Category: Modern(ish)

Rare lead doll found by mudlark

Modern(ish)

A rare intact lead doll from the 16th or 17th century has been discovered by a mudlarking metal detectorist in Long Whatton, in Leicestershire. Sarah Brackstone found the small piece in a brook near her home this February. She reported her discovery to finds liaison officer for Leicestershire and Rutland where the modest little toy caused something of a sensation because it is the only complete 16th century doll to be recorded in the database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).

 

It is a lead sheet alloy child’s toy two inches long in the shape of a woman wearing a gown with a triangular narrow bodice and a full skirt. A semi-circular headdress or hairstyle outlines her round face. The moulded features — circular eyes, triangular nose, mouth upturned — are raised from the flat surface of the face. The back of the head is decorated with raised pellets and the initials “T T” which experts believe may be a makers mark. Two circular loops project out from the shoulders; in the center of both is a flattened loop. Experts think the loops may indicate the doll was used as a puppet on strings to entertain children.

The gown is intricately decorated front and back. In the front, the bodice has transverse lines that look like lacing. The skirt has a central triangular panel made of moulded lines. On either side of the triangle panel are three pairs of raised round pellets of different sizes. Two rectangular panels with intersecting lines that create six triangular sections go from the lower part of the triangle panel to the edge of the skirt. The hem is decorated with a zig-zag pattern. The back of the dress has two swagged rows of pellets on the shoulders and moulded lines forming a downward-pointing triangle to the waist. The gown has a curved row of pellets over a rectangle with vertical lines. The bottom features a zig-zag pattern with a pellet in each triangle.

Figures like these are rare because lead is so malleable that it is easy to manipulate and reshape. That also makes it easy to break. The shape of the doll, a slender waist and an even more slender neck, makes it susceptible to breakage. There are several disembodied torsos in the PAS database, and one example that is in three pieces — broken at neck and waist — and missing an arm. It is also heavily corroded, unlike Ms. Brackstone’s find.

Because the doll is made out of a base metal and does not qualify as official treasure, it has been returned to the finder. Apparently she has been fielding offers from collectors in the US, but for now at least, Sarah Brackstone plans to loan her little lead treasure to the British Museum.

Bath’s famous waters may contain real healing power

Ancient, Modern(ish)

The natural hot springs in Bath that give the city its name and 2,000-year-old reputation for healing contain a small army of pathogen-combating bacteria. Biomedical researchers at the University of Plymouth sampled the water, sediment and bacterial biofilm from the King’s Spring and the Great Bath, and found 300 different types of bacteria, 15 of them showed broad spectrum activity against pathogens including E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Shigella flexneri.

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the most urgent threats to global health today. Antibiotic-resistant pathogenic infections were responsible for killing 1.27 million people around the world in 2019. That figure is expected to skyrocket to 10 million a year by 2050. There are no new antibiotics coming down the research pipeline, so the search for novel antimicrobial natural products is of towering importance in combating this threat. Extreme ecological environments are getting new attention as their unique ecosystems are rich in microbial diversity and may contain antimicrobial NP.

Bath’s hot springs are the only ones in the UK, and with the geothermal energy that heats the waters as high as 96 °C (205°F), it offers a unique opportunity for the discovery of microbial powerhouses. Thermal springs in Italy, India and Jordan have all been found to contain microbes that combat human pathogens, but this is the first study to look at Bath’s hot springs.

The mineral-rich hot springs of Bath have been famed for their medicinal properties since the pre-Roman Iron Age. The Britons built a shrine to the goddess Sulis at the site of the hot springs and when the Romans came, they built it up into a huge bath complex and temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva who they identified with the local deity Sulis. Even after the Romans left and the baths fell into ruin, new facilities were built several times from the Middle Ages into the 19th century.

The Roman Baths has been welcoming visitors for almost two millennia, and in 2023 more than one million people toured its hot springs and other collections.

Zofia Matyjaszkiewicz, Collections Manager at the Roman Baths and a co-author of the new study, added: “People have visited the springs in Bath for thousands of years, worshipping at, bathing in and drinking the waters over the centuries. Even in the Victorian period the Spa Treatment Centre in Bath used the natural spring waters for their perceived curative properties in all sorts of showers, baths and treatments. It’s really exciting to see cutting edge scientific research like this taking place here, on a site with so many stories to tell.”

The research into Bath’s potential contribution to the fight against antimicrobial resistance will continue. The University of Plymouth will launch an expanded study with a PhD studentship beginning October 2024 that will take an in-depth look at the Bath hot spring’s microorganisms, screening them to identify any with antimicrobial activity that may have clinical use.

17th c. mayor’s hoard found in Saxony-Anhalt

Modern(ish), Treasures

Excavations at the historic Altstadt Wettin Farmhouse in the center of Wettin, southeastern Germany, have unearthed a hoard of silver coins buried 350 years ago. Construction workers found the first coins when digging a trench for a new sewer line in July 2023, and archaeologists from Saxony-Anhalt’s State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeology followed up with an excavation of the find site in the farmhouse’s courtyard. About 20 inches beneath the surface, 285 silver coins, greened by corrosion, were found compacted together. They were likely in an organic container that has rotted away. The hoard was removed in a soil block for micro-excavation under laboratory conditions.

The coins were exposed in layers, documented, cleaned and conserved. They were found to range in date from 1499 to 1652, and are an unusually international grouping. The majority are regional Saxon froschen coins, used for local markets, but the second largest number are thalers from the Spanish Netherlands, coins used for long-distance trade. There are also coins from Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and many German cities. Some of these are very rarely found in Wettin, for example a 1630 scudo minted by Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, and a tallero minted in 1620 by Cosimo II de’ Medici when he was Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Archaeologists believe this was a collection amassed by a wealthy family active in international trade over 150 years and buried in the late 1650s. The two-story rectangular farmhouse was built in the second half of the 16th or the early 17th century by wealthy Wettin citizens. Records of ownership go back to the end of the Thirty Year’s War (1648). At the time when the coins were buried, the farmhouse belonged to Johann Dondorf, one of Wettin’s wealthiest people who would go on to become the town’s mayor in the late 1660s.

He earned his income primarily from agriculture, some wine-growing and brewing rights. Wettin was an extremely wealthy brewing town during and after the Thirty Years’ War. Dondorf’s wealth became clear after his death in 1675. When his estate was recorded by the court, more than 2,500 thalers were found in his house in 13 separate items, of which 1,000 thalers alone were “[…] 500 ducats in a long leather bag.”

Maybe this hoard was one of his leather bags full of cash he stashed all over his property.

Napoleonic Wars soldiers’ graffiti found on Dover Castle door

Medieval, Modern(ish)

A wooden door covered in more than 50 carvings from soldiers garrisoned there from the wars of the French Revolution through the mid-19th century has been discovered at Dover Castle. Graffiti include initials, surnames, dates, a large single-masted sailing ship and nine men hanging from gallows.

First built shortly after 1066 to defend the Strait of Dover, the shortest sea crossing between England and mainland Europe and therefore an inestimably valuable strategic position, Dover Castle took its permanent form under Henry II. The great keep, towers, inner and outer baileys were completed by 1188. St. John’s Tower was added under Henry III after 1217.

The castle’s fortunes declined in the Civil War period (1642-5), and it began to be used as a prison for captured French and Spanish soldiers in the wars of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. They passed the time carving graffiti on the walls. Dover Castle was revived as a defensive fortress in the Georgian period as tensions rose between Britain and France.

A new construction program restored the crumbling buildings and erected new barracks to house infantrymen in the 1750s. Come the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, military engineers completely redesigned the outer defenses to protect the castle from modern artillery and converted the Great Tower into a massive magazine for gunpowder, shot, shells and other supplies. Thousands of soldiers were garrisoned there.

The door with the carvings was originally on an upper floor of St. John’s Tower. During Dover Castle’s revival, it was guarded at all times by six to 12 men, one or two of them manning the top room repurposed as a watchtower because of its a commanding view of the exposed northern flank of the castle. The guards were armed with knives, perhaps bayonets, and they put their sharpened ends to good use decorating the old door.

The plank door was rediscovered several years ago. It had long been inaccessible without using a ladder to reach the base of a spiral staircase. Covered in several thick coats of paint, the graffiti were not immediately evident. It was only when the door was removed for conservation and the old paint layers stripped that the engraved treasure they were concealing was revealed.

The St John’s Tower door contains around 50 pieces of carved graffiti. These include: three dates: 1789, the date of the French Revolution; 1798, a period of rebuilding in the castle; and 1855, when changes were planned to the tower. There are also many sets of people’s initials and two surnames: Downam and Hopper/Hooper. At least nine contain gruesome illustrations of hangings, a strange and macabre repetition, including one example where a man wears a military uniform and a bicorne hat. It is possible that this could be a depiction of a real hanging, as hangings were known to take place in Dover and did serve as morbid entertainment, or perhaps even a representation of Napoleon himself. Also present is a detailed and accurate carving of single-masted sailing ship, most likely an 8-gun cutter which was a fast vessel used by the Royal Navy, the Revenue Service, smugglers and privateers. Another curious symbol which depicts a glass or chalice for wine, surmounted by an elaborated cross, may be a representation of Christian holy communion.

The door was removed from its original location for conservation and stabilization. Old coats of paint, added after the graffiti was carved, were removed. The wood of the door was cleaned and treated for long-term preservation. It will go on display in July at Dover Castle’s new exhibition, Dover Under Siege. In addition to viewing the door, visitors to the exhibition will have the chance to walk the castle’s northern defenses, casements and its medieval and Georgian underground tunnels.

Remains of saint’s reliquary found in church crypt

Medieval, Modern(ish)

The remains of the reliquary of St. Svithun, long believed to have been sent to Denmark and melted down 500 years ago, have been found in the crypt of the church dedicated to him in Stavanger, Norway.

The find consists of a gilded copper plate measuring five by ten centimeters with small holes along the edges which indicate that it has been attached to a larger object, for example a wooden plate. The archaeologists see this in connection with a gilded silver medallion with an animal motif, and several decorative glass gems.

“We were very surprised when we carried out an X-ray examination of the copper plate. The image clearly reveals a church building with tower and roof, columns and windows,” says conservator Bettina Ebert.

According to the archaeologists, all these finds can be connected to the reliquary of St. Svithun.

St. Swithun was the Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Winchester from 852 until his death in 863. His remains were translated to a shrine inside the new cathedral at Winchester a century later, and so many miracles occurred during and after the move that the Winchester monks lodged a protest at having to drop everything and go to church to celebrate every time a miracle happened, even multiple times a night. They gave up when Swithun appeared in a dream and told them they had to go to church or he’d stop doing miracles. He was thereafter canonized a saint by popular acclaim.

His relics were translated again when the new Norman cathedral was built in 1093, and while most of the core set remained there, some of his bones were shared with other parishes and shrines in the Middle Ages. The Winchester shrine and St. Swithun’s remains were destroyed in the frenzy of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII in 1538.

Stavanger got the saint’s arm bone because its first bishop, Bishop Reinald, came to the newly-established bishopric from Winchester and began construction of its cathedral in around 1100. Contemporary sources say Reinald already had the arm in Stavanger in 1112. The cathedral was completed in 1125.

The excavation of the basement of the church was triggered by the chance discovery of a 700-year-old ivory figurine of Melchior, one of the Three Kings, kneeling before the Christ Child. The follow-up investigation unearthed an ivory of the Virgin Mary. They were parts of two different altarpieces.

Many precious objects followed the discovery of the ivory figurines: gilded fragments of liturgical objects, hundreds of pieces from the old stained glass windows, a burial chamber, likely of a bishop, a woven gold band from the fine vestments of a church official, the papal seal of Boniface VIII (r. 1294–1303), and an enameled metalwork fitting with an intricate geometric decoration. Also found in the excavation were 160 coin and bracteates plus 60 fragments of coins and bracteates. This is Stavanger’s largest ever medieval coin discovery. More utilitarian objects from daily life were uncovered as well, like a tablespoon and an ear spoon.

While there is no detailed description of the reliquary that held the holy humerus (or ulna, or radius), reliquaries shaped like churches studded with colorful gem-like stones were popular in medieval Norway. That means somebody defied the Reformation zealots who busted up the cathedral’s stained glass windows for their idolatrous Catholic imagery and secreted the saint’s relics under the North Tower to keep them from being destroyed.

“In terms of quantity and significance, the finds in the basement have exceeded all expectations and reflect more than 1,000 years of Stavanger’s history. They demonstrate the cathedral and city’s clerical wealth and contact with Rome in a way not previously seen in the archaeological material,” [excavation leader Sean] Denham says.

Visitors will be able to see these treasures and more in the museum’s 2025 exhibition celebrating the cathedral’s 900th anniversary.