Month: August 2013

Poison ring found in 14th c. Bulgarian fortress

Medieval, Treasures

It’s not the large cabochon gemstone that opens on a hinge to reveal a secret compartment filled with tasteless, odorless, deadly iocane powder of your imagination. This ring has a more subtle, and therefore effective, design. It’s made out of modest bronze and has a hollow cartridge welded to the bezel. It’s finely crafted with a circular granulation detail around the top and five cylinders that look like stacked pennies going up the side. There’s a small hole on the side of the ring between two of the cylinders through which poison could be introduced into the hollow chamber and, when the propitious moment is at hand, into the food or beverage of your benighted target.

Its size suggests that it was made for a man to wear, probably on the little finger of the right hand. Since the hole is on the left side, it would be concealed by the ring finger next to it. A quick lift and tip of the pinkie and poisoning accomplished. It’s a much stealthier approach than having to open a splashy begemmed lid and turn your hand upside down without anyone noticing.

The ring was found by archaeologists excavating the remains of a 14th century fortress on Cape Kaliakra on the Black Sea about seven and a half miles from the town of Kavarna in northeast Bulgaria. Bulgaria’s National Institute of Archaeology has been excavating the fortress site since 2011. Amidst the remains of the 14th century walls, water pipes, baths and fortress, archaeologists have found more than 30 gold jewels, pearl earrings, rings set with precious and semiprecious gems. This ring is the only one made out of bronze discovered on the site.

Some of the gold rings also have holes deliberately drilled in them, but only the ones with gemstones and none of them have hollow cartridges. According to team leader Boni Petrunova, holes were sometimes added to rings to allow the gems to “breathe.” The bronze ring is in excellent condition and intact as is. There were no gemstones in need of a breathing port, so that hole was used for other purposes, nefarious ones at that.

The location certainly lends itself to deadly political machinations.

The ring was most likely used in the conflict between Dobrotitsa, ruler of the independent Despotate of Dobrudja in the second half of the 14th century, and his son Ivanko Terter, Petrunova said. The conflict is the most likely cause of many deaths of nobles close to Dobrotitsa at Kaliakra fortress.

Kaliakra was the capital of the short-lived principality that stretched from the Danube River delta to present-day Bourgas. The peak of its power came under Dobrotitsa, who had sufficient military strength to participate in Byzantine civil wars and, allied with Venice, challenge Genoese naval domination in the Black Sea.

Dobrudja was a center of wheat production for Byzantium and it had extensive trade networks with Italy and Spain through Genoa. That connection took an unpleasant turn on occasion, like when Genoese galleys dropped off the Black Death in 1346 or 1347 before carrying their Y. pestis-laden rat fleas to Sicily and thence to the rest of Western Europe.

There was also plenty of local intrigue. Dobrotitsa and his son Ivanko had a dysfunctional relationship, to put it mildly. Their vicious rivalry left swaths of dead supporters in its wake. Perhaps this ring is responsible for some of that body count.

Signet ring testifies to early Christians in Norfolk

Ancient, Medieval, Treasures

An engraved silver disc thought to be the bezel of a signet ring discovered by a metal detectorist in February in Swaffham, Norfolk, has been officially declared treasure trove at a coroner’s inquest in King’s Lynn on Tuesday. It’s a small piece, less than half a gram in weight and just 11 millimeters (.43 inches) in diameter, but all ancient precious metals are treasure trove by British law and this one has particular historical significance as well.

The disc dates to between 312 and 410 A.D. and features a male head in profile wearing a diadem with the inscription “ANTONI VIVAS IN DEO” encircling the figure. The Latin inscription means “Antonius, may you live in God” which is a common Christian formula seen on rings and other jewelry. They’re very rare in Norfolk, however. This ring is only the second “VIVAS IN DEO” ring known to have been found in that county — the first is a gold betrothal ring found in Brancaster — and it’s the only such signet ring.

Adrian Marsden, local finds officer:

“On one level, of course, this is good negative evidence, implying that most people at the time worshipped the old gods. On another, it shows there were one or two Christians around.

“The ring would have been a gift to Antonius, perhaps on the occasion of his conversion, coming of age or betrothal/marriage.”

The Brancaster ring was identified as a betrothal ring because it had two figures, a male and female, facing each other. Since this is just the one diademed fellow, I lean towards it being an individual special occasion present, like the coming of age or the conversion. Also, the signet ring element sounds more like a graduation gift than a marriage gift.

We know it was intended for stamping because the engraving is in intaglio, dug into the silver, and it’s backwards. The inscription is retrograde: it reads left to right only when you’ve stamped it in wax.

Norfolk coroner William Armstrong also declared another two silver discoveries treasure trove at the same inquest: four East Anglian silver coins (one is actually plated in silver but with a copper alloy interior) attributed to the Iceni tribe, and one Viking silver ingot. The ingot dates to between 850 and 1000 A.D. and is of interest to historians because Vikings used ingots for currency in this period, so metallurgic analysis might provide some insight into Viking trade practices.

It weighs 7.04 grams and is 28 millimeters (1.1 inches) long. One end was broken in antiquity, so it was longer and heavier when it was new. The ingot has also been stamped with a decorative motif of pairs of triangles touching at the peaks which is usually found on Viking jewelry from this time. The British Museum has a piece of a silver arm-ring from the Cuerdale Hoard that bears this same stamp.

The next step is for British Museum experts to assess market value of the treasures, which probably will be relatively modest figures. The Norwich Castle Museum hopes to acquire the signet disc and the Viking ingot for its permanent collection.

Pre-Raphaelite mural found in William Morris’ Red House

Modern(ish)

A mural painted by Pre-Raphaelite luminaries has been found hidden behind patches of 1960s wallpaper and a wardrobe in the master bedroom of Red House, the custom home built in 1859 for William Morris, founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, and his new wife Jane Burden. They only lived in the house for five years, selling it in 1865. It passed through various hands until 2003 when it was acquired by the National Trust. The interior had been subjected to some unfortunate renovation choices over the decades, among them the application of imitation William Morris wallpaper over the mural in the Morrises’ bedroom.

One faded female figure and parts of an indistinct fifth figure were visible behind the wardrobe but in very bad condition. The National Trust raised £100,000 ($156,530) from the Wolfson Foundation and its own budget to restore the original mural. When the wardrobe and wallpaper were gingerly removed, conservators discovered a six foot by eight foot painting with five figures, not two, designed with trompe-l’oeil folds to look like a hanging tapestry. The figures are characters from the Bible. On the left are Adam and Eve with a snake climbing up the tree between them whispering disobedient things in Eve’s ear. Noah stands in the middle of the composition holding a small model of his ark. Rachel and Jacob perched on his ladder are on the right. Those are the two figures that were barely visible when the project began. Beneath Noah, Rachel and Jacob is a string of faded black text on a deep red background.

The mural had been ill-used by previous renovations. Old wallpaper was scraped off to make room for new wallpaper, and in the process paint was scraped off too. The remaining paint was flaking and pockmarked with divots. After two months of conservation, the mural was stabilized and, while the colors are still faded and there has been irrevocable paint loss, the five figures are distinct now and the text has been identified, thanks to the Red House’s Twitter and Facebook followers, as Genesis 30:6, which reads: “And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son.” The cleaner figures now show evidence of individual styles of the artists who painted them, and the National Trust hopes to pinpoint which of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painted which character.

Morris had all his pre-Raphaelite brothers take a hand in the decoration of Red House. Architect Philip Webb designed the house to Morris’ specifications. A lover of medieval art and literature, Morris wanted his new home to have a 13th century look with turrets, peaked roofs, a minstrels’ gallery, a well with a conical roof and stained glass windows. It was one of the first private homes of the era built out of visible red brick — the standard in this period was for brick houses to be stuccoed over — and the interior was decorated by Morris and his friends.

He wanted it to be dedicated to art, a party house for him and his friends to play with however the muse struck them. Patterned ceiling paintings in the great hall and wall hangings were done by Morris himself, custom furniture by Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, stained glass by Edward Burne-Jones, murals with Biblical and medieval romance themes by Burne-Jones and others. (There are none of the wallpapers, prints or textiles that would become forever associated with William Morris, however, because he didn’t found his design firm until 1861 and the first run of wallpaper wasn’t manufactured until 1864.)

Aymer Vallance in The Art of William Morris describes those heady days:

Near about the same time, i.e., the latter part of 1860, in a letter to Bell Scott, Rossetti writes to say that his wife has “gone for a few days to stay with the Morrises at their Red House at Upton, and I am to join her there to-morrow, but shall probably return before her, as I am full of things to do, and could not go there at all, but that I have a panel to paint there.” The work was in oils, and it is said that one week sufficed for its execution. The subject of one of Rossetti’s compositions for the Red House was the Garden of Eden.

The Garden of Eden, you say, Vallance? Why, we just found one of those behind a wardrobe! Adam and Eve could very well have been painted by Rossetti. Eve’s posture — her curved neck, long blond hair, one hand held up to her forehead, the other holding an orb — is the spitting image of the Mary Magdalene in a stained glass window in Bradford Cathedral Rossetti made in 1864. Other contenders for the hands behind this mural are Ford Madox Brown for Noah, Elizabeth Siddal for Rachel and Morris for Jacob. Morris probably designed the overall painting.

This mural isn’t the only discovery made at Red House since the National Trust’s began to return the house as much as possible to its original condition. Basically everything white is hiding a Pre-Raphaelite treasure behind it, because Morris et al went hogwild in that house. Even elements that were still in view turned out to have parts hidden by later paneling, papering and furniture. For instance, the Wedding Feast, a mural by Edward Burne-Jones depicting a scene from the 15th century romance Sir Degrevant, depicts William Morris and his new wife Jane as Sir Degrevaunt and his bride Melydor.

Conservation healed its massive flaking problem and revealed there was a whole lower section underneath the scene with a pattern of flowers and bandeaux with the motto “Qui bien aime tard oublie” (“he who loves well forgets late”). Most awesomely of all, it revealed that what people had thought was a dog curled under a chair in the feast scene is actually a freaking wombat. Yeah. These guys were way into wombats. Edward Burne-Jones is known to have painted several wombats in his career, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had one as a pet for a while until it died after eating a box of his cigars.

Watch these videos from the National Trust’s YouTube channel to get a quick tour of the newly revealed mural and some of the other wall paintings from Red House.

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

[youtube=http://youtu.be/wfbrREvNzM4&w=430]

All of Queen Anne’s Revenge to be salvaged

Modern(ish)

The Queen Anne’s Revenge, the flagship of the notorious English pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, has been lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Beaufort Inlet in the Inner Banks of North Carolina since it ran aground in May 1718. It was discovered in 1996 by Intersal Inc., a private research firm that has searched for several shipwrecks under the oversight of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR). The wreck and all artifacts belong to the state and in 1997 NCDCR archaeologists began a long-term project of exploring, mapping and documenting the debris field.

Starting in 2006, the NCDCR’s Underwater Archaeology Branch added a program of artifact recovery to the ongoing study of the wreck site. Fifteen years after the initial discovery, the program was able to confirm that the wreck was indeed that of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, a certainty they had scrupulously avoided expressing because none of the artifacts offered a smoking gun, so to speak, like the name of the ship. The large size of the ship, the great number of loaded cannons of different makes found, French artifacts and depth markings on the stern (it was a French slaver before being captured by pirate Captain Benjamin Hornigold in 1817 who gave it to one of his crewmen, Edward Teach, to captain), a date of 1705 on a ship’s bell: all the evidence added up to this being the QAR.

More than 280,000 pieces have been brought to the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort for conservation and display, but that’s just a third of the estimated total. Now the Underwater Archaeology Branch has announced that they plan to recover the entire wreck, from dishes to weapons to the ship’s planks, by 2014.

“The project calls for the recovery of all the materials. Everything. All the weapons, all the bits of the ship, all the personal items. Everything. If it’s down there, it’s coming up,” project leader Billy Ray Morris told FoxNews.com on Wednesday.

Morris and a group of 14 marine archaeologists, technicians and restoration experts from the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources believe the Queen Anne’s Revenge itself is a treasure trove, a unique repository of history from centuries ago. They plan to salvage the entire remains of the pirate ship by 2014. Cannon by cannon, plank by plank.

This will be a uniquely rich source of information about life on an 18th century pirate ship. There aren’t any shiny chests of treasure to hog the spotlight (Blackbeard and his crew had time to unload high value items after the ship ran aground which seems to have been a deliberate choice). It’s a treasure trove of social history with the additional cachet of association with and use by one of the famous pirates ever.

Once the wreck is salvaged, years, probably decades of conservation work will follow. Many of the artifacts can’t even be immediately identified because of concretions. Over the centuries spent in the ocean, artifacts become encrusted with sand, marine critters and other artifacts locking them together like concrete. It takes a lot of work to reveal the objects trapped in concretions. Here’s a cool example of one that has been cleaned enough to identify the different parts:

Check out the Queen Anne’s Revenge Project website for more information about the wreck, including a killer interactive site map, pictures (small ones, tragically) of the artifacts and a regularly updated blog.

Nevada petroglyphs oldest known in North America

Ancient


Rock art carved on limestone boulders in Winnemucca Lake, a dried lake bed in northwest Nevada, is at least 10,500 years old and may be as much as 14,800 years old, a new analysis confirms. Even at the lower age range that makes these petroglyphs the oldest known in North America, and at the higher range it makes them contemporary with some of the first people to migrate to the continent from Asia.

Winnemucca Lake had some water in it as recently as the 1930s before construction projects drained the shallows for good, but at various times in the past it was so filled with water that the boulders on the western end of the lake were completely submerged for thousands of years. The carvings could only have been done when the rocks were above the water line. In order to determine when the petroglyphs were made, therefore, University of Colorado Boulder geochemist Larry Benson radiocarbon dated crusts of carbonate left on the boulders when they were under water. He found that a carbonate film underneath the rock art is around 14,800 years old while the carbonate crust on top of the art is around 11,000 years old. Additional information from rock and sediment core samples from adjacent Pyramid Lake narrowed down the range further, suggesting the boulders were above water in two phases: once between about 14,800 and 13,200 years ago, the second time between about 11,300 and 10,500 years ago.

Before this study, experts thought some of the petroglyphs at Long Lake, Oregon, were the oldest in North America. The most ancient Long Lake rock art (there are pieces carved as recently as 500 years ago) is dated by the ash which covered it after the eruption of Mount Mazama around 7,300 years ago. That means the art is at least that old and may be older.

There are some stylistic similarities between the Oregon petroglyphs and the Nevada works. They both have abstract designs of lines straight and curved, alone and in parallels, rings, swirls that appear to be part of a larger composition. The Winnemucca Lake rock art also features pieces that may be abstract renderings of nature — interlinked diamond shapes, trees, flowers, chevrons bisected by a central vertical line that suggest the veins of leaves. Individual carvings in the soft Nevada limestone are as small as eight inches wide to as large as three feet wide.

The petroglyphs are carved deep by what means we do not know. Larry Benson speculates that the artists used hard volcanic rock to carve into the soft limestone. As long as the carving tools are harder than the medium, it wouldn’t have taken too much time to get the job done. It still could have taken centuries for all the works we see today to have been carved, of course, or they may have all been done in one fell swoop.

Additional details about the dating might be determined by taking samples of carbonate from inside the carvings, but the petroglyphs lie within the borders of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe agreed to let Benson research the art only if he didn’t remove anything, not even a carbonate scraping, from the carvings themselves. (Some Native American tribes believe the spirits of the artists reside in their work and thus taking any part of it would be tampering with their ancestors’ souls.) He took his samples from the sides of the glyphs instead.