Month: July 2019

Two rare boat graves found at Uppsala vicarage

Medieval

Two extremely rare boat graves have been discovered in an excavation of a vicagare in the village of Gamla Uppsala outside of Uppsala, southeastern Sweden. The location of yearly Things, religious celebrations, royal residences and burial mounds from prehistory through the Middle Ages, Gamla Uppsala is one of the most important archaeological sites in Sweden, so when the Swedish Church planned to build an addition to the vicarage, archaeologists from the National Historical Museums surveyed the construction site.

First the team unearthed a well and basement from a late medieval building. Underneath those remains, they found the two boat graves, burials in which deceased were inhumed in a boat dug into the ground and covered with soil. They date to the Viking era (800-1050 A.D.) or the Vendel Period (550-790 A.D.), the centuries bridging the Migration Period and the Viking Period. This is a sensational find, as only 10 known boat graves have been discovered in all of Sweden, and it’s been 50 years since the last boat grave was found.

One of the two was damaged, likely when the late medieval basement was built, but the other is intact. It contained the skeletal remains of an adult male buried in the stern of the boat. He was interred with valuable personal belongings including a sword, spear, shield and an ornate comb.

The bow of the boat held the remains of a dog and a horse. Iron fittings from the horse’s gear were still in place. The horse and dog probably belonged to the man and were slain and buried with him to accompany their master into death.

Remains of the boats were also discovered. Iron rivets have survived, and even more rarely, so has some of the wooden planking. The damaged boat burial appears to have been the largest, with an estimated length of at least 23 feet. The elements from the boats are of particular archaeological importance because they may reveal whether the vessels were old or specifically manufactured for funerary purposes.

The untouched grave is a boon for archaeologists because this will be the first time they have an opportunity to use the latest and greatest technologies and scientific analyses on a boat grave. There is so much we can learn from the smallest samples of soil, organic material, bone and metal that wasn’t even a remote possibility 50 years ago.

While the studies are ongoing, a selection of the finds will be on display this summer at Gamla Uppsala Museum and this fall at the Historical Museum in Stockholm.

Lewis Chessman sells for $929,000

Medieval

The long-lost Lewis chessman has sold at a Sotheby’s auction for £735,000 ($929,000). The warder from the famous medieval set believed to have been made Trondheim, Norway, in the 12th or 13th century, set a new world record for a medieval chesspiece sold at auction, which should surprise absolutely nobody given how iconic the Lewis Chessmen have become. No word yet on who the lucky buyer is. All we know is it’s an “anonymous bidder.” I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’s a museum and they’re just preparing an official announcement.

World’s largest mosaic opens to the public this year

Ancient

The world’s largest intact mosaic will open to the public this year in Antakya, Turkey, as part of the newly built Antakya Museum Hotel.  The 1,300-year-old, 9,000-square-foot mosaic was discovered in 2010. Archaeologists believe this vast mosaic with intricate geometries was the floor of a public building in the ancient city of Antioch. It was damaged during a series of major earthquakes in 526 and 528 A.D., but some of that damage only enhances its spectacular visual qualities because the mosaic remained connected to the floor and mostly intact even as the foundation itself undulated wildly.

Founded in 300 B.C. by one of Alexander the Great’s successor generals Seleucus I Nicator, Antioch was the capital of the Seleucid Empire until it was conquered by Rome in 63 B.C. and became the seat of the governor. Its location made it a hub of trade between the Mediterranean and the East. At its peak, Antioch had a population of half a million and was so important that it was considered a rival first to Alexandria and then to Constantinople as the second most important city in the Empire.

Today Antakya is internationally known for the great number and high quality of mosaics that have been found under its streets. The Hatay Archaeological Museum has a collection of Roman mosaics that is without peer, most of them lifted from excavations and conserved indoors. So it was not unexpected when construction of a new hotel revealed a spectacular late Roman mosaic. The approach taken to its preservation, however, diverged from the well-trodden path of earlier discoveries.

The sheer enormity of the mosaic required a different plan of action. Instead of lifting the mosaic, or part of it, or covering it for its own protection and building over it, archaeologists and architects worked together to create a hybrid: a museum hotel. The Antakya Museum Hotel, located near the Church of St. Peter, a crusader-era church built around a cave believed to be one of the earliest Christian churches in the world, would be built using the archaeology of the site as a lodestar.

EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture placed structural columns along the a former riverbed that crosses through the middle of the site and outside the perimeter of the mosaic. They built a platform on top of the columns to house the hotel’s amenities — ballroom, conference rooms, pool, gym — with passageways and viewing points for guests to view the incredible archaeology beneath them. The rooms are prefabricated units stacked on top of each other, which reduced the amount of on-site construction and the potential damage to the mosaic. The walkways and bridges that connect the rooms create an open space where the archaeology is in sight throughout the building.

Execution chains found at gallows site in Poland

Modern(ish)

An excavation of a centuries-old gallows site in Żagań, western Poland, has unearthed extremely rare execution chains used in public hangings in place of rope. The site is known as Gallows Hill because it was the gibbet used for public executions from the 16th to the 18th century. The condemned would be hanged or decapitated and their bodies left to rot, very visible examples of the fate any potential criminals had to look forward to should they choose to break the law.

One of the two chains found is fragmentary, with only a single link extant. The other has four links and archaeologists believe it was complete. That would make it the third complete execution chain ever discovered in Poland.

Lead archaeologist Dr. Daniel Wojtucki from the University of Wrocław believes the iron chains were used to ensure the dead bodies would hang for a good long time, rotting away gradually in full public view. Rope frays and breaks, especially when it has been subject to the stress of a weighted drop, but chains will easily outlast the decaying corpse. Iron nails used to attach the ropes or chains to the gallows were also unearthed.

According to others – for example Magdalena Majorek, who leads the excavations in Żagań together with Bartosz Świątkowski, archaeologist from the University of Gdańsk – they were used mainly for people who committed serious crimes.

“Chains of this type constrained the larynx, so this execution method was very painful” – the researcher adds.

According to the researchers, one of the chains was used during the execution of the death sentence issued in September 1716 by the Prague Appeals Chamber. Dr. Wojtucki estimates that the execution took place at the turn of 1717.

There are no precise records tallying up the number of people executed on Gallows Hill. Researchers estimate the figure was at least in the dozens, and the excavation unearthed thousands of bones and bone pieces. Among the findings were skulls and individual bones, but also one intact inhumation burial. That individual had been decapitated and his head placed between his feet.

The site didn’t just hold the remains of the executed criminals. This year’s dig uncovered two burials parallel to each other with a respectful distance between them, the kind of plots you’d find in a cemetery. Convicts were not afforded that privilege. Archaeologists believe these were suicides. Unable to be buried in the consecrated ground of the churchyard, they were interred in the other place of the dead.

New Bronze Age cairn found near famous one in Anglesey

Ancient

Archaeologists excavating a burial mound near the 5,000-year-old passage tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu have unearthed a 4,000-year-old cairn. Bryn Celli Ddu is famed for its passage tunnel that aligns with the rising sun on summer solstice. Excavations of the area around the tomb have revealed that it was a site of great ritual significance for thousands of years, generations returning to make their mark on the landscape their ancestors had marked before them.

This is the fifth consecutive year of excavations at the site. The digs and ground-penetrating radar surveys have revealed several structures and artifacts buried around the passage tomb, including rock art, a Neolithic pit circle, pottery and stone tools. Bryn Celli Ddu was first built in the Neolithic era as an earth embankment and ditch surrounded a stone circle and then added to and altered over the course of centuries. The stone circle was replaced with a chambered tomb, a corridor leading to an eight-foot burial chamber whose contents include human bones, flint arrowheads and a large pattern stone carved in a curvilinear design. On the summer solstice and only on the summer solstice, the rising sun shines through the passageway and light the octagonal burial chamber.

This year the team turned its attention to a mound 150 feet away from the passage tomb. They found the burial cairn was built in the Bronze Age — radiocarbon testing of some of the pottery unearthed in the mound returned a date of 1900 B.C. — but it looks like some of the artifacts it contains might be much older. Archaeologists found flint tools and a double kerb of massive stones, some weighing more than a ton. The cairn appears to be larger than its famous neighbor.

No evident human remains have been unearthed thus far, however it’s possible fragmentary remains might be discovered in the recovered material once it is analyzed.