Month: June 2020

Skull on a stake gets a face

Ancient

The Kanaljorden site in southern central Sweden is adjacent to the Motala river, a small lake and a wetland today. In the Neolithic era (ca. 7700 years ago), it was a very shallow lake just three feet deep lake next to a reed fen. The Mesolithic population didn’t just use the small as-is for ritual depositions. They built a sort of platform of densely packed stones on the lake bed first, and then deposited human and animal remains in the water.

The site was excavated between 2009 and 2014. Archaeologists discovered the stone floor, a plethora of objects — tools made of stone, antler and bone, harpoon and spear tips — and  the disarticulated skeletal remains at least nine adult humans and the almost complete articulated skeleton of a neonate or stillbirth. The bones of at least 14 animals of seven different species (wild boar, brown bear, red deer, roe deer, moose, badger)  were also scattered on the stone construction. The dates of the finds range from 8,000 to 7,500 years ago.

Very few human burials from Mesolithic Scandinavia have been archaeologically investigated — only 200 or so from the 3,000 year span (9,000-6,000 years before present) — so information about the funerary practices of the hunter-gatherer population is scarce. The Motala finds were well-preserved by the wetland conditions, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to learn about their lives — diet, age at time of death, sex, injuries — and deaths.

The osteological finds are also very unusual as most Scandinavian Mesolithic burials are full-body inhumations, but the adult remains at Kanaljorden predominantly consist of crania and fragments there of, all missing their mandibles. There is evidence of antemortem blunt force trauma on seven individuals. Of those seven, four evinced shallow injuries and healed injuries on or near the top of the head, two had multiple wounds on the back of the head. The ones with trauma to the back of the head were both female. There are only a few potential instances of sharp force trauma on the bones, and the cuts are very shallow and could have been postmortem. There is plenty of evidence of sharp force trauma on the animal remains indicating they were butchered. The animals remains also included mandibles, so the disarticulation of the human jawbones seems to have been deliberate.

Two of the crania recovered had wooden stakes inside of them. One had an intact stake 18.5 inches long embedded in the cranium. The other end of it was pointed. The second stake was broken and what was left of it was only discovered in the laboratory when the inside of the skull was examined. The skulls had been mounted on those stakes. The remains of hundreds more wooden stakes, 400 of them intact, were also unearthed at the site, although without any handy tell-tale skulls attached. Archaeologists believe some were likely used to mount remains for ritual purposes; others appear more likely to have been remnants of fences or other wooden construction.

A local museum in the town of Motala has commissioned archaeologist and sculptor Oscar Nilsson to do a facial reconstruction of the one of the skulls on a stake. DNA analysis determined that this individual, dubbed Ludvig, was light-skinned and blue-eyed. Nilsson took a CT scan of the skull and 3D-printed a replica to use as the base for the reconstruction of muscular tissue and skin. He calculated the proportions of Ludvig’s missing mandible by measuring the cranium. The wild boar coat was inspired by the remains of that animal found at the site.

Stockholm museum will return stolen 16th-century painting to Poland

Museums, Renaissance

After an appeal from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Warsaw and a thorough investigation, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm has formally recommended the repatriation of 16th century painting to Poland.

The Lamentation of Christ by the School of Lucas Cranach the Elder (ca. 1538) is believed to have originally belonged to the 12th century Lubiąż Abbey, about 35 miles northwest of Wrocław, the largest Cistercian abbey in the world. Lubiąż was part of the Holy Roman Empire when the painting was made, and part of Germany from 1871 until the end of World War II after which it became part of Poland along with most of Silesia. In 1880, the painting was acquired by what was then the Schlesische Museum der Bildenden Künste in Breslau (modern-day Wrocław), predecessor to the present-day Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu. It was lost after the war.

The painting was purchased for Nationalmuseum’s collections at auction in Mariefred in 1970, for SEK 4,000.It was sold by the estate of Sigfrid Häggberg. At this date, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was no suspicion that the painting could have been stolen; there were no illustrations of it in the available literature about Cranach, nor had the lists of evacuated objects ever been made public. The provenance information in Nationalmuseum’s inventory states that the painting belonged to Director Häggberg in Mariefred and was previously in Polish ownership.

Nationalmuseum and experts from Poland have now conducted a detailed review of the painting’s history and discovered information that was not previously available. The painting was on a list drawn up in November 1945, with objects that were evacuated from the former Schlesische Museum der Bildenden Künste in Breslau (Wroclaw) and transferred for storage in Kamenz (now Kamieniec Ząbkowick) in Poland. When Soviet troops left the occupied area at the end of February 1946, hundreds of paintings on the list were missing, including this one. Following the painting’s fate more closely is not possible until it appears in Mariefred, Sweden, where it belonged to the Warsaw-Swede Sigfrid Häggberg. During World War II, he was director of L M Ericsson’s two Polish subsidiaries. In 1942 he was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, along with three other Swedes, after being accused of helping the Polish resistance movement. Among other things, he had smuggled out documents revealing the Nazi atrocities aimed at both the Jewish and Polish peoples. His punishment was commuted to a life sentence and, after a special plea from King Gustaf V, Häggberg was released in 1944. After the war he returned to Poland to restart work at L M Ericsson. According to Häggberg’s family, he did not buy the painting but was taking care of it for an individual who had given it to him for safekeeping. This person then never returned.

It’s an unusual story for an artwork looted in World War II, as the man who spirited it out of the country appears to have done it on behalf of someone trying to protect it from being pillaged. It depends on who he was “taking care of it” for, I suppose.

The Nationalmuseum’s collection belongs to the country, so the final decision on repatriation belongs to the Swedish Government. Given the evidence that the last legal owner of The Lamentation of Christ was the Muzeum Narodowe we Wrocławiu, it’s almost certain that Sweden’s Ministry of Culture will follow the Nationalmuseum’s recommended course of action and return to the painting to Poland.

Summer solstice at Pompeii

Ancient, Modern(ish)

The sun was hiding behind the clouds up at Stonehenge this year, but it was a lens-flarin’ spectacle at Pompeii.

The Via di Nola and Via dell’Abbondaza face the sun at summer solstice. They are aligned within less than half a degree of the solstice sunrise azimuth. This is a feature seen in other Roman cities, including Pompeii’s neighbor Herculaneum. Ancient writers record that it was customary to orient a town’s main street, the Decumanus, towards to sun where it rises on a day of special significance to the town. Solstice sunrise was a special day for many Roman towns and forts. Archaeologists suspect the origins of the practice goes back to the Etruscans whose religious rituals the Romans absorbed.

Already at the beginning of the last century, antiques and archaeological research investigated the urban orientation of Pompeii and its relationship with astronomical orientations and the sun. As part of the wider program of studies on the cities of Campania, the doctoral course of the Department of Letters and Cultural Heritage of the University of Campania, combining astronomy and archeology and moving from scientific data, investigates the ancient urban systems, from Capua to Calatia to Sorrento. The Archaeological Park of Pompeii opened its doors shortly before dawn to the small group of scholars composed of Carlo Rescigno, Michele Silani, Carmela Capaldi and Ilaria De Cristofaro. The sun, on the day when it ‘stays’ longer in the sky, arose from the tip of the mountain on Via di Nola and dell’Abbondanza and from these streets it was photographed in its blinding halo. The city of Athena and Apollo, of Diana and Venus, is also told by the lines, apparently silent, of its many orientations. And documenting the city, the summer solstice was celebrated in a Pompeii illuminated by the first light of dawn, immersed in history and in its many possibilities of knowledge.

Rare whale bones found in Leith

Medieval, Modern(ish)

Two bones from a whale that may date as far back as the medieval period have been discovered in Leith, Scotland. Archaeologists surveying the site of a new tramway unearthed the rare bones earlier this year between the post office and a scrap yard on Constitution Street. They are the radius and ulna from the fin of a large adult male sperm whale and are a matched pair. They have not been radiocarbon dated yet because a pandemic rudely got in the way, but the archaeological context suggests they could be as much as 800 years old, dating to the earliest days of Leith’s settlement.

Located at the mouth of the Leith river on the Firth of Forth coast just north of Edinburgh, Leith has served as the city’s major port since the 12th century. Shipbuilding and whaling were two of its major industries from inception, the latter continuing well into the 1960s when ships had to go far afield to Arctic and Antarctic waters to find any whales left to kill.

Amongst possible theories are that they were brought back in the 19th or 20th century as a memento as part of Leith’s historic whaling industry, that they came from the remains of a whale beached locally and were subsequently dumped there or that they were part of medieval deposits left there during the reclamation of the site in the 17th to 19th centuries, perhaps dating back to the medieval period.

Other finds of note made during the exploration include an iron cannonball likely dating to the 17th century when the defenses of this area of Leith were reinforced during the Civil War, the remains of large stone wall that may have been part of a seawall built in the 16th or 17th century.

When the archaeological work began in November 2019, the team took down a wall from a graveyard that was established on the site in 1790 and in so doing discovered a large charnel pit with tightly stacked bones. This was probably created when graves were disturbed during the construction of utilities on Constitution Street in 19th century. The graveyard itself will be excavated later this year.

City archaeologist John Lawson said: “Our work to excavate the area as part of preparatory work for the Trams to Newhaven project has offered really interesting glimpses into the area’s history, over the past three to four hundred years, and we’re endeavouring to conserve that.

“Discoveries like the whale bones have been particularly fascinating and exciting. These bones provide a rare glimpse into and also a physical link with Leith’s whaling past, one of its lesser known maritime industries and one which in the 20th century reached as far as the Antarctic. Given the circumstances of how they were found it is possible that they may date back to the medieval period, and if so would be a rare and exciting archaeological discovery in Edinburgh.”

Lucca crucifix is Europe’s oldest wooden statue

Medieval

A revered crucifix in the Cathedral of Saint Martin in Lucca has been discovered to be hundreds of years older than previously believed, making it the oldest surviving wooden sculpture in Europe. The Volto Santo (Holy Face) di Lucca is a monumental sculpture more than eight feet long depicting Christ on the cross. It is itself a holy relic and as such has never been radiocarbon dated before because the testing requires taking samples and destroying a part of the cross.

This year marks the 950th anniversary of the dedication of the cathedral. As part of program of events to celebrate its venerable history, the Cathedral of San Martino asked the Institute of Applied Physics and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics to analyze and date the sculpture. Technology now allows for radiocarbon dating extremely small samples, so for the first time, permission was granted to remove tiny bits for testing. Four samples were taken from different places on the crucifix — three of the wood and one fragment of canvas affixed between the wood and the paint in a technique known as incamottatura. They were carefully treated and cleaned to remove any organic residues or varnishes that might alter the data. The dates of all the samples converged around the early 9th century, but the possible range goes back as far as the late 8th century to the middle of the 9th.

That early potential date sets off a frisson of excitement, because it matches the legend behind the sculpture. According to the traditional tale relayed in a 12th century manuscript, the statue was carved by Nicodemus, the Pharisee who helped Joseph of Arimathea wrap the body of Jesus after the crucifixion, but as he was Jewish and therefore prohibited from depicting a human visage, angels carved the face of Christ, hence the “Volto Santo” even though it’s a full-bodied sculpture.

For 700 years it remained hidden in the city of Ramla, modern-day central Israel, where it was rediscovered by a northern Italian bishop named Gualfredo during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. An angel came to him in a dream and told him where to find it. He had it loaded onto a ship at Jaffa and put it out to sea without a crew or sails, praying that it would reach Christian lands. It reached the town on Luni the northern coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. John I, Bishop of Lucca, was visited by an angel in a dream and told to fetch the Volto Santo from Luni. The feat accomplished, he brought the statue to Lucca in 782, the second year of the reign of Pepin, son of Charlemagne, as King of Italy.

Its first appearance on the historical, rather than hagiographic, record is when Bishop Anselmo da Biaggio presented it to the cathedral of Lucca at its consecration in 1070. Art historians have long thought based on the carving style that the sculpture now in the cathedral was made after that date, that it was a mid-12th century copy of a lost original that was the kernel of truth in the legend.  The C-14 results prove that it is not a later medieval copy, but the original Volto Santo and it could even date to the time when legend says it arrived in Lucca.