Month: December 2015

Met acquires Crown of the Andes

Modern(ish), Museums

The Crown of the Andes, a rare surviving example of 17th and 18th century colonial Spanish gold work, the oldest and largest collection of emeralds in the world and the oldest surviving emerald and gold crown or tiara, has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Famous and coveted for at least three centuries, the crown has been in private hands since 1936. It has gone on display at special events like the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1937, the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the 1957 American Gem Society convention in Philadelphia and most recently, at the
Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Sacred Spain exhibition in late 2009, early 2010. Now that it’s part of the Met’s collection, it is on permanent display for the first time in its life.

The crown was never worn by a temporal ruler. This crown was made for a more saintly head: that of the statue of Our Lady of the Assumption in Popayan, Colombia. Popayan is a city high up in the Andres, 5,700 feet above sea level, founded in 1537 by Sebastian de Belalcazar during his search for the mythical city of Eldorado. The was no city of gold to be found, but tons of gold moved through Popayan to Cartagena and thence to Spain, and gold and gems were extensively mined in the area.

In the late 1580s and 1590s, a smallpox epidemic cut a deadly swath through Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. An estimated two million South American Indians died in this outbreak and subsequent ones through 1610. Entire cultures were annihilated and cities depopulated, including some towns neighboring Popayan. The town itself was spared, a miracle attributed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary. The Bishop of Popayan rallied the populace to donate gold and gemstones to create a crown of heavenly beauty worthy to adorn the head of the statue.

The people donated pounds of gold which was melted into a block and the frame of the crown carved out of it. They also donated rough emeralds which were table-cut in a simple rectangular shape or pear cut. The total weight of the crown today is 5.3 pounds. The Met puts the number of emeralds at 443 with an estimated total weight of 846.15 carats. The largest emerald in the crown is a 24-carat stone known as the Atahualpa Emerald. According to lore, it was one of many emeralds taken from the Inca emperor Atahualpa when he was captured by Francisco Pizarro in 1532.

Legend has it 24 goldsmiths using Indian and Spanish techniques created the crown in six years, that is was finished by 1599, but the Met’s research indicates the crown was made in two sections. The diadem was made around 1660, the arches on top a century later. Lore also has it that the crown was stolen twice, once by British pirates in 1650 and once by revolutionary Simon Bolivar in 1812. The locals got the crown back from the pirates after three days of fighting in the streets. Bolivar returned it himself. To keep the crown safe from further incursions, the leading citizens of Popayan formed the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. The crown was divided into six parts and stashed with members of the Confraternity only to be reunited once a year for religious ceremonies.

Whatever the kernels of truth in this story, the Crown of the Andes managed to survive while most other colonial gold objects were melted down and the gems recut in keeping with changing fashions. It would probably still be on the Marian statue’s head had the church not decided to sell the crown to fund a hospital, an orphanage and a home for the elderly. Pope Pius X granted the parish permission to sell the crown in 1914. Tsar Nicholas II reportedly showed some interest in acquiring it, but war, revolution and firing squad got in the way.

Other attempts to arrange the sell fell through for 20 years until Chicago wholesale jeweller and diamond exporter Warren J. Piper put together a syndicate of jeweler investors to acquire the crown from the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in 1936. He is thought to have paid around $125,000. Piper’s initial plan was to break apart the crown and sell the individual emeralds. Instead the crown went on tour and became a popular attraction. While spending most of its time in bank vaults, the Crown of the Andes spent the next 27 years doing the occasional personal appearance

It was sold at Sotheby’s London in 1963 for £55,000 (about $154,000, then; adjusted for inflation in today’s dollars that converts to just shy of $1.6 million).

[youtube=https://youtu.be/ytK52MT7TFg&w=430]

The winning bid was made by the Asscher Diamond Company of Amsterdam. They were acting for someone else, however: jeweler Oscar Heyman whose company was actually the seller. According to a later federal investigation into the crown’s history engendered by a contested title and blackmail case, Piper failed to make his contracted payments on the crown and went into default in 1938. The Met’s provenance information confirms that in 1938 the crown changed hands to Oscar Heyman & Brothers, but most news articles say members of the syndicate owned it until the 1963 sale. Piper never said who all was a part of the syndicate. It’s possible Heyman was an investor and his company took over the payments after Piper’s default.

Anyway, Heyman bought the Crown of the Andes from himself and kept it in bank vaults only releasing it for occasional exhibitions. Oscar died in 1970 and his daughter Alice was the next owner. With all the hype and history behind the crown, when the crown next went up for auction at Christie’s in 1995, expectations were high. It seemed to have sold to a Latin American collector for $2.2 million, but apparently there was a reserve of $3 million on the piece, so it didn’t move after all. It took another 20 years, and God knows how much money ’cause the Met ain’t saying, for the Crown of the Andes to find a new forever home.

Farmer stumbles on intact Etruscan tomb

Ancient

On October 25th, a farmer plowing his field near Città della Pieve, a small town 30 miles southwest of Perugia in central Italy’s Umbria region, opened a hole in the earth. When he peered inside, he saw the carved head of a man with his arm extended holding a plate. The farmer had stumbled on an Etruscan tomb form the late 4th century B.C. and the man with the outstretched arm was the lid of a funerary urn.

The hole was covered and the Superintendency for the Cultural Goods of Umbria alerted to the find. The city cops and Carabinieri (the police branch of the military) secured the site, setting a guard there overnight to keep people of greedy intent away from the tomb until the Superintendency was able to dispatch an archaeological team. Regional archaeologist Clarita Natalini lowered herself into the hole Mission Impossible-style and found she was in a small space about 16 by 16 feet containing at least two cinerary urns and two sarcophaguses.

The tomb was full of soil and debris from ancient collapses. Archaeologists started excavating from the entrance point into the tomb rather than starting from the cluttered burial chamber. They removed the dirt from the dromos, a long corridor leading into the tomb, and found heavy stone double doors guarding the room. The doors were carefully removed for study and to give the team a large enough opening to get the rest of the contents of the tomb out the way they came in more than 2,000 years ago.

One of the two sarcophaguses has a long inscription in Etruscan on the side with the word “Laris” identifiable in the carving. “Laris” or “Lars” was the name of an aristocratic Etruscan family that boasted a king among its famous ancestors. The name on the inscription has now been adopted as the name of the tomb since it likely refers to the person laid to rest inside of the coffin. At the foot of the sarcophagus was a statue head broken at the bottom of the neck. It depicts an adult male, bald, and still retains traces of the original polychrome paint. The pupils have been filled in.

The second sarcophagus also had an inscription, but it was damaged during one of the collapses. Archaeologists have collected the fragments, but there are thousands of them, so it will be difficult puzzling this jigsaw back together.

Apart from grave goods, which include pottery, miniature votive vases and two intact ceramic jars, likely used to store food for the afterlife, the archaeologists found four urns with cremains.

Made from fine grained alabaster marble, three of them are finely sculpted. The lid portrays the half naked deceased with a flower necklace reclining on two cushions as if at a banquet. He bears a patera, a shallow ritual offering dish, in the right hand.

The use of alabaster marble, the style of the burial and clues from the inscriptions suggest the burial belongs to an aristocratic family from the nearby Etruscan stronghold of Chiusi, Natalini said.

The last artifact to be removed was a large sarcophagus recovered on Saturday, November 28th. Unopened with the lid still sealed, the sarcophagus weighs more than three tons. Removing it from the small space while ensuring its safety was a challenge that required special expertise and equipment. Perugia fire fighters were deployed to lift the sarcophagus using air-filled pontoons that stretch from just a few centimeters thick to eight inches after inflation. The heavy piece was lifted onto a wooden sled on the floor and was then pulled out through the dromos which is just 35 inches wide.

All of the contents of the tomb have been moved to the Civic Museum of Santa Maria dei Servi for conservation.

Viking skeleton, wood coffin on display in York

Medieval, Museums

York was occupied by Vikings from 866 A.D. until the Anglo-Saxon King Eadred defeated Eric Bloodaxe, the last Viking ruler of York, in 954 A.D. and united England into a single kingdom. When the Vikings arrived, the Anglo-Saxon port city of Eoforwic was in decay. They renamed it Jorvik and developed it into a thriving center of trade with Viking Scandinavia and Dublin, the Byzantine Empire and the merchant networks of the Silk Road. Despite this rich history, what little evidence of Viking material culture surfaced in York was discovered by accident. The first professional excavation by the newly founded York Archaeological Trust only took place in 1972, and that was just a few small trenches dug under Lloyds Bank on Pavement. The trenches were unexpectedly productive, revealing up to 30 feet of archaeological layers and proving that the waterlogged, peaty soil of York was an excellent preserver of organic remains like timber, textiles, leather, seeds, plants, pollen, human parasite eggs and insects, an invaluable source of information about people’s daily lives in Jorvik.

The York Archaeological Trust (YAT) performed the first planned excavation in 1976 in Coppergate, the city’s ancient center, which was slated to be redeveloped into an open-air shopping center. From 1976 through 1981, the Trust excavated more than 1,000 square metres and 2,000 years of history. The remains of an entire street of Viking York survived thanks to the magic of peat: timber buildings, woven wattle used to make walls and pathways, fences, animal pens, shop fronts, artisan workshops, cesspits and wells. More than 40,000 objects were unearthed in the Coppergate excavation and more than 500,000 people visited the site during the dig.

The excavation was incorporated into the new development. It became part of the Jorvik Viking Centre, visible through the transparent floors of the museum which recreated the Viking city with period-accurate structures, manikins with faces recreated from 9th and 10th century skulls, and my favorite part, the pungent smells of Viking York which came highly recommended by SourceRunner and Duncan Armitage in this comment thread.

The York Archaeological Trust had another archaeological coup between October 1989 and July 1990 when it excavated graveyard of the lost church of Saint Benet in the Swinegate area of York. The church had stood on the site from the 8th century through the 14th, and archaeologists discovered more than 100 burials from the churchyard. A number of burials dated from Viking era — late 9th to the early 11th century — and included the exceptionally preserved remains of wooden coffins and lids.

One of these Viking-era burials from the Swinegate excavation has now gone on display in its wooden coffin at the Jorvik Viking Centre. This is the first time any of the Swinegate skeletons or coffins has gone on public display.

The condition of the wood gives this coffin national significance, as so few similar examples exist – particularly as this coffin would have been fairly fragile when first constructed, which tells archaeologists that it would have only been transported a short distance for burial. The coffin was made for a young woman, estimated at being aged between 26 and 35. Recent analysis of the bones reveals some of her life story– including that she had inadequate nutrition or disease as a child and degenerative joint disease in the spine and hips – but there is no indication of the cause of her death.

Over the last few weeks YAT’s conservation team have undertaken a thorough examination of the coffin to determine its structure and reveal how it was constructed. “The coffin is made from oak with pegged fastenings, and you can see that during construction, the piece of timber used for the lid of the coffin split and was repaired using a baton fastened inside, with the pegs cut flush on the outer surface to make the repair less obvious,” adds Sarah.

You can read the full reports of the 2015 reinvestigation of the skeletal remains and wood coffins on the York Archaeological Trust website. I particularly enjoyed the Woodworking Technology Report (pdf) and the Osteological Analysis (pdf).

The skeleton and coffin display is the vanguard of the Jorvik Viking Centre’s commemoration of the thousand year anniversary of King Canute’s accession to the throne of England in 1016. The Canute Millennial celebrations will kick off during next year’s 32nd annual Jorvik Viking Festival in February. If you’re in York for the festivities, there will be a lecture event at the Jorvik Viking Center on February 17th, 2016, at 7:00 PM about the skeleton and her coffin. York Archaeological Trust conservator Steve Allen will discuss the coffin, while osteoarchaeologist Malin Holst will talk about the skeleton.


Embalmed hearts of French nobility analyzed

Modern(ish)

Last year, archaeologists discovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a 17th century French noblewoman in the Convent of the Jacobins site in Rennes, northwest France. The body of Louise de Quengo, Lady of Brefeillac (died 1656), was one of five bodies found buried in lead coffins. Interred with the five were five lead heart-shaped containers, each holding a human heart. The practice of removing hearts after death and burying them in vessels in the coffins of deceased loved ones was common among the societal elite of Middle Ages, Renaissance and early modern France. Louise de Quengo was buried with the heart of her husband, identified from the engraving on the heart-shaped box: “This is the heart of Toussaint de Perrien, Knight of Brefeillac, whose body lies at the Savior near Carhay in the convent of the Discalced Carmelites that he founded and died at Rennes the 30th of August, 1649.”

The Knight of Brefeillac’s heart and the four other hearts excavated by archaeologists from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) at the site of the 14th century convent have been examined by a team of researchers including radiologists, forensic physicians, physicists and pathologists. They scanned the hearts with MRI and CT technology. The images looked good, but they weren’t usable for diagnostic purposes because the materials used to embalm the hearts got in the way.

“We tried to see if we could get health information from the hearts in their embalmed state, but the embalming material made it difficult,” said study author Fatima-Zohra Mokrane, M.D., radiologist at Rangueil Hospital at the University Hospital of Toulouse in France. “We needed to take necessary precautions to conduct the research carefully in order to get all possible information.”

Those necessary precautions included cleaning the hearts very carefully, removing the embalming materials, and then redoing the MRI and CT scans. This time the CT scans clearly showed the structures of the heart — chambers, valves, coronary arteries. The hearts were rehydrated which made it possible for researchers to identify myocardial muscles on the MRI images. The team also employed dissection, visual examination and study of the tissues with a microscope to find out as much as possible about the health of the hearts.

One heart appeared healthy and showed no signs of disease. Three of the hearts did show signs of disease, as plaque was found on the coronary arteries. The fifth heart had been poorly preserved and, therefore, could not be studied.

“Since four of the five hearts were very well preserved, we were able to see signs of present-day heart conditions, such as plaque and atherosclerosis,” Dr. Mokrane said.

It’s interesting that heart disease was so prevalent among the wealthy aristocrats. I imagine it’s a diet issue. Wide access to fatty meats made the upper classes more susceptible to heart conditions than the poor who subsisted on less rich and artery-clogging diets.

As for Louise de Quengo, her remains were reinterred in September. Numerous descendants were consulted as to the disposition of her body. There was a divide whether to bury her in Rennes where she slumbered for 358 years or in Tonquédec in the Côtes-d’Armor department of Brittany where several of her descendants live today. Patrick de Quengo de Tonquédec, father of actor Guillaume de Tonquédec whom you might have seen as Serge in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s masterpiece Three Colors: Blue, and his brother General Pierre de Quengo de Tonquédec advocated for her reburial in town cemetery in the shadow of the Château de Tonquédec, a castle which in the 17th century belonged to the lady’s brother. A majority of descendants agreed and Louise de Quengo was reinterred in Tonquédec on Wednesday, September 23rd.

Sealed chambers found under Templo Mayor

Medieval, Modern(ish)

The search for the tombs of Aztec emperors inches closer to a possible conclusion with the discovery of two sealed chambers under the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan in downtown Mexico City. Archaeologists have discovered a narrow tunnel that leads into the center of a large circular ceremonial platform at the foot of the Great Temple. At the end of the tunnel are two doors sealed with masonry that archaeologists hope may hold the cremated remains of 15th century Aztec rulers.

Elaborate Maya royal burials have been discovered in Mexico, for instance Pakal II’s massive sarcophagus in Palenque, but archaeologists have yet to find any tombs of Aztec rulers. The only historical sources to mention royal Aztec burials extant are accounts written by Spanish chroniclers like Bernardino de Sahagún and Diego Durán after the conquest that record that the remains of Aztec emperor Axayacatl (grandson of Moctezuma I), and his brothers and successors to the throne Tizoc and Ahuitzotl were each cremated on a great circular platform in the Templo Mayor complex called the Cuauhxicalco.

The Cuauhxicalco in question was unearthed in 2011. While at least five are recorded as having existed in the temple complex, this was the only one discovered in the ritually significant area at the foot of the temple. The platform is studded with 14 carved snake heads and is more than 50 feet in diameter. It was built in the 15th century on the south side of the temple which was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war and patron god of Tenochtitlan.

In 2013, archaeologists excavating the north side of the Cuauhxicalco found a large slab of volcanic andesite embedded in the floor. After lifting the 3-ton slab, they found a hollow space underneath it filled with offerings. Inside an offering box were the stones of a dismantled wall. At the bottom of the offering box were a pair of skulls of young children between five and seven years old at time of death, the first three cervical vertebrae and the skeletal remains of one hand and two feet. This is the first find of child sacrifices with complete skulls including the mandibles and the bones of the neck included. Lead archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan believes the remains of the children were interred right after death, which is why the vertebrae were there and why the feet and hand bones were articulated. The offering box also held gold objects, stone knives used in human sacrifices, the bones of eagles and one spectacular as yet unidentified artifact made of gilded obsidian. Underneath the box was another offering box containing the skull of an adult woman.

The team was just about the rebury the offering boxes when one of the researchers, archaeologist Tomas Cruz, realized the south wall of the hollow space was hiding a narrow corridor just 18 inches wide and five feet high. They dug out the debris filling the hallway and found it led 27 feet to the center of the Cuauhxicalco, culminating in the two entrances, one facing east, one west, that had been walled off by the Aztecs.

But Lopez Lujan is being cautious, saying the presence of graves at the end of the newly found passageway is simply a theory that could be wrong. The blocked-up entrances will be excavated starting in 2016.

“What we are speculating is that behind these sealed-up entrances there could be two small chambers with the incinerated remains of some rulers of Tenochtitlan, like Moctezuma I and his successors, Axayacatl and Tízoc, given the relative dating of the surrounding constructions,” Lopez Lujan said. […]

Dr. Michael E. Smith, a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University who was not involved in the dig, said “Leonardo knows the archaeology and ethno-history better than anybody, and he is not one to grandstand or make fantastic claims to garner publicity. Thus I would think his prediction is reasonable.”

They weren’t able to excavate of the chambers right away because construction of a new entrance hall to the Templo Mayor made the space inaccessible for two years. That’s almost complete now, so archaeologists will be able to pick up where they left off in January or February of next year. They expect to find two small rooms, no grand vaulted spaces like those created by the Maya.

In seven years of excavation, Lopez Lujan’s team has found 39 offerings containing more than 50,000 objects. Nine offerings were found before this excavation project began in 2007, for a total of 48. It’s the largest concentration of sacrificial deposits found in the temple complex, and they were found at the foot of the double staircase on the south side, not inside the pyramid, nor on any of the other sides. The concentration suggests this spot has greater ritual significance than the rest of the site, which, combined with the massive Cuauhxicalco, gives archaeologists reason to believe that any royal remains that may have been entombed in the temple were entombed in that location.