Month: November 2018

Fisherman finds tombstone of 12-year-old Roman girl

Ancient

A fisherman has discovered the tombstone of a 12-year-old Roman girl in the Sava river in Kranj, northern Slovenia. Jure Meden was fishing the Sava near Kranj’s medieval old town last week when he spotted a rectangular block of stone. He contacted the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia and it sent archaeologists to take a look at the stone. They saw that it had a Latin inscription marking it as the gravestone for a young lady named Aurelia who died when she was 12 years old in the 1st or 2nd century A.D. Her bereaved father commissioned the stone.

There is archaeological evidence of human occupation going back to the Bronze Age and there were settlements on the site in the late Iron Age. The town of Carnium, which would become modern-day Kranj, was officially founded where the Sava and Kokra rivers meet by the Romans. An earlier Celtic burial site is located in the southern part of the town overlooking the left bank of the Sava, but Roman cemeteries have not been pinpointed. While Roman grave markers are not uncommon in Slovenia, this is the first one known to have been found in Kranj.

It’s not clear whether the stone was transported any significant distance by the high water or whether there’s a nearby cemetery. Wear on the stone indicates it has been in the water a very long time. There’s a divot at the top of the tombstone that suggests there was another feature above the inscription, possibly a small statue, mounted to the stone.

The stone is in quite decent condition considering it has spent centuries under running water. To prevent any further deterioration, archaeologists wasted no time getting the gravestone out of the Sava. Two days after it was found, firefighters raised the stone from the river and transported it to the Restoration Center of the Institute of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana for conservation and further study.

Celtic coin hoard found in Slovakia

Ancient, Treasures

Archaeologists have discovered a hoard of Celtic coins from the early 1st century in the village of Mošovce, northern Slovakia. Forty silver tetradrachms were found scattered over a steep slope. This is the second largest coin hoard discovered in the area and the one with the oldest coins.

They date to the end of the La Tène period and were buried in the early 1st century around the turn of the millennium when the Romans occupied the area. The collapse of the Celtic civilization and the Roman invasions created social instability that may have spurred the burial of the coins, either to protect precious savings or as a ritual deposit to buy the protection of the gods.

They were originally buried in one place, wrapped in an organic material. The archaeologists identified the burial site. It broke down due to soil erosion, exposing the organic material to decay and the coins to scattering. Very few coin discoveries are made in their original context by archaeologists like this one was. Night hawks and looters run rampant, and if they get to a site at all, archaeologists are often beaten to the punch by treasure hunters. Because the coins and find site were untouched, the team was able to discover the extremely important burial location.

Tetradrachms are silver coins weighing nine to 10 grams, about four times the weight (and therefore value) of the smallest denomination, the drachma. In the 1st century, tetradrachms were the most valuable coin denominations minted in what is now northern Slovakia.

It is highly probable that they are minted from silver originating from a Carpathian (Slovak) deposit. The economic power of Celts in the Slovak area was to a considerable extent based on using natural resources, especially gold, silver and iron. The Turiec region belonged among the key economic and cultural centres of Celts in Slovakia, [Deputy Director of the Archaeological Institute of Slovak Academy of Sciences Karol] Pieta added. […]

Celtic coins are the oldest coins minted in the Slovak area. The finding proves that Slovakia is full of significant archaeological discoveries still hidden under the ground, thinks Matej Ruttkay, director of Archaeological Institute of SAV in Nitra.

Staffordshire Hoard helmet reconstructed

Medieval, Museums, Treasures

With more than 4,000 pieces, the hoard of 7th century gold and silver fragments discovered in 2009 near the village of Hammerwich in Staffordshire, England, is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon precious metals ever found. About 1,500 of those pieces were found to come from a single artifact: an extremely rare helmet of highest quality. Like the famous helmet discovered in the 7th century ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1939, the Staffordshire helmet must have belonged to an individual of high status.The Sutton Hoo helmet’s owner is believed to have been King Rædwald of East Anglia; the helmet is made of iron, tinned bronze sheeting, bronze and a few prominent gilded elements like the upper lip. The Staffordshire helmet was covered in reliefs of silver gilt foil, so has even more precious metal surfacing than the Sutton Hoo helmet.

The main structure of the helmet is lost and the hundreds of surviving relief fragments are so thin and delicate that they cannot all be puzzled back together. Small sections to be carefully jigsawed together during an extensive study project dedicated to identifying the helmet fragments amidst the 4,000-plus pieces in the hoard. The project ran from 2014 through 2017.

In order to get a full picture of what the helmet looked like when it was intact, researchers dedicated another 18 months to creating a painstakingly detailed reconstruction using a combination of the latest technology and traditional crafts. Two copies were made.

It will never be possible to reassemble the original physically. Instead, the project explored how the original may have been made and what it looked like, enabling archaeologists to understand its construction better and test theories about its structure and assembly.

The reconstructions were created by a team of specialist makers. The School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University (BCU) led on the fabrication of the precious metal elements of the helmet. Laser scanning of the original objects was used to ensure the replica pieces are as close to the surviving original parts as possible.

Other specialists, including Royal Oak Armoury, Gallybagger Leather, Drakon Heritage and Conservation and metalsmith Samantha Chilton, worked collaboratively to bring the helmet to life, advised by the archaeologists.

Steel, leather and horsehair elements were created, as well as the wood and paste, that scientific analysis of the original has revealed were used in its construction.

The reconstructions went on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery Friday, November 23rd.

7th c. textile before and after

Medieval

Excavations in the historic center of Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark and the hub of maritime trade network that operated in the North and Baltic seas starting in the 7th century, unearthed a section of textile on July 25th of this year. It was preserved in water-logged soil and even folded up and coated in dirt the finely woven fabric was clearly identifiable as diamond twill.

This kind of high quality woolen cloth played an important role in the growth of trade in the area. In the early Middle Ages, cloth production was centered primarily in coastal areas where the sheep farms were. Southern Jutland, where Ribe was located, had a significant population of Frisians who specialized in creating wool fabric with an international reputation as the best in the business. Charlemagne gifted colorfully dyed Frisian wool cloaks to the Caliph of Baghdad and star of several One Thousand and One Nights Harun al-Rashid when he sent emissaries in 799 to offer friendship and alliance.

It’s a testament to how important the cloth was to the economy that early medieval codes imposed greater fines on people who harmed Frisian wool weavers. Only goldsmiths and harpers were granted the same distinction. The latter two professions were exclusively male. The weavers were largely women, so this law afforded them additional protections that other women did not enjoy.

Experts have been cleaning, conserving and studying the piece since it was discovered. They dated it to the first half of the 8th century, just a century after Ribe was settled. It is a z/z diamond twill woven on an A-frame loom with a thread count of 21 x 15 per centimeter. Researchers believe it’s a weave known as the Spong Hill type after the Anglo-Saxon cemetery type site where textile remains were found attached to brooches and other accessories. More research needs to be done to confirm the identification, to determine if it was dyed and find out other details about the piece.

But really it’s all about the before and after pictures.

First Celtic chariot burial found in Wales

Ancient

The first Celtic chariot burial ever found in Wales has been discovered in a Pembrokeshire field by a metal detector hobbyist. When floods made his usual haunt impassable this February, Mike Smith surveyed a new site in southern Wales. (The exact location is being kept secret for its protection.)

“My first find was a Celtic horse harness junction piece,” said Mike. “When I found it my friends said I would never top it, but the next day I went back and found the rest…”

As Mike dug down eight inches into the soil he found other decorative pieces, including bronze bridle fittings, a brooch and the handle section of tools.

Though they were green from corrosion, the bronze pieces were covered in bright red enamel decoration which had not faded with time.

The small metal objects weren’t the only thing at the site. Smith’s metal detector signaled the presence of a much larger metal anomaly about 10 feet long. Mike alerted the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff that he had found horse fittings and gotten a signal alerting to greater metal quantities under them. He suggested that it could be a chariot burial. The experts were doubtful as no such thing had been found in Wales before.

All speculation aside, the significance of the bronze pieces spurred the National Museum of Wales to organize a joint excavation with the Dyfed Archaeological Trust at the find site in June. The team, Mike Smith included, only had a week’s worth of funding to do a geophysical survey and dig test pits. They hit paydirt right away. Just 10 inches below the bronze and enamel artifacts archaeologists unearthed the rims of two iron chariot wheels. A tooth from a pony next to two bits confirmed that this was a chariot burial, the first of its kind ever found in Wales.

They haven’t even reached the 10-foot metal Smith’s detector alerted him to, and already they’ve unearthed 35 fragments of enamelled bronze. The geophysical survey indicates there is far more to this site even than a uniquely important chariot burial.

Survey work uses a technology called geophysics which maps structures buried under the earth and revealed a 12m circular earthwork around the burial, known as a ring ditch.

Two other burials in ring ditches were also found nearby and soon a complex of ditches, walls and other features were detected.

Researchers believed that a huge and previously unknown Celtic settlement had been found.

“The actual field is very large and it is only in the corner of this field, but the settlement is also going into other nearby fields,” said Mike.

There are no estimates for how large the settlement could be, but the National Museum staff believe it to be larger than Castell Henllys near Crymych, which is just over an acre in size.

After the week was up, the chariot was covered back up to keep it safe from the elements and from treasure hunters. Archaeologists plan to return for a more in-depth excavation next year when the cash more fluid and the weather less so.