Month: June 2016

Satellites, drones find huge new structure at Petra

Ancient

Archaeologists using high-resolution satellite imagery and drone photography have discovered a massive structure in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. The UNESCO World Heritage Site, known as the Rose City after the red sandstone of the rock cliffs its most famous buildings were cut into, was built by the Nabateans beginning in the 2nd century BC and prospered as a trade hub linking East and West. It was abandoned in the 7th century and rediscovered by Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt in 1812. Since then, it has been extensively explored. Finding a previously unknown structure of monumental dimensions is therefore unexpected, to say the least, especially half a mile south of the main city center.

Archaeologist Christopher Tuttle, who has worked at Petra for nigh on 20 years, collaborated with everyone’s favorite (only?) space archaeologist Sarah Parcak, who scanned the satellite imagery for spots of interest. She saw a large rectangular shape with a smaller rectangle inside it at a site that Tuttle was somewhat familiar with, but the glimpse he’d seen of it looked like there were just a few crumbling terrace walls of a type widely seen all over the city. Tuttle then took to the field to discover if there was anything of note at the site. Aerial drone photography confirmed the outlines of an ancient structure worth exploring further, and then Tuttle took to the field to examine the site with his own eyes.

He realized that it wasn’t busted old terrace walls but rather the remains of a massive previously unknown building. Some pottery found there dates back to 150 BC, which may indicate the platform was built in the early days of Petra’s founding.

The newly revealed structure consists of a 184-by-161-foot (about 56-by-49-meter) platform that encloses a slightly smaller platform originally paved with flagstones. The east side of the interior platform had been lined with a row of columns that once crowned a monumental staircase.

A small 28-by-28-foot (8.5-by-8.5-meter) building was centered north-south atop the interior platform and opened to the east, facing the staircase.

This enormous open platform, topped with a relatively small building and approached by a monumental facade, has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra. It most likely had a public, ceremonial function, which may make it the second largest elevated, dedicated display area yet known in Petra after the Monastery.

Most of the large public monuments, including the Monastery (which is actually a temple), were built between the late 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., so if the pottery dates pan out, the platform could be the oldest structure in Petra of monumental scale. It’s not clear how the Nabateans used these shrines as they left no written records and few hints carved in the stone since their religious monuments eschewed icons for the most part, or used portable figures that are long gone.

There are no current plans to excavate the site. Tuttle and Parcak have co-authored a study on the find published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. It can be read here if you have a JSTOR login or nine bucks to spare.

You can take a virtual walk through the glories of Petra with Google Street View. Also, PBS’ always excellent NOVA had a fascinating episode last year on how the great buildings and elaborate water systems of Petra were constructed. It’s jaw-dropping at times. The Nabateans were genius engineers, truly.

First ancient oracle found in Athens

Ancient

Archaeologists have discovered the first ancient oracle of Apollo in Athens. Others have been found elsewhere in Greece, most famously the Oracle of Delphi, but this one is the only discovered in Athens. It’s in Kerameikos — the old potters’ quarter (hence the name) — northwest of the Acropolis in downtown Athens. It’s the site of a necropolis used over different periods known today as the Street of the Tombs for the funerary moments and stelae that line the road to Eleusis where the mysteries were performed.

Just south of the burial ground is a sanctuary discovered by Kyriakos Mylonas, a pioneer of scientific archaeology in Greece, in 1890. Myolnas unearthed a marble omphalos stone set in a rectangular enclosure between the altar and a triangular statue base in a cult niche. The omphalus, meaning navel, symbolized the center of the world. It was also believed to enable direct communication with the gods. The omphalos stone at the Oracle of Delphi was hollow and is believed to have been part of the ritual reading the oracular gases that came up through it. Because Hecate was frequently depicted as having three forms, Myolnas thought the base once held a statue of Hecate and that the sanctuary was dedicated to her, but Artemis was also sometimes depicted in triplicate, and several inscriptions and other artifacts were later found on the site indicating it was a sanctuary of Artemis Soteira, meaning Artemis the Saviour.

In 2012 during some cleaning work on the site, the German Archaeological Institute found that the omphalos was mounted on a marble slab that covered an opening. Last year, the omphalos was raised with a crane to reveal what it had been concealing for thousands of years: a circular well nine meters (30 feet) deep constructed out of semi-cylindrical clay tiles engraved with more than 20 inscriptions of the phrase “ΕΛΘΕ ΜΟΙ Ω ΠΑΙΑΝ ΦΕΡΩΝ ΤΟ ΜΑΝΤEΙΟΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΣ,” which translates to “Come to me, O Paean, and bring with you the true oracle.” Paean was an epithet of Apollo, son of Zeus and brother of Artemis. The repeated phrase was a prayer, an invocation to the deity that he reveal faithful and accurate answers to believers’ questions.

The shaft is only about 65 cm in diameter (just over two feet) which makes it a very tight fit for archaeologists to explore. Still, researchers were lowered in cautiously by crane. The style of the inscriptions place them in the Roman period, probably the third century, but the well is likely to have been in place much earlier.

Though the powers of the oracle at Delphi and others were famously plied by the ancient Greeks, this is the first ancient oracular edifice to Apollo to have been found in Athens itself, Dr. Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, told Haaretz. The well would have been used for hydromancy, a method of divination by means of water.
The ancients routinely sought oracular guidance not only on the future, for simple everyday matters, such as finding/keeping a lover, ahead of a journey, after falling ill, and so forth – or applying for asylum in the sanctuary.

This find is also significant because it confirms that the omphalos is in its original location. It is the only one in Greece to bear that distinction. The one in Delphi was moved over the years and is now in an unrelated location inside the sanctuary.

A wooden lid with a waterproof cover has been placed over the oracle well for its protection. The plan is to move some of the marble pieces, including the omphalos, to the Kerameikos museum. A replica will be placed in the sanctuary so it can take the brunt of the elements while the original is spared.

6,000-year-old massacre found in Neolithic silo

Ancient

Archaeologists from France’s National Institute for Preventative Archaeology (INRAP) have unearthed the skeletal remains of a Neolithic massacre in a silo in Achenheim, Alsace, northeastern France. The silo is pit number 124 of more than 300 used to store grain and other food staples unearthed inside a large Neolithic compound surrounded by a V-sectioned ditch with defensive bastions at the entrances. The silos were only used for food storage temporarily. Once they were emptied, they were used as garbage dumps or graves. The compound dates to between 4400 and 4200 B.C., a turbulent time in Alsace which explains why the settlement needed extensive protective measures.

Silo 124 is one of the larger pits at almost 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in diameter and it was set apart from the other silos either on the site of a dwelling or in a residential area. Inside the silo archaeologists found the complete skeletons of six people, five adult males and one teenage male between 15 and 19 years of age. The fact that the six complete skeletons were all male indicates this may have been a group of warriors, or at least defenders of the settlement. They were found lying on their back, stomach and sides, sometimes intermingled. The position of the bodies indicates they were dumped in the pit and no further attention was paid to them. They were not buried with the care evinced in other silo graves; these bodies were disposed of, pure and simple.

All six of the skeletons have numerous broken bones. There are fractures on the legs, hands, feet, ribs, collar bones, skulls and mandibles. The fractures were on living bone, and the extent and quantity of the broken bones suggest they were brutally beaten to death with blows from a stone axe. The wounds are too extensive to have been received in combat. This was a methodical punishment inflicted off the battlefield on helpless individuals.

The violence wasn’t just perpetrated on the living bodies, but on their corpses as well. Post-mortem wounds were also found on the bones. The corpses were all put in the silo at the same time, meaning they likely died in the same event, a single episode of killing in a larger conflict.

In addition to the complete skeletons, archaeologists found the upper left arms of three adults and the left forearm of a youth 12 to 16 years old. The forearm was cut in the middle of the humerus. The arms are believed to be “war trophies.” It’s not possible from osteological examination to determine the sex of the people’s whose arms were severed and thrown into the silo, nor were archaeologists able to discern whether the arms were severed pre or post-mortem.

The severed left arms are reminiscent of another very similar massacre discovered in Bergheim, 35 miles southwest of Achenheim. In 2012, archaeologists found the skeletons of eight individuals, also tossed in a silo and who also died in a single event. Under the complete skeletons at the bottom of the pit were seven left upper arms. The Achenheim and Bergheim date to the same period, the Middle Neolithic.

(INRAP archaeologists also found skeletal remains in an ancient silo about 70 miles west of Achenheim in the Lorraine town of Marsal. Eight skeletons, two of them children, were discovered tossed haphazardly over each other in the silo, but they were much more recent, dating to around 500 B.C.)

Archaeologists think both the Achenheim and Bergheim massacres could have been the result of raid by locals against newcomers to the area, or a victory by locals against raiders from elsewhere. The victory was celebrated with torture and mutilation of enemy prisoners. Pottery discovered on the site indicates the residents were part of the Bruebach-Oberbergen culture, but that pottery is followed by ceramic shards in a style first made in Paris.

Archaeologists would like to do stable isotope analysis on the bones to find out where the individuals were born and raised. If they were from the Paris area, that would mean they were killed by the fierce local farmers defending their homes and supplies from raiders. If they were local boys, they were likely the victims of a successful raid. INRAP will need to raise money to fund the additional research, however, as they don’t have the budget for it now.

Wrecked Piombo masterpiece restored

Museums, Renaissance

The University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum has restored a 16th century painting by Sebastiano del Piombo that has been in dire condition for centuries. The restoration took a full decade of research and painstaking work by conservators at the museum’s Hamilton Kerr Institute to complete.

Sebastiano Luciani (he got the “del Piombo” moniker after his appointment to the Papal office of the leaden seal in 1531) was born in Venice around 1485. He started off his career in the arts as a lute player and while he was successful at a young age and very much in demand by the nobles of Venice, he soon changed course to painting, becoming a student first of Giovanni Bellini, who was by then in his 70s, and then of Giorgione a former pupil of Bellini’s who while still in his 20s had already made a name for himself and won several important commissions. Giorgione had a strong influence on the young Sebastiano, and indeed more than one of his early works were believed for centuries to be pieces by Giorgione.

In around 1511, Sebastiano moved to Rome at the behest of the powerful Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. There he met Michelangelo who had just revealed the first part of his epic fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when Sebastiano arrived. Sebastiano was a congenial, charming fellow, enough to get along with Michelangelo who was notoriously prickly. According to Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo appreciated the young artist’s color skills and the gracefulness of his work and decided to take him under his wing.

Shortly after he arrived in Rome, Sebastiano painted the Adoration of the Shepherds for an unknown patron. The influence of Giorgione and the Venetian school is seen in the color palette and in the landscape of the painting (see for example Giorgione’s Adoration of the Shepherds painted around the same time that is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.), while the dynamic, animated figures show the influence of Michelangelo.

The painting first appears on the historical record in 1724 as part of the collection of the Duke of Orléans. It was attributed to Giorgione at that time, and still was in 1800 when museum founder Viscount Richard Fitzwilliam bought it at the sale of the Duke of Orléans’ collection in London after the French Revolution. The painting was part of the original bequest to his alma mater the University of Cambridge that created the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1816. It was only in 1913 that scholars attributed the Adoration of the Shepherds to Sebastiano del Piombo based on the fusion of Venetian and Roman elements that was characteristic of the artist’s work.

The painting has been in storage for 70 years because it was considered undisplayable in its condition. It was marred by thick layers of overpainting and X-rays and infrared imaging had shown that the original paint underneath was severely damaged. There was much discussion about whether conservation should even be attempted on so precarious a piece. Ten years ago, conservators at the Hamilton Kerr Institute began to seriously investigate the possibility of restoring the work. Sebastiano was a very slow painter and once he got the leaden seal job he was even slower. Most of his surviving works are portraits. A large religious piece by him is a rarity. Ultimately conservators decided that the overpainting was so atrocious, so far from the original in color and design, and enough of the critical areas of the original survived that it was worth tackling, even though it would require filling in significant areas of paint loss.

Here’s what it looked like before cleaning:

When the layers of overpaint and yellowed varnish were removed, conservators could see right away that the damage to the painting was not the result of the mere passage of time. It was caused by a botched transfer from original wood panel to canvas, probably when the Adoration was in the collection of the Duke of Orleans. Such transfers were considered a valid conservation approach at that time, particularly in the France, but they were hugely risky. On smaller works the painted surface was shaved off and applied to canvas. On larger pieces, a fabric facing was glued to the surface then either the wood was removed by carving or a corrosive until all that was left was the paint stuck to the facing. Canvas was then glued to the back and the facing carefully removed. Sometimes it worked and the painted surface adhered to the canvas. Sometimes it went horribly wrong and a precipitous amount of paint was lost.

Here’s what it looked like after the overpaint and varnish were removed:

Since the owner wanted his Old Master back on the wall, the damage was obscured by repainting. When that began to fail it was repainted again, lather, rinse, repeat. The botched transfer took place around 1750. Before the tragic events, a copy of the painting when it was still on panel was made. That copy is now in the Louvre. Without this copy, conservators would likely never have attempted this restoration because filling in the missing paint would have required too much guess work to be decently accurate. Thankfully, the original paint that survived the transfer proved resilient, tough enough to withstand the removal of multiple layers of overpainting.

In order to understand the artist’s technique, a microscopic particle of paint, smaller than the head of a pin, was taken from the Virgin’s blue robe and analysed under a microscope during research. Examination of the paint cross-section demonstrated Sebastiano’s sophisticated system of layering with an application of pink paint beneath the blue, as well as his use of superior and expensive pigments, such as ultramarine blue. This and other forms of state-of-the-art analysis greatly helped to reconstruct the missing areas. […]

[Director of the Hamilton Kerr Institute] Rupert Featherstone added, “We have conserved over 3,000 pictures in the last forty years at the HKI, but the Sebastiano is one of our biggest projects. Some might have argued to leave the painting as an archaeological relic, but I think we have made the right judgement to restore it so it can be appreciated as the masterpiece it is, aesthetically and historically. The scientific research that was conducted to aid our understanding of the technique of the artist has been key in being able to recreate it.”

Here’s what it looks like now:

The restored Adoration of the Shepherds is the Fitzwilliam’s “Object of the Month” for June and is now on display in the museum’s Flower Gallery.

Hikers find first ancient petroglyphs on Montserrat

Ancient, Modern(ish)

Locals Shirley Osborne and Vaughn Barzey were hiking on the Caribbean island of Montserrat this past January when they saw some carvings on a moss-covered rock face. They reported their discovery to the authorities. Volunteers with the Montserrat National Trust, archaeology professors and students from universities in the United States and elsewhere in the Caribbean studied the carvings in the hills near the town of Soldier Ghaut (Ghaut means “abrupt ravine” in Montserratian) about five miles north of the capital city of Plymouth. Officials kept the find under wraps until researchers confirmed that they were indeed ancient petroglyphs, the first ever discovered on Montserrat.

They are stylistically similar to petroglyphs made by the indigenous Amerindians (commonly referred to as the Arawaks, archaeologically known as the Saladoid culture) on Caribbean island like St. Kitts, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, among others.

“We have Amerindian artifacts on the island, but had not seen petroglyphs,” said Sarita Francis, director of the Montserrat National Trust. “These are the first, that we know of, that have been found here.”

Initial analysis suggests Montserrat’s petroglyphs are between 1,000 and 1,500 years old, Francis said, though carbon dating will paint a clearer picture of the images’ origins.

The petroglyphs consist of geometric shapes and what may be stylized animal or human figures. One figure could be a bat. Another with two deep circles cut from the stone and a line underneath is more than a little reminiscent of a rudimentary face design. The mouth doesn’t turn up at the corners, but it still manages to look like a smiley face.

The earliest artifacts found on the island long predate the Arawaks. Flint blades, flakes and other evidence of knapping about 2,500 years old have been found in the central hills of Montserrat and judging from the style and technology of the lithic materials, archaeologists believe the first settlers came from South America between 4,000 and 2,500 years ago. This Archaic, pre-ceramic culture was displaced with the arrival of the Arawak between 500 and 300 B.C. who settled Montserrat until they in turn were displaced by the raiding Caribs (also known as the Kalinago). By the time the Spanish arrived, the Awarak had left the island and the Caribs do not appear to have settled it. The next wave of settlers came in 1642 and were predominantly Irish.