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.

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.

A copper horary quadrant, a timepiece, calendar and altitude calculator, inscribed with the year 1311 on the reverse side, making it the oldest dated English scientific instrument, will be going under the hammer at Christie’s on December 13th.

Engraved on the obverse curved, unequal hour lines and a quadrant arc with numbered scales, the dated reverse of the thin copper plate had a spinning index pointer that could be used to calculate the height of an object, the altitude of the sun and the date of Easter Sunday.

It also contains a sundial that tells the time, which in medieval England was commonly divided into 12 hour-long segments between sunrise and sunset. This meant that each hour was longer in summer than in winter — which was useful when daylight was crucial to working the land.

The ingenious science behind this device, which remained in use in one form or another for nearly a millennium, can be traced back to a manuscript produced in Baghdad in the 9th or 10th century. The city was a cosmopolitan centre of learning, which fed into Europe through Al-Andalus, the area of the Iberian peninsula that was under Muslim rule between the 8th and 15th centuries. […]

These quadrants were probably the tools of merchants, senior churchmen and scholars,’ explains Hyslop. ‘The knowledge they provided would have revolutionised the way people in the Middle Ages lived.’

Very few early examples of horary quadrants have survived. One discovered in 2015 by metal detectorist Simon Neal near what had once been an Augustinian priory at Chetwode in Buckinghamshire, has notable similarities to the 1311 example. The metal composition, dimensions and engraving style are so similar that the two pieces were not only manufactured in the same workshop, but likely by the hand of the same unknown horologer now dubbed the master of the Chetwode Quadrant.

The pre-sale estimate is £100,000–£150,000 ($125,000–$188,000). Even the high estimate is modest. A medieval quadrant dating to 1388 that was discovered in Canterbury in 2005 sold for £138,000. The buyer applied for an export license and the Culture Minister placed a temporary ban on export as an object of exceptional cultural interest. The British Museum was able to raise the matching funds in time and it is now on display.

The head of a medieval star-shaped mace has been discovered during construction of a barn in Wilków, Lublin Voivodeship, east Poland. It was found last week in the sand and rubble of construction by twelve-year-old Witold Bołtuć who recognized it as a medieval artifact. His parents promptly reported their son’s find to experts at the University of Lublin.

The mace (buława in Polish) was introduced to Poland by the nomadic Turkic peoples who migrated to Eastern Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries, possibly the Khazars. As it gained popularity in what are now Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Hungary its original combat function evolved into a symbol of military power. These weapons were not used by ordinary soldiers; they were the exclusive province of commanding officers.

The newly-discovered star mace head was cast in bronze and is just under three inches high. It was definitely not just symbolic, as bent and damaged pyramid knobs indicate it saw intensive use, perhaps in combat, perhaps recycled for a new purpose, for use as a tool like a hammer, for instance. It has been tentatively dated to between the 12th and 14th centuries.

The three rows of spikes in the stylized shape of a skull classifies it as a Type IV head. The type is usually found in the territory of the Kievan Rus which is where they were originally produced. The type was copied elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and several comparable examples in the Museum of Cracow were produced in Hungary. Because of the damage to this mace head, its origin is difficult to determine.

The mace head will be assigned to a museum, likely the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, where it will studied and conserved.