Intact 17th c. shipwreck found in Gulf of Finland

Divers have discovered the nearly intact wreck of 17th century merchant ship at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. A team of volunteer divers from Badewanne, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting shipwrecks from World War I and World War II in the Gulf of Finland, spotted the wreck on the sea floor at a depth of 280 feet. The area was extremely active during the world wars and is replete with the remains of minesweepers, U-boats and other casualties of naval conflict, so on the descent the team assumed it was one a relic from the first half of the 20th century. They were shocked to find it was a wood sailing vessel from the 17th century.

The cold, dark, shipworm-free waters of the Eastern Baltic preserved the vessel in extraordinary condition. It has taken some small damage from a pelagic trawl that swept over the deck bow to aft, pulling out the masts, some deck timbers and the transom between the hoekman (statues of prosperous Dutch merchants flanking the stern). Some of the damaged parts of the transom and hoekmen are still in situ on the bottom of the ship behind the stern. There is no damage to the hull so the ship cannot have been dashed onto shoals. The ship probably capsized in a storm.

Its pear-shaped stern identifies it as a cargo vessel of Dutch manufacture called a fluyt. With their shallow draft, ample cargo space, narrow deck and absence of armament, the three-masted ships were fast, capacious, able to sail inland waterways and, thanks to an innovative pulley and tackle system operating the sails, they were easily manned by a small crew. They were the cheap, efficient workhorses of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th and 18th centuries and dominated the Baltic trade routes.

Badewanne team will continue documenting and investigating this significant wreck in co-operation with Finnish Heritage Agency of Antiquities and other partners, Including Associate Professor Dr. Niklas Eriksson, Maritime Archaeologist, Univ. of Stockholm, Sweden:

“The wreck reveals many of the characteristics of the fluit but also some unique features, not least the construction of the stern. It might be that this is an early example of the design. The wreck thus offers a unique opportunity to investigate the development of a ship type that sailed all over the world and became the tool that laid the foundation for early modern globalization,” says Dr. Eriksson.

You can see a brief but crystal clear video of the shipwreck here.

Urartu child buried with dragon-head bracelets

The remains of a child wearing a dragon-headed bracelet on each arm have been discovered in an ancient necropolis near Van, eastern Turkey. The burial was unearthed last year in an excavation at the Castle of Çavuştepe, about 15 miles southeast of Van, where archaeologists have been exploring a 2,750-year-old necropolis.

Van, then named Tushpa, was the capital of the Urartian kingdom that ruled what is now eastern Anatolia from the 9th century B.C. until the early 6th century. The necropolis dates to the reign of Sarduri II (r. 764–735 B.C.) who built the fortress of Çavuştepe at the peak of Urartu’s power in the region. The remains of defensive walls of the citadel, a royal palace, a temple, the king’s tower and service areas were unearthed in excavations from 1961 to 1986, but the necropolis was unknown until the latest program of excavations began three years ago.

The necropolis was where the elite of Urartu who lived in the castle citadel were interred. Archaeologists have unearthed burials with large amounts of jewelry including silver necklaces, dozens of earrings, a lion brooch and a belt decorated with mythological characters. The small child, only three years old at time of death, buried with rich furnishings was certainly a member of the Urartu aristocracy. The finely-crafted dragon-headed copper bracelets are unique finds in the region. Beads from a necklace, originally threaded on a now-decomposed string or leather cord, surround Dragon-head bracelet. Photo by Mesut Varol, Anadolu Agency.his neck. At his head is a small ceramic bowl with food offerings still inside.

His lavish grave goods are evidence that the Urartu elites buried young children with meticulous care to send them well-accessorized to the afterlife.

Sold: One of the world’s oldest names

A clay tablet inscribed with one of the first known proper names in history sold at auction last month for £175,000 ($229,000). The 3×3-inch baked clay tablet dates to around 3100 B.C. and is engraved in the archaic Sumerian pictographic script dubbed Uruk III. It was kept in the archive of the Temple of Inanna in Uruk in what is now southern Iraq, one of 77 pictographic tablets found there that were written by the same hand.

The Kushim Tablet, baked clay, pictographic script Uruk III, ca. 3100 B.C. Photo courtesy Bloomsbury Auctions.The topic of this administrative record is beer production. The pictograms take the reader through the process, starting with a sheaf of barley on the center bottom of the tablet. To its left is a brick building with a chimney (the brewery). To its left is a sheaf again now inside a vessel. The dots and lines are numbers which reveal the impressive scale of this business: 29,086 measures barley over 37 months were to be delivered to the temple. Taking receipt of the beer was one Kushim, represented by the symbols “KU” and “SIM” written in the upper left above the vessel with the barley sheaf.

There has been some scholarly debate over whether Kushim was a title rather than a proper name, but Kushim’s name appears on 17 other tablets, and some of those instances include the title “Sanga,” meaning temple administrator. So not only is Kushim one of the world’s first personal names written more than 5,000 years ago, but it might even be a signature as Kushim recorded his duties as administrator at the Temple of Inanna.

The tablet was most recently part of the epic Schøyen Collection, the largest private collection of writing materials in the world spanning 5,000 years of history. Norwegian shipping heir Martin Schøyen has been selling some of his collection over the past few years, and this very special lot was part of a selection on The History of Western Script sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in London in celebration of Schøyen’s 80th birthday.

It first emerged on the record in the 1950s when it was acquired by renown antiquities collector of Hans Erlenmeyer. The Erlenmeyer antiquities were sold at auction in 1988.  It was the Erlenmeyer sale with its collection of 78 5,000-year-old pictographic clay tablets that sparked Schøyen’s interest in adding archaeological primary sources to his collection. He was only able to acquire two of the tablets at the auction itself, but in subsequent years he collected whole groups of pictographic and cuneiform tablets. Schøyen acquired the Kushim Tablet in 1993 from Quaritch, rare book dealers who had bought it at the 1988 auction.

The rest of the 77 pictographic tablets from Uruk that were written by the same hand, possibly Kushim himself, are all in institutions — the Freie Universität Berlin collection, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre. The Kushim Tablet is the greatest gem among the group and the only one of the 17 mentioning Kushim that was in private hands. It was bought by an anonymous US private collector.

Two little piggies found at Bronze Age site in Poland

Two small Bronze Age pig figurines have been discovered at the archaeological site of Mount Zyndram in Maszkowice, southern Poland. The clay pigs are the first zoomorphic figurines discovered at the Bronze Age settlement which is about 3,500 years old.

The site is a defensive settlement surrounded by a stone wall. It was occupied off and on from the early Bronze Age through the late Iron Age. The massive stone wall built atop the plateau is the oldest example of stone architecture in Poland. Archaeologists have also discovered dwellings from this first phase of occupation. The pigs were found inside one of the dwellings.

Just a few centimetres long, the figurines are shaped like pigs, with a visible snout and ears. Their soft earthy colour with pinkish tones makes them look even more like pigs.

One of them is darker than the other, which could result from an accidental difference in the firing process used to harden the clay figures after their shape was formed.

Although they were found inside the same house, the figurines’ slightly different style may be a sign that they were made by two different people, Przybyła suggests.

The clay pigs’ function is unclear, but researchers generally think of these kinds of finds as children’s toys or objects used in a cult – or both, as some items may have served both purposes.

The objects could have been used to tell a story with a special significance for the people of the time.

Rats are excellent historic preservationists

The moated brick manor house of Oxburgh Hall has been through a myriad cycles of growth, decline, expansion, dereliction and reconstruction since it was first built in 1482 by Sir Edmund Bedingfeld. It came within a hair’s breadth of demolition in 1952 before it was saved at the very last minute by Lady Sybil Bedingfeld who gave it the National Trust. It is currently undergoing a £6million program of repairs to the roof, structural timbers and tiles, 14 dormer windows and its 27 brick chimneys. It is a massive feat of engineering (wrapping a building surrounded by a moat that cannot be drained in full scaffolding is … tricky) and conservation.

The work on the roof is so extensive that temporary roofing was rigged to allow all of the 17,000+ tiles and coverings to be removed for structural work on the timbers. The floorboards were painstakingly lifted, numbered and removed, exposing the underfloor for the first time in centuries. The floorboards date to a Victorian-era renovation, but builders at the time simply laid them over the 16th and 17th century ceilings, leaving the underfloors entirely undisturbed. Archaeologists expected to find some old discarded fragments under the floors — newspapers, candy wrappers, buttons, pins — and their expectations were quickly met when they discovered a box of Terry’s Gold Leaf chocolates, complete with all the packaging and wrappers, missing only the chocs themselves.

A few weeks later they found some old rats’ nests and it turns out the rodents at Oxburgh Hall had excellent taste in bedding. There were fragments of 16th century sheet music and of a 16th century English edition of the King’s Psalms. Next to the nests was a large fragment from a 15th century illuminated Bible, only slightly gnawed. It contains a passage from Psalm 39 from the Vulgate highlighted with blue and gold letters.

Upon closer examination, two of the nests were found to contain more than 200 fragments of luxury textiles including silk, satin, linen, velvet and leather. There are pieces with fine embroidery and ribbons. They date to the late 16th, early 17th century and were probably snippets of larger sections. The rats recognized their high-end qualities and made off with as many remnants as they could get their tiny little hands on.

One of the largest pieces is browny-gold slashed silk, with each of the slashes revealing gold thread. Slashing was very popular for men’s clothing during the 16th century and was used for doublets, jackets and sleeves. It was placed over a textile of a contrasting colour which would be revealed through the slashes. We have the rats to thank for the remarkable condition of these textiles; begin kept below the floorboards for hundreds of years has prevented them from decaying and has allowed us to find out so much more about life at Oxburgh Hall.

That was in May. Two weeks ago, builders hit a motherlode, not in the rats’ nests but it was in a nearby void in the attic. It is a full leatherbound copy of the King’s Psalms published in 1568 and is in exceptional condition, even if was the source for the fragments found in the rats’ nests. There is only one other copy of this book known to exist and it’s in the British Library.

The Kynges Psalmes was originally written by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, in the 1st half of the 16th century and first published in England c.1544. Fisher was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to accept him as the supreme head of the Church of England and is honoured as a martyr and a saint by the Catholic church. Interestingly, this edition was translated into English from Fisher’s Latin by none other than Katherine Parr, who tweaked the emphasis of some of the text (perhaps in collaboration with her husband) in order to emphasise Henry VIII’s religious authority, obedience to God, and military prowess. The English version of The King’s Psalms, which we have at Oxburgh, was therefore highly regarded by Protestants.

This is of particular significance because the Bedingfelds were Catholic, and staunchly so. They were persecuted, fined and harassed for their recusancy. Oxburgh Hall is famous for its priests’ hole, a trapdoor in the floor that is the most popular stop for visitors to the estate.

Russell Clement, general manager,said: “We had hoped to learn more of the history of the house during the reroofing work… but these finds are far beyond anything we expected to see. These objects contain so many clues which confirm the history of the house as the retreat of a devout Catholic family, who retained their faith across the centuries.

“This is a building which is giving up its secrets slowly. We don’t know what else we might come across or what might remain hidden for future generations to reveal.”