Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,300-year-old Neolithic glacier mummy discovered by hikers in the Otztal Alps in 1991, has set another record: he is the owner of the oldest known bowstring in the world. In fact, Ötzi’s whole kit — quiver, arrows, bowstring and unfinished bow — is the oldest hunting equipment in the world.

Made of three strands of twisted fibers, the cord was found in the quiver. The Iceman had carefully wound it into an S-shaped bundle and tied a knot at the end, not unlike how I store my extension cords. It looks like a hemp rope and experts at the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology where Ötzi and his stuff are kept were not able to determine whether the cord was made of plant or animal fiber. The former would be unusable for a bowstring because they lack the necessary flexibility to withstand the tension of the bow.

Only three examples of Neolithic bowstrings are known to have survived. A study by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) compared prehistoric bowstrings recovered from alpine glaciers. Using a microscopic fiber sample from the string found in Ötzi’s quiver, the team confirmed that it was made of the leg sinew of an undetermined animal, not from plant fibers, and therefore ideally suited for a bowstring. The cord is almost six-and-a-half feet long, long enough to fit the 5’11”-long yew stave Ötzi had almost finished fashioning into a bow when he was killed. Stretched out to its full taunt length, the cord, which is 4mm in diameter relaxed, would be 2-3mm in diameter, a perfect fit for the width of the notches in the arrows Ötzi carried. A loosely wound bundle of animal leg sinew was also found in his quiver, perhaps raw material for bowstring production.

The rest of Ötzi’s gear also lends unique insight into Neolithic hunting practices, touching on a range of subjects from trade to tool use to the kinesiology of the hunt.

Ötzi’s 1.83 m long, unfinished bow made of yew (Taxus baccata) gave a unique, informative glimpse into how Neolithic bows were manufactured. The bow was first freshly cut from an 8-10 cm thick yew tree. He had already made good progress with his work, but the bow probably needed to be shortened and thinned. The best shooting results are obtained when the bow approximately corresponds to the height of the archer. For Ötzi that would have been approximately 1.60m. The investigation was able to establish that Ötzi’s bow had been worked with a hatchet from both directions. Whether this had been done by Ötzi himself cannot be determined. The question of how to work the ends of the bow to fasten the string also remains open. Junkmanns proposed the hypothesis that Ötzi could have purchased the rough bow on the way, which would possibly explain why he had an unfinished bow with him in the high mountains.

Even the Iceman’s quiver is the only known Neolithic carrying case for arrows. It is 86 cm long and stitched from doeskin (Rupicapra rupicapra). One side of the quiver is reinforced with a hazel wood stick. At the upper end of the quiver a flap of stiffened leather protected the arrows carried within. If required, it could be opened very quickly and an arrow could be pulled out with a single motion of the arm.

The quiver’s interior held 14 arrows, two of which were ready to fire and complete with arrowheads and fletching. They represent the best preserved examples of Neolithic arrow production in Europe. Neolithic arrows were most often made from branches of suitable bushes like hazel (Corylus avellana) or, as with Ötzi, from the branches of the wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana). Three feather halves were attached to the end of Ötzi’s arrows with birch tar glue and bound with thin nettle fibers. They represent the only preserved fletchings in Europe. The three-part, radially-placed fletching for stabilizing the arrow during flight has remained virtually unchanged since the Neolithic.

The SNSF study has been published in the Journal of Neolithic Archaeology and can be read here.

An archaeological survey at the site of a planned gravel pit expansion in Kallerup, Denmark, this February unearthed an exceedingly rare grouping of Bronze Age artifacts: a man wearing a horned helmet, a large ceremonial axe and two horse-headed snake figures. They were made of bronze about 3,000 years ago.

It was a metal detectorist volunteering with the team of archaeologists from the Museum Thy who made the initial find. Peter Jensen was scanning the field for remains of a Royal Air Force Stirling airpcraft that was shot down by German bombers on November 4th, 1943. Instead of aluminum airplane parts, his metal detector alerted to the presence of a large piece of bronze.

Archaeologists dug it up and recovered a bronze figure of a man topped with a horned helmet. It is double-faced, a Bronze Age Danish Janus, each face with its own pair of horns. (One of them had broken off and was found in the soil.) Nothing like it has been found before in Denmark. It would have originally been fitted to a pole for ceremonial purposes. Next to the broken horn emerged the top of a ceremonial axe a foot in diameter. Instead of continuing to excavate in situ, they removed the find en bloc, wrapping the soil around and under in plaster and transporting it to a laboratory at the Moesgaard Museum.

A CT scan revealed the precise shape and location of the axe and the presence of two figurines with the heads of horses and serpentine bodies. The scan gave archaeologists a 3D roadmap for the excavation. After three days of painstaking work, the objects were fully revealed.

The axe was cast over a clay core and was a masterpiece of metallurgy in its day. Ceremonial axes from the Bronze Age are rare finds. Large ones like this piece are even more rare. They were made as individual artworks, and the Kallerup axe is unique in its rounded spade-like edges that end in spirals. Spirals were a widespread motif in Bronze Age religious iconography, but this is the only known axe to incorporate them so distinctly in the design. The two figures of stylized horse heads on long, serpentine necks are also well-known motifs in Bronze Age art.

The artifacts will be stabilized and conserved. If all goes as planned, they will be put on display in the newly refurbished exhibition space at the Museum Thy when it opens in 2021.

Two 8,500-year-old teeth used as beads have been discovered at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. Three teeth with holes that appeared to have been deliberated drilled in them were unearthed between 2013 and 2015. A study, now published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, confirmed that two of three had been drilled through for use as beads.

“Not only had the two teeth been drilled with a conically shaped microdrill similar to those used for creating the vast amounts of beads from animal bone and stone that we have found at the site, but they also showed signs of wear corresponding to extensive use as ornaments in a necklace or bracelet,” University of Copenhagen archaeologist and first author of the article Scott Haddow said. He added:

“The evidence suggests that the two teeth pendants were probably extracted from two mature individuals post-mortem. The wear on the teeth’s chewing surfaces indicates that the individuals would have been between 30-50 years old. And since neither tooth seems to have been diseased — which would likely have caused the tooth to fall out during life — the most likely scenario is that both teeth were taken from skulls at the site.”

Human teeth drilled for use as ornaments have been found before at prehistoric sites in Europe, but these are the first examples from the Near East.

“Given the amount of fragmentary skeletal material often circulating within Neolithic sites, not least at Çatalhöyük where secondary burial practices associated with the display of human skulls were frequent, what is most interesting is the fact that human teeth and bone were not selected and modified more often. Thus, because of the rarity of the find, we find it very unlikely that these modified human teeth were used solely for aesthetic purposes but rather carried profound symbolic meaning for the people who wore them,” Scott Haddow explained.

The symbolism might have been connected to the deceased from whom the teeth were extracted — a memento mori, for example, or an attempt to capture some element of their characters and spirits. The rare ornamental human teeth were not found in graves which is particularly notable because many beads made from the bones and teeth of animals have been discovered in a funerary context at Çatalhöyük. That suggests the human teeth may have been specifically excluded from burial practices.

Found in a previously unexplored field near the Palace of Nestor in Pylos in 2015, the richly furnished shaft tomb of a Mycenaean warrior was filled with precious artifacts of unprecedented quantity and quality, more than 3,000 objects including gilded weapons, gold rings, a massive gold chain, thousands of semi-precious stone beads, seal stones and between his legs, an ivory plaque engraved with a griffin on a rocky landscape. Two years later one tiny agate sealstone of Cretan manufacture emerged from its thick lime accretion to reveal itself as one of the greatest masterpieces in ancient Greek art, far more advanced in craftsmanship than anybody realized the Minoans were capable of in 1,500 B.C.

The discovery of the richest tomb ever found in ancient Greece, dubbed the Griffin Warrior tomb after the extraordinary ivory plaque, made headlines all over the world. It put a global spotlight on the archaeological motherlode at Pylos. Excavating the land immediately to the east of the Griffin Warrior tomb, the University of Cincinnati archaeology team who made the sensational find in 2015 have now discovered another two elite Bronze Age tombs replete with grave goods.

This excavation was a long time in coming. The plot is privately owned. University of Cincinnati archaeologist Carl Blegen, who discovered the Palace of Nestor in 1939, unearthed an important beehive grave right at the edge of the property in the 1950s and asked the owner for permission to excavate the site but was denied. More than six decades would pass before Greek authorities were able to get access to the property and give another University of Cincinnati team the chance to fulfill Blegen’s goal.

Excavations began in 2018. Due to the delays in securing the site for excavation, the team was not able to perform a ground-penetrating radar scan that would give them hard data on where to dig. Instead, archaeologists used landscape features to determine where to dig. Once the currant plants covering the land were removed, large concentrations of stones (an estimated 40,000 of them) and several large slabs on the southeast of the parcel indicated to archaeologists there might be something worth pursuing.

They were right. By the end of May, the team had discovered two previously unknown beehive-shaped vaulted tombs. Tholos VI and VII are the same type as the tomb discovered by Blagen 63 years earlier and the entrance passages of the three tombs are parallel to each other. This was a ceremonially important burial ground along the road from the Palace of Nestor to Chora, not a tomb or two placed on a prime hilltop real estate.

The vaults of both tombs had collapsed (that’s where all the stones came from) and tons of soil and rock had fallen in to the space. Nonetheless, there are clear archaeological strata inside the chambers. Tholos VI has a large chamber 40 feet in diameter and walls reaching 15 feet above the tomb floor. Tholos VII is smaller, 28 feet in diameter with surviving walls rising six-and-a-half feet above the floor. Carved stones were found on the floor of Tholos VI that cannot have fallen from the vault. They were likely recycled from the Palace of Nestor.

The tombs were replete with artifacts and jewelry — Baltic amber, Egyptian amethyst, carnelian, gold. Flakes of gold leaf, now crumbled, had once adorned the rough stone of the walls. These expensive imports attest to Bronze Age Pylos’ extensive trade links, despite its remote location. The tombs can only have belonged to the Mycenaean elite, likely aristocracy.

Artifacts found in the princely tombs tell similar stories about life along the Mediterranean 3,500 years ago, Davis said. A gold ring depicted two bulls flanked by sheaves of grain, identified as barley by a paleobotanist who consulted on the project.

“It’s an interesting scene of animal husbandry — cattle mixed with grain production. It’s the foundation of agriculture,” Davis said. “As far as we know, it’s the only representation of grain in the art of Crete or Minoan civilization.”

Like the grave of the Griffin Warrior, the two family tombs contained artwork emblazoned with mythological creatures. An agate sealstone featured two lion-like creatures called genii standing upright on clawed feet. They carry a serving vase and an incense burner, a tribute for the altar before them featuring a sprouting sapling between horns of consecration, Stocker said.

Above the genii is a 16-pointed star. The same 16-pointed star also appears on a bronze and gold artifact in the grave, she said.

“It’s rare. There aren’t many 16-pointed stars in Mycenaean iconography. The fact that we have two objects with 16 points in two different media (agate and gold) is noteworthy,” Stocker said.

The genius motif appears elsewhere in the East during this period, she said.

“One problem is we don’t have any writing from the Minoan or Mycenaean time that talks of their religion or explains the importance of their symbols,” Stocker said.

UC’s team also found a gold pendant featuring the likeness of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.

“Its discovery is particularly interesting in light of the role she played in Egypt as protectress of the dead,” Davis said.

Excavations will continue for at least another two years, and documentation and conservation of the huge number of artifacts will take even longer.