Month: September 2014

Skeletons holding hands found in lost chapel cemetery

Medieval

A team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) has unearthed the skeletal remains of an adult male and female who are still holding hands 700 years after they were buried side by side. The lovers were found along with nine other individual burials at the site of a cemetery on the north side of the Chapel of St Morrell in Hallaton, Leicestershire. They human remains have been radiocarbon dated to the 14th century.

Built on the side of a hill that appears to have had sacred structures on it at least since the Romans, the chapel was a site of pilgrimage in Middle Ages, in use from the 12th century to the 16th. The last documentary evidence of the chapel as an active pilgrimage site is the 1532 will of Frances Butler, a Hallaton priest. He left all his worldly goods to another priest, Edmund Oliver, with the stipulation that he travel to four shrines to ensure the ideal disposition of Butler’s soul. “St Mawrell of Hallaton” was one of the four.

Sometime after that it fell into disuse. Eventually the chapel crumbled and its location was lost to memory. The hillside became the locus of an annual Easter custom called the Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle Kicking in which hardy men from Hallaton and the neighboring village Medbourne chase a wooden canteen down the hill and over a stream. The event begins on Hare Pie Bank, so named because that’s where the hare pie gets eaten before the bottle kicking begins.

A decade or so ago, local historian John Morison found a reference in a 1606 Glebe Terrier (a survey of parish lands that were income-generating parts of a clergyman’s benefice) that the “Chapel of St Morrill” was on or around Hare Pie Bank. The Hallaton Fieldwork Group (HFWG) did a geophysical survey of the site which found a square perimeter about 120 feet across with various architectural features inside. Together with ULAS and some local volunteers, they began excavating Hare Pie Bank.

This is the fourth year of excavations on the site. The tiled floor of the chapel has been unearthed, along with the remains of walls and lead from the windows. Coins were found dating to between the 12th and 16th centuries, confirming the documented period of activity. Underneath the chapel remains archaeologists found Roman remains, among them a square ditch that may be evidence there was a temple on the site. Given that the vast Hallaton Treasure of more than 5,500 Roman and British coins, a silver bowl, ingots, jewelry, the complete skeletons of three dogs, the bones of more than 300 pigs consumed in a feast and an exceptional Roman cavalry parade helmet were discovered just a few hundred yards from Hare Pie Bank, it seems likely that this area has held ritual significance since before the Roman conquest.

So it makes sense, considering the hill’s long sacred history, that there would be a chapel built on the site. It’s not clear, however, why the small chapel had its own cemetery.

Vicki Score, ULAS project manager, said: “We have seen similar skeletons before from Leicester where a couple has been buried together in a single grave. The main question we find ourselves asking is why were they buried up there? There is a perfectly good church in Hallaton. This leads us to wonder if the chapel could have served as some sort of special place of burial at the time.”

The team believe the chapel may have been an area of pilgrimage. Alternatively, the bodies might have been refused burial in the main church, perhaps because they were criminals, foreigners or sick.

Further study of the skeletal remains might help explain their burial. So far, in addition to the lovers, one older male has been found with a wound from a sharp weapon like a pole axe on his skull that was probably what killed him. The teeth of a young man who was buried with his legs raised to his chest indicate that he experienced trauma as a little boy. He’s likely to have been felled by illness, and in fact there is a reference by a 17th century historian to Hallaton having been a holy place visited by flocks of sick people.

17th c. Codex Chimalpahin returned to Mexico

Modern(ish), Museums

The Codex Chimalpahin, a seminal three-volume handwritten indigenous history of pre-Hispanic and 16th century Mexico, has returned to Mexico after almost 200 in the archives of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS). The codex was slated to be sold at a Christie’s auction in London on May 21st of this year. Before the sale, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) contacted Christie’s in the hope they could acquire the codex privately. The BFBS was glad to work with them so that this founding document of national significance could go home.

The day before the auction, INAH became the delighted new owner of the Codex Chimalpahin. The three volumes arrived in Mexico on August 18th, 2014, where they were secured in the vault of the National Library of Anthropology and History. On September 17th, the Codex Chimalpahin was welcomed home in an official ceremony attended by officials from the government, INAH and the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA). The next day the Codex Chimalpahin went on display in the Mexican Codices: Memories and Knowledge exhibition at the MNA along with 43 other codices from the National Library vault that have never been exhibited to the public before.

The Codex Chimalpahin is considered the first history of Mexico. It’s a collection of several chronicles, calendars, lists of rulers, locations, accounts of the Spanish conquest and more written in Nahuatl and Spanish. Prominent in the first two volumes are the writings of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (b. between 1568 and 1580 – d. 1648), a direct descendant of Ixtlilxochitl I and Ixtlilxochitl II, rulers of Texococo, and of Cuitláhuac, the penultimate ruler of Tenochtitlan. He was heir to their titles and property, but unfortunately there wasn’t much of the latter. Educated in Nahuatl and Spanish, Alva Ixtlilxochitl had a profound knowledge of his ancestors’ oral histories, songs and traditions. He worked his whole life for the people who ruled the land his fathers had ruled as a translator and historian. He died in poverty.

The Historia Chichimeca. a history of the Nahua peoples through the Spanish conquest from the Texoca perspective, is Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s most enduring work. It’s in the Codex along with several other of his writings. They are the only surviving copies of his histories in his own handwriting. Volume One even has his signature.

Most of Volume Three was written by Domingo Francisco de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin (b. 1579 — d. 1660), a Nahuatl historian who also claimed to be a descendant of Aztec rulers. His Nahuatl names mean “Runs Swiftly with a Shield” (Chimalpahin) and “Rises Like an Eagle” (Quauhtlehuanitzin), and the first of them gives the codex its name. His writings were not commissioned by the Spanish viceroys, unlike Alva Ixtlilxochitl’s. They were written in Nahuatl for Nahuatl readers. There are only six of his works extant in his own handwriting. The other five were already in public institutions and now this last one is as well.

The manuscripts were compiled and bound into three volumes by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (b. 1645 – d. 1700), a poet, historian, former Jesuit, philosopher and all-around intellectual born in Mexico City of Spanish parents. He had a particular interest in the indigenous cultures and created a legendary library of native documents, including manuscripts by Chimalpahin and Alva Ixtlilxochitl. He in fact became good friends with Don Juan, the son of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, who gifted him many of his father’s works to thank him for his help in a lawsuit against Spanish settlers trying to steal his property near the great pyramids at San Juan Teotihuacan. After Don Juan died, he bequeathed the rest of his collection to Sigüenza.

Much of Sigüenza’s famed library was acquired by Italian-born antiquary and ethnographer Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci (b. ca. 1702 – d. ca. 1753). Benaduci fell afoul of the Spanish viceroy and in 1743 he was arrested and his collection impounded. Although eventually Benaduci was absolved and the King ruled his collection should be returned to him, it never was. During the years it was kept in the office of the viceroyalty, it was horribly neglected and many items disappeared. Parts of the collection can be found in the Berlin State Library, the National Library in Paris and the National Museum of Anthropology.

The Codex Chimalpahin fell into the hands of priest, politician, historian José María Luis Mora Lamadrid (b. 1794 – d. 1850). One of his favored political causes was national literacy. To further that aim, in 1827 he made what seems like a completely insane deal with James Thomsen of the British and Foreign Bible Society: already rare original handwritten works by Alva Ixtlilxochitl and Chimalpahin in return for a bunch of Protestant Bibles to be used in a national literacy campaign.

The codex was never published or even studied. Once it left Mexico, scholars who would seek out such a source had no idea where it was. It was considered lost until it showed up like magic in the Christie’s sale. Now it’s on display in Mexico and, once the exhibition ends in January, it will be made available to researchers at the National Library of Anthropology and History.

Body found near a previously-found one in Rossan Bog

Ancient

Workers for Ireland’s semi-state peat harvesting company Bord Na Móna discovered an ancient bog body in Rossan Bog last Saturday, September 13th. As per protocol, when the remains were found, work stopped and the gardai (police) were called. When the gardai determined that it was not a contemporary crime scene, they quickly informed the National Museum of Ireland which has the largest collection of bog bodies of any museum in the world.

Rossen Bog straddles two counties. The partial remains — only the lower leg, foot bones and some flesh were recovered — were found close to the border with County Westmeath, two miles from the town of Kinnegad where another bog body was found in December of 2012. Later named Moydrum Man, the 2012 body was radiocarbon dated to 700 – 300 B.C.

Maeve Sikora of the Irish Antiquities Division, who led the Museum’s fieldwork team said the fact that two bodies were unearthed in such close proximity to each other makes the find even more exciting.

“A lower leg of an individual was discovered. We don’t yet know how old it dates back to or whether it was male or female. We will be carrying out tests over the coming months to determine more information about this body but because it was the lower leg this could prove difficult,” Ms Sikora told the Westmeath Examiner today.

“Because it was found at the site where another bog body was found two years ago it makes it all the more interesting,” she continued. “The 2012 find dates back to at least 700 – 300 BC, so it was prehistoric. That’s why it’s unusual to find two in the one place extremely close together and it makes it all the more exciting because it shows that it was an area where a lot of activity took place.”

National Museum of Ireland archaeologists and conservators excavated the find site over the weekend and the removed the bog body to its conservation laboratory at Collins Barracks, Dublin. Even though little remains of the body, the oxygen-free environment of peat uniquely preserves organic materials that decay rapidly in other contexts. Thus, the bones and tissues that have been recovered may prove a rich source of information about the deceased. Having another body discovered nearby to compare it to will shed rare light on he Bronze Age life and religious practices in the area.

Peabody Essex Museum acquires gorgeous 18th c. Indian textile collection

Modern(ish), Museums

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts has acquired a rare collection of 18th century Indian textiles that are in such spectacular condition that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were made yesterday. Made in the early 1700s for export to the Netherlands, the cotton chintz textiles include jackets, men’s dressing gowns (banyans), women’s dressing gowns (wentkes), children’s caps and bed coverlets known as palampores both hand-painted and embroidered.

Woman's jacket, mid-18th century India. Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum
Cotton, mordant- and resist-dyed, and painted. Jacket, pieced from three patterns of chintz: sleeves from a chintz with a red background and large pink flowers and leaves (lined with a European floral print), and the bodice from an Indian chintz with a white background and red flowers and vines, and a European printed cotton with small floral vines. The bodice is lined and padded with cotton. The jacket is trimmed with silk velvet and Dutch weft-patterned tape (langetband), stitched with silk thread, and fitted with brass hook-and-eye fasteners. Veldman-Eecen Collection. Image and description courtesy the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

There are about 170 textiles in the collection, all assembled by historian Alida Eecen-van Setten between 1927 and 1969. Some she bought from antiques dealers, others she scavenged from the trash, documenting every acquisition in her “chintz book.” She shared her collection with fabric designers who used the patterns in their creations and with other historians, keeping the chintz book current as new research suggested different dates. After her death, her granddaughter Lieke Veldman-Planten took charge of the textiles and the book. The collection is named after both women: the Veldman-Eecen Collection.

Woman’s dressing gown (Wentke), Coromandel Coast, India, ca. 1740
Constructed in Hindeloopen, The Netherlands, mid-18th century. Cotton, resist-dyed and painted; gown, lined with linen, trimmed with Dutch weft-patterned tape (langetband). Veldman-Eecen Collection. Image and description courtesy the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

The textiles are decorated with vibrantly colored floral motifs that began as naturalistic garden scenes commissioned by Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India, in the 16th century but had become stylized botanicals by the reign of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, in the 17th century. They were hand-painted and fixed using mordant and resist dying techniques that ensured the bright colors of natural dyes like red madder and blue indigo held fast without fading. Nothing in Europe could compare to the intensity and durability of Indian colors.

Portuguese traders began exporting Indian textiles in the 1500s, but it was the Dutch East India Company (VOC) that began large scale exports in the 17th century. It started out as a branch of the spice trade since Indian cloth was used as currency in Indonesia and the Spice Islands. Merchants would buy textiles with European bullion, trade some of them for spices and then sell both the cloth and the spices in Europe. By the late 17th century, England, France and the Dutch Republic each imported more than a million pieces of chintz a year.

Many textile words in English are imports from India. Bandanas were Bengal handkerchiefs sold as neck cloths to sailors and laborers; chintz comes from the word “chitra” meaning “spotted.” Calico, khaki, gingham, dungarees, pyjamas, and my personal favorite, seersucker, are all Indian words for textiles and garments that became ubiquitous in Europe during the heyday of the textile trade.

Woman's breast yoke, ca. 1750, India. Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum
Cotton, mordant- and resist-dyed, and painted. The front and back of the yoke are constructed from large, vibrant pieces of the same chintz in red, blue, purple, yellow, and green. The shoulders are pieced from several smaller fragments of a different chintz pattern. The yoke is lined with linen, fitted with cotton tape ties and brass rings, and possibly decorated with gold thread. Veldman-Eecen Collection. Image and description courtesy the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

The explosion of popularity of imported textiles sent local cotton producers into a tailspin. France prohibited the import of chintz in 1686; England followed suit in 1720, prohibiting not just its import but also its use in furniture, bedding and clothing. Demand remained high, however, and as inevitably happens with prohibitions of pretty much any kind, making the importation of Indian chintz illegal just created a burgeoning black market.

Ultimately it was duplication and industrialization starting in the late 18th century that killed the Indian export textile trade. Machine-printing and synthetic dyes made possible the speedy manufacture of large quantities of cheap fabrics. Expensive imports couldn’t compete.

Palampore, mid-18th century
Cotton, mordant- and resist-dyed, and painted. Veldman-Eecen Collection. Image and description courtesy the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

Alida Eecen-van Setten’s interest in collecting and documenting these textiles was unusual at the time. Formerly fashionable consumer goods weren’t popular subjects for historians, and keeping 200-year-old organic fabrics from decaying is not an easy thing. There are very few 18th century chintzes available on the antiquities market (or in dumpsters) today. Her taste, persistence and dedication saved these exquisite textiles for a time when they could be appreciated as the museum pieces they are. She collected in such depth that the collection today is pretty much ideal for museum display. There are 15 chintz baby caps, for example, so the museum will be able to rotate them in and out of public view to keep them all in optimal condition.

In 2015, the Peabody Essex Museum will partner with no less illustrious an institution than the Rijksmuseum for an exhibition about the Dutch East India Company’s vast and influential trade in Asian imports. The Veldman-Eecen Collection will feature prominently in the Asia in Amsterdam exhibition that will run in Amsterdam from October 16th, 2015 until January 17th, 2016, after which it will travel to the Peabody Essex.

Embroidered Palempore, early 18th century
Cotton, embroidered with silk and gold-wrapped threads. Veldman-Eecen Collection. Image and description courtesy the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem.

 

Archaeology students find Roman fort on the Rhine

Ancient

An educational dig by the Goethe University Institute of Archaeology in the city of Gernsheim on the east bank of the Rhine in Hesse, Germany, has unearthed the remains of a Roman fort. Supported by professional archaeologists from the university and Hessian State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, 15 students spent five weeks excavating a small double lot in the middle of a residential neighborhood that was one of the last pieces of undeveloped property in the town. They found the first evidence of a late 1st century, early 2nd century fort.

Although Roman artifacts have been discovered in Gernsheim since the 19th century, construction exploded in the 20th century leaving few sites unmolested for a proper excavation. Archaeologists weren’t even certain what kind of Roman settlement was on the site. The artifacts indicated that there was at least a vicus, a small village, in Gernsheim, which often served as the civilian settlement for the families and support staff of a military fort. Actual physical remains proving the presence of a fort had yet to be discovered.

The student dig hit paydirt. They found two V-shaped trenches (fossae) used in Roman fort construction as obstacles to approach and the base of ramparts formed by the dug-up soil. They also found postholes from one of the wooden watchtowers placed along the fort walls, and a few stones from the lowest layer of a foundation that once supported a structure pillaged in the post-Roman period for its masonry.

The trenches turned out to be a motherlode not just because they’re evidence of the fort, but because of what they contained.

An unusually large number of finds were made. This is because the Roman troops dismantled the fort and filled in the ditches when they left. In the process they disposed of a lot of waste, especially in the inner ditch. “A bonanza for us,” according to Prof. Dr. Hans-Markus von Kaenel from the Goethe University Institute of Archaeology. “We filled box after box with shards of fine, coarse and transport ceramics; dating them will allow us to determine when the fort was abandoned with greater accuracy than was possible before.”

One of the artifacts recovered was nothing short of a struck of luck: it’s a brick fragment stamped with the name and number of a legion: Legio XXII Primigenia Pia Fidelis, an elite legion named after and dedicated to the goddess of fortune, Fortuna Primigenia. Finding an artifact that announces the precise legion that once occupied the fort seems like Primigenia is still looking out for her guys.

Caligula first sent Legio XXII to Germany in 39 A.D. It garrisoned the fort in Mainz (Mogontiacum) which was one of a series of forts charged with guarding the Rhine border of the Roman province of Germania Superior. The fort in Gernsheim was also part of the Limes Germanicus, and served as a strategically significance launching pad for missions east of the Rhine. Its central location between two important Roman cities — Mainz 30 miles to the northwest and Ladenburg 30 miles south — made it an important link in the infrastructure chain. The cohort (500 soldiers) of Legio XXII was stationed at Gernsheim between 70/80 and 110/120 A.D.

Another artifact found suggests a cavalry presence in the fort as well. It’s a large (about five inches wide by three inches high) bronze pendant that Roman cavalry used to decorate their horses’ harnesses. The pendant indicates that there was a mounted squadron (cohors equitata) attached to the cohort or maybe even a pure cavalry unit (ala) at the Gernsheimer fort.