Month: December 2011

Tax bill paid with 2,000-year-old Celtic fire guard

Ancient, Museums, Treasures

The Welsh government has taken a most beautiful payment in kind for an outstanding inheritance tax bill: an elaborately decorated 2000-year-old Celtic iron fire guard known as the Capel Garmon Firedog. The owners of the firedog had previously lent it to the Amgueddfa Cymru – the National Museum of Wales, who generously sent me the high resolution pictures included in this post that I couldn’t find anywhere else — where it was one of the most important artifacts in its exhibit of early Celtic art.

The Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme allows owners to transfer “pre-eminent” heritage objects (works of art, archives, manuscripts) to public ownership as full or partial payment of their inheritance taxes. The Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage approves the artifacts on the advice of independent experts and allocates them to a public museum.

The firedog was discovered in 1852 by a man digging a ditch in a peat field near the village Capel Garmon in county Conwy, north Wales. It appeared to have been buried deliberately, probably as an offering to the gods, as it was found intact deep in the peat, lying on its side with large stones placed at each end. This is in keeping with the well-established tradition of burying metal objects in lakes, rivers and bogs as a religious devotion in Iron Age Wales.

It certainly was not a commonplace object when it was first crafted between 50 B.C. and 50 A.D. (The date is an estimate based on comparisons with other firedogs found at chieftain burials. There was no archaeological excavation following its discovery in 1852, so we have no access to the original context where stratigraphic analysis or radiocarbon dating of nearby organic elements could give us a specific burial date.) It would originally have been one of a pair, used to hold logs or skewers on the central hearth of a chieftain’s round-house, an emblem of the chieftain’s wealth and power.

As part of an experiment to duplicate the firedog, conservators X-rayed it and found that it was made of 85 pieces shaped separately and then put together. Archaeologists estimate that the initial weight of iron used to make the twin firedogs was a staggering 38 kilos (84 pounds). The single firedog today is approximately 42 inches long, 30 inches high and weighs nine kilos (20 pounds).

Iron was hard to come by and very valuable. To use this much of it for a decorative (albeit practical) item must have been a prohibitively expensive proposition. The craft itself represents an enormous investment of time. Experts think it would have taken Iron Age blacksmiths perhaps as long as three years to create the firedogs, from gathering the ore, to smelting it through to crafting all the individual parts and then putting them together.

It’s no wonder the Minister approved this trade. For now, the Capel Garmon Firedog will remain on display in the Early Wales gallery of the National Museum in Cardiff. It will eventually be moved to new galleries currently still in the planning phase at St Fagans: National History Museum, another of seven national museums under the aegis of Amgueddfa Cymru.

Hearse that carried body of JFK to be auctioned

Modern(ish)

The white 1964 Cadillac Hearse that transported the body of slain president John F. Kennedy from Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital to Love Field Airport will be sold at the Barrett-Jackson Auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, on January 21.

The hearse was built by the Miller-Meteor company as a display vehicle to introduce the new model year body at the National Funeral Directors Association Convention held in Dallas in October of 1963. At the end of the convention, the O’Neal Funeral Home bought the hearse. Just a month later, on November 22, President Kennedy was shot in Dealey Plaza. The Secret Service announced at 1:00 PM that the President was dead. They enlisted the funeral home closest to the hospital — the O’Neal Funeral Home — to carry the president’s body and the First Lady to Love Field. They asked O’Neal to provide the finest conveyance possible and a suitable casket. This hearse was the newest in O’Neal’s fleet and the only one with swag drapes (the curved, bunting-style drapes at the top of the windows) rather than simple airline drapes.

Vernon O’Neal, the owner of the funeral home, drove the casket and hearse to Parkland. O’Neal Funeral Home employee Don W. McElroy happened to be at Parkland Memorial when the President and Texas governor John Connally were brought to the emergency room (funeral homes also occasionally provided ambulance service back then; he had just transported a patient). He helped load the bronze casket the home had provided into the hearse, and then helped First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy into the back with the casket. She had sat in the front seat at first, but then decided she wanted to be in the back with her husband. A Secret Service agent got in the back with her and another agent drove them to Love Field where Air Force One waited to take the president’s body back to Washington, D.C.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was waiting for them on Air Force One. Ninety-nine minutes after President Kennedy was pronounced dead was pronounced dead, Lyndon B. Johnson, a stricken Jacqueline Kennedy by his side, would be sworn in as President on Air Force One while it was still on the tarmac at Love Field Airport.

O’Neal traded the hearse to another funeral home a few years later who sold it to a third firm and then got it back in a later trade. Then funeral home owner and collector Ardeen Vaughan bought it and restored it. He kept it for decades before selling it a few years ago to Desert Autosport who are now selling it at the January Barrett-Jackson auction.

Stylish cockerel found in Cirencester Roman grave

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi, Treasures

The team from Cotswold Archaeology excavating the site of a major Roman-era cemetery in Cirencester (the one with the surprisingly high proportion of inhumations) has unearthed a beautiful little artifact that embodies three of my favorite things: chickens, decorative enamel and harlequin patterns. Just shy of five inches tall, the cast copper alloy (probably bronze) figurine was discovered in a child’s grave adjacent to another child’s grave where an intact pottery flagon was found earlier this year. Archaeologists estimate that it dates to the 2nd century A.D.

The breast, wings, eyes and probably the ‘comb’ of the cockerel are beautifully inlaid with enamel, which now appears green and blue. There is a separate plate at the tail end which could be its fanned tail feathers, although it is difficult to tell at this stage. The cockerel also has its beak open as if crowing – could this be a message to one of the gods of the afterlife?

Neil Holbrook, Chief Executive for Cotswold Archaeology commented: “The cockerel is the most spectacular find from more than 60 Roman burials excavated at this site. It was excavated from the grave of young child and was placed close to its head. Interestingly a very similar item was found in Cologne in Germany and it looks like they both could have come from the same workshop based in Britain.”

Roman Britain was an important center of enameled decorative objects, especially the north of the province. The Cologne piece has different colored enamel and is missing its tail, but it’s so similar that archaeologists have little doubt it came from the same shop, possibly even the same maker.

As for why the cockerel was buried with the child, it was probably an offering to Mercury, messenger of the gods and mover between states who escorted the souls of the newly deceased to the afterlife. The rooster was one of his symbols. Julius Caesar noted in Book six, Chapter 17 of his Gallic Wars that Mercury was the most popular deity among the Celtic peoples of Gaul and Britain.

They worship as their divinity, Mercury in particular, and have many images of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, they consider him the guide of their journeys and marches, and believe him to have great influence over the acquisition of gain and mercantile transactions.

Caesar, in keeping with interpretatio Romana, the Roman practice of equating local deities with those in the Roman pantheon, may have actually been referring to the Celtic god Lugus which shared some of Mercury’s characteristic attributes, including the rooster. Once Roman occupation was established, dedications to Mercury proliferated over Gaul and Britain, marking him as a far more prominent and popular deity than he was in Rome itself.

As with the other artifacts discovered in this excavation, after it is cleaned and conserved the cockerel is destined to go on display at Cirencester’s Corinium Museum.

Original offering found inside Pyramid of the Sun

Ancient, Treasures

Archaeologists have discovered what they think are the original ceremonial offerings made by the builders of Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun before construction began around 50 A.D.

Using a 380-foot-long tunnel originally dug towards the center of the pyramid by archaeologists in the 1930s, researchers added an additional three short tunnels and dropped 59 exploratory shafts with the aim of reaching the foundational layer. The old tunnel turned out to stop just 20 feet west of the center, so the new extensions led archaeologists to the pre-construction base of the pyramid where they found the remains of three structures that pre-date the pyramid and the ceremonial offerings they were hoping to find.

The offerings found at the base of the pyramid in the Teotihuacan ruin site just north of Mexico City include a green serpentine stone mask so delicately carved and detailed that archaeologists believe it may have been a portrait.

The find also includes 11 ceremonial clay pots dedicated to a rain god similar to Tlaloc, who was still worshipped in the area 1,500 years later, according to a statement by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.

The offerings, including bones of an eagle fed rabbits as well as feline and canine animals that haven’t yet been identified, were laid on a sort of rubble base where the temple was erected about A.D. 50.

“We know that it was deposited as part of a consecration ritual for the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun,” said INAH archaeologist Enrique Perez Cortes.

They also found seven human burials, some of them of infants, who were probably sacrificed in the same consecration ritual that claimed the animals’ lives. Obsidian artifacts were discovered in a variety of forms — projectile points, razors, anthropomorphic designs — along three large discs of pyrite. One of the pyrite discs is almost 18 inches in diameter, the largest ever found at Teotihuacan.

The exquisite serpentine mask was not the only stone mask. There were two other human figures found with shell and pyrite eyes. The greenstone mask is the most unusual, however, because of its top quality artistry and its relatively small size. It’s just over four inches square, smaller in dimension and volume than other Teotihuacan masks which have been discovered. Those masks are not carved in such detail, nor have they been found in a ritual context.

The city of Teotihuacan was founded by an unknown culture approximately 2,500 years ago. By the time the Aztecs settled in the area in the 1300s, the town had long since been abandoned. It was the Aztecs who named it Teotihuacan meaning “the place where men become gods.”

Rich Viking era graves found in Poland

Medieval, Treasures

In 2007, an archaeological survey of a highway construction site near the central Polish town of Bodzia uncovered a Viking era cemetery with several dozen chamber graves dating to between 980/990 A.D. and 1030 A.D. Over the next two years, an excavation of the site revealed the remains of 14 men, 21 women and 14 children, and an extraordinarily rich collection of grave goods including weapons, jewelry, coins, amulet containers and the remnants of silk fabric, marking the cemetery as the final resting place for the élite.

Some of the artifacts are Scandinavian in origin, like silver beads with a traditionally Scandinavian granulation decoration, the weapons buried with a young man whose broken jaw and sliced face indicate he died in battle, and a few of the coins. The north-south orientation of the graves also suggests a Viking presence, since Slavic custom placed graves along an east-west axis while in the Scandinavian tradition people were buried north to south. The graves are relatively spacious, another Scandinavian style element, with wooden coffins lined in fabric and reinforced with iron fittings placed in deep burial pits. Eastern European graves at this time were more shallow and snug to the body.

A unique feature of this cemetery is the remains of wooden palisades enclosing small groups of one to three graves. “Fences of the dead” have been found before in Britain, but they’re centuries older than the Bodzia cemetery and they weren’t fastened together at the corners like the Bodzia fences. Another rarity is a bronze balancing scale possibly used to weigh precious metals. Such artifacts are rare finds in Europe in general, and the first of its kind ever found in central Poland.

Scandinavians had been trading and raiding in central and eastern Europe since the 9th century. Some of them settled in the area and became prominent citizens, often as mercenaries for kings like Mieszko I, founder of the Polish state and father of Boleslav the Brave, the first crowned King of Poland. The young warrior may in fact be connected to Boleslav. Bronze belt fittings found in his grave bear the insignia of Sviatopolk the Accursed, Boleslav’s son-in-law and ruler of the powerful Kievan Rus state east of Poland between 1015 and 1019. (He was Accursed because he killed three of his younger brothers to secure the throne. One he didn’t kill, Yaroslav, killed him and took the throne.)

The warrior cemetery of Bodzia, composed exclusively of chamber graves, is unique in early medieval Europe. It is located near the trading route of the rivers Vistula and Bug, connecting the Baltic Sea areas with the Byzantine world, and from Bodzia it is not far to the borders of Prussia. In the Kuyavia region, where Bodzia is sited, there are rich saline resources.

The discovery of Bodzia’s cemetery is the most recent and most spectacular example of a growing number of funerary sites found in Polish lands, dated to the period between the end of the tenth and the middle of the eleventh century and connected to the presence of migrants, mostly from Scandinavia. There is a certain regularity in the evidence. While in the pre-state period grave goods indicate a ‘domestic’ status for the deceased, many graves from the early Piast period, dated to the late tenth to mid-eleventh century, are distinguished by the frequent occurrence of weapons. Penetration of Scandinavians on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea was associated at that time with both the merchants’ commercial objectives and their military purposes

The artifacts found are an eloquent testament to that synthesis: Scandinavian weapons for fighting, bronze balancing scale for trading, glass beads from Byzantium, silk from even further east, coins from Germany, England and Scandinavia.