The History Blog

Armed with modern technology, archaeologists have returned to a Bronze Age tumulus in Brittany, northwestern France, that was already excavated once in the 19th century and was largely destroyed by occupying German forces during World War II.

The Cruguel tumulus is on a hill in the town of Guidel where the Laïta river flows into the Atlantic Ocean. When it was first explored by renown Breton archaeologist Louis Le Pontois in the 1880s, it was still 85 feet in diameter and 18 feet high. It was topped with menhirs capped by a large block of granite. The central tomb was excavated and three bronze daggers and 14 flint arrowheads were recovered from the grave. The German occupiers destroyed it, leveling the mound and building on top of it.

This year, archaeologists returned to the tumulus in the hope that modern technology and archaeological practices might bring to light previously undiscovered information about the mound, maybe even unrecorded menhirs on its periphery. Those latter hopes proved vain, but the team did unearth vertical stone slabs that originally formed the perimeter of the mound. They also discovered two pits containing sherds of pottery decorated with incised lines and a funerary stone coffer from the period the tumulus was constructed.

The excavation also provided a better understanding of the architecture of the funerary monument, made up of successive contributions of soil between which layers of clay are inserted, intended to stabilize and solidify the elevation. These clays were taken nearby, as evidenced by the large extraction pits discovered about twenty meters to the east of the monument. A small stone structure, the function of which has not yet been determined, has also been unearthed at the base of the tumulus.

The archaeologists especially had the good surprise to rediscover the central tomb, fortunately preserved under the German remains. Quadrangular in shape, it measured 4 m long by 2.50 m wide and was hollowed out to nearly 1 m deep. The excavation has shown that the arrangement of blocks that constituted the top had been largely disrupted by the exploration of the XIXth century and the collapse that followed. A perforated block and a cup block (round shapes pitted in the stone) were nevertheless extracted from the filling: their function, perhaps symbolic or aesthetic, still raises questions.

The rest of the study will enrich our knowledge of the first societies of the Bronze Age, where tombs dedicated to a single deceased supplant collective tombs and betray a growing hierarchy.

Fungi found in ancient feces recovered from the Hallstatt salt mines in Austria are the earliest evidence of people eating blue cheese and drinking beer in Iron Age Europe.

The salt mountains of Hallstatt in the Eastern Alps have been mined since at least the 14th century B.C. and mining has been continuous ever since. Excavations have unearthed multiple layers dense with evidence of mining activity during the early Iron Age (800-400 B.C.). Objects include wooden tools, fur, hide, wool and textile fragments, ropes and beautifully preserved human feces. These paleofeces, rapidly desiccated in the dry, perpetually cool and salty air of the underground mines, can be radiocarbon dated and analyzed to discover what people ate, what parasites they had, details about the microflora and fauna of their digestive system.

This study looked at three samples of paleofeces from the Bronze Age and Iron Age layers of the Hallstatt mine, and one sample from the 18th century. Even though the samples had been excavated as far as back as 1983, researchers were able to retrieve DNA and proteins that were almost entirely undamaged thanks to the rapid desiccation of the paleofeces in the salt mine environment.

Analyses found that all four samples came from four individual males. Researchers tested for 15 of the most abundant species found in the guts of modern-day populations. They found 13 of them, 11 of them more prevalent in non-Westernized populations. Microscopic analysis of the dietary components found that the Bronze Age sample was heavy on cereals — barley, spelt, emmer, millet. The Iron Age samples were also cereal-rich, with beans, opium poppy seeds, crab apples, cranberries rounding out the diet. Molecular analysis of DNA and protein biomolecules confirmed the presence of the cereals, seeds and fruit varieties and also revealed the presence of walnuts. The plants were supplemented by beef and pork.

It was one of the Iron Age samples that contained the biggest surprise: a high abundance of DNA and proteins from Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae fungi. The research team confirmed these were not contaminants but are indeed of ancient origin, and were used in deliberate fermentation to produce a non-Roquefort blue cheese and beer. Had the fermentation been spontaneous, there would have been yeast species present in the paleofeces that are not there. Wooden cradles have also been unearthed in the mines that are believed to have been used as cheese strainers.

“The Hallstatt miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry,” [the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies’ Frank] Maixner says.

The findings offer the first evidence that people were already producing blue cheese in Iron Age Europe nearly 2,700 years ago, he adds.

The study has been published in the journal Current Biology and can be read in its entirety here.

The nationally important hoard of votive bronzes including a bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius that fell through the loophole in the Treasure Act and were sold at auction earlier this year have been acquired by the Yorkshire Museum. Discovered in 2020 by two metal detectorists near the village of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, the collection of bronzes includes an equestrian statuette of a local iteration of the god Mars, a knife handle shaped like the forequarters of a horse, a large plumb bob and a finely-modeled bust of Marcus Aurelius six inches high. They date to the late 2nd century.

Most remarkable is the striking bust of Antonine emperor Marcus Aurelius. This would have sat atop a sceptre or priestly staff, a focal point for religious ceremonies. Being the face of the emperor, it is a potent symbol of the Imperial Cult, the empire-wide worship of emperors as divine. Such direct evidence of the imperial cult is exceedingly rare, especially in rural settings like this. In terms of its execution and style the bust is absolutely unique, exceedingly rare and of great national significance in its own right.

The three objects found alongside the bust help to add context to the burial of this spectacular object. The beautifully detailed horse and rider figure, a localised depiction of the god Mars, is of a type that has never been found this far north. The knife handle in the form of a horse, may symbolically represent a sacrificial animal in this context. The plumb bob is a large and fine example of a functional object used in Roman engineering projects. Its inclusion within the hoard is unparalleled in Roman Britain and hints at the focus of this enigmatic ritual being the blessing of an act of landscape engineering.

When the assemblage was sold to an unknown buyer for £185,000 ($260,000) in May 2021, I expressed a forlorn hope that the buyer would turn out to be a museum or a generous donor thereto. It was neither. The buyer was antiquities dealer David Aaron, but a generous donor did materialize to save the day. Richard Beleson of San Francisco, a great friend of the Yorkshire Museum who supported them in their acquisition of the Wold Newton Roman coin hoard in 2017, went to the bat for them again. With additional contributions from the Art Fund and other private donors, the museum was able to secure this exceptional treasure that is so uniquely significant to the history of Yorkshire.

The hoard was discovered in the Ampleforth area of Ryedale district, North Yorkshire, England. Before the discovery of this hoard, the presence of the Romans in this area was little known. This find therefore rewrites the history of our region. The situation of this discovery, with detailed and reliable provenance information, makes the hoard even more significant.

The hoard is on display this week at the Frieze Masters in London. It will then make a permanent move to York where it will be exhibited in the Yorkshire Museum’s Roman collection when the museum reopens in 2022.

Archaeologists have discovered a rare luxury private toilet in the ruins of a 2,700-year-old royal building from the Kingdom of Judah in Jerusalem. The smooth carved limestone rectangle with a purposeful hole in the center was unearthed in an excavation of the Armon Hanatziv Promenade, formerly the residence of the British governors of Palestine, before construction of a new tourist complex.

Only a handful of toilet remains from the First Temple Period have been found in Israel, and most of them have just the toilet seats surviving. This find is exceptional because the seat was discovered inside the original cubicle, an ancient water closet for the most privileged of individuals in an era when permanent toilet facilities (as opposed to commodes or going in a secluded spot outdoors) were communal. Under the hole of the toilet seat was a tank to hold waste. Animals bones and pottery were found inside the tank. Many of the vessels were bowls, so while they may have been discarded as refuse, the preponderance of the bowl form suggests they were used as containers in the bathroom. Deodorant oils to counter the fumes from the septic tank, perhaps?

Archaeologists believe the palace overlooked the Temple Mount was built after the failed Assyrian siege of Jerusalem (701 B.C.) during the reign of King Hezekiah. Two other large-scale royal constructions from around this period have been discovered in Jerusalem, perhaps part of a royal program of reconstruction in the city. The remains of villas and public buildings outside the ancient walls that had stood up to Sennacherib attests to the growth of the city after the Assyrian retreat.

The building and its refined toilet had a short lifespan, alas, destroyed in 586 B.C. when Jerusalem was successfully besieged  by the Neo-Babylonian Empire under King Nebuchadnezzar II. The last king, along with most of the societal elite, were deported to Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzar installed a puppet as nominal king, but the destruction of the Temple, the city and its ruling class meant the demise of the Kingdom of Judah.

Last year excavations unearthed dozens of architectural elements including large column capitals and matching mini-capitals that once topped the palace’s balcony balustrade. The design of the capitals, known as Proto-Aeolian and seen on ancient coins from the period, is characteristic of Kingdom of Judah architecture.

The bones, pottery and night soil recovered from the septic tank will be analyzed to shed new light on First Temple Period diets, parasites and diseases. Residues inside the bowls may answer the question of whether they were used to deodorize or for some other purpose.

A  cist tomb from the Early Cycladic period (2700-2200 B.C.) has been unearthed during sewage treatment works in the village of Nea Styra on the Greek island of Euboea. The tomb was found just two feet below the surface of the road. It is six and a half feet long by one and a half feet wide and made of slabs of local brown slate. Previous road works had disturbed the tomb, removing part of the cover and the slabs of the short sides, but the find was not archaeologically excavated at that time. The long slabs on the south side and the other part of the cover were still in situ.

Three burials were found in successive layers inside the grave. Burial A is located 3.6 feet beneath the modern road. It includes the remains of an adult man in supine position with his left arm bent at the elbow, part of a glass vessel and a few ceramic pieces.

After archaeologists removed the bones of Burial A, they found skeletal remains from Burial B. This individual was also placed in supine position. Next to him was a bronze coin, and at his feet archaeologists unearthed a bronze basket, a bronze tray with decorative perforations around the edge and six glass vessels with conical and spherical bodies.

Burial C emerged under the remains of B, again in supine position. No grave goods were reported.

The grave goods are now being studied and conserved at the Archaeological Museum of Eretria. Archaeologists hope to be able to get a firmer date range from radiocarbon analysis. They will focus on the five glass vessels recovered, because as flukish luck would have it, they are all intact and form a typological unit. Also of particular interest is the bronze basket with its embossed body and loop handle with two pointed decorations crafted of a thin sheet of bronze at the terminal ends. It may shed new light on how copper was utilized to create highly decorated objects in the Early Cycladic Era.

When the artifacts have been researched thoroughly and stabilized, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Euboea plans to display the grave goods in the Archaeological Museum of Karystos, a small local museum with a fine collection of ancient Greek and Roman pottery and sculptures.