One of the 14th century painted burial vaults discovered last year under the street in front of the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium, has been lifted whole and moved to a new location for conservation and eventual display. Similar vaults found before in Bruges were filled with lightweight clay aggregates to preserve the interior wall paintings and reburied for their own protection, but the most recent discoveries have to be moved due to the planned construction of a new pumping station on the street where they were found.

Raising a 700-year-old masonry vault presents numerous  logistical challenges. They were built to order, as it were, hastily constructed so that a body could be buried within 24 hours of death. The lime plaster coating the interior was painted when still wet and quickly sealed. Past attempts to raise burial vaults have failed and damaged the priceless paintings, so the City of Bruges created a multi-disciplinary committee of scientists, archaeologists and specialist conservators to coordinate the removal of the best-preserved vault first.

The wall paintings were fixed using Japanese rice paper to prevent plaster loss. While conservators were working on the interior, the exterior base was reinforced with a new poured concrete slab to make it possible to lift the entire vault even in cold, wet and windy weather without the bottom falling out of it.

The vault is now inside the Church of Our Lady where it will be meticulously conserved. The restoration process begins with a controlled drying period. It is a Goldilocks situation. The temperature and humidity levels must be strictly maintained to ensure the tomb doesn’t dry too quickly (because the paint will flake off the contracting walls) or too slowly (because mold will form).

It will be conserved in public view, pandemic permitting, in the church museum where it will go on permanent display when the restoration is complete.

Here’s a time-lapse video of conservators working on the vault before it was raised.

The excavation of the Medieval Park in Oslo where the falconer figurine was discovered last month has unearthed two more rare artifacts: a large bone inscribed with Norse runes, and a stick with runic text in Norse on one side and Latin on the other.

The bone is from a large domesticated mammal (probably a cow or a horse) and is believed to be rib. It is carved on one side with 13 clearly visible runes. The other side is also carved with runes, but they are worn and difficult to read. It has not been radiocarbon dated yet. Comparable rune bones date to between 1100 and 1350.

The rune stick is flat and has writing on both long sides and one edge. It is broken at both ends so is likely missing some of the text. The grain and damage to the wood makes the runes that have survived challenging to interpret.

The legible text of both pieces has been interpreted by Runologist Kristel Zilmer from the Cultural History Museum, University of Oslo. The bone’s runes read “basmarþærbæin,” which could be a name or nickname. It could also be a self-reference, as “bæin” means bone in Old Scandinavian, so the word may be describing the object, much like the runes found on a comb in Denmark which spelled out “comb.”

The rune stick features both a prayer and a personal name.

On one of the broad sides, there are two latin words: manus and Domine or Domini.

Manus means hand, and Dominus means lord, or God. The words are found in a known latin prayer: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum”, meaning “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”. These are words traditionally attributed to Jesus as he was crucified.

The short side of the stick may be a continuation of the prayer, Zilmer explains. The first rune is difficult to pin down without a microscope. So far it can be read in different ways. […]

It is possible that it says “it is true”. If so, then the prayer is similar to one found in the Urnes stave church: “Hold thy sacred Lord hand over Brynjolvs spirit. This be true”.

The female name Bryngjerd is also inscribed.

After her name is a damaged section that appears to include the verb “fela” which means both to hide and to surrender. The latter interpretation could suggest that Bryngjerd surrendered her life in the service of God.

The combination of Latin and Norse on the stick is a fine example of the complexity of runic script even among the general population. Latin literacy was not solely the province of the clergy in medieval Norway.

The stick was found in a waste layer while the bone was on the southern end of the site, one of the oldest sections. Dates are difficult to derive from the archaeological context, but comparable finds, the carving style and the use of certain characters point to a date of between 1100 and 1350.

A high-status burial from the late 11th/early 12th century containing an intact bronze bowl and rare matched pair of amber rings has been discovered in Ostrowite in Poland’s Pomeranian Voivodeship.

Two burials with bronze bowls had been found at the site before, one by the farmer during agricultural work in 2007 (precise location unknown) and the other in 2010 by archaeologists. Fragments of bronze bowls have been found throughout the site, however, and in 2020 and 2021, the team worked with volunteer metal detectorists  to pinpoint the likely location of a bowl and therefore a grave.

They hit paydirt in 2020 when a trench dug in an area with a concentration of detected bowl fragments unearthed an east-west orientated grave with a bronze bowl at the legs of the deceased (Tomb 80), then they hit it again in 2021 with an even more richly furnished bowl tomb (Tomb 81). While the organic structure of the tomb has not survived, the shape and size indicates it was a wooden chamber grave, a type used by the early medieval elites of Pomerania. Tomb 81 is larger than most at 9.7 feet long and five feet wide. (The average dimensions of the bowl tombs are 8 x 3 feet, and that’s larger than the average size of a non-bowl grave.)

Bronze bowls from the early Middle Ages in Poland are exclusively found in the graves of men. Inside the bowl were two pieces of wood. They were resting on top of the complete bowl, and archaeologists believe they were not left inside of it for funerary purposes, but rather are surviving fragments of the tomb’s wooden roof. Other organic materials have been found on the bowl’s surface  (fragments of textiles and their imprints) and underside (small fragments of leather, probably remnants of the deceased’s shoes preserved by the copper oxides in the bowl). The knife sheath has similar textile traces preserved on the surface as well.

Archaeologists also found an iron knife in a leather sheath with bronze fittings, two coin fragments and two amber finger rings buried in thegrave. The first ring was found where the bones of the right hand would have been (the small hand bones have not survived). The second ring was on a finger of the left hand on other side of the body. Amber rings are extremely uncommon grave goods, and finding two in one grave is unique.

“The deceased was most likely a representative of the local Pomeranian elite” – Dr. hab. Jerzy Sikora from the Institute of Archeology of the University of Lodz, who has been leading research in Ostrowit for several years. The deceased was placed in a wooden structure of the burial chamber, resembling a very large chest or a small house. Archaeologists call this type of burial, associated with the early medieval elites, chambered. The fact that the buried person was a Christian is evidenced by the fact that he was not incinerated after his death. In addition, the body was placed on the east-west axis, which was also a practice for Christians.

Tomb 81 is located near two other burials that likely belonged to the elite. They too have the dimensions and shape of a wooden chamber burial, but no clearly identifiable remains of the structures have been found.

Two Viking-era oval brooches that have shed new light on the Viking settlement of the Isle of Man have gone on display for the first time.

The brooches were discovered in December of 2018 by metal detectorists John Crowe and Craig Evans, along with bronze fittings from a belt and a decorated glass bead. The brooches were full of soil when first unearthed. Specialist conservators at the York Archaeological Trust x-rayed, cleaned and waxed them to reveal their intricately interwoven designs in bronze with silver wire decoration. They date to around 900 A.D.

Large, highly-ornamented domed oval brooches like these were worn in pairs by Viking women to fasten the long back straps of their dresses to the two short front straps. The pins were fastened in the front at the shoulders and were sometimes connected with decorated strands of beads. Most of the ones that have been found (primarily in a funerary context) are made of bronze, although a handful of ones made of silver and gold have been found in extremely rich graves.

They were created using a technique derived from late Roman chip-carving in which the complex design was carved into a master model in a soft material — wax, lead, wood — and then cast in bronze. The technique was first used for Roman military belt buckles. It was picked up in the border regions to make fibulae which evolved into the large fastener brooches sported by Viking women.

While men also used brooches to fasten their garments, usually cloaks, the ones found in men’s graves are stylistically very different from the women’s and are individual pieces, not pairs. Pairs of oval concave brooches were exclusively the province of Viking women and have been found in Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) as well as further afield in Britain, Ireland, Russia and Iceland. This is the first pair found on the Isle of Man.

Allison Fox, Curator for Archaeology at MNH said:

“The Isle of Man has a rich Viking heritage and the Manx National Collections reflect this.  This type of brooch, worn by Scandinavian women in the Viking Age and usually found in graves, has been missing so far.  In addition to the brooches, there was also one decorated glass bead made in Ireland and a belt with bronze fittings, most likely made in the Irish Sea area. Although proud of her Scandinavian roots, this particular pagan lady also wore local fashions”.

Because the brooches have so often been discovered in graves, archaeologists did a follow-up targeted excavation of the find site, hoping to find evidence of this fashionable pagan lady’s burial. They came up empty-handed, alas, and no grave was found where the pair of brooches were found.

The brooches, belt fittings and bead are now on display at the Manx Museum in Douglas.