The History Blog

A a 7,500-year-old copper axe found at a neolithic site in Serbia shows that copper was being used in Europe earlier than we thought.

The find near the Serbian town of Prokuplje shifts the timeline of the Copper Age and the Stone Age’s neolithic period, archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic told the independent Beta news agency.

‘Until now, experts said that only stone was used in the Stone Age and that the Copper Age came a bit later. Our finds, however, confirm that metal was used some 500 to 800 years earlier,’ she said.

Archaeologists excavating the site also found pots and furnaces with metal residue, suggesting people might have fabricated metal goods on the site, not just used them.

Placido Domingo sang at Chichen Itza Saturday night. “The world’s greatest tenor at one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World,” the publicity materials say. “The world’s greatest tenor should be in the slammer,” the archaeologists retort.

Domingo’s concert inside Chichen Itza violates a law that requires the ruins to be preserved to educate Mexicans about ancient cultures, said Cuauhtemoc Velasco, a leader of the archaeologists’ union.

“These monuments are not there so that rich people can hold events at them” said Velasco, noting the tickets cost between $45 and $900 in a country with a minimum wage of about $4.50 per day.

For present-day Mayas like Amadeo Cool May, who hosts a Mayan-language radio program, the concert “is an event for foreigners who come here on vacation. It is something completely alien to the Mayas, because of the ticket prices and the type of music.”

Judging solely from the sketchy info in the article, I would say the legal beef is a tad thin on substance. The concert is not going to destroy the ruins or keep them from educating Mexicans about Mayan culture.

The cultural argument, otoh, has some bite. The government in charge of protecting Mayan sites is basically selling them out to events that have no relevance to the Mayan community. I can see why they’d be pissed about that, especially when long-term health of the ruins can be compromised by excessive use.

Workers in Istanbul are currently excavating a rail tunnel underneath the Bosphorus. Like the Chunnel linking France and England, only this one will link the continents of Asia and Europe.

The 2.6 billion dollar project began in 2004 and almost immediately encountered a major archaeological roadblock in the form of the 4th c. port of Eleutherios harbour where a railway hub was supposed to go.

Since then, they’ve found enormous piles of stuff, including over 30 shipwrecks transporting material from far and wide. These discoveries are writing a whole new chapter in the history of Byzantine trade.

Keep in mind that these shipwrecks are the first ever found in Istanbul, despite its fortuitous location straddling two seas.

For more on the Bosphorus finds, see this AFP story:

The poor homeowner thought he’d bought a serial killer’s house when human skulls started turning up in the garden.

Instead, he was just the fortunate beneficiary of the previous homeowner’s bargain hunting in the Sinai peninsula.

After analysing them, they found the skulls to be Egyptian artefacts between 2,054 and 2,144 years old.

The owner of the skulls turned out to be the house’s previous owner Carl Bracey.

Dr Bracey had been on holiday in the Sinai peninsula in the Middle East as a teenager when he was offered the skulls.

He brought them back to England and had kept them ever since.

His partner however was not fond of the skulls and repeatedly asked him to dispose of them as they frightened the children.

Wussies.

Anyway, the skulls are back in Egypt now, happily repatriated.

Scientists have found 2 new species of the Kribbella bacterium on the walls of the catacomb of St. Callistus. This is significant not only because, hey, new life forms here, but also because studying the wall-chewing bacteria might help with conservation efforts.

By studying bacteria that ruin monuments, the researchers hope to develop methods of protecting cultural heritage sites such as the catacombs in Rome. The two new bacterial species discovered in the tombs also have the potential to produce molecules that have useful properties, like enzymes and antibiotics.

“The special conditions in the catacombs have allowed unique species to evolve,” said Professor Dr Urzì. “In fact, the two different Kribbella species we discovered were taken from two sites very close to each other; this shows that even small changes in the micro-environment can lead bacteria to evolve separately.”

It’s big news, of course, and potentially great news, but it’s set against the bad news that the catacomb walls are decaying.

It’s not any of the major pieces of the Parthenon frieze controversially housed in the British Museum. Lord Elgin gave this fragment to the British consul-general of Sicily when he was passing through with his ill-gotten gain in 1816.

It’s been in Sicily ever since, and now it’s finally home, personally transported to Athens by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

The sculpted fragment of the ancient Greek hunt goddess Artemis, part of the eastern Parthenon frieze depicting the twelve gods of Olympus, had been in the collection of the Antonio Salinas Archaeological Museum of Palermo.

Greece had sought to secure its return for 13 years, the Greek culture minister said.

The fragment depicts the goddess’ right foot and part of her long robe.

“For the first time in nearly two centuries, a valuable fragment of the Parthenon’s sculpted decoration returns to be embodied where it belongs,” Culture Minister Michalis Liapis told reporters.

Hint, hint. Ever since the New Acropolis Museum opened, Greece has been putting serious pressure on the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles.

The BM hasn’t been receptive to Greek entreaties, needless to say. Collecting fragments of the frieze scattered about is a great way to keep the situation in the papers and to make the British Museum look like a dick for not being willing to even consider what other countries are doing.

Edit for clarification: The piece is on loan to Greece. It will return to the Palermo museum at the end of the year.

commenter Mark Watson

The recent Stonehenge dig is already revising historical assumptions. Radiocarbon dating of bluestone fragments indicates that the first ring of stones was erected 300 years later than previously thought.

Until now, the consensus view for the date of the first stone circle was anywhere between 2600BC and 2400BC. [...]

The dig unearthed about 100 pieces of organic material from the original bluestone sockets, now buried under the monument. Of these, 14 were selected to be sent for modern carbon dating, at Oxford University.

The result - 2300BC - is the most reliable date yet for the erection of the first bluestones.

The professors in charge of the excavation, Tim Darvill and Geoff Wainwright, think this dating supports their theory of Stonehenge as temple of health, a “Neolithic Lourdes”. I’m not sure why, exactly.

The article mentions the “Amesbury Archer” dates to this same time frame. The profs think he dragged his cookies to Stonehenge to get a cure, but even if it we knew for sure he was buried after the bluestones went up (which we don’t, and most likely won’t be able to find out until dating technology gets a lot more specific), I don’t see how we could know his reasons.

Other theories fit the data as well, like the burial ground theory.

In 1990, excavators found a Chi-Ro amulet in a Roman grave in Shepton Mallet in Somerset. The find was explosive: the amulet marked the grave as the earliest Christian burial in Europe, which would redraw the map of the spread of Christianity.

The city of Shepton Mallet named a street and a theater after the amulet. The Archbishop of Canterbury wore a reproduction of it around his name.

Then people started to actually, you know, study it. The British Museum’s tests at the time were inconclusive. Now the University of Liverpool has tested the amulet with the latest and greatest technology, and declared it a fake. The amulet is not Roman at all.

It’s barely even old. Hell, it looks like a Coke bottle cap someone took a finishing nail and some craft store beads to, although at least one theory suggests actual silversmiths and actual Roman silver were involved.

The amulet is now thought to be a modification of a Roman brooch dug up in Sussex 100 years ago. New technology has allowed experts to analyse the composition of the amulet in more detail than was previously possible. Samples of metal taken from the amulet were analysed by the university which found them to be consistent with silver produced in the 19th century or later.

So it’s a blend of the old and the new, it seems, put together by fakers with nebulous motives.

Another ancient skeleton is providing clues to the spread of tuberculosis. This one is Roman from the 4th c. and was found on a construction site at York University.

If the new case is confirmed as TB it could provide scientists with a valuable tool to trace the movement of the disease as it is relatively rare for specimens to be discovered in the UK that date from any earlier than the 12th century.

Archaeologist Cath Neal, from the University of York said: “This was a remarkable find and detailed study of this skeleton will provide us with important clues about the emergence of tuberculosis in late-Roman Britain, but also information about what life was like in York more than 1,500 years ago.

Bone evidence suggests that the poor fellow might have contracted the disease as a child, possibly from domesticated animals, then it lay dormant until adulthood. I didn’t even know TB did that.

His burial is unusual, too. At the time of his death, people were buried in cemeteries. Our tubercular friend, on the other hand, was buried alone close to living quarters, maybe because his illness was rare and scary so his people were afraid to transport his corpse over any distance.

Worked building a subway line in Salonika, Greece, have unconverted an enormous grave complex with over 1400 graves ranging in date from the 4th c. B.C. to the 4th c. A.D.

The finds range from humble pits and altar tombs of stone to marble sarcophagi, the ministry said.

One in five burial sites were found to contain offerings including Roman-era gold coins from Persia, jewellery made of gold, silver and copper, clay vessels and glass perfume-holders.

It looks like such a jumble. I can’t figure out from the article or the picture if these graves were all found in one spot, or if this is some sort of collection area for sarcophagi. I can’t imagine they’d move them around already, so I’m going to go with the on-site theory.

The subway also passes underneath the Jewish cemetery, incidentally, which was one of the largest in Europe and is thought to have contained 300,000 graves at its peak. Suprisingly huge, neh?