Year: 2009

Massive 3,700-year-old wall found in Jerusalem

Ancient, Treasures

3700-year-old fortification, City of DavidArchaeologists digging in the oldest part of Jerusalem have uncovered a 79-foot-wide wall dating back to the 17th c. BC. That’s back in the Bronze Age, when it was a small, heavily fortified Canaanite town known today as the City of David.

The 26-foot-high wall seems to have been part of a passageway from the City of David to the sole source of water in the area, the Siloam Spring, so it was vitally important that it be secure.

No fortifications of this size have ever before been discovered from the time of the First Temple, considered the zenith of Jerusalem’s development in the biblical period. The next period of such massive construction would not be for another 1,700 years, during the time of King Herod in the Roman period.

The Canaanite walls the archaeologists discovered are about two meters apart, rise to a height of some eight meters in some places and are made of gigantic stones, three to four meters thick. About 24 meters have been exposed, but excavators say this is only one-third of their original length.

A small portion of the wall was first discovered in 1909, but nobody had any idea of how massive it was. Now that this 79-foot section has been found, archaeologists hope that there is a great deal more still to be uncovered.

The unexpectedly massive construction suggests a stronger, larger Bronze Age town than people realized.

The wall is open to the public starting today.

Watery Mexican tart lobs a convent at us

Medieval, Modern(ish)

Forty years ago the Malpaso dam was built in the Mexican state of Chiapas to produce hydroelectric power. As is the case with too many of these schemes, it flooded the community Quechula and completely submerged its 16th c. Convent of Santiago.

Now, thanks to a drought that has dramatically lowered the water level, a full 32 feet of the 49-foot tall convent has emerged. What a beautiful 32 feet it is.

16th c. Convent of Santiago emerges from the waters

It’s made from carved bricks, decorated with Maya figures. You can see its famous double choir windows, an unusual feature in a Dominican monastery of that era.

Little more than the facade was left by the mid-1900’s, but a 90-year-old Quechula resident remembers climbing the bell tower as a child and ringing the 7 antique bells, only one of which was saved before the flooding.

National Register of Historic Dumps

Modern(ish), Social policy

Hanford landfill, flags mark discoveriesI don’t mean that in the Bette Davis sense. I mean in the actual trash heap sense. Two World War II-era dumps in Richland, Washington are eligible to be added to the National Register of Historic Places because of who generated the garbage and what they were doing there.

The 50,000 people who moved there during the war, living in tents first, then barracks they built, didn’t exactly know what they were doing, but it turns out they were building a plutonium reactor to arm “Fat Man”, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Now the dumps are being excavated to study the social history aspect of the Manhattan Project.

Men were separated from women in two barracks. Most of their domestic waste was burned, but glass waste remains. Atop one landfill: scattered whiskey and blue Milk of Magnesia bottles, proof that they worked hard and played hard. […]

Research shows that at least one of the Hanford landfills could be the prototype for sanitary military landfills established during the World War II period, Marceau said. Archaeologists hope to study patterns of waste disposal from male and female workers, or black and white workers.

“Is there anything different in this community relative to other World War II communities during the war?” Marceau asked. “That’s what we want to know.”

Local tribes are also interested to see what might be underneath the trash. The dumps were created on archaeologically sensitive native lands as there was no protection for it at that time.

Archaeologists have already uncovered pithouses — sunken buildings roofed with rocks or wood — along with fire hearths and clamshells used to scrape deer hides.

Another lavish Macedonian burial found in Greece

Ancient, Treasures

Silver vessels used for burial in AigaiArchaeologists excavating the ruins of Aigai, the royal seat of Macedonian kings like Alexander the Great and his father, Philip II, have uncovered two large silver vessels, one of which contains human remains.

This is the second time bones have been found in containers in the middle of town rather than in the nearby cemeteries. Last year the bones were found along with a gold wreath. This time, in a handsome silver vessel similar to others found in the royal tumulus decades ago.

So clearly the people re-interred in these places were wealthy, possibly Macedonian aristocrats, possibly even members of the royal family.

Archaeologist Stella Drougou said the new find is “very important, as it follows up on last year’s.”

“It makes things very complex,” she said. “Even small details in the ancient texts can help us solve this riddle. We (now) have more information, but we lack a name.”

Drougou told The Associated Press that the fact the funerary urns were not placed in a proper grave “either indicates some form of punishment, or an illegal act.”

“Either way, it was an exceptional event, and we know the history of the Macedonian kings is full of acts of revenge and violent succession.”

The remains in the silver vase have not yet been analyzed, so we don’t know the date, gender, age of the deceased.

One of the excavators speculates that the bones found last year belonged to Alexander the Great’s illegitimate son, Heracles. He was assassinated and buried in a secret location during the wars of succession after Alexander’s death.

There’s no way to know for sure, though. All we know is they were the bones of a teenaged male, but without an inscription or some other specific evidence of identity, speculation is all we’ve got.

Emmett Till’s casket donated to Smithsonian

Modern(ish), Museums

Emmett Till and his mother, Friday was the 54th anniversary of Emmett Till’s lynching. To mark the occasion, his family announced the donation of his original casket to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Chicago native Emmett Till was just 14 years old when he was beaten, tortured and shot in the head for allegedly whistling/flirting/touching the hand or waist of a white woman (the witnesses’ stories are inconsistent on what actually happened) while visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi. The case drew national attention and is considered a seminal event of the Civil Rights era.

The picture seen 'round the world of Emmett Till's open casket His casket played a pivotal role in this history, as his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted against all kinds of pressure from Mississippi authorities that it be open for viewing and photographing. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby,” she has famously said, and she got her way.

A picture of the mutilated boy published in Jet magazine went around the world, publicizing the horrors of the Jim Crow South and galvanizing the fledgling Civil Rights Movement.

His murderers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam (the husband of the white woman in question and his half-brother), were acquitted in minutes by a jury of all white men, despite Till’s uncle’s testimony that they had dragged him out of the house and other witnesses who saw them with Till and heard Emmett’s cries shortly thereafter. The killers even admitted it in Look Magazine once the trial was over and died entirely unrepentant.

He was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, and then exhumed in 2005 when the case was reopened in hopes of confirming other participants in the crime. As is customary with exhumations, Emmett’s body was reburied in a new casket. The original one was supposed to be preserved for a memorial museum, but instead it was tossed into a shed by the incredibly creepy cemetery manager who seems to also have embezzled the memorial donations.

That manager and several gravediggers made the news recently for having dug up hundreds of bodies, dumped them and resold the plots. Emmett’s body seems to have been spared, but his casket was not. It was found rusting in a garage full of broken headstones, lawn care equipment and assorted trash. There was apparently a family of possums living in the casket.

Till's casket in the garage Till's casket in the garage, detail

Now the casket, its glass viewing window still intact, is safe in the hands of the Rayner and Sons mortuary, the same funeral home which first prepared Emmett’s body for burial. They will send it to the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center for restoration and conservation until it can be displayed in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens in 2015.