Month: August 2018

Largest, earliest cemetery in east Africa found

Ancient

Archaeologists have discovered the largest and earliest cemetery in east Africa built 5,000 years ago by herders around Lake Turkana, Kenya. Researchers from Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History excavated the site and discovered a dense grouping of interrals in a central cavity with scattered associated burials around it.

The Lothagam North Pillar Site, constructed and in active use between 5,000 and 4,300 years ago, consists of a massive platform 100 feet in diameter with a large funerary cavity in which the dead were buried over time. When the cavity was full, burials ceased and it was capped with stones. Megalith pillars were then placed on top of the cap and additional stone circles and cairns were added around the site.

The central cavity held as estimated 580 individuals, men, women, children, seniors. All of the burials regardless of sex, gender or age included grave goods and none of them were given more or more valuable objects. A wide variety of stones and minerals carved into more than 300 beads of many different forms were unearthed in the graves. Fashioning these handsome ornaments would have taken a lot of time, creativity and dedication, attesting that the people of the Lothagam North Pillar Site placed importance on aesthetics, individual style and adornment.

The grave goods are equally distributed over the burial ground, not concentrated in any area or areas, nor were any individuals interred in a manner meant to single them out for special attention and honor. They were tightly packed in the cavity. This indicates the pastoralists who built and used the monumental cemetery did not have a strong hierarchies in their society.

That is a highly significant find from a social history perspective because it contradicts the widespread notion that the construction of large public monuments and buildings was a function of stratified hierarchical societies, that a concentration of wealth and power and the desire to show them off were requirements for projects of this magnitude in early civilizations. The herders of Lake Turkana had an egalitarian society for hundreds of years.

“This discovery challenges earlier ideas about monumentality,” explains Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Absent other evidence, Lothagam North provides an example of monumentality that is not demonstrably linked to the emergence of hierarchy, forcing us to consider other narratives of social change.”

The discovery is consistent with similar examples elsewhere in Africa and on other continents in which large, monumental structures have been built by groups thought to be egalitarian in their social organization. This research has the potential to reshape global perspectives on how—and why—large groups of people come together to form complex societies. In this case, it appears that Lothagam North was built during a period of profound change. Pastoralism had just been introduced to the Turkana Basin and newcomers arriving with sheep, goats, and cattle would have encountered diverse groups of fisher-hunter-gatherers already living around the lake. Additionally, newcomers and locals faced a difficult environmental situation, as annual rainfall decreased during this period and Lake Turkana shrunk by as much as fifty percent. Early herders may have constructed the cemetery as a place for people to come together to form and maintain social networks to cope with major economic and environmental change.

“The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate, renew social ties, and reinforce community identity,” states Anneke Janzen also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical landscape.” After several centuries, pastoralism became entrenched and lake levels stabilized. It was around this time that the cemetery ceased to be used.

The study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Vanishingly rare Boston Tea Party cartoon for sale

Modern(ish)

An extremely rare print of one of the most significant political cartoons of the Revolutionary War is going under the hammer at Heritage Auctions on Saturday. “Liberty Triumphant: Or the Downfall of Oppression,” attributed to New York engraver Henry Dawkins, was published between December 27th, 1773 and April of 1774, so anywhere from 11 days to four months after the Sons of Liberty dressed up like Indians and dumped East India Company tea into Boston harbor in protest of the Tea Act. There are only six other copies known, all in institutions.

The rather busy and caption-filled cartoon shows British politicians & merchants in league with the devil, on the left side, and American colonists (seven dressed as Indians representing those at the Boston Tea Party) on the opposing right side (labeled Boston, New York and Delaware Bay).

Captions at the bottom serve as a “key” to the people and symbolic figures depicted. The men on the left side are, for the most part, representatives of the East India Company, along with Philadelphia Loyalist Dr. John Kearsley, Jr. The men in the lower right are colonial merchants who opposed the Tea Party, but deem it better to acquiesce, now that the deed is done. “The people have discovered our design to divide them, & we shall never be able to regain their confidence.” The Goddess of Liberty says “Behold the Ardor of my sons and let not their brave Actions be buried in Oblivion.” The lead Indian exclaims “We will secure our freedom, or die in the Attempt.”

Henry Dawkins was a colorful character, and by colorful I mean shady as all get out. Born in England, he set up shop as an engraver in New York. After printing the seminal cartoon celebrating the Boston Tea Party, he was contracted by the New York Provincial Congress to engrave plates for the new Continental currency. Then something went awry and he found himself doing a stint in the city jail for reasons that have been lost in the mists of time, but given his future shenanigans it’s likely an extra-legal use of his engraving prowess was involved.

While he was incarcerated, one Israel Youngs was a frequent visitor, and when Dawkins was released in early 1776, Youngs invited him to visit the duplex home he shared with his brother Isaac in Huntington, Long Island. According to Henry Dawkins’ testimony to a New York Provincial Congress committee in May 1776, Israel repeatedly entreated him to engrave fresh plates so they could profit from the brisk business in counterfeit cash that had sprung up since the Colonies had begun to print their own paper money to raise funds for the war effort.

British authorities and Loyalists made a point of spreading counterfeit bills as a form of economic sabotage. It worked, too. The value of Continental bills cratered and almost a century would pass before the United States issued paper currency again in 1861 under pressure from an even more brutal war.

His English birth thus cast even more suspicion on Dawkins’ activities at the Youngs house. Dawkins had chests of his specialized engraving tools at the home, yet claimed to be supporting himself on past income. One of the Youngs had tried to buy paper in Huntington only to find that it “would not do.” Isaac was overheard telling someone that he would pay off all his debts that summer in Continental Currency. Israel Youngs was the only person allowed to bring wood up to Dawkins’ attic room. It didn’t take much for such glaringly obvious clues to lead people to the glaringly obvious conclusion. Another English-born man, Charles Friend, reported them for counterfeiting and in May of 1776 Captain Jeremiah Wool of the New York militia arrested Dawkins, the Youngs and their kinsman Isaac Ketchan.

Dawkins confessed all. He fingered Israel Youngs as the ringleader, claiming Israel had solicited him to create plates of 40-shilling Connecticut bills, thirty-dollar Continental currency and 42-shilling Massachusetts bills. The Connecticut and Massachusetts ones were printed on a rolling press hidden in a garret and signed in red carmine ink by Israel Youngs. The Continental bills were more complicated to produce because they required special paper that could only be acquired with great difficulty in Philadelphia and Dawkins said he never knew if they’d manage to secure that paper.

The New York Provincial Congress committee convicted Dawkins and in June 1776 he was sentenced to pay a hefty fine and imprisonment in an Albany jail. The Youngs brothers and Isaac Ketcham (tasked with buying the paper in Philly) were also convicted. Israel Youngs, who denied all knowledge of the plot and his brother were sentenced to jail in Litchfield, Connecticut, but Israel only served a few months because he bribed a jailer and escaped in November of 1776. He tried to go back to Long Island but everyone hated his counterfeiting ass now, so he had to move to New Jersey.

Henry Dawkins was not so fortunate in his jailers. From his prison in White Plains (Albany fell through), he sent a petition dated October 19th, 1776, to the Provincial Congress literally begging for death.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOURS: The subscriber, humbly relying on the known goodness and humanity of this honourable House, begs leave to lay his complaint before them, which is briefly as follows:

That your petitioner was about six months past taken upon Long-Island for a trespass of which this House is thoroughly acquainted, as by the instigation of Israel Youngs he was led away to perform an action of which he has already sincerely repented. And as your petitioner was torn away from his only son, who is left among strangers, without any one to support or protect him during the inclemency of the approaching winter; as his unhappy father hath since the first day of his being taken had but one shirt and one pair of stockings to shift himself, and as he hath been afflicted during his imprisonment at the White-Plains with the worst of enemies — hunger, and the nauseous stench of a small room where sometimes twenty persons were confined together, which hath introduced a sickness on your distressed subscriber, which, with the fatigue of travelling, hath reduced your unhappy petitioner to a state of despondency; — he therefore, being already weary of such a miserable life as his misconduct hath thrown him into, humbly begs for a termination of his sorrows by a death to be inflicted in what manner the honourable House may think fit. The kind compliance of this honourable House will ever lay an obligation on your Honours’ distressed, humble servant,
HENRY DAWKINS.

They did not accede to his request. It’s not clear exactly when he was released, but released he was because, believe it or not, in early 1778 he was back on his grind, working for the same government that had convicted him of counterfeiting. Henry Dawkins engraved the first official coat of arms of the State of New York, the same design that would be printed on the reverse of New York’s issue of the 1882 National Bank Note.

Gold horse head shines on public display

Ancient, Museums

The gilded bronze horse head from a 1st century equestrian statue found in Waldgirmes, central Germany, is going on public display for the first time since it was unearthed in 2009. It’s been through a lot in its 2000 years, first getting dismembered by Germanic tribesmen making a point about the transitory nature of imperial power in the wake of their annihilation of Rome’s legions at the Battle of Teutoborg Forest, then getting thrown in a deep well, then getting dug up by archaeologists, then spending years undergoing painstaking conservation while the owner of the land where it was found took the state of Hesse to court to geometrically expand his compensation.

When I posted last month about the outcome of the trial (the court sided with the landowner), there were no recent photos of the horse’s head so I had to grudgingly make do with one taken in 2010 in the early stages of conservation. Very grudgingly. Most extremely grudgingly. All that gnashing of teeth can now be forgotten because Hesse has finally put the horse head on public display. The new exhibition opens Sunday and was previewed for the press on Friday. That means those of us not afforded the opportunity to see the gloriously golden equine in person benefit from the release of new photographs of it on display.

The Saalburg Roman Fort museum is the lucky recipient of the refreshed head. Built in the early 2nd century A.D. under the reign of the Emperor Trajan, the fort overlooking the Limes (the frontier of the Roman Empire) did sentry duty for 150 years before the frontier got too hot and the troops were withdrawn. The ruins of the Saalburg were rediscovered and excavated in the mid-19th century. Between 1897 and 1907, the fort was reconstructed by order of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It became an open-air museum and research facility surrounded by the remains of the Roman settlement which was also partially reconstructed. Today it is the only museum in Hesse that is entirely dedicated to the area’s Roman history.

Saalburg’s permanent exhibition has been updated and redesigned over the past few years, and the Waldgirmes head will be its centerpiece. The museum has created a wall-height poster depicting the original size of the full statue. The head alone is two feet long and weighs 33 pounds, so the statue was an impressive sight when it was intact. Another large panel explains how the horse head was excavated from a wooden barrel at the bottom of well shaft 36 feet deep.

That was just the beginning of the hard work. While the waterlogged anaerobic environment preserved the gilded bronze head, it did have some thorny condition issues mostly posed by the nature of gilding itself. The corrosion of the bronze manifested on the gold surface which, as on any gilded object, is extremely thin. Conservators struggled to remove those corrosion products without also removing precious gold. Patches of acrylic resin were applied to strengthen a few areas and then the entire piece was given a coating of resin for its protection. The conservation team made a conscious choice not to re-gild areas of loss.

Hesse’s Science and Arts Minister Boris Rhein showered the conservators with praise at the press preview of the exhibition, noting that their precision work allows us to see the exquisitely life-like details captured by the sculptor. The anatomy of the horse — muscles, veins, nostrils, teeth, eyes — is crafted with a verisimilitude only a highly skilled craftsman and artist could achieve.

3,800-year-old relief found in Peru

Ancient


Archaeologists have discovered a 3,800-year-old wall with a large relief at the ancient site of Vichama in Peru’s Caral Archaeological Zone. The relief is one meter (3.2 feet) high and 2.8 meters (9.2 feet) long and features four human heads, eyes closed, entwined by two serpents. Where the heads of the two snakes meet in the center of the wall is a fifth head, not human but anthropomorphic with a wide-eyed face and five appendages. Experts believe it may be a representation of a seed putting down roots.

The wall is made of adobe bricks and was found in the antechamber of a public building believed to be a ceremonial hall. The building was remodeled and built up over the years until it reached an area of 9400 square feet. The structure faced Vichama’s agricultural fields in the Huaura Valley.

Vichama was an urban center of the Norte Chico civilization, the oldest in the Americas, which thrived in the coastal area of north-central Peru from around 3500 B.C. to 1800 B.C. Caral was the largest and oldest of Norte Chico’s settlements and may have been the oldest city in the Americas. Vichama was built in the last period of development of the Norte Chico culture.

Its remains were first unearthed in 2007 when the modern-day city of Végueta threatened to expand into the archaeological zone. Cultural heritage officials and the municipality made a deal to keep the site safe and thoroughly explore it. Excavations have been ongoing since then, and the unique art and architecture of Vichama attest to a major climate crisis that struck the area around 3,800 years ago. A succession of droughts lasting between 60 and 130 years caused widespread famine. Under too much pressure from famine and water scarcity, Caral was abandoned during the crisis. Vichama pulled through because it was just meters away from the ocean and was a major agricultural center as well, with fields extending the length and breadth of the right bank of the Huaura River. The combination of agriculture and fishing got its population through the hard times.

Archaeologist Ruth Shady, who oversees the site and announced the discovery, hypothesized that the serpents represent a water deity that irrigates the earth and makes seeds grow.

Shady said the relief was likely done towards the end of a drought and famine that the Caral civilization experienced. Other reliefs discovered nearby showed emaciated humans.

Archaeologists believe that the relief discovery reinforces the notion that these early humans were attempting to depict the difficulties they faced due to climate change and water scarcity, which had a large impact on their agricultural production.

This relief and other finds will be open to visitors on Friday, August 31st and Saturday, September 1st, the 11th anniversary of the start of excavations at the site.

On a side note, the gleeful face of the anthropormorphic seed reminds me that one of these years I have to make a set of emoticons for the blog that are pixel versions of highly expressive reliefs, masks, false heads, mummy portraits, mosaics, figurines, anything archaeological (and yes, of course that includes poop). I’ve come across enough pieces to ensure my archaeological emoticon team would be as diverse as it is educational.

Buddha statue returned to India 57 years after theft

Medieval

A 12th century statue of the Buddha that was stolen from a museum in India 57 years ago has been found in London and is on its way back to India. The bronze statue with silver inlay was stolen from the Nalanda Archaeological Museum in eastern India in 1961, one of 14 important Buddha statues stolen in a single burglary.

Nalanda was the site of a Buddhist monastery that was a center of learning and pilgrimage from the 5th century until the early 13th when it was sacked by Mamluk armies. Monks came from all over Asia, as far east as Korea, to study the rigorous Vedic tradition of learning taught at the Nalanda monastery. After its sacking, the site fell into disuse and was gradually forgotten. It was rediscovered in the 19th century by the Archaeological Survey of India and subsequent excavations in the early 1900s revealed multiple monasteries, temples and artifacts, including the 14 sculptures of Buddha that would be stolen from the museum.

What happened to the statue between 1961 and 2018 is unknown. It reemerged from the penumbra this March at an antiquities trade fair in London. Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA) and Vijay Kumar from the India Pride Project recognized it as one of the 14 looted Nalanda pieces and called the Metropolitan Police. The Met’s Art and Antique Unit investigated and confirmed its identity. The dealer and owner do not appear to have realized they were fencing stolen goods — the statue has passed through many hands over the six decades since the theft — and they cooperated with the investigation and returned the object willingly so there will be no charges pressed against them.

On Wednesday, August 15th, India’s Independence Day, the statue was returned to Indian High Commissioner YK Sinha in London in an official ceremony.