Month: May 2018

First remains of a horse found at Pompeii

Ancient

Archaeologists have made an extraordinary discovery at Pompeii: the first complete remains of a horse ever found at the ancient site. It was looters who inadvertently led them there. A joint team of archaeologists from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and investigators from the district of Naples’ prosecutor’s office, local and cultural patrimony Carabinieri have been investigating looting activity since August, probing some tunnels recently dug by people of nefarious intent looking for artifacts to sell illegally on the black market.

The looters used the perimeter walls as guides to tunnel under, causing breaches in the walls, damaging plaster and frescoes and helping themselves to any ancient artifacts they came across. Using a laser scan mapping of 200 feet of tunnels, archaeologists excavated areas encroached upon by looters to aid in the investigation while simultaneously preserving remains harmed or endangered by the looting activity. In the service section of a grand villa less than half a mile northwest of the city walls in the suburb of Civita Giuliana, the excavation unearthed the bones of a horse killed in the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius.

The villa had been partially excavated already in 1907-8, revealing residential rooms and some agricultural production facilities, precisely which are unclear as there is little extant documentation, but researchers believe were areas dedicated to the production or storage of wine and oil. The service area where the horse was found, a stable complete with remains of a manger, was south of the early 1900s excavation.

Other equines — donkeys, mules — have been found at Pompeii before, but this is the first horse. It was identified as such by its size, proportions and most specifically, by the clear imprint of its left ear made in the ground as it lay on its side. It was a large animal by the standards of the time (150 cm high, or just under 15 hands), and the remains of an iron bit and bridle and bronze fittings between its ears suggest this was a prized steed, an expensive horse owned by someone of high rank. A second, smaller equine was found in the same stall, but most of its was destroyed in a landslide. Only part of its legs remain.

That earprint and the intact skeleton were indications that a plaster cast, the technique of preservation of Pompeiian remains pioneered in the 19th century, might be taken here. Because the horse is unique, taking a cast of it was all the more important. The cast revealed that the remains did suffer some damage in the haunches from the looters, thankfully minor.

Numerous objects of daily use have been found in the villa, including amphorae, cooking utensils, and part of a carbonized wooden bed. The bed was in good enough condition that archaeologists were able to make a plaster cast of it too.

Wreck of steamship Pulaski found

Modern(ish)

A 19th century wreck discovered 40 miles off the coast of North Carolina has been conclusively shown to be the steamship Pulaski which sank in a massive explosion in 1838 and claimed the lives of some the southeast’s most prominent individuals and families.

Divers with Blue Water Ventures International found the wreck in January under 100 feet of water. The locations, silver coins dating up to the year of the wreck and no later, plus evidence on the wreckage of a boiler explosion on the starboard side suggested it was the Pulaski, but there was no, pardon the term, smoking gun. To determine the ship’s identity with certainty, they needed to find an artifact with its name on it, like the bell or a labelled part of the boiler.

This week the smoking gun was found in the form of a candlestick holder and a token, both stamped “SB Pulaski” (SB stands for steamboat).

Dr. Joseph Schwarzer, director of the North Carolina Maritime Museums, was among the historians waiting for Webb to prove he was in the right spot. Schwarzer was hoping for the ship’s bell, but he says a candlestick holder with the ship’s name is just as good.

“That really is a smoking gun,” said Schwarzer. “It’s like finding proof of something which was not just history, but almost legendary. This is empirical evidence. The wreck is no longer folklore, on the pages of a book. There is an actually object that proves it is out there.”

The Pulaski sailed from Savannah, Georgia, on June 13th, 1838, and picked up more passengers that afternoon in Charleston. It departed the next morning for its ultimate destination in Baltimore. An easterly wind picked up in the afternoon. The choppy sea forced the boat to ramp up to full steam pressure to make any progress.

According to the testimony of wreck survivors documented in the 1840 book Steamboat Disasters and Railroad Accidents in the United States by Southworth Holland, disaster struck at 11:00 PM when the starboard boiler exploded. It blew up the promenade deck above it, the starboard side of the ship, the bulkhead between the boilers, the forward cabin and the bar room.

The ship first listed on its relatively undamaged side, but it soon rolled onto the starboard side and water flooded into the holes. The women and children had been hustled to the promenade deck above the ladies’ cabin, and men joined them when the aft deck flooded. Soon the waters rose to the promenade deck and the ship broke in two. The stern rose briefly, then split into three, throwing everyone on the deck into the churning waters.

The four lifeboats were launched immediately after the boiler explosion. One fell apart as soon as it hit water. The others took on as many survivors as they could (ie, hardly any) and at various times attempted landfall in crashing surf and high winds. Two of the lifeboats overturned and several passengers drowned. Others were able to make it to shore.

Twenty-three passengers manage to survive on the fore of the ship which floated instead of sinking, and Second Captain (first mate) Pearson clung to a plank overnight until he managed to navigate his way to the remnant of the Pulaski. They were still clinging to the fore, now lashed together into a makeshift raft, baked by the sun, desperately thirsty, on Saturday when another piece of flotsam bearing four more survivors came into view. The four joined the larger group on the raft.

Together they lived through a gale on Sunday, saw four ships on Monday who were too far away to see them and finally, blistered, parched and sleep deprived from having to keep the underwater raft afloat, they were rescued on Tuesday by the schooner Henry Camerdon. The schooner picked up another four people who had been spotted floating in the distance, barely alive, on a raft of planks from the promenade deck. The last eight people to be rescued managed to make it to land on the New River Inlet on Wednesday. They were nearly dead from dehydration and exposure. In total, more than 100 passengers died in the Pulaski disaster.

Writers have called the disaster story “the Titanic of its time.”

“Finding the Pulaski is a big deal,” said Dr. Joseph Schwarzer…. “Saying something was the ‘Titanic of its time’ is an overworked metaphor, since the Titanic was among the greatest maritime disasters in humankind. … But I will say it’s one of the more significant disasters in American maritime history. It was the ‘Titanic of its time’ in terms of the people who were on it. It was a who’s who of the colonial South, and the loss of life was significant. Entire families were lost.”

Maritime archaeologists are still studying the site, ensuring it is explored with the utmost care to ensure the context is preserved. They want to find scientific evidence of what caused the explosion, as so far historians have had to rely on survivor accounts which is less than fully reliable.

Germany has a historic (former) bridge to sell you

Modern(ish)

The Bundeseisenbahnvermögen (BEV), aka the German Federal Railway Authority, is offering an exciting if ominous real estate opportunity: half of the ruins of the Ludendorff Bridge are for sale, price negotiable. The two looming, blackened, massive masonry towers in the town of Erpel on the east bank of the Rhine and their twins on the west side are all that remains of the railway bridge built during World War I to aid in the movement of troops and supplies to the Western Front.

It was barely completed when the war ended and the Allies occupied the strategic site. By the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, the German military was excluded from the entire territory, and specifically from controlling any access points on both sides of the Rhine. It wasn’t until 1936 with the Remilitarization of the Rhineland under Hitler that the Ludendorff Bridge returned to German control.

Germany would enjoy that control for less than a decade. On March 7th, 1945, the U.S. Army’s 9th Armored Division took the bridge. It had been damaged by Allied bombing and German attempts to demolish it before the Allied troops could use it. The underpowered demolition charges had failed to destroy the bridge, giving the Americans the opportunity to move six divisions, 50,000 troops, over it, establish a bridgehead on the east bank and build a pontoon bridge to move the rest of the US forces. On March 17th, the bridge collapsed, killing 28 U.S. Army Engineers who were attempting its repair.

Here is period color film of the bridge before and after it collapsed. The focus is on the spans of the steel bridge itself which is, after all, the key part of any bridge, but the towers on both banks are also in high relief.

The bridge was never rebuilt, and over the years the towers were used for different purposes. Most recently, the east bank towers were used by the Erpel cultural association as galleries, but as of now, they are hardly fit for human habitation, no matter how temporary. From the BEV’s sale listing:

Heating: No
Water supply: None
Windows: Weathered until 6 years ago. Then installation of shipbuilding foil on wooden frame to protect against invading water and small animals. Partially wall-mounted parapets, some bricked windows. […]

It is in need of major refurbishment and due to the danger of falling facade parts, the duty of care must be observed: pedestrians, cyclists and car traffic runs in the immediate vicinity. No residential object.

Notwithstanding its challenges, the bridge has interested buyers, or so says the BEV spokesman. Adding to its dark allure may be the 1969 film The Bridge at Remagen, starring George Segal, Ben Gazzara and Robert Vaughn, which tells a highly dramatized version of the bridge’s role in World War II. It’s not remotely historically accurate, of course, but war movies are adroit mythmakers. It has also been featured in several video games, most recently Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

The towers in Remagen on the west bank of the Rhine are not for sale. They currently host a museum dedicated to the bridge’s history in wartime. Anybody who wants an unheated, waterless, crumbling, lawsuit-waiting-to-happen insurance nightmare that is legally enjoined from being used as housing but comes with a darn cool military history has until May 18th to submit a bid.

Hiker finds prehistoric pot, hides it, calls it in

Ancient

When Colorado hiker Randy Langstraat came across a piece of pottery on a popular trail in the Arizona Strip desert just across the state line from St. George, Utah, he reacted in an ideal fashion: he left it exactly where he found it, concealing it so it wasn’t in view of less scrupulous people, and called the Bureau of Land Management.

Langstraat described the exact location of the pot to BLM Arizona Strip archaeologist Sarah Page. In February, Page used that description to find the pot, still buried where Langstraat had left it. Nobody had interfered with it and it had suffered no damage. Except for a piece broken off the handle, likely in the distant past, the pot is intact.

After locating the intact pot, Page began a full documentation process of the site and, along with another agency archaeologist, conducted an intensive archaeological survey to determine if additional artifacts were present. No other artifacts were present and the archaeologists believe the pot was left in the location by the pot’s creator with the intent to collect it later. However, the person never recovered it. A detailed analysis was conducted by archaeologist David Van Alfen who determined the pot to be North Creek Corrugated, which dates to the Late Pueblo II period (AD 1050-1250) of the Virgin Branch of the Ancestral Puebloan culture. The effigy handle appears to be that of an animal, possibly a deer or bighorn sheep. However, the ears or horns have been broken off making it difficult to determine precisely.

Precious resources like the prehistoric North Creek Corrugated pot aid scientists in their study of earlier occupants. In addition, losses of these resources deny present and future generations the ability to enjoy the privilege of learning from and observing the site in its original state. BLM Arizona manages some of the most significant and best-preserved prehistoric and historic archaeological sites in the American Southwest that are important to our understanding of both recorded history and prehistory.

It is illegal to remove or damage artifacts found on BLM land, but with 245 million acres of territory and more than 150,000 cultural heritage sites to cover, its law enforcement program couldn’t possibly prevent the loss of archaeological significant material like the North Creek Corrugated pot without the cooperation of good citizens like Randy Langstraat.

“While the BLM is tasked to protect these resources,” said Page, “we need everyone’s help to do so. Langstraat did the right thing by reporting the discovery of the pot to the BLM and by leaving it in place. Just like Langstraat, everyone can help to protect our nation’s fascinating past. We hope that others will follow his example and respect our past.”

First confirmed family burials found in Roman cemetery

Ancient, Modern(ish)

DNA analysis has confirmed for the first time the presence of family members buried in a Roman cemetery. University of Essex scientists have tested bones found in the Butt Road cemetery in Colchester, a late Roman burial ground that is one of two located outside the walls of the first colonia (city settled by retired Roman soldiers) in Britain, and determined that they were, as suspected, biologically related to each other.

The cemetery first saw use in the mid-third century A.D., its 61 graves oriented north-south as was customary in traditional polytheist burials. In the fourth century, the cemetery transitioned to Christian burials, with at least 620 inhumations (some overlapping the earlier pagan graves) oriented east-west containing no grave goods. A building at the northwest of the cemetery dating to 320-340 A.D. was probably a church and/or a martyrium. Its construction coincides with the relatively abrupt shift to Christian burials at the cemetery.

Around the middle of the fourth century, six timber vaults were built in the cemetery. They contained double and single burials. Also from this period are several plaster burials and three lead-lined coffins, two of them decorated with early Christian symbols. Other burials were clustered around the vaults, primarily two vaults labelled I and II which had more than 30 later inhumations densely packed around them. The presence of multiple infant burials is further evidence of Christian funerary practices.

The spatial relationships of the burials and osteological analysis of the skeletal remains led the archaeologists who first excavated the Butt Road cemetery between 1976 and 1988 to hypothesize that these were probably family groups, but it could not be scientifically verified with the technology available at the time. In order to maximize optimal conditions for DNA extraction and analysis, archaeologists needed to re-excavate in the areas cemetery believed to be family burials and remove human remains under DNA-free conditions to minimize the chances of contamination.

The Colchester Archaeological Trust excavated the Butt Road site and University of Essex scientists successfully extracted DNA samples from the femurs of 26 individuals, most of them from vaults I and II and the densely packed burials around them. Two middle aged men buried next to each other in the vault complex were found to be kin, either father and son or brothers. A young adult woman and two infants buried near her were likely related, possibly a mother and her two babies. There were also another pair of possible brothers, a possible brother and sister or cousins or uncle and niece.

Studies of ancient DNA usually determine relationships by looking at mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Relationships can also be determined using HLA (human leukocyte antigen) typing which shows how closely the tissues of one person match the tissues of another person and is an effective indicator to show if someone is related. Using both approaches, the scientists found that the individuals buried within the vault complex at Butt Road were interrelated and were most likely from Roman descent.

The results also throw some light on Christian funeral practices in Roman Britain. Most of the sampled graves which were arranged around the pair of vaults are interpreted as ‘focal graves’. The results indicate that family burials could be an important focal burial characteristic, with the associated family groupings perhaps representing people of privilege within the community.

Professor Fernández said: “In recent years, aDNA analysis has breathed new life into archaeology as it is such a powerful research tool. It means that we have been able to for the first time scientifically prove the long-held theory that there were family burial areas at the Butt Road Roman cemetery by showing they shared the same inherited genetic markers.”

The results of the study have been published in the journal Frontiers in Genetics and can be read in full here.