Two Roman-era graves with rich grave goods including a rare bronze medallion of the emperor Caracalla have been discovered in Nova Varbovka, Bulgaria. One is a double burial of an adult man and a woman, the other of a young child, suggesting these graves were a family grouping. The artifacts found inside the graves date them to the first half of the 3rd century.

The burials were discovered last fall by a tractor driver when he hit a limestone slab while plowing a field near Nova Varbovka. He saw the human remains but didn’t realize they were archaeological in nature, so he reported the find to the mayor who reported it to the police thinking it might be a criminal matter. When the remains were examined by archaeologists from the Veliko Tarnovo Regional Museum of History, they were found to be from the Roman era and an emergency archaeological salvage excavation was launched. The dig took place in December 2023.

The excavation revealed two large graves built of brick masonry with plaster on the interior walls. They were covered with heavy slabs of limestone. The larger of the two was ten feet long and contained the remains of a woman about 45-49 years of age and a man of about 50-60 at the time of their deaths. The child was just two or three years old when he died and his grave is a little earlier than theirs, so he must have predeceased them.

The parents’ grave contained a pair of gold ladies earrings, a gilt pendant with a glass bead, a necklace of lapis lazuli and gold, a silver-plated fibula. The child was buried with a pair of gold earrings, glass bead jewelry, a ceramic wine amphora, two delicate glass lacrimaria (small vessels containing perfumes or unguents) and the bronze medallion issued by Emperor Caracalla (r. 198-217 A.D.) to commemorate his visit to the Pergamon’s Temple of Asclepius in 214 A.D.

The expensive burial facilities and grave goods were only affordable for the very rich in this time and place. Some of the limestone came from a quarry near Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman city about 25 miles southwest of Nova Varbovka founded by Trajan in the early 2nd century. Archaeologists hypothesize the adults were wealthy landowners from Nicopolis ad Istrum who had a villa rustica (country estate) where they spent their summers.

Chakarov, who excavated the burials along with colleagues Nedko Elenski and Mihaela Tomanova, noted that the Caracalla medallion could point to an Asia Minor origin for the occupants of the graves, which would be consistent with the fact that Nicopolis ad Istrum was built mainly by settlers from Asia Minor. “Of course, we are searching for an opportunity to make DNA and other analyses which our museum can’t afford, to see if this hypothesis is correct,” Chakarov said.

Archaeologists from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have unearthed a Neolithic snake-shaped pottery handle. Radiocarbon dating found it is 4,000 years old. Crafted in the shape of a cobra with its upper body raised and hood flattened ready to strike, it was discovered during a 2023 excavation of a sand dune on the northwest coast of Taiwan in the Guanyin District of Taoyuan City. The site was a major center of stone tool manufacturing during the Neolithic era.

Snakes have symbolic significance in many religions around the world, including in East Asian cultures. They can represent healing, as on the caduceus of Asclepius, god of medicine, metamorphosis and rebirth due their ability to shed their skins, the circle of life, as in the ouroboros (serpent biting its tail) of ancient Egypt, as intermediaries between heaven, earth and the underworld, as in the Aztec feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl and Apollo’s python who transmitted prophecy from the underworld to earth.

“Snakes are often regarded as symbolic animals in religion, mythology and literature, and are considered to be the bridge between heaven and man,” [Hung-Lin Chiu, associate professor of the Institute of Anthropology at Tsing Hua] said.

Given their ability to shed their skin, ancient societies in the region associated these animals with the cycle of life and death, and considered them to be symbols of creation and transition.

The snake-shaped pottery handle may have come from a sacrificial vessel for shamans in ancient tribal societies to perform rituals, according to the researchers.

“This reflects that ancient societies incorporated animal images into ritual sacrificial vessels to demonstrate their beliefs and cognitive systems,” Chiu said.

Archaeologists from the Czech Institute of Egyptology (CIE) have discovered the richly decorated shaft tomb of a royal scribe who died in the 5th or 6th century B.C., the time of Persian invasion of Egypt. Inscriptions name the deceased as Djehutiemhat.

A long sequence of apotropaic sayings against snakebite from the Pyramid Texts covers the north (entrance) wall . Interestingly, the snakes mentioned in these magical texts both represented a potential danger and could serve as powerful protectors of the deceased and his mummy. “While the entrance to the nearby Menechinekon’s burial chamber was protected by the guardians of the gates of the 144th chapter of the Book of the Dead, in the case of Džehutiemhat, snakes from the Pyramid Texts play this role,” adds Renata Landgráfová, director of the Czech Institute of Egyptology at the FF UK and an expert on the ancient Egyptian language and texts. The south and west walls are covered with a sacrificial ritual and an extensive sacrificial list. On the ceiling of the burial chamber there are depictions of the sun god’s journey through the sky, first in the morning and then in the evening celestial bar. The depictions are accompanied by hymns to the rising and setting sun.

Inside the burial chamber covered with relief decoration is a large stone sarcophagus, which also bears hieroglyphic inscriptions and depictions of gods, both outside and inside. The upper side of the sarcophagus lid is decorated with three columns of hieroglyphic text with the liturgy of the 178th chapter of the Book of the Dead , which is composed of excerpts from the much older Pyramid Texts . The longer sides of the lid are decorated with the 42nd chapter of the Book of the Dead dedicated to the deification of parts of the body of the deceased, including depictions of individual deities to which the deceased is compared. The shorter walls of the lid then bear images of the goddesses Eset and Nebtheta, with accompanying texts offering protection to the deceased.

On the outer walls of the sarcophagus there are excerpts from the Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts , which partially repeat sayings that already appear on the walls of the burial chamber. On the bottom of the inner wall of the sarcophagus bath, the goddess of the West is depicted, and its inner sides bear the so-called canopic sayings, spoken by this goddess and the earth god Geb. “The Goddess of the West inside the sarcophagus represents the protector, guide and symbolic mother of the deceased,” explains Jiří Janák, who analyzes and interprets religious and magical texts as part of field research. All the mentioned religio-magical texts were intended to ensure the deceased a smooth entry into a blissful and well-provided eternal life in the afterlife.

The team excavated shaft tombs in this area of Abusir, known for its burials belonging to important officials and military commanders of the 26th and 27th dynasties, in April and May of 2023. At the bottom of the 45-feet-long shaft is a burial chamber made of large limestone blocks. A smaller access shaft connected to the chamber through a 10-foot-long corridor. A stone sarcophagus inside the chamber is covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions and reliefs. Djehutiemhat’s tomb had been looted in antiquity, but some pottery bowls, jugs and lids were found in the small access shaft.

Osteological examination of the skeletal remains found that he was about 25 years old when he died. Despite his young age, he suffered from wear and tear of the spine from years of working in a kneeling position and had severe osteoporosis. Several other individuals buried in this part of the necropolis also suffered from osteoporosis. Egyptologists hypothesize that tombs in this section of Abusir may have belonged to an extended family.

The oldest known bead in the Western Hemisphere has been discovered at the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming. Radiocarbon dating results indicate the tubular bone bead is approximately 12,940 years old.

There are very few Early Paleoindian beads known to survive, and most of them are not securely dated because they are made of minerals (caliche, hematite) rather than bone. The bone beads on the archaeological record were found in slightly more recent contexts than the La Prele example.

The La Prele Mammoth site was first excavated in 1987. They uncovered a Paleoindian camp where the remains of a young Columbian mammoth had been processed using chipped stone tools. Radiocarbon dates of the mammoth bones found the site was occupied around 12,940 years before the present. The bead was found in a hearth area of the site about 11 miles from the mammoth remains. Stone flake tools, bone needles and the butchered and burned remains of prehistoric bison were unearthed there, but the bead was not derived from bison bones.

Researchers employed zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) to identify the animal the bone came from, and the material turned out to be lagomorph bone, most likely from a hare rather than a rabbit.

This finding represents the first secure evidence for the use of hares during the Clovis period, which refers to a prehistoric era in North America, particularly prominent about 12,000 years ago. It’s named after the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico, where distinctive stone tools were discovered.

The bead is about 7 millimeters in length, and its internal diameter averages 1.6 millimeters. The research team considered the possibility that the bead could have been the result of carnivore consumption and digestion and not created by humans; however, carnivores were not common on this site, and the artifact was recovered 1 meter from a dense scatter of other cultural materials.

Additionally, the grooves on the outside of the bead are consistent with creation by humans, either with stones or their teeth. Beads like this one were likely used to decorate their bodies or clothing.

The findings have been published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read in full here.

A large Copper Age necropolis has been discovered in the burg of San Giorgio Bigarello on the outskirts of Mantua. It dates to around 5,000 years ago. The quantity of graves and the finely crafted weapons found in some of them were unexpected, and examination of the burials is expected to shed new light on the prehistoric peoples who inhabited of this area of northern Italy.

In the Neolithic (ca. 6000-4,000 B.C.) and Chalcolithic (ca. 4000-1700 B.C.), the area that is now Mantua was part of the River Mincio basin. The outskirts of the modern city were the shores where people actually lived and died. The famous Neolithic double-burial, the Lovers of Valdaro, were found in San Giorgio Bigarello, so it is known to be archaeologically significant.

The first human skeletal remains were found in November in an archaeological survey at the site of a future city park. A follow-up excavation unearthed three inhumation burials about 16 inches under the surface. Fortunate happenstance had left the site undisturbed by agricultural work of urban development, and the sandy soil preserved the bones in excellent condition. Two of the burials included grave goods: flint arrowheads and a flint knife blade.

Most of the burials excavated at Bigarello are simple individual inhumations, the deceased placed on their left sides with legs bent to their chests and heads oriented to the northwest. These characteristics are also seen in burials of Neolithic cultures in northern Italy, and some of the grave goods found in the Bigarello graves — flint weapons, hematite beads — are found in Neolithic burials as well.

Excavations resumed in January, and since then another 19 graves have been found, confirming archaeologists’ suspicions that this was a cemetery, not a handful of random burials. More flint arrowheads and blades have been found in the 19 newly-discovered burials. They are of exceptionally high quality — sharp, even, so light they are practically translucent — and can only have been crafted by people of great technical ability and experience.

Archaeologists are continuing to explore the site. Meanwhile, the skeletal remains and grave goods are being removed to Palazzo Ducale complex in Mantua for further analysis and conservation. There has been some discussion of creating a dedicated museum to house the finds and make them more accessible to visitors.