Forum of Peace excavation reveals millennia of Roman history

An excavation of the Temple of Peace built by Vespasian in the Imperial Forum in Rome has revealed thousands of years of Roman history, without even reaching the imperial era yet.

The Templum Pacis was built by the emperor Vespasian (r. 69-79 A.D.) between 71 and 75 A.D. in celebration of his victories in the First Jewish–Roman War. Vespasian had personally led the Roman legions that crushed the rebellion in Galilee in 67 A.D. and after his elevation to the purple took him to Rome in 69 A.D., he left his son Titus behind to besiege Jerusalem. Jerusalem fell to Rome in the summer of 70 A.D. The loot from the sacking of Jerusalem funded the construction of Vespasian’s new temple to Pax, the goddess of peace.

A large and important temple facing what would become the Colosseum, The Temple of Peace is probably best remembered today for something added to it long after Vespasian’s death. It was the home of the Forma Urbis, an incredibly detailed map of Rome 60 feet wide carved on 150 marble slabs that documented the floorplans of every building, monument, bath, street and even staircases in the city to a scale of 1:240. It was hung on an interior wall of the temple by the emperor Septimius Severus in the first decade of the 3rd century. It was damaged in the 410 A.D. sack of Rome by Alaric, and gradually more and more of it was lost. Like much ancient marble, in the Middle Ages it was harvested to make lime. Today only 1,186 pieces of it (10-15% of the original) survive, and they are still being puzzled together.

The excavation of the eastern section of the temple, an area never archaeologically investigated before, began in June 2022 and came to a close just last week.

The discovery of cellars and large kilns, which can be easily imagined to have been the fate of many imperial marbles transformed into lime, reveals to archaeologists the evidence of the great complexity of the area, which had not been subject to archaeological investigations until now. Moreover, with the upcoming excavations, thanks also to the funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), it will probably be possible to reach the imperial phases and, why not, even the earlier ones. The hope is that this relatively small section of the Imperial Forums, not adequately investigated with the currently used methodologies, may bring some new interesting data to the understanding of an area that is only seemingly well-known: written sources, views, nineteenth-century photographs, and old-style digs (not scientific excavations) from the first half of the twentieth century do not represent a sufficient heritage to understand the phases in a city that has been constantly transforming for millennia like Rome.

“Boy Bishop” token found in Norfolk

A metal detectorist working with the National Trust has unearthed a medieval Christmas token at the Oxburgh Estate in Norfolk that was likely dispensed by a late medieval “Boy Bishop” in a St. Nicholas Day procession.

The token dates to between 1470 and 1560 and was designed to resemble coinage but was not legal tender. They were made of lead in penny, half penny and groat sizes. On December 6th, the Feast of St. Nicholas, a choirboy would be selected to wear bishop’s vestments, mitre and crook and lead a service and a procession to collect donations for the church. The Boy Bishop would throw tokens into the crowd during a procession through town, and those tokens could be exchanged for food in town during the holiday season between December 6th and December 28th.

Found at West Park near Oxburgh Hall in a survey as part of a parkland restoration project, the token is well-preserved on one side depicting a long cross with dots between the arms. The other side is heavily corroded but likely featured a portrait of St. Nicholas. It probably came from Bury St. Edmunds Abbey 30 miles away which was one of the richest and most influential monasteries in England.

[National Trust Archaeologist Angus Wainwright says:] “We believe that one of the inhabitants from Oxborough village must have made the long trip to Bury St Edmunds, around 27 miles, to see the festive ceremonies in the massive Abbey Church where they may have acquired the token. As one of the biggest buildings in Western Europe this must have been a mind-blowing experience for someone from a tiny village.

“This discovery shows how rich the cultural life of even the poorest folk could be in the Middle Ages. It’s also interesting that the Christmas period was a time for fun and celebration aimed at children, with a child taking on the role of the bishop, and St Nicholas as patron saint of children.”

The practice died with the Reformation as the monasteries were destroyed and the very concept of saint days discarded. The token is now on display at Oxburgh Hall.

Scandinavia’s oldest ship burial found in Norway

A mound at Leka in central Norway has been identified as a ship burial constructed in the Merovingian era (550-800 A.D.), predating the Viking era by a hundred years. Radiocarbon dating results indicate the mound was built around 700 A.D., making it the oldest known ship burial in Scandinavia.

The Herlaugshaugen mound was surveyed this summer by archaeologists and volunteer metal detectorists at the behest of national and county heritage authorities. The team recovered large iron rivets, some with wood corroded around them, confirming that the mound contained a ship burial.

“This dating is really exciting because it pushes the whole tradition of ship burials quite far back in time,” said Geir Grønnesby, an archaeologist at the NTNU University Museum. […]

The development of shipbuilding has played a key role in the discussion about when and why the Viking Age started. We can’t say that the Viking Age started earlier based on this dating, but Grønnesby says that you don’t build a ship of this size without having a reason for doing so.

“The burial mound itself is also a symbol of power and wealth. A wealth that has not come from farming in Ytre Namdalen. I think people in this area have been engaged in trading goods, perhaps over great distances.”

The mound is located along a shipping route that at least from the mid-8th century was a key stop in the trade of whetstones to mainland Europe, so it stands to reason that the locals could have had the knowledge, skills and incentive to build large ships.

At 200 feet in diameter, Herlaugshaugen is one of the largest burial mounds in Norway. It was first excavated in the late 18th century. Those early excavations reportedly unearthed a bronze cauldron, animal bones, iron nails and most dramatically of all, a seated skeleton with a sword. The finds were lost, disappearing from view in the 1920s. The skeleton, also missing, was exhibited as the semi-legendary 9th century king Herlaug, after whom the mound was named.

According to the Heimskringla, the collection of sagas of the kings of Norway by 13th century chronicler Snorri Sturlason, Herlaug and his brother Hrollaug co-ruled the petty kingdom of Naumudal, north of Trondheim, in the 860s A.D. The minor kingdoms were constantly squabbling with each other, and in 866 A.D., Harald Hårfagre, king of Agder, started a campaign to defeat them all and unite Norway under his rule. Many kinglets went down to defeat. After his conquest of Trondheim, the brother kings knew they were next. They had very different reactions to the news.

North in Naumudal were two brothers, kings,—Herlaug and Hrollaug; and they had been for three summers raising a mound or tomb of stone and lime and of wood. Just as the work was finished, the brothers got the news that King Harald was coming upon them with his army. Then King Herlaug had a great quantity of meat and drink brought into the mound, and went into it himself, with eleven companions, and ordered the mound to be covered up. King Hrollaug, on the contrary, went upon the summit of the mound, on which the kings were wont to sit, and made a throne to be erected, upon which he seated himself. Then he ordered feather-beds to be laid upon the bench below, on which the earls were wont to be seated, and threw himself down from his high seat or throne into the earl’s seat, giving himself the title of earl. Now Hrollaug went to meet King Harald, gave up to him his whole kingdom, offered to enter into his service, and told him his whole proceeding. Then took King Harald a sword, fastened it to Hrollaug’s belt, bound a shield to his neck, and made him thereupon an earl, and led him to his earl’s seat; and therewith gave him the district Naumudal, and set him as earl over it.

The newly-discovered date means the skeleton found within was not in fact Herlaug, but rather an elite individual who died close to two centuries before the king of lore sealed himself into his own tomb in a final act of defiance.

Medieval lead curse tablet found in latrine

A lead curse tablet invoking Satan and two other devils has been discovered in a 15th century latrine in Rostock on the north coast of Germany. This is the first curse tablet from the Middle Ages found in Germany.

Curses, known as defixiones in Latin, inscribed on lead were widespread in ancient Greece and Rome well into the Christian era. They invoked demonic or divine powers to destroy rival businesses, rival sports teams, rival in love, opponents in lawsuits, people who had done them a wide variety of wrongs. They were also love/sex spells, intended to compel a target’s love or passion, or compel a wrong to be righted.

The curse was scratched on a small sheet of soft lead, rolled or folded up with the text on the inside and placed in an area considered to be a gateway to the chthonic powers like a grave, a well or a temple, places where the targets could not find them and the gods of the underworld could. There are about 1,500 ancient curse tablets known on the archaeological record, with new ones cropping up regularly, sometimes by the dozens as certain locations were popular curse receptacles for centuries.

The era of the lead curse tablet came to an end in the early 7th century. While curses have been found from later eras, they were in different formats. Apparently the ancient tradition was still in practice in medieval Rostock at least once.

The tablet was discovered during an excavation preliminary to the expansion of Rostock’s town hall. At first it seemed like just a random rolled up piece of metal, but when it was unrolled the inscription “sathanas taleke belzebuk hinrik berith” was found inside. Written in Gothic minuscule script, the inscription is a list of names. Satan, Beelzebub and Berith (aka Baʿal Berith, a Canaanite deity which in the Rabbinic tradition is equated with Beelzebub) are the invoked devils. Taleke and Hinrik are the apparent targets of the curse. Was this perhaps a spurned lover sicking devils on a couple to break them up? That would certainly be in keeping with the ancient approach to curse tablets.

So is the location where the curse was stashed. A latrine is even closer to the underworld than a well, and there was no way the targets of the curse could happen upon it down in the depths of human waste collection.

Harpole burial: micro-excavation bears fruit

A year of painstaking micro-excavations of soil blocks recovered from the 7th century bed burial unearthed near the village of Harpole, Northamptonshire, in April 2022, has revealed new details about the burial and its exceptional furnishings. The gold, glass and gemstone necklace with its 30 pendants has been cleaned, uncovering the intricacy of the goldsmithing and the brilliant colors of the glass and gems. The central pendant is a large square inlaid garnet and gold spirals, reminiscent of many of the pieces in the Staffordshire Hoard.

Here are photographs of the necklace before and after cleaning:

Comparing the after photograph to the digital reconstruction made in 2022, I’d say they were pretty much dead-on.

The unique silver pectoral cross is still in the process of being liberated from its soil enclosure. Archaeologists are excavating it extremely slowly because of its complexity and fragility.

A central cross is decorated with a smaller gold cross, which has a large garnet and four smaller garnets. At the end of each arm are smaller circular crosses made of silver, with garnet and gold centres. These are very similar to the pectoral crosses found in other high status female burials from this time, including the Trumpington burial. The use of these crosses within one larger cross, however, is unique and suggests the individual may have held a very special position within the Christian community.

Through micro-excavating the feature, our conservators have revealed it is mostly made of extremely thin sheets of silver attached to wood, its corroded surface barely distinguishable from the surrounding soil. We hope to identify the type of wood used, and better understand how the cross was constructed.

The laboratory excavation has also found more skeletal remains of the high-status woman buried in the grave. In the initial in situ excavation, only a few partial teeth were discovered, but one of the soil blocks recovered from the dig turned out to contain more parts of the skeleton: an upper femur, a piece of the pelvic bone, vertebrae, part of a hand and wrist. The bones were pinned under a crushed copper dish that had been buried with the deceased. The copper prevented the usual decomposition process of the organic remains.

Our specialists are continuing to analyse and piece together the story of the Harpole Burial. As well as getting a better understanding of the items recovered and individual buried, it is hoped that scientific techniques may reveal more about funerary rituals at the time. This potentially includes studying tiny fragments of organic matter, which may hold clues as to what the person was wearing and the types of materials they were lying on.