Month: February 2024

Burnt porridge crusts identified on Neolithic pottery

Ancient

A study of burnt food residues in prehistoric ceramic vessels found in the Neolithic settlement of Oldenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, has revealed meals of varied cereals and wild plants and dairy, including a thick porridge with the same kind of intractable charred residue porridge so willingly leaves on pots today. Scanning electron microscopy and chemical analysis of food crusts caked to the inside of bowls identified the remains of emmer, barley and the starchy seeds of wild white goosefoot. The same ingredients have been identified in soil samples from the site.

Oldenburg was a Middle Neolithic settlement inhabited by Funnel Beaker groups, the first farmers of northern Europe, between 3270 and 2920 B.C., making it one of the oldest villages in Schleswig-Holstein. At its peak of occupation, there were about 40 dwellings in the village, an important example of how individual farmsteads evolved into small agrarian communities.

We know from stable isotope analysis and soil analysis which plants the Oldenburg farmers grew, the livestock they raised, which animals they hunted and plants they foraged, but less is known about the cooking practices, how they combined ingredients and prepared their meals. Analysis of the lipids absorbed into the ceramic have shed some light on the cooking of animal products, but new advances in microscopy and chemical analyses of residues have now opened up the possibilities of exploring cooked plant materials.

The new findings show that cereals indeed played an important dietary role and that wild plants enriched the food spectrum of the earliest farmers in the north. The barley was harvested when milky ripe and prepared in a similar way to the green spelt traditionally produced in Baden-Württemberg. The emmer was processed in a sprouted state, which gave the porridge a sweet flavour. Food in the Neolithic Age was therefore by no means bland, but rather varied. People had a highly differentiated sense of taste and attached great importance to good flavour.

So far, chemical analyses of the pottery have shown that the vessels contained dairy products. A look at the crusts burnt onto the cooking pot now shows that cereals and dairy products were probably processed into porridge for everyday use in the same vessels and formed a balanced dietary basis. “While the animal fats are absorbed into the ceramic and leave a signal there, the plant food components can only be detected in the burnt food crust,” emphasises Dr Lucy Kubiak-Martens, cooperation partner of BIAX Consult (Netherlands) and first author of the study. This shows how important a multi-method approach is for reconstructing Neolithic recipes created from a variety of ingredients. These discoveries expand our understanding of the long and complex process of transforming plants into meals during the period that followed the introduction of the agricultural way of life and cultivated plants in north-central Europe.

The study has been published in the journal  PLOS ONE and can be read here.

V&A launches campaign for 12th c. walrus ivory carving

Medieval, Museums

The V&A museum has launched a campaign to raise the £2 million it needs to acquire the rare 12th century walrus ivory carving that will otherwise leave the UK and enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Deposition from the Cross is a depiction of Joseph of Arimathea taking the body of Christ down from the cross. The meticulous detail — the finely striated hair and beards, the soft draping of the robes — make it one of the greatest surviving examples of English Romanesque ivory carving. Thought to have been crafted in York, North Yorkshire, in around 1190, it was originally part of a larger altarpiece with multiple scenes from the Passion of the Christ. Today only this fragment and a much smaller fragment of Judas eating the bread dipped in wine Jesus passed to him marking him as the betrayer, are known to survive from this altarpiece. The V&A already owns the Judas fragment.

The Met bought the carving in a private sale last year but its application for an export license was deferred on the grounds that its exceptionally fine carving and rarity make it a work of national importance. The UK Arts Minister placed a temporary export bar on the Deposition to give a local museum the opportunity to raise the purchase price and keep the carving in the country.

From Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A:

“The Deposition from the Cross ivory is one of the most beautiful, entrancing and historically important items to have been on display at the V&A. It tells the story of humanism long before the Renaissance, and speaks to an elemental part of English culture. It is vital that we return it to display, for free, for everyone, forever.”

Why does this object belong at the V&A?

The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest have stated that the Deposition from the Cross is ‘one of the most culturally and aesthetically significant objects’ they have ever considered, and that this important work is of eminent importance for providing vital insights into a period of English history, from which very few objects have survived. The successful acquisition of the Deposition from the Cross by the V&A would allow for the sculpture to be re-united with the only known surviving piece of the same ensemble, a fragmentary ivory carving of Judas at the Last Supper, discovered in Wakefield during the 18th-century, which is currently in the V&A Collection.

The two pieces were on display together at the V&A from 1982 until 2022. The Deposition was on long-term loan, and was only removed from the museum when the owner decided to sell it.

The V&A has set up a donation button at the bottom of the page here. You check out with a credit card or PayPal just like buying something from the museum’s online store.

“Vanished church” found under Venice’s iconic Piazza San Marco

Medieval

The remains of San Geminiano, the “vanished church” that moved around Piazza San Marco in Venice for centuries before its final destruction in 1807, have been discovered under the iconic main square. So far archaeologists have discovered pieces of the medieval pavements and walls and a brick tomb containing the skeletal remains of seven people. The tomb dates to the 7th or 8th century, predating construction of Piazza San Marco itself.

Tradition has it that the first San Geminiano church was built by order of the Byzantine general Narses in the mid-6th century A.D. in appreciation of Venice’s contributions to his reconquest of Ravenna. Saint Mark the Evangelist wasn’t even the patron of Venice then (Saint Theodore was), so there was no Piazza San Marco. For that matter, there weren’t even any doges until the 8th century, and it was only in the 9th century, after the relics of St. Mark were smuggled out of Abbasid-ruled Alexandria in a basket filled with pork by Venetian merchants, that Mark became the city’s new patron.

The Church of San Geminiano burned down in 976 and a new one built in the first decade of the 11th century. That one burned and collapsed after an earthquake in around 1108. The reconstructed church was then demolished in the late 12th century to accommodate the expansion of Piazza San Marco. It was relocated to another location on the newly-expanded Piazza. The 12th century church was demolished in the early 16th century and the new one relocated again. This last one would stand until 1807 when it was demolished by Napoleon to make way for a new wing of the long colonnaded buildings that embrace three sides of the piazza.

With all its movement, the exact locations of the original church and its immediate descendants were lost. Archaeologists unearthed the ruins in the center of the Piazza while working on the restoration of its paving stones. The brick tomb emerged first, then the wall and paving remnants. The excavation is now complete and the remains will be analyzed in the lab while the piazza’s paving stones are returned to their place over the early Christian remains of Venice.

Caracalla medallion found in child’s grave in Bulgaria

Ancient

Two Roman-era graves with rich grave goods including a rare bronze medallion of the emperor Caracalla have been discovered in Nova Varbovka, Bulgaria. One is a double burial of an adult man and a woman, the other of a young child, suggesting these graves were a family grouping. The artifacts found inside the graves date them to the first half of the 3rd century.

The burials were discovered last fall by a tractor driver when he hit a limestone slab while plowing a field near Nova Varbovka. He saw the human remains but didn’t realize they were archaeological in nature, so he reported the find to the mayor who reported it to the police thinking it might be a criminal matter. When the remains were examined by archaeologists from the Veliko Tarnovo Regional Museum of History, they were found to be from the Roman era and an emergency archaeological salvage excavation was launched. The dig took place in December 2023.

The excavation revealed two large graves built of brick masonry with plaster on the interior walls. They were covered with heavy slabs of limestone. The larger of the two was ten feet long and contained the remains of a woman about 45-49 years of age and a man of about 50-60 at the time of their deaths. The child was just two or three years old when he died and his grave is a little earlier than theirs, so he must have predeceased them.

The parents’ grave contained a pair of gold ladies earrings, a gilt pendant with a glass bead, a necklace of lapis lazuli and gold, a silver-plated fibula. The child was buried with a pair of gold earrings, glass bead jewelry, a ceramic wine amphora, two delicate glass lacrimaria (small vessels containing perfumes or unguents) and the bronze medallion issued by Emperor Caracalla (r. 198-217 A.D.) to commemorate his visit to the Pergamon’s Temple of Asclepius in 214 A.D.

The expensive burial facilities and grave goods were only affordable for the very rich in this time and place. Some of the limestone came from a quarry near Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman city about 25 miles southwest of Nova Varbovka founded by Trajan in the early 2nd century. Archaeologists hypothesize the adults were wealthy landowners from Nicopolis ad Istrum who had a villa rustica (country estate) where they spent their summers.

Chakarov, who excavated the burials along with colleagues Nedko Elenski and Mihaela Tomanova, noted that the Caracalla medallion could point to an Asia Minor origin for the occupants of the graves, which would be consistent with the fact that Nicopolis ad Istrum was built mainly by settlers from Asia Minor. “Of course, we are searching for an opportunity to make DNA and other analyses which our museum can’t afford, to see if this hypothesis is correct,” Chakarov said.

Rare Merovingian gold ring found in Jutland

Medieval, Treasures

A metal detectorist has discovered a rare Merovingian gold ring dating to 500-600 A.D. in Emmerlev, Southwest Jutland, Denmark. The ring is made of 22-carat gold and is set with an oval cabochon almandine garnet, a red semi-precious stone prized among Germanic peoples as a symbol of power. The mount has four spirals on the underside and trefoil knobs where the band meets the bezel. The spirals and knobs are characteristic of the highest quality of Frankish manufacture, and rings of this type were worn by the elite of the Merovingian dynasty.

National Museum of Denmark curator Kirstine Pommergaard believes the quality and construction of the ring suggests there may have been an unknown noble family in the Emmerlev area with close connections to Merovingian royalty.

“The gold ring not only reveals a possible new princely family in Emmerlev, but also connects the area with one of Europe’s largest centers of power in the Iron Age. The gold ring is probably a woman’s ring and may have belonged to a prince’s daughter who was married to a prince in Emmerlev. Gold was typically reserved for diplomatic gifts, and we know that people married into alliances, just it probably happened with Thyra and Gorm the Old and in more recent times when Christian IX became known as ‘Europe’s father-in-law’ for marrying his daughters into other royal houses, ” she says.

Archaeologists do not think the ring was at that location because it was lost on the way to somewhere else. Almost a thousand ancient and medieval artifacts (gold and silver trade coins, textiles, pottery) have been found at Emmerlev, evidence that busy international trade was taking place there for centuries. The trading post of Ribe was just 30 miles north of Emmerlev, an important stop in the lucrative trade network of the Wadden Sea region.

Gold and silver coins in the Emmerlev area confirm Merovingian contact, and the Merovingian kings and merchants did trade through the Wadden Sea network to Ribe. Making a marriage alliance with a Southern Jutland potentate would therefore have been highly advantageous to provide them with safe harbor and local influence.

The find was actually made in 2020, but the discovery of the ring has been kept under wraps until now to allow metal detectorists and archaeologists to explore the site without unwanted attention.The finder, Lars Nielsen, turned the ring in to the Museum Sønderjylland when he found it, and the local museum has now transferred it to the National Museum in Copenhagen.

”We’ve never seen anything like it out here. Many discoveries have been made over time that point to global trade connections at the Wadden Sea. The gold ring substantiates that there has also been an elite who have had something to do with music. Not everyone has had contact with the Merovingians, ” says Anders Hartvig, museum curator at Museum Sønderjylland.

Kirstine Pommergaard adds:

“The Merovingians were interested in entering into a network with families and individuals who could control trade and resources in an area. “Perhaps the princely family in Emmerlev had control over an area between Ribe and Hedeby and thus secured trade in the area,” she says.