The History Blog

Would you look at this:

That is a pure gold 7th c. cross of Anglo-Saxon manufacture and it was found in a muddy field by yet another British dude with a metal detector.

I swear to God it’s like people just tossed huge loot around for people to find under a few of inches of dirt 1300 years later. And England was a backwoods for centuries! Yet still they score and score. I never hear of a metal detector turning up shit in Rome.

The stunning Anglo Saxon artefact was set with red gemstones and might have originally held a relic such as bone from a Disciple or fragment of the Cross.

Measuring just over an inch long, the 18 carat gold has been decorated with fine detail and is thought to have been worn as a pendant.

It is English made with gold that was probably melted down from Merovingian French coins.

The metal detector fellow actually sounds like he knows what he’s doing. There’s a great passage in the article where he describes his process and the discovery.

Belgian Archaeologists digging in Turkey have found the head of a colossal statue of the empress Faustina, wife of Roman emperor Antonius Pius.

She was found just a few meters from where another colossus, this one of Hadrian and currently on exhibit in the British Museum, was discovered last year: in the frigidarium of the Roman Baths at Sagalassos.

Last year’s discoveries suggested more statues of people belonging to the circles around Hadrian, such as his wife Vibia Sabina or his male lover Antinoüs, might be found here. The team even initially thought that this year’s find was probably Vibia Sabina, who was only 14 years old when she was forced into marriage with Hadrian. But it was clear once the head, which was face down, was turned over, that it represented a woman more mature than as Sabina was usually portrayed.

The head has large, almond-shaped eyes (only the tear ducts are rendered, not the iris or pupils as became usual during the reign of Hadrian) and fleshy thick lips. Its hair is parted in the middle of the front and taken in wavy strains below and around the ears toward the back. The rendering of the hair was done with only sparing sparing use of the drill, a feature characteristic for portraits of empresses in this, the Antonine, dynasty, in sharp contrast with the beards and curly hairs of their husbands. On top of the head is a circlet, a feature typical for most of Sabina’s portraits, yet in this case the whole physiognomy of the face clearly indicates it is the empress Faustina the Elder, wife of Hadrian’s successor Antoninus Pius.

Faustina and Antonius Pius were married for 31 years and had 4 children, only one of whom — a daughter and future empress — survived to adulthood. By all accounts their marriage was a very happy one. Antonius Pius deified her upon her death in 141 A.D., struck several coins dedicated to the Divine Faustina, built a temple in her name and started a charity for orphans called “Faustina’s Girls”.

Sweet, neh?

The good folks over at the Orwell Prize are doing a cool thing reminscent of that WWI letters blog I posted about a while ago. They’re reposting all of George Orwell’s diary entries in real time, exactly 70 years after Orwell first wrote them.

The August entries are from his domestic diaries. The political ones kick off on September 7th. I don’t know if that’s a convention Orwell himself used, or if it’s just how they classify them at the Orwell Prize.

So far the entries are relatively mundane stuff about the weather and George catching snakes, although I don’t mean that dismissively. It’s refreshingly genuine, and I’m glad George Orwell bucked the trend and didn’t kill snakes.

The footnotes are money, complete with Shakespeare quotes to explain a passing reference.

Pardon my impromptu hiatus there. I’m back with 2 new fans and replaced DC jack. I had actually forgotten my computer could be this neat. As is usual with technology these days, I could have bought a new laptop with what I paid for the hardware fixes, but it wouldn’t be as pimped out as this one. Besides, this is my laptop. There are many like it but this one is mine. /Full Metal Jacket

As I catch up on my news alerts, I might just write up an ante-dated story or two, so if you see stories appear from a week ago, you’re not crazy. Not because of that anyway.

But enough about me. This week the internets bring us Executed Today, an engrossing blog which discusses the circumstances behind one execution which took place on that day. Some of them were cause célèbres in their time, including Nazi executioners, spies, witches and sodomites.

Here’s the witchy one, courtesy of 17th c. Sweden.

Accused by her own daughters of carrying their children — Malin’s grandchildren — to Satanic masses, “Rumpare-Malin” obstinately refused to cop to the charge. (Naturally, not confessing was a further indicator to the court that Satan was fortifying her defiance.) Without a confession, the authorities couldn’t assuage themselves by giving her the easy-ish death of decapitation; the law required burning at the stake.* A sack of gunpowder around the neck to speed things up was the best they could offer her.

Matsdotter maintained her innocence to the stake, frustrating the confessors, and when one of her daughters called on her to admit the crime, “she gave her daughter into the hands of the devil and cursed her for eternity.”

Some years later the daughter apparently was executed for perjuring herself in this case, thereby fulfilling mom’s dying curse. Oh, and Malin’s husband was also an executee. Sodomy.

Srsly if I were part of that family, I’d be courting any dark power I could think of to make me invisible to the authorities.

I’ve mentioned whole ancient chariots having being found in two entries, but neither times did any source provide a picture, and believe me I looked far and wide.

Well, Bulgarian archaeologists have found a 1900-year-old chariot in a Thracian tomb and for once they’re not being stingy with the archaeoporn, bless their merciful hearts.

Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the village of Borisovo, about 180 miles east of Sofia, the capital.

“This is the first time that we have found a completely preserved chariot in Bulgaria,” said Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

At the funerary mound, the team also discovered table pottery, glass vessels and other gifts for the funeral of a wealthy Thracian aristocrat. In a separate pit, they found skeletons of two riding horses apparently sacrificed during the funeral of the nobleman, along with well-preserved bronze and leather objects, some believed to be harnesses.

It’s actually not the first time a complete chariot has been found in Bulgaria; it’s just the first time one has been found by archaeologists and excavated properly instead of torn out of the earth by looters.

Anyway, it’s hotness, so without further ado, enjoy:

While excavating the site of a future theater, Museum of London archaeologists found what they think are the foundations of one of London’s first theaters.

According to the museum the precise location of the open air playhouse, called The Theatre, were previously unknown. A venture of the travelling player James Burbage, it was one of London’s first dedicated playhouses when it opened in 1576, and it was here that a young William Shakespeare trod the boards as part of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men company of players, and had his first plays performed.

A tenancy dispute led to The Theatre being dismantled and its timbers transported south of the river, where they were used to construct The Globe in 1599.

Needless to say, the Tower Theatre Company, the folks building the new community theater on the site, are just about peeing their pants with excitement over the find.

“The discovery that we shall be building a 21st century playhouse where Shakespeare and Burbage played and where some of Shakespeare’s plays must first have been performed is a huge inspiration.”

“We are delighted that informal discussions with Hackney’s planning officers have been extremely positive. In the run up to submitting a formal planning application we, our architect and structural engineer will all be working with English Heritage and the planning authority to ensure that the design of our building enables the archaeology to be retained in situ.”

Sounds ideal on all counts, then.

Here’s a quick slideshow recap of some of the most memorable intersections of politics and the Olympics, courtesy of the New York Daily News.

The massacre in Munich is number one, natch. I’m partial to Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their begloved fists during the US national anthem on the podium in Mexico City in 1968.

It might be a part of a 6th c. monastery, and it’s not just an olive press but rather the remains of a huge olive pressing operation destroyed — but also in a way preserved — by fire.

Three screw-type press beds and a stone weight that was originally connected to the end of a beam were revealed at the site. Alongside the press beds collecting vats, settling pits and other pools that were used to separate the oil from the watery lees (the non-oily liquid that is also expressed from the olives) were exposed.

Two stone containers that were used to store the oil were exposed next to the oil production installations. The containers had a combined capacity of approximately 20,000 liters, and have mosaic floors and are treated with plaster. The top of the wall that separates the two containers was paved with a mosaic, part of which is adorned with a geometric decoration and part bears an inscription that has not yet been deciphered.

This very formidable and rare olive press and the inscription on the mosaic floor suggest that the complex was not built at the initiative of a local individual.

That would lend credence to the monastery theory. Check out the bird’s eye view architecture of this place:

The circle in the middle is the crushing mill. Beasts of burden would be tied to it, the stone would turn and grind up the olives into mush.

Archaeologists and computer scientists from the universities of Glasgow, Leicester and Exeter are collaborating to study how the ancients transferred information by analyzing the development of widely-used consumables like pottery and coins.

The project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, will combine archaeology, archaeological science and computer science to investigate Greek, Punic and other civilisations, from the late Bronze age through to classical times.

Prof Peter Van Dommelen, from the University of Glasgow, said: “By tracing the development of techniques and technologies used to create specific objects we will see how the developments crossed temporal, geographical and cultural boundaries.

The researchers hope this analysis will help computer scientists develop more effective and reliable means of transmitting and upgrading information.

It’s sort of like a reverse NASA: instead of inventing new things for space exploration which end up used in a myriad mundane consumer applications, use the ancient mundane to create more advanced computers.

Okay, so it won’t be televised for an audience of hooting and hollering voyers, but the mummified fetuses found his tomb are getting a paternity test.

The two tiny female foetuses, between five to seven months in gestational age, were found in the King Tut’s tomb in Luxor when the tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.

DNA samples from the foetuses “will be compared to each other, along with those of the mummy of King Tutankhamun,” the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said in a statement.

The testing is part of a wider programme to test the DNA of hundreds of mummies to determine their identities and their family relations, and Hawass said the programme could help determine Tutankhamun’s family lineage, which has long been a source of mystery among Egyptologists.

Maury really needs to get in on this because they are going to DNA test every mummy they have, from famous royal ones to the unknowns stacked in the basement. Shocking, possibly tawdry, surprises are bound to be revealed.

The Egyptian Council of Antiquities doesn’t actually expect the girls to be Tut’s daughters, incidentally. The pharaoh is thought to have died childless, so the fetuses might be there for symbolic rebirth value much like the statues and cats and whatnot.