The History Blog

Archaeologists excavating an ancient burial mound in Habikino, Osaka Prefecture, southern Japan, have discovered the remains of the tallest haniwa statue ever found. Haniwa statues are large, hollow funerary markers typically made of unglazed clay that topped the characteristic tomb mounds of the Kofun Period (ca. 250-538 A.D.) in Japan. Wooden examples are extremely rare. This one is a towering 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) tall, three feet more than the second tallest. Just under 30 inches wide at the widest point, which makes it not just the tallest, but also one of the largest overall.

The wooden haniwa was unearthed from the moat surrounding the Minegazuka Kofun, a keyhole-shaped burial mound 315 feet long that dates to the late 5th century. It is part of the Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group, 49 Kofun Period tumuli that have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the variety and richness of material from 3rd to 6th century Japan.

The statue is an Iwami-style haniwa, which “has only been found at 15 kofun tumuli in Japan so far,” according to an official of the education board.

“The haniwa is a very rare artifact as it is made of kōyamaki (Japanese umbrella pine), which was a type of wood favored by people in power at the time,” the official said. […]

“Wooden haniwa made out of kōyamaki, which can be logged in only a few areas in Japan, have only been found from kofun tumuli in the Kinki region and are extremely few in number,” said Hiroaki Suzuki of the Nara Prefectural Government’s cultural property preservation division, who is familiar with wooden haniwa.

The earliest haniwa were cylindrical, jar or bell-shaped, made by stacking coils of clay. In the early 4th century, house-shaped haniwa developed and were placed on top of kofun along with cylindrical ones. By the middle of the 5th century, figural forms emerged. Haniwa shaped like objects (swords, shields, quivers, parasols) people (priests, warriors, maidens) and animals (horses, dogs, boars, ducks) were arrayed in lines or groups around the edges of the mounds, likely depicting ritual scenarios. Haniwa are important sources of Kofun period clothing, hairstyling, weapons, tools and architecture.

A wall relief featuring a man holding his phallus in one hand while two leopards look on is the earliest narrative scene ever found. It was discovered in Sayburc, southeastern Turkey, and dates to the earlier part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (10,000 – 6500 B.C.).

The five-figure wall relief depicts a scene with humans and animals in action. In the center, a man holds his penis in his right hand. He is carved in high relief, the only figure on the wall to stand out in three dimensions; the rest are flat. He is flanked by leopards with open mouths that face him. On the west side of the relief are the figures of a man and a bull. The man has his back to the man with the leopards and is holding either a rattle or a snake. The bull is stylized, almost Cubist in concept: shown from the profile like the leopards, but with the head and horns seen from above.

The figures are captured in movement and relating to each other, there is a cohesive theme and a story being told. Other reliefs from this time have human and animal figures, but without a connecting narrative through-line. In other words, this one has a plot.

Archaeologists discovered the relief in a rescue excavation under a modern home in the village of Sayburc.
Sayburc is a very modern village built in 1949. The region is replete with prehistoric sites that include the world’s oldest megalithic complexes, Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. ( c. 9500 B.C.). These sites and 15 others found in this remote, arid part of Anatolia are of incalculable archaeological significance as some of the oldest settlements/religious complexes in the world. The builders were still hunter-gatherers when the megaliths went up. They built homes and communal buildings and settled down there, leaving behind the nomadic lifestyle, but they had not yet transitioned to farming and livestock domestication.

These sites are renown for the hundreds of T-shaped obelisks carved with figures of wild animals that have been discovered there. In 2021, Sanlıurfa Archeology Museum received reports of obelisk parts being re-used in Sayburc to make garden walls. Archaeologists examined the walls and confirmed they were indeed Neolithic stelae. An excavation ensued. Under two modern homes, archaeologists unearthed a circular pit building carved into the limestone bedrock. Along a perimeter wall 36 feet long, the team discovered a bench formed by the bedrock. It is about three feet high and two feet wide. The relief was carved on the inner face of the bench.

In terms of technique and craftsmanship, the flat relief figures are also comparable to other Pre-Pottery Neolithic images in the region. The Sayburç reliefs, however, differ in that the figures form a narrative, with the two individual scenes appearing to be related to one another. This human/animal relationship is emphasised by the interpretation of the T-shaped pillars in Göbeklitepe, which depict stylised humans alongside animal figures (Verhoeven Reference Verhoven2002; Schmidt Reference Schmidt2006a, Reference Schmidt2006b, Reference Schmidt and Yalcin2013). This relationship is also central in the depiction of human figures carrying animals on their backs found at Karahantepe and in the composite sculptures from Nevali Çori, where humans and animals are placed on top of one another. At Sayburç, however, this relationship is presented in a horizontal orientation, creating a different effect. By being represented on the same level, the comparable stature of humans and animals at Sayburç suggests a newly recognised dimension in the narratives of Pre-Pottery Neolithic people. The figures were undoubtedly characters worthy of description. The fact that they are depicted together in a progressing scene, however, suggests that one or more related events or stories are being told.

An excavation of a Gallo-Roman sanctuary in the village of Saint-Just-en-Chaussée in northern France has revealed a series of vast enclosures, dwellings, offerings and burials that sheds new light on the religious practices of Belgian Gaul before and after the Roman conquest. Some parts of the sanctuary were excavated in 1994-5, but a thorough, systematic investigation of the site only took place starting in 2007 in advance of development. More than 2.5 hectares were excavated, but the sanctuary extends beyond that by several more hectares.

The sanctuary was built during the Second Iron Age (450-50 B.C.) and artifacts point to it having been in active use from the 1st century B.C. until the 3rd century A.D. It was on the northern slope of plateau that dominated the plain below. The builders made it dominate even more by digging a huge enclosure ditch 10 feet wide and five feet deep and using the soil to build a high embankment. The perimeter ditch was filled with animal remains — pigs, horses, oxen, sheep, goats, cows — that were sacrificed and in some cases consumed in ritual banquets. The skeletal remains of horses were placed in the ditch after the bodies had begun the process of decomposition elsewhere. The skulls of cattle, on the other hand, had been exposed to the elements for a long time before being deposited.

Within the perimeter enclosure are several more enclosures surrounded by ditches. It seems these enclosures were dedicated to different practices as each ditch contained different kinds of offerings. The ditches on the west of the site contained weapons and armature. Elements from eight shields, including handles, bosses and orles (the border around the edge of a shield) were unearthed there. They bore of evidence of having been deliberately damaged before deposition. Archaeologists also unearthed three Port-type helmets (a sort of round beanie shape with cheek flaps forged from a single sheet of iron), an incredible jackpot considering there are only around 10 known to exist in total.

An unprecedented sixty pieces of plate armor made from riveted sheet iron were discovered in the ditches, including a segmented cuirass, forearm, upper arm and shoulder protection. The corrosion materials have some organic remains trapped inside them that will be analyzed to identify whether they were leather, linen, felt, etc. fittings. Whether they saw battle is not evident on the arms, but it’s likely they were collected from a battlefield, then ritually broken (flattened, cut, torn, struck) and scattered into the ditches. Archaeologists believe from the distribution of the objects that elements that when in use would have been used together were deliberately separated from each other.

Then there was the dining area. The team discovered four pits from the middle of the 1st century B.C. that had been dug into the soil. These proved to be in-ground benches with a table about three feet wide between them. The table had a fireplace built into it and the benches were lined with wood for comfort. There was sitting room for about 50 people. Chemical and soil analysis found copious spilled wine, fatty meats from non-ruminants and the remains of a pancake, so this was likely to have been a banquet site.

The human burials also appear to be ritual deposits, both as primary burials (individuals were only buried once where they were found) and secondary burials (originally buried somewhere else and the remains moved after decomposition). The excavation unearthed eight primary burials. The deceased were placed in a seated position inside round pits. They were propped against the sides of the pits ; six of them had their right lower legs bent. All of their skulls were missing, perhaps destroyed by agricultural activity as it is certain the bodies were intact when they were deposited. The pit was not filled; decomposition happened in the open.

In addition to the articulated interred remains, 899 bone fragments from about 15 individuals were found in some of the pits and ditches at the site. They had been deliberately crushed. Evidence of blows and cuts have been found on some of the fragments, including on the skulls which may have been left behind when people removed the face of the deceased to make a mask out of it. (Yes, this was a thing in Belgian Gaul at the time.) The bone fragments date to between the beginning of the 2nd and the end of the 1st century B.C.

What differentiates this site from sanctuaries known in Belgian Gaul is the distribution of the remains, according to their nature, in space. In the ditch where the animal bones are, there is little or no metal, conversely where the iron objects are concentrated, there are only a few bones. The distribution of human deposits also shows differences, on the one hand burials of adults in a seated position, bone remains testifying to work on the cranial boxes, others deliberately crushed, heated, and on the other limbs which were disarticulated and defleshed.

A 7th century burial discovered in the Northamptonshire village of Harpole contains a gold and gemstone necklace that is the richest ever discovered from the period.

Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) archaeologists were engaged to excavate a site before construction of a housing development. It didn’t seem at first glance like the site would have a great deal of archaeological material to offer. There was no necropolis known in the area, no church. The only archaeological find of any significance ever made in Harpole was a Roman mosaic from a villa found in the mid-19th century in another part of town, and that was removed a hundred years ago.

Then, on the last day of the eight-week excavation, lead archaeologist Levente Bence Balázs was sorting through what he thought was a garbage pit when he came across some teeth. Then he saw the glitter of gold from what proved to be the rectangular garnet-inlaid central pendant of an ornate gold necklace. In total there were 30 pendants and beads on this one necklace. They were made of gold, garnets, colored glass, other semi-precious stones and Roman gold coins repurposed as pendants.

The necklace turned out to be part of the bed burial of a high-status individual who had died between 630 and 670 A.D. The bones have long since disintegrated, but the necklace is evidence that the deceased was female, as is the bed burial itself, a funerary practice almost exclusively reserved for elite women in the Saxon period. She was not wearing the necklace when she was buried. It was placed next to her on the bed.

Two pots were buried on either side of her lower legs. They contain an organic residue, the first such pot with analyzable contents found. Another artifact was removed in a soil block for excavation in laboratory conditions, and an X-ray revealed it is a large, elaborately decorated silver cross mounted on wood placed face-down. The cross features never-before-seen depictions of oval human faces made of silver with blue glass eyes.

Few of these burial sites date back earlier than the 7th century AD, when burials of high-status men were more common, and as Christianity took root, later graves rarely featured valuable objects because being buried with ornate jewelry, such as the necklace, was frowned upon by the early Christian Church, said Lyn Blackmore, a senior finds specialist at MOLA.

“The Harpole Treasure, it’s not the richest (bed burial) in terms of the number of artifacts but it is the richest in terms of investment of wealth … and it has the highest amount of gold and religious symbolism,” she said at a news briefing. […]

Organic matter found in the grave is thought to contain fragments of feathers and textiles like leather, and further study should uncover the nature of the bed burial and whether it had a cover or canopy. The two pots were Frankish in style, Blackmore said, suggesting they came from what is now France or Belgium. The archaeologists hope molecular analysis will allow them to identify the residue in the pots; to date, their analysis has ruled out myrrh.

The woman buried in this exceptional grave was a leader in an early Christian community during the short transitional period between pagan burials with all their grave goods and the burials of established Christianity which explicitly eschewed grave goods. She was wealthy and powerful, likely born to a prominent family and held an important religious position like an abbess.