Italians did the same thing, btw: allow Shelby White to claim “good faith” so she won’t get prosecuted like Marion True, former curator of the Getty Museum and regular receiver of stolen goods.

It’s a fig leaf. White and Levy knew full well they were buying shady shit from shady people. They just looked the other way like the Getty and the Met did.

For more information translated from the full Greek press release, see David Gill’s entry here.

It was a huge fire that ravaged the Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire for six days, burning 2.5 square miles and pealing away thousands of years of vegetation to the bedrock.

Underneath the blanket of peat, it turns out, was a wealth of rock art and bronze age boundary stones.

“We have always known that this part of the world is very rich in prehistoric remains,” said Graham Lee, senior archaeological conservation officer for the national park. “But the sheer number of new finds exposed by the fire is the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience.” The rock art list for the site, part of a vast moor also used by the RAF’s Fylingdales satellite tracking and early warning station, has grown to almost three times its previous size, with more than 100 sets of mysterious lines, cups and circles discovered since the fire.

“One of the very rare features exposed by the removal of the entire plant and soil covering is a set of defined borders to the areas cultivated in the bronze age,” said Lee.

They’ve also found flint tools, 18th c. drainage tunnels, and most recently, shell craters from WWII artillery practice.

Nice that there’s an upside to environmental disaster, especially since there’s no way archaeologists could ever even approach excavating such a massive area, even if they were allowed to despoil the natural beauty of the area.

Archaeologists excavating what was once the central market in ancient Aigai, the capital of Macedonia in Philip II and Alexander the Great’s day, have uncovered an odd marvel.

When the digger first came across the large copper vat, he thought it was some old landmine. Upon further inspection, archaeologists found a gold jar inside containing a gold wreath and human bones.

You don’t come across gold wreaths every day. Only aristocrats and nobles were buried with them, but they were buried in, you know, cemeteries, not in jars.

That means someone disinterred those bones and the wreath, canned them, and reburied them in the market near the spot where Philip II was assassinated.

“Archeologists must explain why such a group … was found outside the extensive royal cemetery,” the university statement said. “(They must also) work out why the bones of the unknown - but by no means insignificant - person were hidden in the city’s most public and sacred area.”

During the fourth century BC, burials outside organized cemeteries were very uncommon.

Whoever did this did it fairly soon after burial and obviously left behind the big ticket items (the gold wreath and jar), so it definitely wasn’t a looter.

I love a good archaeological mystery.

One of our regular commenters here, Dina, has a blog of her own: Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo.

It’s always a beautiful glimpse into the daily life of a city crammed to the gills with history, but now Dina is on an archaeological dig, so the daily photos take on a whole new historical resonance.

From one of my favorite entries so far:

Hope this won’t make anyone freak out, but my F words for today are femur, fibula, frontal bones, and funerary practices. Of Canaanites who were buried here on the outskirts of Jerusalem some 4,000 years ago.

Last week, to the excitement of all, we uncovered a skeleton in the burial cave I and three others were digging in. Here you can see the skull, arm bones, and ribs.

How exciting is that? I’ve linked to dig blogs before, but I didn’t know those folks so this is even cooler. Vai Dina vai! Sei tutti noi!

In an upscale Lima neighborhood called Miraflores, there’s a pre-Incan mud brick temple called Huaca Pucllana. Archaeologists excavating it have now found the first intact Wari burial on the site, and it includes a female mummy complete with a snazzy death mask, plus the remains of two other adults and a child.

The Wari people lived and ruled in what is now Peru for some 500 years, between 600 AD and 1100 AD. Their capital was near modern-day Ayacucho, in the Andes, but they traveled widely and are known for their extensive network of roads. [...]

Small children were often sacrificed and it is common to find their bodies alongside adult ones. The child discovered with the adult mummies at Huaca Pucllana was likely sacrificed.

The discovery at Huaca Pucllana confirms the Wari people buried their dead in what is now Lima and offers a more complete picture of how burials were done. “This enriches Lima’s story,” Flores said.

The mummy dates to approximately 700 A.D., researchers say.

Scholars and museums have been elbowing each other in the face for decades to get access to the famed Dead Sea Scrolls, but because they’re so delicate only a small fraction of the people who’d like to study them get the chance.

Soon the entire internetted world will get that chance.

“The project began as a conservation necessity,” Ms. Shor explained. “We wanted to monitor the deterioration of the scrolls and realized we needed to take precise photographs to watch the process. That’s when we decided to do a comprehensive set of photos, both in color and infrared, to monitor selectively what is happening. We realized then that we could make the entire set of pictures available online to everyone, meaning that anyone will be able to see the scrolls in the kind of detail that no one has until now.”

The digitizing process will take only 1-2 years, which seems fast to me, especially considering how gingerly these fragments must be handled. Once it’s done, every piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls will be available high detail to anyone with an internet connection. Very, very cool.

Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware is releasing a chocolate beer which uses the same ingredients the Aztecs used for their human sacrifice after-parties.

University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologists examined the remains in an Aztec drinking vessel found in Honduras, and the Dogfish brewmasters recreated the quaff of the gods.

“Before we were eating chocolate, we were drinking it.” [Dogfish Head owner Sam] Calagione said. “In ancient central America, cocoa was considered to be a very divine and sought-after ingredient.”

Combining cocoa nibs, powder and honey with chilies and seeds of the annatto tree, Theobroma aims to dispel the notion that chocolate-flavored alcohol is only for ladies. At a hearty nine percent alcohol-by-volume, it nearly doubles the alcohol content of the average mass-produced beer.

I’ll be raising a glass of that goodness to Xtapolapocetl as soon as I can get mah grubby hands on it.

I just ordered a sixer of their Midas Touch brew, which is also a historical recreation, this time of the dregs left in cups in the Golden One’s tomb. It’s a meady sort of thing, apparently, involving muscat grapes, honey, barley and saffron. Weird, right? If it sucks they’ll be stocking stuffers.

For more about the Aztec chocolate beer, see Dogfish’s page: Theobroma.

Archaeologists excavating the ancient Roman city of Pompeipolis on the coast of the Black Sea in Turkey have uncovered a mosaic floor, an iron furnance, a marketplace and a bunch of small artifacts like the bronze Apollo on the right.

This dig has been turning up amazing things for three years. Last year they found a temple of Augustus which is even better preserved than the one in Ephesus.

Pompeipolis was founded by none other than Pompey the Great (aka Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus) in 65 or 66 B.C. when he was in the East fighting Mithridates VI of Pontus. It’s such a rich site for Roman remains because it was built brand-new, not on top of or amidst an existing town, like Ephesus was.

It was abandoned in the sixth or seventh century A.D. when the Persians invaded.

I found a nice little video tour of the uncovered ruins but fair warning: you’ll want to mute your computer before clicking play.