Only known lorica squamata armor reassembled

Ancient

The only known surviving Roman lorica squamata armor, discovered in a 2020 excavation at the ancient town of Satala in northeastern Turkey, has been reassembled. It dates to the Late Roman period (5th century A.D.) and is in remarkably intact condition. Lorica squamata was made of small metal scales connected with wire into horizontal rows and then sewn to a leather or fabric tunic. Individual scales are not uncommon finds, but this is the first nearly complete set ever discovered.

 Reassembled lorica squamata, front. Photo courtesy Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Türkiye.

The ancient city of Satala became part of the Roman province of Armenia Minor during the reign of Vespasian (69-79 A.D.). Its location just north of the Euphrates near the Silk Road made it an important center for commerce and for the military defense of the eastern border of the Roman Empire. Under Trajan, who visited in person in 115 A.D. to receive the tribute of local princes, the Legio XV Apollinaris was garrisoned in Satala and a large permanent camp built. It would house legionaries continuously until the 5th century.

Today, the castrum of the 15th Legion in Satala is the only surviving permanent Roman military camp on the eastern border of the Roman Empire. Excavations have been ongoing since 2017. The lorica squamata was discovered in the 2020 excavation of the Roman castrum. The iron armor was removed in a soil block so it could be excavated in laboratory conditions to preserve even the smallest fragments.

X-ray and micro CT imagining revealed the armor inside was almost complete. In 2021, conservators at the Erzurum Restoration and Conservation Regional Laboratory began the painstaking process of putting the pieces back together in their original configuration. This includes three sections of chain mail as well as the overlapping scales of the lorica squamata. They are at about waist level and may have helped mitigate some of the weaknesses of the scale armor: its heaviness and limited flexibility. Chain mail (lorica hamata) was more expensive to make and required specialists to repair, unlike the squamata which could be patched up relatively easily by the legionaries themselves. The presence of chain mail elements in this armor indicates it may have belonged to an officer.

This video shows some of the process of excavation, cleaning and reassembly done by conservators: 

Oldest wine in the world found in Spain

Ancient

In 2019, a glass cinerary urn containing a reddish liquid was discovered in a 1st century Roman mausoleum in Carmona, southern Spain. Liquids don’t usually stay liquid for thousands of years — if they survive in any form it’s as residue absorbed by the vessel — so the discovery was exceptional. Now a study of the liquid has determined that the liquid is white wine, making it the oldest wine in the world.

The mausoleum was discovered under a house in Carmona during renovations. Likely a family tomb, the vaulted enclosure had eight loculi (funerary niches) in the wall. Six of them contained urns with cremation remains and a few grave goods. Loculus 8 contained a glass cinerary urn with M-shaped handles inside a lead case with a lid. The urn held cremated bone remains, a gold ring carved with an image of two-faced Janus, four metal objects that may have been the feet of the bed on which he was cremated and was full to the brim with more than a gallon of reddish liquid.

Archaeologists were able to exclude the possibility that the liquid had filled the urn from a flood or leak or condensation. There was no spillover, no evidence of water penetration anywhere else in the tomb and the urn in the neighboring niche, Loculus 7, which was under the exact same conditions as Loculus 8, was dry. Because wine was an important part of religious rituals in ancient Roman culture, including in funerary offerings, archaeologists had reason to believe the reddish liquid might be wine or the remains thereof, placed in the urn to accompany the deceased to the underworld.

Researchers from the University of Córdoba analyzed samples of the liquid to determine its composition. They found that it had a PH 7.5, close to neutral, and contained biomarkers that are exclusive to wine. High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) identified seven wine polyphenols all of which matched those in modern wines produced in this area of Andalucía, including dessert wines from Montilla-Moriles, sherry-type wines from Jerez, and manzanilla from Sanlúcar.

They then used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the chemical elements in the mineral salts of the wine. The lack of syringic acid, a polyphenol found when the pigment in red wine decomposes, and the mineral salt profile confirmed that it was white wine. The findings are supported by local mosaics depicting people trampling white grapes.

The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and can be read in its entirety here.

Votive altar dedicated to Basque deity found in medieval well

Ancient, Medieval

An excavation of a medieval monastery on Mount Arriaundi, northern Spain, has unearthed a Roman-era votive altar inscribed with a dedication to the Basque deity Larrahe. The altar dates to the 1st century A.D. and is one of only three altars found in Spain with a dedication to Larrahe. It is the only one of the three to have been recovered from an archaeological excavation.

Located five miles northwest of Pamplona in the Gulina river valley near the tiny town of Larunbe, Mount Arriaundi reaches 3100 feet of elevation. From the summit you can see the entire Pamplona Basin and that prime viewing spot is easily defended thanks to an unscalable promontory on the south side. Arriaundi was occupied from the Roman era through the Middle Ages and into the Modern era almost continuously. There was a Roman presence in the Pamplona Basin since the Sertorian War in the 1st century B.C. In the 1st century A.D., the major communication routes were built It overlooked an important road to Pamplona from the Roman era onward, and a monastery dedicated to Saint Stephen was built there in the 11th century.

For ten years, archaeologists and seasonal volunteers have been excavating the summit to uncover the remains of the medieval monastery whose location was lost over the centuries. The excavations have revealed the monastery’s rectangular floorplan with three semicircular apses one end. In 2022, they discovered the opening of a medieval well in the floor of a walled room behind the right apses. Inside the well, they found the stone altar. The presence of a votive altar is evidence that cult worship took place on Arriaundi in the 1st century. The altar would originally have been standing. It was thrown or placed in the well with the inscription facing downwards.

The inscription reads:
VAL(eria) V[i]
TEL.LA
M(erito?) LA R
A HE VO(tum)
L(ibens) S(olvit)

This is a standard formula for votive altars that translates to: “Valeria Vitella fulfills her vow to Larrahe freely and deservedly.”

Although archaeological materials from the Roman period such as ceramic fragments, sandal studs and coins have been documented in isolation at the Arriaundi site, the discovery of the altar provides significant advances on the beliefs of the Basques , the area of ​​worship of the deity Larrahe. and the syncretism between the Roman and Basque worlds.

The name of this indigenous god or goddess is only attested in three other altars from the Basque territory, located in the Arga basin and its tributary the Salado River: Muruzabal de Andión (Mendigorria, ancient Andelo), Irujo and Riezu. That of Larunbe is exceptional since it is the piece that has appeared further north and at a higher altitude, and the only one recovered in the context of archaeological intervention . This expands the scope of influence hitherto known for this divinity.

It is therefore an evidently Basque deity, since it has a final part, written -he , which we can probably interpret as the form of the Basque dative, that is, it marks who it is dedicated to: the deity Larra . The Basque name, with its connection to current Basque, leads us to interpret it as a deity related to the field or agricultural territory.

The Larunbe altar extends the territorial range of the written evidence of deities and the Basque language further north. The altar’s find site is on the limits of what could be the Basque heritage territory and its (probably Vardulo) neighbors. The testimony of the altar delimits this range a little more and points us to this area of ​​worship of the Basque divinity at the end of the 1st century AD. It is one more testimony that helps to delve deeper into the origins and evolution of Vasconic languages and Basque.

Celtic fertility figurine goes under the hammer

Ancient

A Celtic bronze fertility figurine discovered in Little Chishill, Cambridgeshire, in 2018 is going under the hammer. Metal detectorist Bob Jemmett found it during a rally in a freshly plowed field and reported it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Experts identified it as a Celtic fertility figure from the 1st century A.D.

The cast copper-alloy figure is 38 mm (1.5 inches) high and 12.53mm (.5 inches) and is a stylized depiction of a standing male figure with a prominent phallus, nubs for arms, an elongated torso and short legs. His head is large and skull-like with pits as eyes, a button nose and a wide groove as a mouth with vertical lines for teeth. The shape of the head is mushroomed-shaped with an extended rounded back and jutting chin. On the back is a circular loop that was used to suspend it or mount. The loop is almost worn through on one side, indicating it may have hung from something for a significant length of time, but it is too low on the back to have been a pendant from a necklace.

The only known comparable figurine was found in 2014 in Sussex, but there are marked differences. The Sussex example has no facial features at all, the arms are waist-length and the phallus is small and flaccid. There is no exact parallel known, and neither this figurine nor the Sussex one were excavated in archaeological conditions. Interestingly, it does have several notable features in common with the Cerne Abbas Giant, the hillside chalk figure in Dorset, namely the erect phallus and the shape of the eyes, nose and mouth.

The Little Chishill figurine was immediately popular. The rally organizers used him as a logo in promotional material and that spread the word of the find among metal detectorists far and wide. Jemmett named him Nobby and kept him in his pocket at all times (a choice the Romans would certainly have approved of). He has decided to sell him now spurred by a recent house burglary.

Nobby goes under the hammer at Noonans on June 20th. The pre-sale estimate is £1,000–£1,500 ($1,270-$1,900).

800-year-old wood water reclamation structure found in Germany

Medieval

Archaeologists excavating a planned construction site in the historic center of Wiedenbrück unearthed a large amount of wood arranged in a purposeful fashion, likely intended to reclaim land adjacent to a waterway. The wet soil near a waterway had preserved the small logs and branches, and also preserved pottery, animal bones and leather shoe soles. The pottery dates it to the 13th century.

The wooden stakes were laid in two or three rows know as fascines, used to reinforce sloping terrain like a kind of retaining wall. Worked stakes and plain branches run east-west with willow rods woven in between them. South of the rows, thin birch twigs were laid flat on the ground to help secure the subsoil. Archaeologists believe its positioning indicates the network was used to prevent water penetration.

A small town in northwestern Germany’s Westphalia region, Wiedenbrück grew around a church built there in the late 8th century. The earliest archaeological remains in Wiedenbrück are from a basilica built after 900 and within 50 years of that, Wiedenbrück was part of the territory of the Bishopric of Osnabrück, with market and mint rights granted to the bishop by the king of East Francia and future Holy Roman Emperor Otto I. The oldest surviving coins on the archaeological record, however, date to 1230, almost 300 years after the mint rights were granted, around the same time as the wood structure was built.

For the history of the town of Wiedenbrück, the excavation findings open a window into the exciting period of growth around 800 years ago: “The elaborate wooden construction was probably built during the construction of the new town shortly before the middle of the 13th century in order to make use of a peaty depression east of an old arm of the Ems that had always been unsuitable for settlement,” explains Sven Spiong, head of the Bielefeld branch. “Such medieval land reclamation or densification measures in towns can be observed again and again, recently in Minden or Rietberg, for example. When the town grew, previously unused areas were prepared as building land.”

The continued use of the land along the waterway was demonstrated by the embankments that covered the entire structure in the 14th or 15th century, thereby raising the land and making it drier. Finally, the final settlement of the site is evidenced by posts up to two meters long that were driven through the older embankment and the wooden structure underneath. One of these posts turned out to be a reused, slightly charred half-timbered beam. Scientific research is now intended to clarify whether these posts could be part of the first written record of development on the site from around 1500.