4,200 yr-old rattle found in Turkey

Archaeologists excavating the Acemhöyük excavation site in central Turkey have unearthed a clay rattle that dates to the early Bronze Age. It has not been radiocarbon dated yet, but the layer in which it was found dates to around 2200 B.C. which makes the toy one of the oldest rattles ever found. Made out of terracotta, the rattle is shaped like an oval coin purse. It probably had a handle originally but that has been lost. The top has a few perforations to allow sound to escape. It is intact and still sealed with small objects inside, probably pebbles, which make the rattling noise. Had any part of it broken or chipped over the past 4,000 years, the contents would have fallen out and it would no longer rattle. Happenstance has preserved it so that we can still hear what the Bronze Age baby and parents who once shook it can hear.

You can see and hear the rattle rattled in this Turkish language news story on the find.

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

That’s Dr. Aliye Öztan in the video, leader of the excavations at Acemhöyük since 1989. Acemhöyük is a large oval mound 44 hectares in area that is one of the largest Bronze Age sites in Anatolia. The tumulus was erected around 3000 B.C. There are a total of 12 habitation layers, the oldest dating to the Late Copper Age. The rattle was found in layer seven. The settlement was continually inhabited from the Early Bronze Age through the Roman era, reaching peak prosperity in the second millennium B.C. when it was an important center of trade during the Assyrian Trade Colonies Period (1950-1750 B.C.) when the Assyrians established karums, or merchant colonies, in multiple cities in Anatolia.

Excavations at the site began in 1962 and have continued ever since. While earlier excavations have focused on the prosperous Assyrian Trade Colonies Period, the aims of the current dig is to excavate the bottom layer of the mound and the Early Bronze Age ones. The city walls were built in the Early Bronze Age, so this period is key to understanding the community’s growth and development. Other artifacts found this season include a fragment of a necklace made of bones, metal needles and cups.

Etruscan stele names goddess Uni

The inscribed Etruscan stele discovered in the ancient settlement of Poggio Colla earlier this year has yielded an exciting name: Uni, a fertility/mother goddess who was the Etruscan equivalent of the Greco-Roman goddesses Hera and Juno. She may have been the goddess worshipped at the temple. Other finds made at Poggio Colla, most famously a ceramic fragment with the earliest birth scene in European art, support the contention that the town was the center of fertility cult.

The massive slab was found in the foundation of a 2,500-year-old stone temple, but it was recycled for that purpose. Archaeologists believe the stele was an important part of a sacred display in the first wood temple. It is ponderously sized at 500 pounds, four feet high and two feet wide, and is inscribed with letters and punctuation around the edges of the front face and sides. With the stone partially cleaned the number of characters found was 75. Now they’re up to 120 and still counting, putting it in the running for the longest Etruscan inscriptions on stone. It is certainly one of the three longest sacred (non-funerary) Etruscan texts yet discovered.

When the discovery of the stele was first announced, archaeologists expressed hope that they might discover from the inscription which deity the temple was dedicated to because it’s extremely rare for Etruscan sanctuaries to be so identified. The discovery of the name of the goddess Uni is therefore a wish come true. In addition to the name of the goddess Uni, researchers found the word “tinaś,” which they believe is a permutation of Tina or Tinia, the god of the sky and the top of the divine hierarchy in the Etruscan pantheon. Tina was the Etruscan equivalent of Zeus or Jupiter.

Etruscan epigrapher Adriano Maggiani and comparative linguist and University of Massachusetts Amherst classics professor Rex Wallace are studying the inscription and working to translate the text. They’ve found that the text was carved with great care, perhaps by a professional, highly skilled stone carver commissioned to carve words written by a scribe or temple official.

“This is probably going to be a sacred text, and will be remarkable for telling us about the early belief system of a lost culture that is fundamental to western traditions,” said archaeologist Gregory Warden, co-director and principal investigator of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which made the discovery. […]

“It is also possible that it expresses the laws of the sanctuary — a series of prescriptions related to ceremonies that would have taken place there, perhaps in connection with an altar or some other sacred space,” said Warden[.]

This is just the early stage of the translation, hence the carefully qualified statements. Mugello Valley Archaeological Project researchers will present the discovery of the goddess Uni in the inscription at an exhibit in Florence on August 27th. The talk will include a hologram of the stele since the stone itself is still in the process of conservation at the Archaeological Superintendency in Florence. Their findings will also be published in the upcoming November issue of the journal Etruscan Studies.

“We can at this point affirm that this discovery is one of the most important Etruscan discoveries of the last few decades,” Warden said. “It’s a discovery that will provide not only valuable information about the nature of sacred practices at Poggio Colla, but also fundamental data for understanding the concepts and rituals of the Etruscans, as well as their writing and perhaps their language.”

Six Neolithic flint axes reunited in Denmark

It was the recent discovery of the sixth axe that set the wheels in motion for its reunion with its five brethren, but the story begins in 1930 when a farmer discovered a Neolithic flint axe in a field near Snostrup on the Roskilde Fjord in southwestern Denmark. The axe was 27 centimeters (10.6 inches) long and roughly hewn. Over time the farmer found another four axes with the same coarse finish. In 1975, National Museum of Denmark curator CL Vedbæk visited the farmer and documented the axes. Treasure trove laws were different then; after the artifacts were recorded, they stayed with the finder.

Forty-one years later, an archaeological excavation in the same field unearthed another rough axe. Museum Group ROMU archaeologist Jens Winther Johannsen was part of the excavation team. He remembered there were other Neolithic axes found in the field and decided to seek out the family. He asked around and was able to locate one of the farmer’s sons. As luck would have it, the family had kept the axes together and in good condition and the son wanted to hand them in to the National Museum. The National Museum judged them to be treasure trove. The state gets to keep the axes and the farmer’s family will get a finder’s fee.

The five previously excavated axes were transferred to the Museum Group ROMU, thus reuniting them with the sixth one unearthed this year. Examination of the group found that all of the axes are so roughly worked they are classified as intermediate goods, begun, but not completed. They would have had to be reworked, sharpened and polished on a grinding wheel before they could be used. National Museum curator Peter Vang Petersen and Jens Winther Johannsen think that the six axes were deposited together and then spread all over the field by subsequent cultivation. The whitish color of the axes indicates they spent many centuries in the same place where the soil conditions affected their color. They are made out of the same type of flint, and stylistically they all date to the mid-Neolithic, about 2,800-2,600 B.C.

The field where they were discovered was a marsh during the Neolithic. The area wasn’t drained and developed for agriculture until the 19th century. As a general interpretative rule, archaeologists believe deposits in wetlands were religious offerings, sacrifices, ritual “killings” of powerful objects, while objects buried in dry soil were stored for later retrieval. The six axes, therefore, are thought to have been ritually sacrificed to the gods by deposition in the marsh.

As for why unfinished flint axes might have been considered desirable sacrifices, archaeologists have found both finished and intermediate flint objects deposited in wetlands. Petersen hypothesizes that the form may not have been the important factor, rather the material used. The sacrifice of flint objects may have been a kind of tax or toll due to the gods for all the flint removed from the earth. Neolithic Danes were well aware of the value and importance of flint. Eastern Denmark was the center of flint production in northern Europe. From there, they were exported east to the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and north to Sweden and Norway where there is no natural source of flint.

There are no current plans to display all six of the flint axes. The five that were found by the farmer will probably be part of the National Museum’s exhibition of select artifacts that were declared treasure trove the year before. That won’t happen until 2017.

Crusader-era grenade in group of artifacts turned in to authorities

A group of artifacts recently turned in to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) include a striking embossed hand grenade from the Crusader era. The objects were collected by the late Marcel Mazliah who worked at the Orot Rabin power station in Hadera on the northwest Mediterranean coast of Israel since it was built in 1973. Over the years, he found a broad assortment of archaeological treasures in the sea, probably lost in shipwrecks or simply overboard.

The Mazliah family contacted the IAA after Marcel died and they inherited his less-than-legal collection. An expert went to their home to examine the artifacts and was surprised to find such significant pieces.

According to Mrs. Ayala Lester, a curator with the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The finds include a toggle pin and the head of a knife from the Middle Bronze Age (from more than 3,500 years ago). The other items, among them, two mortars and two pestles, fragments of candlesticks, etc. date to the Fatimid period (eleventh century CE). The items were apparently manufactured in Syria and were brought to Israel. The finds are evidence of the metal trade that was conducted during this period”.

The hand grenade is a handsome example of a weapon in common use by Islamic forces during the Crusader (1099-1187), Ayyubid (1187-1250) and Mamluk (1260-1516) periods. It is made of unglazed ceramic and embossed with grooves and tear drop-shaped designs. It has a domed top over a spherical body that tapers to a point. They were filled with incendiary material – petroleum, naphtha, Greek fire — and thrown or catapulted into the enemy camp where they exploded fire that water could not put out on their targets. There’s a small hole in the top into which flammable liquid could be poured and a wick added once the grenade was loaded.

Some scholars believe these vessels were not weapons, but rather perfume bottles. They’re certainly pretty enough for it and it seems counterintuitive that someone would bother to decorate an explosive projectile whose sole function is to destroy itself and take people down with it. On the other hand, their shape makes them markedly unsuited for placement on a dresser, requiring a rack or holder to keep them vertical, and the decorations also have the practical function of making the devices easier to grip in the hand or set snugly in the sling of a catapult. A smooth clay grenade would be dangerously easy to drop.

There is historical and archaeological evidence of this type of vessel being used in war. For one thing, clusters of them have been found in fortresses, castles and moats. The 12th century historian Mardi ibn Ali al-Tarsusi mentioned in the military manual he wrote for Saladin in 1187 that terracotta vessels with incendiary contents were launched from catapults or thrown from ramparts. Other sources from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries describe the clay gourds in more detail, explaining how they were used in battle and the various launching methods. Chemical analysis of residue inside several similar pieces discovered traces of rock salt, pine resin and other flammable materials. One gourd on display in the National Museum of Damascus has an inscription that leaves no question as to its bellicose purpose: “This kind of projectile is useful for targeting the enemy.”

The IAA is grateful that the family has voluntarily come forward and handed the artifacts over to the state. Officials plan to give the Mazliah family with a certificate of appreciation and, which is way cooler, have invited the family to visit the IAA laboratories where the artifacts will be studied and conserved.

Tiny publisher to publish Voynich Manuscript facsimile

The Voynich Manuscript, a folio of mysterious illustrations and hand-written texts written in an unknown language or code, has been bedevilling linguists and cryptographers for almost 600 years. Radiocarbon dating of the book’s vellum leaves found it was produced between 1404 and 1438, and even though the ink cannot be dated at present, researchers believe the manuscript was written relatively close to the parchment’s age. There’s a documented history of alchemists, scholars, occultists, even one emperor (Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II) succumbing to its fascination since the 1600s. It fell off the radar in the late 17th century only to be rediscovered in 1912 inside a trunk at the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome by Polish antiquarian and book dealer Wilfrid Voynich.

Voynich was obsessed with attempting to decipher the manuscript, dedicating the last 18 years of his life to the pursuit. Since then, everyone from professional codebreakers from both World Wars to amateur puzzlers have tried to crack the code. It has become the a cryptological Holy Grail, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which was owned the volume since 1969, gets thousands of emails a month from people claiming to have cracked the code. Fully 90% of traffic to the library’s website goes to the digitized images of the manuscript.

The Beinecke Library gets constant requests to loan the codex out to museums, institutions and researchers — it is the second most requested book after the Gutenberg Bible — but they mainly keep it locked up in a vault for its own protection. If everyone who wanted to turn its pages did so, its condition would quickly deteriorate. In 2005, a small Spanish publishing company called Siloé which specializes in printing precise facsimiles of historic manuscripts learned of the Voynich Manuscript and campaigned with the Beinecke to be allowed to make a specialized reproduction of it. Ten years later, the deal was done and the obscure publishers in the historic center of Burgos in northern Spain were granted the right to make the first ever copy of the Voynich Manuscript.

Siloe … has bought the rights to make 898 exact replicas of the Voynich — so faithful that every stain, hole, sewn-up tear in the parchment will be reproduced.

The company always publishes 898 replicas of each work it clones — a number which is a palindrome, or a figure that reads the same backwards or forwards — after the success of their first facsimile that they made 696 copies of… another palindrome.

The publishing house plans to sell the facsimiles for 7,000 to 8,000 euros ($7,800 to $8,900) apiece once completed — and close to 300 people have already put in pre-orders.

The first high resolution photographs of the 252 pages of the manuscript were taken earlier this year and Siloé experts are now working on mock-ups. It’s no easy task reproducing a codex that has lived a rich and varied life over 600 years. Each folio is bound by hand and the delicate vellum has been exposed to diverse, sometimes damaging, climactic conditions. Some pages are dehydrated. Others are almost burnt from exposure to heat and light. Then there are the complexities inherent in this particular codex which has leaves that unfold into triples and quadruple pages.

Once the images are sorted out, the book will be printed on special paper developed by the company. Made from a thick paste, the paper will be treated so that the final product has the stiff feel of the Voynich vellum. The printed pages will then be then bound and aged to match the original.

It’ll be about 18 months before the first facsimiles go to print. The 300 copies that have already been sold in advance were all purchased by individuals — institutions have to wait to buy things when they actually exist — but one of the main reasons the Beinecke agreed to the copy was so facsimiles to go to museums and schools for scholars to peruse without fear of damaging the original. There must be some sort of reservation option with such a limited run already being more than a third claimed. I could find no means to preorder on the publisher’s website. Perhaps there will be more information available on the site once we get closer to publication.