Month: June 2008

Ancient necropolis for the poor excavated near Rome

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi, Treasures

Necklace from the poor folks’ cemetaryThe authorities found it because looters starting digging it up hoping to score fancy funerary artifacts, but it’s not that kind of necropolis.

In fact, the very reason looters would find this burial ground useless is what makes it so special a find: it’s full of labourers who bear the marks of a lifetime of hard work on their bones, not the rich people one usually finds in Roman necropolises.

Not that the deceased weren’t buried with stuff for the afterlife because they were. The children’s tombs held necklaces of figurines and amber chunks (want!), bronze rings, gold earrings. They’re just not the big ticket items the antiquities trade craves.

Most of the 300 skeletons unearthed were male, and many of them showed signs of years of heavy work: joint and tendon inflammation, compressed vertebrae, hernias and spinal problems, archaeologists said. Sandy sediment helped preserve the remains well.

Judging by the condition of the skeletons, archaeologists concluded that the men likely carried loads on their backs at a nearby port during the early years of Imperial Rome, said Gabriella Gatto, a spokeswoman for the archaeology office.

Many ailments “seem to hark back to work as laborers, in transport and carrying of heavy loads, in an especially humid environment, circumstances that makes one think of the burial of individuals who worked in port areas of the city,” the office said in a statement.

One of the skeletons was of a 30-year-old man whose upper and lower jaw bones were fused together. Apparently his family cared for him for 30 years feeding him a liquid diet via a hole in his teeth.

That’s a major find. Romans were not keen on birth defects. It would have been perfectly acceptable, even expected, for the infant to have been thrown off the Tarpeian rock.

“Headless Pyramid” rediscovered

Ancient

It’s sort of bodiless too, truth be told (it’s been little more than a foundation since at least the the mid-19th century), but it was lost under Saharan sands, and now has been found again.

The pyramid is thought to house the tomb of King Menkauhor, who is believed to have ruled in Egypt’s 5th dynasty for eight years in the mid-2400s B.C. […]

“After Lepsius the location of the pyramid was lost and the substructure of [the] pyramid never known,” said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“It was forgotten by people until we began to search this area and a hill of sand, maybe 25 feet [7.6 meters] high.”

I guess people didn’t think the decapitated structure was worth keeping exposed, or even pinpointed for tourists.

They’ve also uncovered a Ptolemaic segment of the sacred road in Saqqara, which is notable because it suggests people were still angling to be buried there two thousand years after Menkauhor got his headless eternal resting place.

Chinese treasures in Columbia University basement

Ancient, Treasures

Arthur Sackler donated a huge collection of 3000 or so Asian antiquities to Columbia University in 1970. Out of that group, 22 particularly notable Chinese stone sculptures ended up uninventoried and unloved in the basement until collector and Columbia donor Leopold Swergold was allowed access.

The display includes steles, Buddha heads, standing bodhisattvas, tomb doors, a large section of a mortuary bed and smaller icons. Their startling diversity makes the show feel much bigger than it is, and it reflects the unstable, culturally up-for-grabs phase of China’s history from the fall of the Han Dynasty in the early third century to the rise of the Tang in the early seventh century, sometimes likened to the Middle Ages in Europe.

Over those four centuries China was especially porous. Nomadic peoples from Inner Mongolia took turns invading and setting up kingdoms, sometimes being absorbed by local populations and sometimes being repulsed. Buddhism and its artistic styles, traveling along the Silk Road with monks from India and Central Asia, were part of that flux. The thirst for stone images of Buddha and bodhisattvas gave stone sculpture a boost, as did Indian traditions of carving figures and entire temples out of walls and caves of living rock.

You can get a sense of the range of sculptural styles and techniques from the pieces on exhibit. They testify to the cultural changes of the period.

A 6th c. Northern Wei dynasty funerary stele is a glorious mixture of Buddhism, ancestor worship, dragons and images of partying in the afterlife. An Eastern Wei votive stele made just a few decades after that is all about the Buddha, indicating a major religious shift in a short period of time.

The sculptures are now on display at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery at Columbia University through June 21.

Who looted Machu Picchu first?

Ancient, Looting, Modern(ish)

The story as we know it gives Yale University explorer Hiram Bingham III the honor of having been the first Westerner to exploit the Inca ruins in 1911, but a team of historians say one Augusto Berns, a German adventurer and con man, got there way earlier.

Berns made a (sucker’s) deal with the Peruvian government to grab as much loot as he could from Machu Picchu back in 1867.

Berns purchased land across from Machu Picchu in 1867, and an 1887 document even shows he set up a company to plunder the site, Greer told The Associated Press.

Berns wrote that Machu Picchu “‘will undoubtedly contain objects of great value, and form part of those treasures of the Incas,'” Greer said.

Peruvian historian Mariana Mould de Pease backs Greer’s claim. She said she found in Yale University archives a letter of understanding between Berns and Peru’s then-president to pillage the site, as long as the Peruvian government received 10 percent of the profits.

See what I mean about the sucker’s deal? Because, damn, 10 percent is just embarrassing. If you’re going to let foreigners take your country’s cultural patrimony and run, shouldn’t you at least get a decent cut?

This insensate generosity flummoxes me. “Sure, buddeh. Go ahead and take all the piles of painstakingly worked ancient gold you can find. Just leave me a Krugerrand in the tip jar on your way out. Oh, and don’t forget to tell your friends about our great selection and rock-bottom prices!”

Who knows were the stuff Berns took has ended up. We know that Bingham’s loot, a massive collection of over 4000 artifacts ranging from mummies to ceramics to gold jewelry, ended up on display at Yale where it remains to this day, although after much negotiation it is finally slated to return to Peru in 2011.

Gravediggers: Is there anything they can’t do?

Medieval, Treasures

A gravedigger in the Shetland town of Cunningsburgh during the course of his duties discovered a Pictish stone engraved with symbols and dating back to 700 A.D.

Not only is it extremely cool-looking, but it turns out to be a witness to a crucial period in Shetland history.

The 18×11 inch sandstone slab, which is broken from a bigger stone, is inscribed with symbols on one side.

Most striking are two discs with crosses, which are connected together with a band and crossed over by a Z-shaped figure with ornate terminals.

The motifs on the latest stone are known by archaeologists as “double-disc and Z-rod”, one of the commonest motifs.

Double-discs often have circles within them, and sometimes spirals, but this is the only one with crosses.

If this is a Christian cross it indicates a mixed belief between the Picts’ indigenous religion, and their new Christian faith.

The Vikings invaded Shetland starting in the late 8th century, so this stone was carved less than a hundred years before Norse culture began to dominate, which it would do quite thoroughly until the Scots, using a clever pawnshop maneuver rather than a boring old war, snagged Shetland back from the Danes in 1469.

The Pictish symbols carved on the stone would have been illegible within a couple of hundred years, and so they remain.