Month: October 2020

Polish nationalist sword found in Bulgaria

Modern(ish)

A sword in a Bulgarian museum has been identified as a 19th century Polish nationalist sabre. It was discovered near the city of the Veliko Tarnovo in northern Bulgaria where curators from the Archaeological Museum saw it had a Polish inscription. An expert from the University of Warsaw recognized the inscription Vivat Szlachcic Pan i fundator wojska (“Long live the Noble Lord and founder of the army”) and engraved iconography as one wielded by Polish patriots during the January Uprising against Russia’s autocratic rule.

The January Uprising (1863-1864) was one several attempts by Polish patriots to re-establish the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the Russian Kingdom of Poland. Russian Poland was carved out of the Duchy of Warsaw at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The kingdom was supposed to be largely autonomous, nominally under the rule of the Tzar, but governed by its own parliament, defended by its own army and bound by the Polish constitution. Tzar Alexander I and his successor Nicholas I had other plans, and between the two of them, they quashed the country’s traditional religious and political freedoms and made it a puppet state of the Russian Empire.

Nationalist resistance to Russian rule grew in the wake of its losses in the Crimean War. In January 1863, pro-Russian Polish aristocrat Aleksander Wielopolski, adjutant to the Polish viceroy, ordered  the conscription of Polish nationalists into the Imperial Russian Army for 20 year terms. He knew the movement for Polish independence was working up to an uprising and thought strongarming its young men into military service would break up the movement. Instead it triggered the very uprising he was trying to prevent.

It was the longest uprising for Polish national unity under Russian rule, but it too ultimately collapsed under the weight of Russia’s superior military strength. The results were brutal — executions, mass deportations to Siberia, punitive taxation, the complete erasure of the Polish language in government and schools and the replacement of all Polish government officials with Russians.

The newly-discovered sword was inscribed during this period. The curved karabela type, a Polish sabre used during the halcyon days of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th and 18th centuries, was an emblem of Polish culture and independence. During the uprisings of the 19th centuries, they were engraved with slogans and imagery harkening back to the Commonwealth.

[Professor Piotr Dyczek] added: “The sabre was probably the spoils of an officer of the Tsarist army who participated in the suppression of the January Uprising in 1863 and 1864, who then fitted it with a silver hilt typical for a shashka – a sabre with an open hilt with a split pommel.”

Presumably that Russian soldier took the sword out of Poland after the uprising was suppressed. At that time, Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule as it had been since 1393, but a decade after the January Uprising, Bulgaria had an uprising of its own in April 1876. Russia was a fan of this one, though, since wresting the Balkans out of Ottoman hands would extend their sphere of influence which had been whittled away by the Crimean War. They jumped on the opportunity and the Russo-Turkish War began in 1877. It ended when the Imperial Russian Army took Tarnovo in July 1878. The Polish sword was probably used (and lost) in that battle.

Torlonia marbles exhibit opens. Seriously!

Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums

Four years after the agreement was signed to display a selection of ancient sculptures from the unparalleled collection of the princely Torlonia family, one year after the announcement that would finally go on display in March 2020, and seven months after that date came and went, the Torlonia marbles exhibit has actually opened. Ninety-six marbles of the 620 in the collection have gone on display at the Palazzo Caffarelli, a newly-renovated venue that is part of the Musei Capitolini system.

This is the first time the general public has been able to see any of the Torlonia masterpieces in person since the 1940s. The Museo Torlonia, the private museum in Trastevere where the  ancient statues, reliefs, vases and busts the Torlonia amassed primarily by buying entire collections from impoverished Roman nobility, closed its doors in 1976. Not that they were ever wide open. Founded in 1875, the museum was very exclusive, with access granted to invited guests, dignitaries and scholars. So 101 years after the private museum opened, it was shut down on the pretext of roof repair. In fact, the Torlonia illegally converted the building into apartments and tossed the priceless collection into the basement to collect dust.

Since then, the state has tried to acquire the or at least arrange for its permanent display but for decades all dealmaking attempts and court cases failed. The 2016 agreement was a major breakthrough, but new problems cropped up when the pater familias Prince Alessandro Torlonia died in 2017. Those were sorted out just in time to hit the COVID wall. We’ll see if the Torlonia marbles manage to stay on display as planned this time. The exhibition is scheduled to run through June 29th, 2021.

The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces is arranged in five sections. Room 1 is dedicated to the Museo Torlonia. It includes the famous 1884 catalogue of its 620 marbles which was the first catalogue of an ancient sculpture collection to use photographs of all the works instead of illustrations. Room 2 features works excavated from Torlonia properties in the 19th century. Section 3 covers three rooms and is dedicated to the many marbles acquired from the 18th century collections of the Albani family and sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. Section 4 (in four rooms) features works collected by Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani in the 17th century. The final section spotlights pieces from 15th and 16th century collections of distinguished Roman families.

In a nod to the seminal catalogue that first documented the collection of the Museo Torlonia, a catalogue of the exhibition has been published that covers the artworks on display in exhaustive detail, from provenance to restorations to the latest research. Essays by specialists contextualize the pieces, delving into the history of antiquities collecting and museums themselves. The catalogue is available in English and can be bought online.

Merovingian-era settlement excavated in France

Ancient

Archaeologists have unearthed a full Merovingian settlement complete with church and burial ground in Pontarlier, eastern France. Grave goods including weapons and jewelry indicate the settlement was a prosperous one, not a sleepy pastoral village.

It was strategically located near the village of Pontarlier, formerly the ancient waystation of Ariolica on the Roman road between modern-day Orbe, Switzerland, and Besançon, France. Pontarlier became even more important after the Burgundian invasions of the 5th century as a key trading center linking Burgundy’s territories to Switzerland, German and Lombard northern Italy. It was also the only reliable pass over the Jura Mountains well into the 17th century.

The site was occupied for 150 to 200 years in the 6th and 7th centuries. The settlement was built quickly according to a plan found in Germanic territories from this period in Switzerland and Bavaria, but never before in France. Ten large rectangular buildings were at the center, each supported by massive corner poles three feet in diameter. These large structures had two distinct areas: one half partitioned into smaller spaces, the other half wide open. The former is believed to have been the living space for humans, the latter for animals.

The church was built a little ways apart from the large dwellings and the smaller structures at the center of the village. Based on the size and position of the postholes, we know the church was a wooden building about 65 feet long and 46 feet wide designed on a basilica plan. It is one of the oldest churches in the Jura Mountains and its architecture is unique in the area for its time. No other examples are known in France or Switzerland.

One tomb was found inside the church, and three more next to it. The prime location indicates these may have been members of the family that founded the village and/or sponsored the construction of the church. The women buried near the church were laid to rest with expensive jewelry like a fibula with cloisonné garnets, gold-plated earrings and glass beads. Another 70 graves were unearthed located in different spots throughout the settlement.

The settlement’s economy appears to have revolved around raising livestock. A cattle slaughter site a few thousand square feet in area has been found a few yards from the village. Radiocarbon dating results confirm that it was in use at the time the village was occupied in the 7th century. Of the thousands of bones at the slaughter site, most are from oxen and horses. The village likely bred the livestock for slaughter.

The non-local house plans, the rapid founding and growth of the village suggests the population was transplanted, not naturally evolved in the area. This was a frequent practice for conquering peoples like the Burgundians and Franks. They seeded their new territories with their own people, and this spot at a key transit area for trade between Italy and France would have been crucial to claim and control as quickly as possible.

The site was abandoned as quickly as it was built. The departures appear to have been orderly and non-violent, so the population was either consolidated with that of Pontarlier or moved away for other reasons (easier defense, better economic opportunity, etc.).

Mosaics from luxury Roman villa found under luxury Roman condos

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi

The Domus Aventino is a high-end condominium complex offering all technology, comfort, amenities, energy efficiency and round-the-clock of new construction in the historic surroundings of Piazza Albania at the foot of Rome’s Aventine Hill. Three buildings, built in the 1950s and for decades headquarters of a bank, were converted into 180 luxury apartments and penthouses. Installation of new earthquake-resistant foundations in 2014 revealed ancient remains which were excavated by archaeologists from the Special Superintendency of Rome. Elaborate mosaic floors from an Imperial-era villa demonstrated that the luxury dwellings of modern Rome stood on two hundred years of luxury dwellings of ancient Rome.

There is evidence of human occupation at the site going back to the prehistory of Rome, the 8th century B.C. when legend has it Romulus founded the city. The excavation also unearthed a wall of volcanic tufa blocks that may have bene the base of a guard tower built between the 4th and 3rd century B.C. when the Servian Wall was constructed looping around the foot of the Aventine Hill. Just a few steps away on the Viale Aventino is an extremely rare surviving archway from this wall in which a throwing weapon like a ballista or a catapult could be positioned to defend against marauders.

The site seems to have first changed from public defensive structure to private use around the middle of the 2nd century B.C., although the material from this period is too sparse to determine how it was used. Within this large perimeter, the floorplan of a domus emerged with identifiable areas for sleeping and for daytime use, storage areas and open-air gardens. Over the two centuries, six levels of floors were superimposed on each other. The full stratigraphic record was brought to light in one location of the house, and analysis of the six layers found that the home was restructured about every 30 years. Every generation put its stamp on this villa, altering it and refurbishing it to meet new needs and fashions.

The oldest mosaic floor dates to the late 1st century B.C. and features black and white tiles arranged in a hexagonal pattern. The next two chronologically date to the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the beginning of the 2nd. A partial inscription (the black tiles that formed the letters were reused in later renovations) dates to the reign of Trajan (98-117 A.D.) and records three patrons of that particular mosaic pavement, suggesting it may have had a semi-public use at this time, as in for members of an association.

Black-and-white geometric mosaics from the era of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) were found in good condition, but the real stand-outs are five mosaics dating to the Antonine dynasty (150-175 A.D.). These were the first ones encountered by the finders and they are dazzling in their array of iconographic elements and color accents. One floor has a black-on-white figure eight pattern that has never been seen before. A few painted walls from this phase have also survived.

The Antonine mosaic floors undulate today, a result of centuries of earth movement culminating in structurally damaging subsidence that likely caused the abandonment of the villa in the early 3rd century. In addition to the floors of the domus, archaeologists discovered hundreds of artifacts including lacquered bowl fragments, a hairpin, a key and an amphora used to store garum, the fermented fish gut sauce that Romans put on everything.

The excavation, conservation of the mosaics and walls in situ and the creation of an exhibit environment to allow the public access to the exceptional remains were privately financed by the developers of the complex who are happily using the extreme coolness of their ancient basement in their promotional materials. The Hadrianic and Antonine mosaics are on display, enhanced by a light projection system that fills in some of the blanks in the mosaics and visually recreates lost frescoed walls and furnishings of the domus. They’re calling it an archaeological treasure chest, opened to the public two days a month, then closed back up to protect it (and the luxury penthouse owners).

6th c. B.C. bronze horse harness found in Poland

Ancient

Metal detectorists in north-central Poland have discovered a complete bronze horse bridle that date back 2,500 years. Also buried with the hoard was a bronze axe. This is the first Iron Age horse harness of its kind discovered in Central and Eastern Europe.

Arkadiusz Kurij had scanned a forest near Toruń with fellow WELES Historical and Exploration Group members with no success. He returned to the rendezvous point and suddenly his detector signaled loudly. The group began to dig, but stopped when they found the first bronze pieces. WELES explores in cooperation with the Regional Monuments Protection Office  (WUOZ) in Toruń, so as soon as they realized they had discovered archaeological artifacts, they notified the authorities and carefully reburied the site to cover up evidence of digging should anybody with less noble intent happen upon it.

Archaeologists excavated the find site and recovered a highly decorative harness made of numerous tubular elements linked together with rings and decorated with round shields with central bosses. A total of 156 bronze harness parts made of sheet metal and wire were unearthed. It is complete in every particular, missing only the bit that went in the horse’s mouth. Bits found in Scythian horse burials were made of wood, so that one missing piece may have decomposed.

Microtraces of organic remains on the artifacts indicate the fittings and the axe were wrapped in burdock leaves and placed in a leather bag. The bag was then deliberately buried in the sandy soil of a hill near the bank of the Vistula River. The hoard weighs one kilo (2.2 lbs) in total, which was a lot of metal in the Iron Age. The hoard could have been intended to be melted down and used as raw material.

The design style of the harness is typical of metalwork by the Iron Age Scythian cultures of the Eurasian steppe, perhaps traveling north and west towards the territories of the Lusatian culture. The moved into southern Poland through the Moravian Gate in which is now the Czech Republic during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (7th-6th century B.C.). The socketed axe found in the cache is of local origin. How it made its way into the harness bag is unknown, but it may suggest encounters between Scythian horsemen and the local population.

The objects will be analyzed, studied and conserved by a multidisciplinary team of researchers coordinated by the Institute of Archeology of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. The team hopes to be able to narrow down the date when the harness was buried. Conservation and analysis is expected to take at least nine months, after which WUOZ hopes the objects will go on display in a local museum.