February 2012 – Page 2 – The History Blog

$500 million “Black Swan” treasure flies to Spain

February 24, 2012

When earlier this month a federal circuit judge ordered Odyssey Marine Exploration to return the vast treasure recovered from the shipwreck code-named “Black Swan” to Spain, I assumed they’d appeal the ruling to a higher court. That’s what they’ve done every other time a judgement went against them in the five years since they first retrieved the gold and silver coins from the Atlantic seabed in May of 2007. I was wrong.

Odyssey did make one last claim in court, but it was already a form of capitulation: they asked that the Spanish government reimburse them $412,814 for storage and preservation costs. On February 18th, US District Court Judge Mark Pizzo denied the claim and ordered the company to grant Spain access to the treasure this week so they could prepare it for transport. Odyssey announced that it would no longer contest Spain’s ownership of the treasure.

Peru isn’t giving up so easily.

On Thursday, the Peruvian government made an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to block transfer of the treasure to give that nation more time to make arguments in federal court about its claim to being the rightful owner.

Peru says the gold and silver was mined, refined and minted in that country, which at the time was part of the Spanish empire. The appeal was directed to Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not indicate when he would respond.

Probably because he’s not gonna. Anyway it’s too late now.

On Thursday evening, two Spanish military Hercules transport planes were loaded with 494,000 silver coins, 100,000 gold coins and assorted artifacts Odyssey Marine delivered to MacDill Air Force Base from their secured storage facility in Sarasota. The treasure of the “Black Swan,” aka the frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes which sank off the coast of Portugal in 1804, is now winging its way to Spain.

Spanish officials counted and weighed the treasure before loading it on the planes. Odyssey actually lowballed the discovery when they announced they had found 17 tons of gold and silver. The total weight was 49,000 pounds, or 24.5 tons. Despite Spain’s floundering economy, massive debt and 23% unemployment, the coins will not be sold or, heaven forfend, melted down. As cultural patrimony, the treasure must by law be preserved intact. The current plan is to divide the coins and display them at a number of museums in Spain.

There’s footage of the cargo being loaded onto the planes and Spanish Ambassador Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo’s tarmac statement in this local news story:

Pipeline work reveals 4 pounds of Bronze Age gold

February 23, 2012

Ancient, Treasures

In April of 2011, an archaeological investigation on the future site of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEL) near the Lower Saxony town of Syke unearthed a large hoard of Bronze Age gold jewelry, the regional Ministry of Culture revealed today. An engineer located the cache while exploring an excavation area with a metal detector. They found several corroded bronze pins, a small gold spiral curl and an engraved gold cuff, then decided to cut a solid two-foot square block of the earth around the discovery spot instead of digging any further.

The block was sent to the State Conservation Office in Hanover where researchers took detailed CT scans so they could know exactly where every artifact was before attempting recovery. They even created a 3D plastic model of the block based on the scans so the conservator could dissect the block and remove each piece with utmost precision.

The final tally was 117 individual items — gold rings, spirals, cloak pins — packed inside a linen bag closed with four bronze needles. The total weight of the artifacts is 1.8 kilos, about four pounds, making it one of the largest prehistoric gold finds in Central Europe.

The gold cuff turned out upon closer investigation to be a cloak pin, decorated with circles and sun symbols. Those decorations date the piece to 1400 B.C., the Middle Bronze Age. The remains of the linen bag are in the process of being radiocarbon dated, but we don’t have the results on that yet.

University of Hanover archaeological metallurgists examined the artifacts using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) testing, scanning electron microscopy and Laser Ablation Mass Spectrometry (LAMS). The results were surprising, even revolutionary, providing a whole new insight into the capabilities and range of our Bronze Age ancestors. For one thing, the gold was not hammered but drawn, a more advanced technique that historians didn’t think was used during the Bronze Age. The gold content of each artifact is 90 percent. Such a high percentage indicates that the jewels were not made from natural gold, but rather from recycled gold. They also discovered that the origin of all the metal in the hoard, gold and bronze, is Central Asia, not a local source.

Research on the find is ongoing, as are excavations all along the 275-mile pipeline route through Germany, from the Bay of Greifswald in the northeast on the Baltic Sea through Lower Saxony in the northwest. The pre-pipeline excavations are some of the largest archaeological projects in Europe, employing hundreds and discovering not just pounds of Bronze age gold, but also Stone Age hearths complete with mother figure, hundreds of cemeteries with cremation urns, Roman-era grave goods, Neolithic graves, a gold ring with a blue pearl from 400 A.D., beads and wood remnants from Egyptian trade goods, and much more. Only 10-20% of the sites were known before the pipeline project began.

This is financed by the developers building the pipeline, who must get an all-clear from the archaeologists before they can begin building on any given spot. They started the surveys in 2010 to ensure that they would have a lot of time to excavate and thus help minimize the chances of delays once construction begins.

Encasing the Magna Carta

February 22, 2012

Medieval, Modern(ish), Museums

Magna Carta, the English charter in which King John guaranteed certain civil liberties to England’s powerful feudal barons, was reissued by every new king at least once between the first version in 1215 and the final edition in 1297 which remains on the books to this day. Every time the charter was amended, multiple copies (known as “exemplifications”) of the contract would be issued to all signatory parties and pertinent archives.

Seventeen exemplifications from various releases have survived to this day, almost all of them in England. There is only one in the United States and that one is also the only Magna Carta in private hands. It’s a 1297 copy bearing the royal seal of Edward I and was kept for hundreds of years by the Earls of Cardigan. They sold it to Ross Perot in 1984, and the Perot Foundation loaned it to the National Archives where it was on display for many years.

In December of 2007, the Perot Foundation sold the document to raise money for its charitable missions. It was purchased for $21.3 million by David M. Rubenstein, the same history buff billionaire who recently donated $7.5 million to repair the earthquake-damaged Washington Monument. He loaned it right back to the National Archives, and then gave them $13.5 million to build a new custom case and to renovate the gallery in which Magna Carta will be on permanent display.

Last year, the National Archives began a program of conservation on the precious parchment. They removed it from its encasement and examined it carefully to see what needed fixing. Required fixes included removing old patches and glues that were causing the paper to contract, filling in holes and thin spots with archival long-fiber conservation paper and wheat starch paste, humidifying the parchment to keep it from getting brittle, and flattening the document. Ultraviolet photographs taken while the charter was out of its protective encasement found areas of writing that had been erased by water damage.

Here’s a short video documenting the conservators’ work last year:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqQVY1Zn0oM&w=430]

Looking forward to the long-term challenges of conserving such an ancient document, the National Archives asked the engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create a new encasement that would keep chemically inert argon gas trapped inside the casing instead of air, control for temperature and humidity, and also allow for ease of transport and display.

NIST worked from a three-dimensional laser scan of the document to support it on the platform and to create a nest to hold the original wax seal with Edward I’s likeness, which is attached to the Magna Carta by a frail parchment ribbon.

The platform was created from a single 6-inch thick block of aluminum to minimize the number of joints or spots that could cause leaks in the encasement, explained Brandenburg. About 90 percent of the block was cut away with a computer-controlled milling machine based on the three-dimensional image to create the perfect fit.

The end result is an enclosure about 41 inches wide by 28 inches long and 6 inches deep. It weighs 225 pounds. The encasement cover is made of a special laminated glass with antireflective coatings to ensure maximum visibility of the document while protecting it. The encasement is sealed with close-fitting bolts that hold the frame against double O-rings that create the encasement seal. The case was filled with argon gas and will be monitored to avoid as much oxidation damage as possible.

Here’s a glimpse of the NIST team building this cutting edge device:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBChU_iACsI&w=430]

Much of that neat technology will be invisible to the National Archives visitor. The encasement is itself encased in a new interactive display in the West Rotunda Gallery of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. Visitors can zoom in on a high resolution image of the document, seeing in detail the areas that were repaired. They can see the ultraviolet pictures of the writing that can no longer be seen with the naked eye. They can compare a translation of Magna Carta with language in the foundational documents of U.S. government — the Constitution and Declaration of Independence — that were influenced by this medieval charter written almost 800 years ago.

Viking sword found in Norway during construction

February 21, 2012

Medieval, Museums

Construction workers building residential homes in the village of Melhus, central Norway, have unearthed an unusually well-preserved Viking sword, possibly from a grave site. The developer alerted archaeologists from the Museum of Natural History and Archaeology, a department of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, just south of Melhus. They confirmed that the piece is indeed a Viking weapon, a Type H sword, according to Jan Petersen’s classification system, which dates it to between 800 and 950 A.D. A small companion piece, probably a knife blade, was found buried with it.

Viking sword with organic remains, ca. 800-950 A.D.

Despite its corroded appearance and missing parts, the sword retains organic elements, pieces of wood and leather that researchers believe are the remains of the hilt and scabbard respectively. It was discovered embedded in clay covered by five feet of topsoil, which is why those delicate organic materials were preserved for over a thousand years even as the area was cultivated and built over.

Archaeologists have excavated the find site before but never found anything. The area was reputed to have several Viking burials, but they were razed for construction during the late 19th century. This find is the sole indication that there might be still be human and material remains from the Viking era on the spot.

Construction has been suspended for now and the Trondheim team has asked for permission to excavate the site as quickly as possible.

The village of Melhus has a strong connection to 10th century Viking history. An infamous murder recounted in The Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason took place in a farm in Melhus, that of Haakon Sigurdsson, aka Jarl Haakon, aka Earl Haakon, who ruled Norway for 20 years (975-995). Officially he held the country as a vassal of Danish King Harald Bluetooth, but in practice he had full autonomy.

Haakon and Bluetooth would quarrel, however, over religious matters. Haakon worshipped the old Norse gods, so he didn’t respond well when Bluetooth forcibly baptised him and tried to pack his return ship to Norway with Christian missionaries. Haakon dumped the priests before his departure, then switched allegiance to Bluetooth’s enemy Holy Roman Emperor Otto II. He held his own on the battlefield and successfully fended off Danish raids on Norway, including one by the fearsome Jomsvikings.

The constant wars began to chip away at Haakon’s popularity, as did his habit of taking the daughters of noblemen for his concubines then sending them home despoiled when he tired of them after a week. When Olaf Tryggvason, son of a Norwegian kinglet and direct descendant of the first king of Norway, got wind of Haakon’s political troubles, he sailed to Norway to win himself a kingdom.

Meanwhile, a rebellion against Haakon’s rule drove the Earl into hiding. He and his slave Kark hid in a cave one night, then the next night dug a hole under a pigsty in a farm in Melhus and hid in there. Olaf and his soldiers unwittingly caught up with him. Olaf even gave a rousing “bring me his head” speech right outside the sty before moving on.

Then Olaf held a House Thing (trusting), or council out in the yard, and stood upon a great stone which lay beside the swine-stye, and made a speech to the people, in which he promised to enrich the man with rewards and honours who should kill the earl. This speech was heard by the earl and the thrall Kark. They had a light in their room.

“Why art thou so pale,” says the earl, “and now again black as earth? Thou hast not the intention to betray me?”

“By no means,” replies Kark.

“We were born on the same night,” says the earl, “and the time will be short between our deaths.”

King Olaf went away in the evening. When night came the earl kept himself awake but Kark slept, and was disturbed in his sleep. The earl woke him, and asked him “what he was dreaming of?”

He answered, “I was at Hlader and Olaf Trygvason was laying a gold ring about my neck.”

The earl says, “It will be a red ring Olaf will lay about thy neck if he catches thee. Take care of that! From me thou shalt enjoy all that is good, therefore betray me not.”

They then kept themselves awake both; the one, as it were, watching upon the other. But towards day the earl suddenly
dropped asleep; but his sleep was so unquiet that he drew his heels under him, and raised his neck, as if going to rise, and screamed dreadfully high. On this Kark, dreadfully alarmed, drew a large knife out of his belt, stuck it in the earl’s throat, and cut it across, and killed Earl Hakon. Then Kark cut off the earl’s head, and ran away. Late in the day he came to Hlader, where he delivered the earl’s head to King Olaf, and told all these circumstances of his own and Earl Hakon’s doings. Olaf had him taken out and beheaded.

Olaf Tryggvason ruled for just 5 years, but he cast a long shadow. He forcibly converted Norway to Christianity, giving people the choice of converting to Christianity or suffering torture and execution.

Fever for more cowbell leads to dastardly crime

February 20, 2012

Modern(ish)

In Valle d’Aosta, the smallest and least populous region of Italy just on the other side of the French Alps, cowbells have achieved cult status with collectors. One of those collectors had a fever … and the only prescription … was more cowbell. So he hired three men to stalk a 90-year-old widow for a week, then at dawn on February 8th they invaded her home in the town of Gressan when she came back from her morning constitutional. They bound Cornelia Betral’s wrists and ankles, gagged her, hooded her and laid her out on her bed while they broke into a locked room where she kept a collection of ten vintage cowbells with elaborately decorated leather collars worth an estimated 20,000 euros (ca. $26,500).

They got away with their euphonious booty, but not for long. Police received tips from the tightly knit cattle breeders community that this theft had been commissioned by 66-year-old Renato Quendoz, a local cattleman and avid cowbell aficionado. On Saturday, February 18th, police arrested Quendoz and two of the hired thieves, Salvatore Agostino (52) and Corrado Daudry (60). A third suspect, thought to be a Romanian citizen, is still at large. The cowbells were found unharmed, stashed in a hidey-hole under a highway overpass just on the other side of town. They will be returned to Mrs. Betral.

Because we live in a great age, the recovery of the cowbells by Aosta CSI was recorded.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Ak2Cr0O4k&w=430]

You can tell that those are not just any old cowbell. They’re huge, for one thing, and those thick bedazzled collars are rare and valuable. They were made in the capital of old school cowbell manufacture: the Alpine town of Chamonix on the French side of the Mont Blanc Pass. (The Devouassoud family have been making cowbells and church bells the traditional way since 1829.)

Cornelia Betral was left the cowbells by her husband, a cattle breeder who had won them all as trophies in the yearly Batailles de Reines. Here’s where the cowbell entry gets even cooler than you imagined possible, and I know you imagined a lot.

The human population of the Aosta valley as of last year was 128,000. The last time they counted in 2000, there were 40,000 head of dairy cattle, which means one cow for every three people. These aren’t your garden variety Holstein cows. There are several breeds of cows that have been in the area since at least the Romans, and possibly as early as the Neolithic, and living in the Alps makes for one sturdy cow.

According to tradition, the Valdostane breed of cattle was introduced by the Burgundians when they controlled the area in the 5th century A.D. Hardy, agile, scrappy and quick to temper, Valdostanes took to the challenging mountain topography and climate (because of its positioning, the Aosta valley is considerably colder than other populated Alpine regions) like ducks to water. In the summer they go mountain climbing to graze on fresh grasses and local herbs in the high Alps. Their milk is the exclusive source of regional Aostan heritage cheeses like Fontina, the perfect melter, and Robiola, creamy, spreadable deliciousness.

Because of the advantages conferred by their tough characters in this tough environment, Valdostane cattle retain a fascinating connection to their primal nature. Every Spring, the females fight each other for a spot in the herd hierarchy. Watching the dominance displays has been a spectator sport since at least the 19th century, and probably for millennia. The gatherings were banned by Mussolini in 1926 as part of his campaign to stamp out regional differences. At the same time he was seeding the Aosta valley with Italian speakers to muscle out the local Francophone dialect and culture.

As soon as the war was over, local organizations started the Queen battles again on an informal basis. In 1957 they made it official and created the Batailles de Reines (the Battles of Queens) as we know it today, a cruelty-free tournament over the course of months wherein the greatest ladycows wearing the greatest bells throw down for lowing rights. Nobody gets gored, nobody gets stabbed, nobody gets ridden, nobody gets hogtied. The cows lock horns (their sharp points have been filed down) and push against each other until one gives, Sumo style. The loser just trots off and the winner hangs out a bit before her owner comes over with a lead and she meekly walks off the field with him. Ornery though they are, they are still dairy cows, after all.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ZHu6CNOlw3g&w=430]

Mr. Betral’s cows won ten of these battles, which is how he got those special bells and why they’re so rare and sought-after that a collector would treat a 90-year-old woman far worse than he would ever treat his cows just to get his hands on them.