Month: September 2013

Roman chain mail found on 3rd c. German battlefield

Ancient

When the third century A.D. battlefield was discovered at Harzhorn, 60 miles south of Hanover, Germany, in 2008, it upended the conventional historical wisdom that Rome withdrew its legions permanently to the Rhine-Danube border after their devastating loss at the Battle of Teutoborg Forest in 9 A.D.

This seminal archaeological find started off modestly in 2000 when two metal detector enthusiasts looking for the remains of a medieval fortress discovered what they thought was a twisted and gnarled medieval iron candlestick. They kept the piece for years, not paying it much attention, until in 2008 they took it to local archaeologist Petra Loenne who identified it as a Roman hipposandal. These are not common finds in Lower Saxony, hundreds of miles north and east of the Roman frontier. Loenne assembled a team of professional archaeologists and historians plus dedicated metal detector hobbyists to investigate the field in which the hipposandal had been found.

Over the course of three months during the summer of 2008, the team found a large ancient battlefield covering a mile of German forest. They recovered 600 artifacts just from the surface of the battlefield, including clusters of Roman sandal nails, spear tips from ballistae (Roman artillery crossbows) all pointing in the same direction, axes, wagon parts, arrowheads and coins. The coins were from the first half of the 3rd century A.D. and a fragment of wood still attached to the arrowhead was radiocarbon dated to the same period.

The discovery of so late a battlefield far beyond the Rhine-Danube border led to five years of excavations on the site. An astonishing 2,700 artifacts have been found thus far, and excavations are still ongoing. The most recent discovery was made by archaeologists from the Freie Universität Berlin who discovered several pieces of Roman chain mail. Chain mail has been found before in warrior burials, but these are the first well-preserved pieces of body armour found on a Germanic battlefield. The team has been excavating the edges of the battlefield in an attempt to determine the full extent of the fighting and whether there were distinct areas where the overall battle broke down into smaller individual clashes. The discovery of the chain mail suggests the battle may have been particularly intense along that edge.

The chain mail, which was found in several fragments, consists of thousands of small chain links with a diameter of about six millimeters. The iron in the rings, however, is largely decomposed. Chain mail was worn in battle by Roman soldiers of various ranks. Germanic warriors usually waived this protection; however, in Germanic burial grounds, remains of those laboriously produced armor can often be found. In this case, not only the object itself was an unusual find, but also the position in which it was found. It was located directly on the edge of the battlefield with probably the most intense combat action that could be detected on the Harzhorn hill.

“This discovery represents something fundamentally new for the Battle at the Harzhorn,” said [lead archaeologists Prof.] Michael Meyer. “This is the first time that an almost complete part of personal armor was found.” Meyer said it is possible that the chain mail was stripped from a wounded Roman soldier by his comrades because they wanted to dress his wounds and carry him away from the battle zone. It is conceivable that they left the chain mail behind. However, it is also conceivable that it was specifically laid down in a certain place by Germanic soldiers after the fighting was over, as an indication that this location played a special role in the fighting.

Two or three links from chain mail have been found on the Harzhorn battlefield before, but they were probably lost during combat. These are lumps from an entire chain mail shirt that was removed and carefully folded on the spot. The largest pieces are about as big as a hand; most of the fragments are much smaller. Much of the iron has degraded, but you can clearly see the mail rings and structure in X-rays.

The chain mail is still in the process of being fully excavated and cleaned. Once it’s been properly conserved, the chain mail will join its brethren at the State Museum of Braunschweig in Lower Saxony where the exhibition Rome’s Forgotten Campaign: Battle at Harzhorn is offering the public the first chance to see the Harzhorn finds on display. The exhibit tells the story of the discovery and explains the historical context of this battle.

According to ancient historians like Herodian of Antioch and the author(s) of the Historia Augusta, towards the end of the reign of Emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222-235 A.D.), the Rhine-Danube border was weakened by troop withdrawals. The emperor was using the legions in his Persian campaigns, a tactical choice the Germans were glad to take advantage of. Raids and incursions savaged Roman territory in the Middle Rhine. Alexander Severus returned from Persia, bringing together a large Roman force at Mainz.

Before engaging in battle, he sought to negotiate with the German enemy. His troops didn’t like that plan since it would have deprived them of additional wages plus their share of slaves and loot, so they mutinied. Alexander was assassinated by the troops who declared low-born career army officer Maximinus Thrax the new emperor. Maximus either went forward with Alexander Severus’ attack plans or his legions were attacked by the Germanic warriors on their way back to Mainz.

Until 2008, historians thought the ancient sources were, let’s just be charitable and call it embellishing, the facts on this point since there was no archaeological evidence to support a strong Roman combat presence so far east and north of the border. Harzhorn may prove to be the redemption of their reputation.

New Van Gogh painting authenticated

Modern(ish), Museums

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum has authenticated a new painting by Vincent van Gogh, the first full-sized canvas by the master to be found since 1928. It’s called Sunset at Montmajour, is 93.3 x 73.3 centimeters (36.73 x 28.86 inches) and was painted in the Arles area by van Gogh during the summer of 1888. Van Gogh Museum Director Axel Rüger explains the significance of the piece:

“A discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum. It is already a rarity that a new painting can be added to Van Gogh’s oeuvre. But what makes this even more exceptional is that this is a transition work in his oeuvre, and moreover, a large painting from a period that is considered by many to be the culmination of his artistic achievement, his period in Arles in the south of France. During this time he also painted world-famous works, such as Sunflowers, The yellow house and The bedroom. The attribution to Van Gogh is based on extensive research into style, technique, paint, canvas, the depiction, Van Gogh’s letters and the provenance.”

This isn’t the first time the Van Gogh Museum has examined this painting. The owner asked the museum to determine its authenticity in 1991, but experts concluded at that time that it was not an original work of Van Gogh. In 2011, the owner (the museum isn’t providing information about this person or whether it’s the same owner who submitted the work in 1991) brought the painting back to the museum for authentication. This time around things went very differently. Researchers had access to new information and new technology.

X-rays of the canvas revealed that it was the same type used by Vincent in another Arles painting, The Rocks, which is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Chemical analysis of the pigments found their colors and makeup correspond exactly to the palette van Gogh used in Arles, and even share their characteristic discolorations.

Experts were able to trace the ownership all the way back to Vincent’s brother Theo who kept all of his brother’s paintings after his death in 1890. Sun Setting at Arles listed as number 180 in Theo’s inventory, and the number 180 is on the back of the newly authenticated canvas. Theo’s widow sold 180 to French collector and dealer Maurice Fabre in 1901. There’s no documentation of Fabre selling the piece. It just disappears from the historical record until 1970 when it cropped up in the estate of Norwegian industrialist Christian Nicolai Mustad. According to the Mustad family, Christian had bought the painting from Fabre in 1908 when he was a newbie art collector. Shortly thereafter the French ambassador to Sweden told him the painting was a fake and, embarrassed that he had been conned, Mustad hid the work in his attic for the next 60 years. When Christian’s estate was sold after his death, an art dealer determined the painting was either a deliberate fake or the work of a minor German painter. From then it’s been in anonymous private hands.

On top of all this, a newly published collection of all of Vincent’s letters pointed the Van Gogh Museum experts to the location depicted in the painting — the hill of Montmajour a few miles outside of Arles — which they were then able to verify in person, even finding an apposite cluster of old oaks.

In a letter to Theo written at Arles on July 5th, 1888, Vincent describes the subject of his painting:

Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheatfields in the valley. It was romantic, it couldn’t be more so, à la Monticelli, the sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground, absolutely a shower of gold. And all the lines were beautiful, the whole scene had a charming nobility. You wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see knights and ladies suddenly appear, returning from hunting with hawks, or to hear the voice of an old Provençal troubadour. The fields seemed purple, the distances blue. And I brought back a study of it too, but it was well below what I’d wished to do.

A week later he refers again to his drawings of the Montmajour area, two of which he believes to be the best pen drawings he’s done. He tells Theo he wants at least 100 francs for them, and he’s willing to throw in the three other drawings for that price even though the work took a toll on him:

And not everyone would have the patience to let themselves be eaten up by the mosquitoes, and to struggle against this infuriating nuisance of the constant mistral, not to mention that I’ve spent whole days out of doors with a bit of bread and some milk, it being too far to be going back to town all the time.

He then goes on to say that the works has exhausted him and that he has started a painting of Montmajour but the damnable mistral wind — a cold, dry wind that blusters over southern France at speeds of up to 55 miles an hour — is making it impossible for him to work on it for the time being. Scholars have thought that reference was to The Rocks, but Vincent doesn’t give specifics in the letter, so perhaps it was Sunset at Montmajour after all. He uses the plural “oaks” in the first letter quoted above while there’s only one oak in The Rocks, and he mentions the ruins of Montmajour Abbey in the background. The ruins can be seen in the left background of Sunset at Montmajour; they don’t appear at all in The Rocks. The Rocks is also significantly smaller than Sunset at 21 5/8 x 25 7/8 inches.

So why have experts have so much difficulty in the past identifying the painting as the work of Vincent van Gogh? Senior researchers Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp think it’s because it’s a transitional piece where the artist was still using more traditional strokes, building up to the thick impasto and layering of his later works. Also, there are elements of the painting — some parts of the foreground and right side — that are a little muddier than van Gogh’s usual. Perhaps that’s why he considered it “well below what [he]’d wished to do.”

Sunset at Montmajour will be on display at the Van Gogh Museum, on loan from the private collection, for a year starting September 24th. It will be part of the exhibition Van Gogh at Work which focuses on the recent discoveries about the painter’s technique as it developed over the course of ten years.

New tunnels found under Hadrian’s Tivoli villa

Ancient

Amateur archaeologists and speleologists from Roma Sotterranea, an organization dedicated to the exploration and documentation of Rome’s many subterranean layers, have discovered previously unknown tunnels underneath Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli. Archaeologists have long known that there was an elaborate tunnel network under the palace complex, but the passageways which once bustled with the activities of slaves, merchants and ox carts had been filled with soil for years. This is the first time cavers were deployed in an attempt to explore these spaces.

The spelunking experts rappelled into the tunnels through light shafts. They had to clear bucket after bucket of dirt out of passageways, many of which were so narrow they barely had the space for a grown human to squeeze through. After clearing some of the access tunnels, the team found a new passageway leading from a remote area of the villa known as the Academy to a major underground tunnel 2.5 miles long called the Grande Trapezio. The newly discovered tunnel is seven feet wide and a half mile long. It runs north-east and then turns south, ending in a roundabout about 766 yards long which may have been used to turn around ox carts.

Another uncharted tunnel the cavers discovered is more than 16 feet wide, wide enough for two-way traffic without needing a roundabout. It is still filled with soil and debris almost to the ceiling. Team members have attempted to inch their way through the tunnel on their stomachs, but they haven’t been able to follow its length so we still don’t know where it leads or what buildings it serviced when it was active.

Neither of these tunnels were included in ancient plans of the villa. Historians still don’t know the full extent of this vast estate. The site today is around the 120 hectares (296 acres) in area, but archaeologists believe it may have been as large as 250 hectares when Hadrian had it built starting when he became emperor in 117 A.D. and continued through to his death in 138 A.D. The discovery of these tunnels in a relatively remote area of the complex provides important information about the extent of above-ground structures that have long since been destroyed by time, the elements, and the ever-present stone looters that dismantled so much of antiquity to make new buildings like the nearby Villa d’Este built by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este in the 16th century.

“These tunnels lead us to understand that Hadrian’s Villa was organised less like a villa and more like a city,” said Benedetta Adembri, the director of the site, who is planning, in the autumn, to open stretches of the tunnels to the public for the first time.

Much of that city was underground, ensuring that the emperor could enjoy the illusion of complete privacy without having to see, hear or even notice the platoons of slaves and carters and beasts of burden that clogged the street-level arteries of actual cities. Now that so much of the above-ground complex has been lost, these tunnels, specifically created to keep all the bustle of daily operations out of view, are now archaeological superstars because they are still in excellent condition thanks to having been filled with debris and ignored for centuries.

Pre-Refomation Tudor tombs digitally recreated

Modern(ish), Renaissance

University of Leicester researchers have recreated the original tombs of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, later versions of which are now in St. Michael’s Church, in Framlingham, Suffolk. Using drawings in 16th century manuscripts, 3D laser scanning and 3D modeling, the team have recreated monuments that haven’t been seen in their original form since the Reformation of Henry VIII resulted in the destruction of the tombs’ original home: Thetford Priory.

Henry Fitzroy, son of Henry VIII and his mistress Lady Elizabeth Blount, was married to the 3rd Duke of Norfolk’s daughter Mary when he died of consumption on July 23rd, 1536, at the age of 17. By his father’s command, he was discretely buried in a lead coffin in a secret ceremony at Thetford Priory. His father-in-law arranged for the construction of an elaborate monument to mark the burial and later commissioned the same for himself.

The two monuments were still being built in Thetford Priory, the Cluniac monastic house where several dukes of Norfolk and related people were buried, in 1540 when it was dissolved. One of the last monasteries to be hit by the Dissolution, after its demise Thetford Priory was given to Thomas Howard by King Henry. Howard planned to keep the building intact and use it as an extremely fancy family mausoleum.

His plans were thwarted by his arrest for treason on December 12th, 1546. Thomas Howard was sent to the Tower. He was saved from execution by Henry VIII’s very conveniently timed death, but remained imprisoned in the Tower throughout the entire short reign of King Edward VI until finally being released and having his title and lands returned by Queen Mary in 1553. By then, Thetford Priory, which along with his other properties had been confiscated during Howard’s long imprisonment, was dilapidated and the Howard and Fitzroy tombs had been moved to St. Michael’s in Framlingham.

Thomas Howard and Henry FitzRoy’s original monuments were never finished. Parts of the structures were moved to Framlingham and integrated into new tombs built with different materials in a new style. Some pieces were left behind at Thetford where they would be rediscovered in archaeological excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Dr Phillip Lindley, of the University of Leicester’s Department of the History of Art and Film, said: “Our exhibition studies the catastrophic effects of the Dissolution of Thetford Priory and of Henry VIII’s attempted destruction of Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, on the ducal tomb-monuments at Thetford. […]

“With English Heritage’s help, we have managed to reunite the excavated pieces, which are scattered across various different museums and stores. It is wonderful that the British Museum have also loaned their two sculptures from the group.

“Using 3D laser scanning and 3D prints, we have — virtually — dismantled the monuments at Framlingham and recombined them with the parts left at Thetford in 1540, to try to reconstruct the monuments as they were first intended, in a mixture of the virtual and the real.”

Here’s the 3D rendering of Thomas Howard’s original tomb monument next to the final version now at Framlingham:

Both feature the twelve Apostles in shell niches along all four sides of the monument, a final flowering of Catholic motifs and aesthetics in an England that was saying goodbye to all that in a most wrenching, brutal manner. The saints are different, or at least in different places, but I don’t really see any other major changes.

Unfortunately there are no pictures available of the 3D rendering of FitzRoy’s original monument. The final version in St. Michael’s today is the polar opposite of Howard’s in terms of its devotional motifs. It’s very secular, festooned with family heraldry which was particularly important to Henry as an illegitimate son.

Currency plate looted during Korean War returned

Looting, Modern(ish)

A rare 1893 currency plate used to make some of the first modern Korean paper money was returned to South Korea 60 years after it was looted during the Korean War. U.S. Ambassador Sung Y. Kim presented it to Prosecutor General Dong-wook Chae in a repatriation ceremony at the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office in Seoul on Tuesday, September 3rd. This is the first time U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has returned an artifact to South Korea, and it took three years of cooperation between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), South Korea’s Supreme Prosecutor, the South Korean Cultural Heritage Administration, the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. State Department to get here.

It all began in April of 2010 when Midwest Auction Galleries in Oxford, Michigan, listed an “exceptional inscribed Korean bronze plaque” for sale. Auction house owner James Amato was selling it on behalf of the family of deceased U.S. Marine Lionel Hayes who had fought in the Korean War and brought back a large collection of artifacts. Along with the plaque, more than 130 pieces Hayes had taken from the grounds of Seoul’s Deoksu Palace in 1951 after the ouster of North Korean and Chinese troops were on sale at the auction. Most of the pieces were relatively low value decorative objects, ceramics, furniture, etc., from the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. The plaque, on the other hand, was Korean and it stood out in quality and historical importance.

The South Korean Embassy alerted the U.S. State Department that this object could have been removed from the Republic of Korea illegally. HSI identified the bidder as a woman from Flushing, New York. Officials from the embassy and State Department contacted the bidder and Amato warning them the sale might be illegal under the National Stolen Property Act. Amato chose to continue the sale, something even bigger auction houses do all the time because, conveniently for them, they have a far more rigorous standard of proof when it comes to suspending sales of questionable artifacts than they do when researching their ownership history.

The bidder turned out to be a proxy. She was a front for South Korean national Wong Young Youn. When she got the call from the consulate, she alerted Youn who told her he would deal with the consulate and that she should go ahead and bid as planned. She purchased the plate at the auction for $35,000.

Youn was pleased. He told the bidder that this purchase was the equivalent of winning the lottery. Since the Korean government had made it clear they valued the piece highly as an object of cultural heritage, Youn figured he could negotiate with South Korea to return it for a tidy profit. The fact that this was basically blackmail and that he would have the law of two countries all up in his business was no deterrent, apparently, and it really should have been because Youn was in the United States illegally. Hiding his identity behind a proxy bidder was hardly an impenetrable ruse, especially since he actually went on Korean television in May of 2010 to talk about the plate.

In December of 2010, Korea’s Cultural Heritage Administration provided evidence that the so-called plaque was actually a Hojo currency plate made in the late Joseon Dynasty (1392 to 1897), a very rare and historically significant artifact from the dawn of paper money in Korea that is one of only three known to survive. Emperor Gojong, 26th king of the Joseon Dynasty, released the first paper bills in 1893. They were called Hojo Taehwangwon. “Hojo” was the royal treasury and “taehwangwon” means convertible note, indicating they were to be used to convert coins into bills. The notes were printed in denominations of five, 10, 20 and 50 yang. The plate sold at auction printed 10-yang notes.

The money these plates were used to print never made it into the hands of the public. Japanese firms were given printing rights to all Korean currency. They confiscated all the initial runs of banknotes and burned them before the bills went into general circulation. They then introduced new banknotes that bore the Japanese imperial insignia.

While the Korean agencies were investigating the history of the plate, the HSI was investigating the seller and buyer. In June of 2012, HSI issued a customs summons to the auction house. In response, Amato submitted an invoice claiming the artifact had been bought by a certain Weng Liang from Hunan, China, for $9,990. In August of that year, an independent expert submitted an affidavit that the currency plate was “historically and culturally significant.” The expert also found a YouTube video of the plaque. There was a man in that video which HSI agents identified as Youn.

Later that year, HSI contacted the proxy bidder again and she admitted to having been a middleman for Youn’s purchases, setting up accounts on auction house websites to buy Korean artifacts in her name only to be reimbursed by Youn. On January 9th, 2013, HSI charged Wong Young Youn with violating the National Stolen Property Act. Youn collaborated with the authorities and threw Amato under the bus, assuring HSI officials that he bought the currency plates himself for $35,000 and that he has no knowledge of this Weng Liang Amato had claimed to be the buyer. On February 12th, Amato was arrested by HSI agents for making false statements, transporting stolen goods and for the sale or receipt of stolen goods.

Both men entered into plea agreements with HSI renouncing their ownership claims. Youn’s deal required him to voluntarily leave the U.S. and return to South Korea which he did on July 31st. Amato deal was for him to serve 90 days of supervised release, pay a $35,000 fine and do 40 hours of community service. I’m sure the bottom line works out just fine for him over time. Why be scrupulously honest when they only get busted one in thousands of times and then get a slap on the wrist? A couple of weekends collecting median litter and a fine that’s the equivalent of the price paid for the stolen artifact is not exactly a powerful deterrent. At the very least they should get the IRS to take a look at his books since we know for a fact that he invoiced a $35,000 sale at $9,990. There’s a lot of daylight between those two figures.

Anyway, the good news is this was an unprecedented collaboration that worked out in the end. Now South Korea gets its currency plate back so it can go on display at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul.