A man planting cherry saplings on his field in Salkaya village near Elazig, eastern Anatolia, found a huge ancient floor mosaic depicting a dazzling array of local animals and plant life. It dates to the late Roman Imperial period or the early Byzantine period.
Mehmet Emin Sualp spotted glimpses of patterns through the planting holes and reported it to the Elazığ Museum Directorate and the gendarmerie. The museum and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism excavated the field and uncovered a single-piece floor mosaic 904 square feet in area. It depicts a whole bestiary of animals, including lions, mountain goats, ducks, greyhounds, deer, pheasants, wild boars, bears, geese and Anatolian leopards. There are also tree and plant species mixed in with the animals. Geometric patterns — triangles, lozenges, kites, concentric square boxes — border the mosaic extending all the way to the walls.
Elazig Governor Numan Hatipoglu described it as one of the largest mosaic pieces discovered in the region, showcasing a vibrant representation of local wildlife and flora. […]
“This is an incredible find for our region,” stated Governor Hatipoglu. “The vibrant representation of local fauna, including bears, wild boars, and various deer species, vividly reflects the area’s biodiversity during the Roman and Byzantine periods.” He emphasized the significance of this discovery and indicated that further excavations could reveal even more historical artifacts, potentially leading to a strategic development for exhibitions in the future.
See overhead drone footage of the entire mosaic in this video:
A Viking burial ground with 50 well-preserved inhumation graves and five cremation graves has been unearthed in Åsum, an village just east of Odense, Denmark. It is one of the largest Viking-era burial grounds ever found on the island of Funen. Preliminary estimates based on the artifacts found in the burials date the graves to between 850 and 970 A.D.
The burial ground was discovered during an archaeological survey before renovations to the electrical grid. A metal detector scan of the field had found numerous objects, but the discovery of a Viking burial ground was completely unexpected, let alone one so large and well-preserved.
The skeletal remains are in unusually good condition, with complete articulated skeletons and surviving textile and wood fragments, because of the high groundwater level of the field. The low oxygen levels of the waterlogged environment slows down the decomposition process. It’s rare to find organic materials so well-preserved west of the Great Belt (the strait that separates the island of Zealand from Funen). The remains in the two other Viking burial sites on Funen that are of comparable size are in far worse shape.
Several of the burials belonged to high-status individuals, most notably a woman buried in the cart part of the wagon as a coffin. This practice took place only in the middle of the 9th century, and was very rare The wood is gone, but it left an imprint behind on the soil and the rivets and nails that held the cart together are still in place.
[Museum Odense archaeologist] Michael Borre Lundø says:
“The woman was buried in the wagon she likely traveled in. We must imagine that she was buried with her finest clothes and belongings. She was given a beautiful glass bead necklace, an iron key, a knife with a silver-threaded handle, and, most notably, a small shard of glass that may have served as an amulet. At the foot of the wagon, there was a finely decorated wooden chest, the contents of which we still do not know.”
One of the other high-status graves contains the remains of an adult woman wearing a very fine iron neck ring. This was not locally made. It is of a type that was manufactured in Gotland. She also had a large bronze buckle shaped like an animal head placed on her chest that was also from Gotland. More than a thousand of these types of brooches have been found there, but only 50 (51 now) of them have been discovered south of Gotland, and this is the only one ever found on Funen. Its rarity suggests she was an important person in the community, and because the buckle was part of the national costume, she most likely came from Gotland, or was related/married to someone who did.
Another contained a trefoil brooch, a red glass bead on a cord around the deceased’s neck, an iron knife and a nugget of rock crystal.
Michael Borre Lundø says:
“Rock crystal does not occur naturally in Denmark and was likely imported from Norway. Several items from the many graves in Åsum indicate that the buried Vikings were connected to international trade networks that developed during the Viking Age.”
The imported grave goods and the presence of several graves of high-status individuals are evidence that Åsum was an important trade hub when the future Odense was still the small settlement of Odins Vi a couple of miles to the west. The River Odense, Funen’s longest river, ran through Åsum. Nonnebakken, a massive ringfort built by King Harald Bluetooth to control access to the river, was constructed around 980, in the last years the burial ground was in use.
The skeletal remains will be sent to the Panum Institute at the University of Copenhagen for osteological examination and further studies. The bones are in such a good state of preservation that scientists believe they will be able to successfully extract ancient DNA on the majority of the skeletons. If the DNA extraction goes as well as expected, this will be the first time DNA analysis can be performed on almost all of a single burial ground. Researchers will determine if any of the deceased were related to each other, if they originated from or have genetic links to other areas of Europe.
Like a French remake of Poltergeist, a homeowner in Corbeil-Essonnes on the outskirts of Paris has discovered that his house was built on an ancient burial ground. The owner was doing some renovation in his cellar late last year when he stumbled on a skeleton. The Regional Archaeology Service responded with a full excavation of the four rooms in the cellar and uncovered 38 graves dating from the 3rd to the 10th centuries A.D.
The burials were distributed across the four rooms of the basement, most of them arranged in parallel rows. The deceased in the Late Imperial era graves were buried on their backs in wooden coffins that were then buried in a deep pit. The wood has decomposed, but there are traces of the original form of the coffin in the pit.
The rows were maintained, with only a slight shift eastward between Late Antiquity and the Merovingian era. There are 10 plaster sarcophagi characteristic of the Merovingian period (476 to 750 A.D.), placed side by side in a fan pattern. While some of the plaster sarcophagi found elsewhere were decorated on the exterior walls, none of the 10 in the cellar have decorated walls. One of the sarcophagi has a lid — a block of soft stone — that is engraved. The lid is broken, but it is possible to discern part of a rose window, a Latin cross and a cross inside a circle.
The presence of a medieval cemetery in this neighborhood has been known since the 19th century when the first plaster sarcophagi were discovered, but there was no formal excavation or scientific study of the remains. This is the first comprehensive examination of the burial ground, and the age of the most ancient graves prove that the cemetery was in use much earlier than previously realized.
The remains have all been removed and transferred to a laboratory for further study.
A richly painted and pillared throne room from the 7th century has been excavated at the Moche architectural complex of Pañamarca in northwestern Peru. The imagery on the wall paintings and on the painted throne indicates the hall was used by a high-status female leader associated with the moon goddess.
Pañamarca was the southernmost monumental city of the Moche culture, built beginning in around 550 A.D. on a hilltop in the lower Nepeña Valley. The main monumental structure is a stepped platform made of adobe bricks. There are two large adobe platforms lower on the hill, an adobe walled plaza and several other structures of adobe and masonry. The city is famed for its vividly-colored wall paintings, the first of which was discovered in 1958.
The Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca project, a multidisciplinary collaboration between Peruvian and US researchers, has been investigating the site since 2018. The 2022 season uncovered a pair of murals depicting two-faced figures wearing headdresses and holding feather fans. The two-faced figures are the only ones of their kind ever found in Moche art.
The throne room of a queen with wall paintings depicting her is also a unique find unknown on the Moche archaeological record. Dubbed the Hall of the Moche Imaginary, the walls and pillars of the space depict scenes of a female ruler: a woman on a throne speaking to a bird man, a crowned woman raising her goblet, a crowned woman wielding a scepter and a serpent rattle leading a procession of men carrying textiles. Other paintings found in the hall include a figure with a human body but spider legs carrying a goblet and a whole workshop of women spinning and weaving.
The interior of the throne features another depiction of the female ruler, this time a crowned woman with a rattle shaped like the crescent moon.
Scholars will debate whether the woman painted on the walls of the throne room is human or mythical (a priestess, goddess, or queen). But the physical evidence of the throne, including the erosion to its back support and the recovery of greenstone beads, fine threads, and even human hair, make clear that it was occupied by a real living person—and the evidence all points to a seventh-century woman leader of Pañamarca.
Another major find of this season’s excavation was a new monumental structure on the plaza with yet another previously-unknown iconographic motif: snakes entwined in a pair human legs.
The Hall of the Braided Serpents (Sala de las Serpientes Trenzadas) was also built with wide square pillars. Many of these pillars were arrayed with paintings of intertwining serpents with human legs—a motif not seen elsewhere in Moche art. Other surfaces were decorated with images of warriors, anthropomorphized weapons, and a large monster chasing a man. The Hall of the Braided Serpents underwent multiple renewal events that included copious material offerings—most notably textiles—burning events, the careful capping of floors, and the whitewashing of previously decorated walls. “Perched above the plaza, this hall offered a prominent position—almost like box seats at a theater or stadium—from which to observe the goings-on down below, while it also provided private spaces for its privileged occupants,” explains archaeologist Michele L. Koons of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
As with all the murals at Pañamarca, these will be covered for their protection and not opened to the public. The first murals found in the 1950s began to deteriorate as soon as they were exposed to air, and are now irreparably damaged. At the end of every dig season, the exposed remains are covered with roofs and windbreaks to ensure the preservation of the painted surfaces and adobe brick. Everything they find is documented with watercolors, scans and digital renderings and shared with the world on the Pañamarca Digital website.
Four wolf teeth have been found in a pre-Roman cremation burial of the Venetii people in Padova, northern Italy. The deceased was almost certainly female, based on the traditionally female grave goods (a needle, a short knife used to work textiles rather than for hunting or combat, an awl), and the four canine teeth had been drilled, likely for use as pendants. Archaeologists believe the wolf teeth may have had symbolic meaning beyond just adornment and were worn as amulets.
The eastern necropolis was discovered in 1990 before a new student residence of the University of Padua was built at the location. The site was enormous, more than an acre in area, and archaeologists had to cover a lot of ground in a very short time. More than 320 tombs, most of them cremation burials, from the 9th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D. were found in the necropolis, including the earliest graves of the Venetian people who founded what would become the city of Padua.
The importance of the site would not stop the construction (today it’s a residence and a subterranean parking garage), so in 1991 archaeologists had to pack up hundreds of burials up to 3,000 years old to rescue them from the bulldozer. The Venetii buried their dead in family groups, so burials were tightly packed and overlapping. They were removed in enormous soil blocks (much larger than the typical en bloc excavation), encased in wooden boxes, some reinforced with cement, and transported to a warehouse of the Archaeological Superintendency for the region of Veneto.
The first of the enormous “loaves of earth,” as they are called, were excavated in 1999. After a gap, excavations resumed in 2007 and 2009, but after that there was an even longer hiatus, until 2017. Since then, the necropolis boxes have been excavated on an annual basis, spearheaded by archaeologists from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
So far the archaeologists have found two types of cremation context: a wooden box of which the imprints of the corners are all that remains, and a dolium, a massive earthenware pot used in antiquity as storage vessels. The dolia contain the cremated remains of the deceased and grave goods (ornaments of bronze, iron, bone and amber, ceramic pots, bowls, cups, glasses), many of them very rich.
Because decades have passed since they were originally removed, the silty clay of the soil blocks has become so compact and hard it is almost impermeable to water. It must therefore be excavated dry with only small jets of water directed to the soil alone, avoiding any contact with the ceramics. The ceramics are highly fragmented, and the dry scraping required to excavate the boxes often causes micro-cracks to expand. To ensure the finds stay in place for the meticulous documentation process, very thin Japanese paper is adhered to the fractured points with acrylic resin.
Today, Wednesday, September 25th, the excavation laboratory opens to the public for a one-time-only event to share the extraordinary excavation process and the discoveries with the general public.
You can see the wolf teeth emerge from the giant soil block in this Italian language video at 2:00 and 6:10. You can see the small knife and awl with one of the excavated wolf teeth at 7:35.
Mehmet Emin Sualp spotted glimpses of patterns through the planting holes and reported it to the Elazığ Museum Directorate and the gendarmerie. The museum and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism excavated the field and uncovered a single-piece floor mosaic 904 square feet in area. It depicts a whole bestiary of animals, including lions, mountain goats, ducks, greyhounds, deer, pheasants, wild boars, bears, geese and Anatolian leopards. There are also tree and plant species mixed in with the animals. Geometric patterns — triangles, lozenges, kites, concentric square boxes — border the mosaic extending all the way to the walls.Elazig Governor Numan Hatipoglu described it as one of the largest mosaic pieces discovered in the region, showcasing a vibrant representation of local wildlife and flora. […]
