Category: Medieval

The Lion of Venice was made in China

Medieval

The winged lion that stands on the column in St. Mark’s Square in Venice that is an icon of the city was made in China. A new metallurgic study of the bronze has discovered a large part of it originated from 8th century China and after making its way to Venice, was mixed with other parts and reconstructed in to fit the standard iconography of the winged lion, symbol of Mark the Evangelist and of Venice itself.

Based on research done after a 1980s restoration, the statue was believed to have been made in Anatolia during the early Hellenistic era (4th century B.C.), but a study of the lead isotopes in the metal alloy found they came from mines in the lower basin of the Yangtze River in southeastern China. Armed with the hard science, researchers reexamined the lion’s design and found characteristic features of Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) sculptures in the head, mane and chest.

This style of creature had a specific function in Tang Dynasty sculpture as tomb guardians. Known as zhenmushou figures, they were fantastical beasts ferocious in demeanor that were placed at tomb gates to scare away evil spirits and protect the spirits of the dead. By the 7th century, they were typically placed in pairs, one with a human-like face, one with a lion or beast-like face.

Some of the characteristic features shared by St. Mark’s lion and zhenmushou figures include wide nostrils with a moustache pointing up on each side, a wide open mouth with a pair of wide-set canines in the top jaw and more narrow set ones on the bottom, a flat plate of teeth between them and prominent orbital sockets in which horns were mounted. The orbitals are truncated in the lion, indicating that it too had once had horns or antlers, but they were amputated to make him look more lionine. His ears also appear to have been trimmed and rounded, as the original zhenmushou ears were higher and pointed.

The lion likely made its way west over the Silk Road through India and Afghanistan, which had a very active flow of trade during the Tang Dynasty. That flow was closed off for some centuries after, reopening at the time of Marco Polo’s voyages in the 13th century. There are no historical sources recording when the lion came to Venice, or when and how it took its current form. Marco Polo wrote about it after his return from China in 1295, but not only was it already on top of the column at that time, it was already in need of restoration so it had been up there exposed to the elements for decades.

Also, it’s huge — more than 13 feet long and weighing three tons — so the fact that there are no references to its transportation and erection suggests it arrived in more manageable pieces. Analysis of the samples from various parts of the sculpture found it was recast in parts and Frankensteined together in at least five or six phases, and that’s before Napoleon looted it and French construction workers dropped it and broke it into 20 pieces when they were forced to give it back after his defeat.

Viking silver bracelet hoard found on farm in Norway

Medieval, Treasures

A hoard of four Viking Age silver bangles has been unearthed on a mountainside at a farm in Årdal in Hjelmeland municipality, Norway. Each of them are of a different style and in excellent condition. They were found less than eight inches under the surface so close together than they overlapped each other, so there is no question they have not been disturbed since they were buried in the 9th century.

“This is a unique find, because we very rarely find such objects exactly where they were placed. As a rule, such valuable objects are discovered on fields that have been plowed, where an object has been completely taken out of its original context. Since the silver hoard has not been moved, it can give us completely new insights into life and society in the Viking Age,” says [lead archaeologist Volker] Demuth.

The excavation was initiated when the landowner, farmer Tårn Sigve Schmidt, called in archaeologists to survey the route of a tractor road he was planning to build up the mountain. Archaeologists found evidence of an extensive Viking farm, including dwellings for people and outbuildings for animals. Artifacts discovered include fragments of soapstone pots, rivets, knife blades and whetstones.

The silver bangles were found under what was once the floor of a small house. The dwelling is so small and spare that archaeologists believe it probably housed enslaved workers, and there were no other artifacts discovered in the area. The excavation found evidence that the farm was burned down around the time the silver bracelets were buried. The people who lived at the farm may have therefore buried the hoard before they fled an attack, and chosen an unlikely location to deter looters.

The bracelets are similar in style to six Viking silver neck rings now in the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger that were discovered in 1769 at another farm in Hjelmeland. They were likely deposited as ritual sacrifices to mark or seal the boundaries of a settlement. They were not associated with a grave, and indeed no silver neck rings have ever been found in a Viking grave. That might suggest another motivation for the burial of the rings. According to Odin’s Law, as recorded in the Heimskringa saga, men were allowed to bring with them to Valhalla everything that was burned on the funeral pyre with them and anything they had personally buried in the ground.

The bracelets were not fully excavated at the site, but rather removed in a soil block for micro-excavation in laboratory conditions at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Stavanger. Conservators have x-rayed the block and will take samples of the soil for evidence of any organic material, like a bag or a cloth, that the bracelets were wrapped in before burial. The hoard will be put on display at the museum when study and conservation is complete.

Dig volunteer finds rare Pictish ring

Ancient, Medieval

A volunteer in an excavation of the site of a Pictish fort in Burghead, northeastern Scotland, has discovered a rare Pictish ring. It is kite-shaped with a central oval red gem, possibly a garnet or red glass, and is one of very few Pictish rings known.

The enclosed promontory fort was one the largest and most important Pictish centers during the kingdom’s heyday (4th-9th centuries), but was believed to have been stripped of its archaeological materials when the town of Burghead was built in the early 19th century. Most of its surviving stone walls were dismantled and reused in the new construction, leaving only a few ramparts and an underground well. Even 5th century stone panels carved with images of bulls believed to have been part of a frieze on the ramparts were just built into the harbor wall like any other rock, only six of 30 making it to safety in museums.

For the past three years, the University of Aberdeen Professor of Archaeology Gordon Noble had led excavations of the site to explore the surviving remains and create accurate 3D reconstructions of the fort’s original structure. John Ralph, a retired engineer and alumnus of the University of Aberdeen whose family was among those who settled the new town of Burghead in the 19th century, volunteered to join the digs. He found the ring on the last day of his third dig.

Professor Noble says that what he was presented with was ‘truly remarkable’. “John was digging and then came over and said ‘look what I’ve found’. What he handed over was incredible,” he added.

“Even before the conservation work we could see it was something really exciting as despite more than a thousand years in the ground we could see glints of the possible garnet setting.

“There are very few Pictish rings which have ever been discovered and those we do know about usually come from hoards which were placed in the ground deliberately for safekeeping in some way. We certainly weren’t expecting to find something like this lying around the floor of what was once a house but that had appeared of low significance so, in typical fashion, we had left work on it until the final day of the dig.”

The ring is undergoing analysis by the National Museum of Scotland’s Post-excavation Service. They hope to narrow down its date and whether it was made at the fort for a prominent individual.

Professor Noble added: “We will now look at the ring, evidence of buildings and other artefacts to consider whether the ring was crafted on the site and who such an important piece of jewellery might have been made for.

“We have some other evidence of metalworking and the number of buildings we have uncovered is quite striking. This further indicator of the high-status production of metalwork adds to the growing evidence that Burghead was a really significant seat of power in the Pictish period.”

6th c. gold coins found in 10th c. house in Bulgaria

Ancient, Medieval

An excavation of a medieval house in the northern Bulgarian village of Debnevo has uncovered five gold coins from the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great (r. 527-565 A.D.). The dwelling dates to the 10th century, so the coins were already 400 years old when the house was occupied and may have been prized heirlooms or recent discoveries made during the construction of the dwelling.

Excavations at Debnevo over the past five years have found the remains of a 4th-3rd century B.C. settlement and evidence that it was still occupied from the 4th to the 6th centuries A.D. The village was next to a fortress built in the early 5th century when the area was part of the Byzantine Empire.

The medieval home was built over the remains of a Byzantine building. It was abandoned in the 10th century after a fire damaged it beyond recovery. The occupants left many belongings behind, including two iron sickles and axes, ceramic vessels, three bronze rings. Archaeologists found the five coins on the floor of the home.

All five coins are of the same type: a “tremissis” — a small gold coin worth one-third of a “solidus” — that depicts the emperor wearing a pearl diadem on the front, while the back depicts the personification of Victory holding a wreath in her right hand and a cross and globe in her left. The inscription on the front reads “Our Lord Justinian Perpetual Augustus,” a reference to the first Roman emperor, whose name was later used to refer to all emperors, while the back reads “Victory of the Augusts.” Two of the coins, likely burned in the fire that destroyed the house, are stuck together.

Archaeologists hypothesize that the builders of the home found the coins when construction work churned up the early Byzantine remains under the new dwelling.

Galloway Hoard “Carolingian vessel” is actually Persian

Ancient, Medieval

The exceptional silver lidded vessel in the Viking hoard discovered in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, that was initially thought to be of Carolingian origin was instead created in Persia during the Sasanian Empire (224 to 651 A.D.). A careful cleaning and metallurgic analysis revealed that the pot travelled thousands of miles to end up crammed with Viking loot and buried in southern Scotland..

Found by retired businessman and metal detectorist Derek McLennan in September of 2014, the Galloway Hoard is the largest Viking treasure found in Scotland since 1891. It contains more than 100 individual pieces — silver ingots with runic inscriptions, silver arm rings, brooches, a solid silver pectoral cross with enamel decoration, an exquisite gold bird pin — buried in two layers. The loose pieces were on top and the lidded vessel underneath containing even more treasures, each individually wrapped in luxurious silk samite cloth.

Its shape and style were comparable to lidded vessels made in the Carolingian Empire (800–887 A.D.) of central and western Europe. The hoard was buried in the 10th century when the population of Galloway was predominantly Viking settlers. By then, the lidded pot was already an antique. It was so important a piece (the largest pot of its type ever found) and its contents so valuable that archaeologists thought it may have been pillaged in a Viking raid of a monastery or church in Germany or France.

The decoration on the surface was hard to see through a thick layer of verdigris (the green powdery coating produced by the corrosion of copper) and the remains of the textile it was wrapped in. After a 3D scan provided a roadmap of the surface, precision laser cleaning allowed conservators to remove the verdigris that obscured the surface without touching the precious surviving textile wrap that clings to the vessel.

Cleaning revealed Zoroastrian iconography, including leopards and tigers and the centerpiece: a crowned fire altar. Zoroastrian was the state religion of the Sasasian Empire, and Sasasian kings were frequently depicted hunting exotic big cats. The crown over the fire altar is also a reference to the Persian emperor.

Dr Jane Kershaw, an expert on Viking age silver from the University of Oxford, said:

“Taking tiny samples from both the vessel body and the niello – the black silver-sulphide inlays that outline the decoration – we assessed the provenance of the silver. It was immediately clear that the vessel was unlike any other silver contained in the hoard: instead, the results point to origins in the Sasanian Empire, what is today Iran. Elemental analysis using portable X-ray Fluorescence revealed that the vessel is an alloy of silver and relatively pure copper, which is typical of Sasanian silver, but not contemporary European silver. In addition, the isotopes of the lead contained within the silver metal and niello match ore from Iran. We can even go so far as to say that the niello derives from the famous mine of Nakhlak in central Iran. It’s fantastic to have scientific confirmation for the distant origins of this remarkable object.”

The vessel will go on display for the first time in the British Museum’s Silk Road exhibition which runs from September 26 until February 23, 2025. Meanwhile, National Museums Scotland is hosting a live online event on September 11 in which conservators, archaeologists and other experts who have studied the hoard will discuss the what they’ve learned about the Galloway Hoard in the decade since its discovery, including the latest findings. Tickets are free (there’s a suggested donation but it’s optional) and you can sign up here.