The excavation of one of the six newly-discovered sacrificial pits at the Sanxingdui Bronze Age archaeological site in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has unearthed a bronze sacred tree from the Shu culture, ca. 12th/11th century B.C. It was found in parts in Pit 3, and is so complex that its surviving branches, flowers, some of the trunk and solar wheel ornament took four months to fully excavate because they were buried under heavy layers of ivory and other artifacts. 

Sacred trees have been found before at the site. The 1986 excavation of Pit 2 unearthed hundreds of pieces from six to eight bronze trees, most of them modest in size. Only three of them could be pieced back together from their component parts. One of them, a colossal example that took conservators a decade to reassemble, is now on display as the centerpiece of the Sanxingdui Museum‘s exceptional collection of artifacts from the ancient site.

The massive restored tree consists of a three-legged base with a trunk growing out of it. The trunk is divided into three levels with three branches curling downward in each level. Flowers bloom on the high points of all nine of the branches and birds alight on the flowers. Each branch in turn branches off into three fruit-bearing branchlets, for a total of 27 fruits on the tree. A slim dragon with a horned head undulates down the lower segment of the trunk, his foot planted in the base.

There is very little concrete information about the Shu people and state as no written records have survived. The archaeological record and later chroniclers indicate the Shu religion was centered on sun worship, and the bronze trees may have been part of it. The Shu Legend of the Ten Suns held that birds carried nine suns on their backs, flying in the morning from a sacred tree in the East, and landing at night in a sacred tree in the West. Humans, according to the legend, only the saw the birds, not the suns they carried, so they lived their lives blithely unaware there were any other suns besides the one we know.

According to Xu [Feihong, excavation leader], the new one is similar to the No. 2 bronze tree which took archaeologists over a decade to restore. Yet, it’s still not complete with several parts missing.

“It cannot be ruled out that these two might belong to the same tree. If the two sacred trees in pits No. 2 and No. 3 are put together, they can explain a lot of academic issues,” said Xu.

There are no plans as of yet to embark on the reassembly and restoration of the Pit 3 tree, not until all six of the new sacrificial pits have been fully excavated. Armed with all the information and contents of the pits, archaeologists will then piece together this tree too, and it will go on display next to its brother from Pit 2.

Tiles stamped with the imperial mark have been discovered at the Roman bathhouse on the grounds of the Carlisle Cricket Club in Stanwix, a suburb of Carlisle. Roman tile manufacturers put their brand on their products as a matter of course, and many surviving tiles bear their makers’ marks, but the IMP stamp is extremely rare. An usually large number of them — about a dozen — have been unearthed at this site.  The high concentration of IMP tiles suggest they were being manufactured there.

Lead archaeologist Frank Giecco:

“This is the imperial court stamping the tile. There have been a handful found in Carlisle at random places. We have probably got a dozen now from this site and it looks like this is where they are coming from.

It’s not a legion or anyone else – this is the signature of the Emperor. It’s been built by the imperial machine and it’s a connection.

The remains of the bathhouse were first discovered in 2017 during an archaeological survey at the proposed site of the club’s new pavilion. The expectation was they’d find a few scattered objects among the fill, but instead archaeologists landed upon entire rooms from a bathhouse complete with walls, painted plasterwork, intact floors, tile stacks for the hypocaust system, lengths of terracotta water pipes and a varied assortment of small artifacts like hair pins, coins and arrowheads.

It was a deluxe facility in the hinterlands of the northern border, and not meant for private citizens to take their ease, but rather to serve the men of the Ala Petriana, an elite cavalry regiment famed for its valor on the field that was stationed at Uxelodunum, the largest fort on Hadrian’s Wall.

Uxelodunum is modern Stanwix, today absorbed into the town of Carlisle which at that time was the Romano-British town of Luguvalio. The Romans had built a fort in the town earlier (ca. 72-3 A.D.) and when Emperor Hadrian ordered construction of the wall that would bear his name, the old Luguvalio fort was integrated into it, linking the town to the shiny new fort with all the amenities at Uxelodunum.

A carved sandstone slab inscribed with a tribute to Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus and mother of Caracalla. Both emperors personally led military campaigns in Britain, and Septimius actually died in York, 40 miles south of Carlisle, in 211. Between the inscription and the IMP tiles, it seems Uxelodunum had a direct link to the ruling family.

Giecco again:

“I can’t say that Septimus Severus ever set foot in Carlisle. Who knows.

“All we can say is that we have got a huge monumental building that has been built in Carlisle. The Emperor was in Britain at that time, we’ve got an inscription from his wife in the building and we have got his personal workshop-stamped tiles coming from the building.

“The evidence is building up that there is something really special going on here.”

Two polished stone balls have been discovered in a Neolithic chambered tomb on the Tresness peninsula of the Orkney island of Sanday. The 5,500-year-old tomb is rapidly eroding, and archaeologists have been working assiduously to salvage any artifacts and fully document the structure before the cliff it is on collapses into the sea.

The Tresness tomb is one of fewer than 20 examples of a stalled cairn, a slab-built passage grave with a central chamber that is divided into compartments along its sides like horse stalls and topped with an barrow. It has five compartments. The southernmost one is partially eroded, but archaeologists believe it was the last cell at the end of the tomb.

In the Bronze Age, a round cairn was built on top of the Neolithic tomb, truncating it and stripping it of its original roof. When excavations resumed this year after last year’s COVID interruption, archaeologists removed the Bronze Age remains to reveal the full extent of the remaining Neolithic tomb. 

The polished stone balls were found in chamber one. They are about the size of cricket balls, and are finely carved and finished. The first is in excellent condition, perfectly spherical and glossy. The second has cracked along a band in the sandstone. That will repaired by conservators.

Only 20 stone balls from this period have been found on Orkney (about 500 have been discovered in Scotland as a whole), and of these, only a few have been archaeologically excavated from a burial site.

Carved stone balls were symbols of power and were probably used, along with perhaps maces, to inflict blunt force trauma to the head. One skull from the Cuween passage tomb on Orkney shows signs of such injury.

Two similar cases were also found by Dr Dave Lawrence at the Rowiegar chambered cairn on the island. At Tomb of the Eagles at Isbister, he found that both males and females, young and old, were harmed in this way.

The team has created 3D models of the Tresness stalled cairn before and after the removal of the Bronze Age round cairn.

Here is the tomb as it looked the first week of excavations, composed from photos taken on August 22nd, 2021. 

Here it is a week ago with the round barrow removed: