Rare 16th c. globe restored and on display

Museums, Renaissance

A rare 16th century globe has been restored and put on display at the Museo Galileo in Florence.

The terrestrial globe was made by Antwerp cartographer Cornelis De Jode in 1594. Most of his surviving oeuvre is a world atlas, the Speculum Orbis Terrae, he published in 1593. It sold terribly at the time, so today there are only a dozen or so copies known. Dedicated to Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg from 1587 until he was deposed, imprisoned and succeeded by his nephew in 1612, this globe is the only surviving globe by De Jode. It was previously known only from a series of cartographical sections now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

Italy’s Ministry of Culture acquired the globe last November for €385,568 ($407,000) on behalf of the Regional Direction of Museums for Tuscany. It had been appeared on the market in 2016 but Italy placed an export ban on it due to its great rarity and historical significance.

It was in dire condition at the time of the sale. The printed paper surface of the globe was badly deteriorated, darked and with several gaps. Its condition was analyzed and assessed for its urgent conservation needs. The non-profit Friends of Florence foundation financed a delicate and complex intervention of cleaning and restoration by the Officina del Restauro in Florence.

The restored globe is now on permanent loan in the Museo Galileo where it will be on display alongside the museum’s important selection of terrestrial and celestial globes.

Unique Scythian bone scepter found in Bulgaria

Ancient

A Scythian scepter carved from animal bone has been discovered in a 5th century B.C. warrior burial in Provadia-Solnitsata, northeastern Bulgaria. Bone scepters have been found before, but they are usually cross-shaped and the design of this one is unique.

The scepter is 15 inches long with a smooth handle made of two sections of bone glued together. It has an ornithomorphic (bird-shaped) head with a hooked beak. From one side it looks like the beak of an eagle, an animal with great ritual significance to the Scythians, but from the other side there’s an anthropomorphic design that makes the beak look like a hat. The lower shaft has a hole suggesting that it was suspended from something. The Scythians were masters of the bone-carving arts, and this scepter is a superlative example of their skill.

The scepter was found in the grave of a warrior that had been opened in antiquity, but not looted. In addition to the bone scepter, archaeologists also found the skeletal remains of a horse, a small dog and a turtle. Although his skull and upper body are missing today, the posture of his body — legs open, one bent — is typical of Scythian burials. A heavily corroded iron knife was also found in the grave. The weapon and horse suggest the deceased may have been a cavalryman, and the scepter is a symbol of command, so he was likely a warlord.

Solnitsata was an ancient town near modern-day Provadia that is the oldest prehistoric town in Europe. The walled fortified settlement existed from 5,600 to 4,350 B.C. It prospered greatly off of salt production. The residents boiled water from a local spring to evaporate the liquid and collect the salt and then traded it throughout the Balkans. Salt was so expensive and valuable because it was essential to food preservation. That’s why the small settlement (population 350) had massive defensive walls built around 4,700 B.C..

The Scythians were latecomers to the area, migrating from the Eurasian steppe to arrive in what is now Bulgaria in the 7th century. When the Scythians first settled the area, they buried their dead in pre-existing burial mounds. The grave of the warrior with the scepter was not in a burial mound, but rather in a settlement mound.

The scepter is being kept in controlled laboratory conditions while it is studied and conserved. When it is ready for exhibition, it will go on display at the historical museum in Provadia.

Exceptional female statue found in Tusculum

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi

Archaeologists from the Spanish School of History and Archaeology of Rome (EEHAR) have unearthed an exceptional marble statue of a female figure at the ancient city of Tusculum 15 miles outside Rome. The statue is life-sized, and is missing its head and some of its arms, but the flawless white Parian marble and the quality of the carving are extraordinary.

The missing parts makes it difficult to identify, but the upper body is draped in a fawn skin, an attribute of followers of Dionysus. This depiction is typically dated to between the mid-1st century B.C. and the mid-1st century A.D. The statue was carved in the round and fine details of the draping, the wet fabric of the chiton clinging to her skin, the workmanship of the fawn skin are superior, comparable to some of the greatest works of antiquity like the Aphrodite Areia found in Epidaurus and now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

Tusculum was an ancient Latin city in the Alban Hills. Its legendary history attributes its founding to mythological Greek heroes (Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe) or their descendants (Latinus Silvius, the fourth great-grandson of Aeneas), but the earliest archaeological evidence suggests it had an established population by the 8th or 7th century B.C. The monumental city walls date to the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., the same period when Tusculum allied itself with Rome against its neighboring Latin tribes.

That alliance was cemented in 381 B.C. when Tusculum became the first municipium cum suffragio, a self-governing city whose citizens had the right to vote and hold public office in Rome. This category was reserved for cities whose populations at every social stratum (not just the governing elites), had demonstrated a strong desire to integrate with the Roman Republic.

In the late Republic, Tusculum became a fashionable location for country villas. The most prominent and wealthy families in Rome built large homes there to flee the heat of the Eternal City in the summer. The remains of than 130 luxury villas and country estates have been documented even though most of the town has not been excavated. They came to dominate Tusculum so thoroughly that the city itself dimmed in importance and became little more than an adjunct to the summer homes of the wealthy. Cicero had a villa there, as did generations of Cato the Elder’s family and the imperial Flavii family.

The statue dates to the period of Tusculum’s heyday as an enclave of Rome’s elite. It was unearthed in the last excavation campaign (October 2022-July 2023) in an area near the forum where a monumental baths complex was built in the Hadrianic period (117-138 A.D.). It was found face-down on a thin layer of painted stucco that originally adorned the walls of the thermal baths.

It was exhibited in public for the first time on Friday at the Aldobrandini Scuderie in Frascati. The exhibition ends Saturday, but it will undergo conservation in public view at the museum.

Oldest baskets in Europe found in Spanish cave

Ancient

Elaborately woven baskets that look like they could have been made yesterday but were actually made 9,500 years ago have been discovered in a cave in southern Spain. These are the oldest surviving baskets in Europe. (The earliest basket known to survive was found in a Dead Sea cave and is about 10,500 years old.) Discovered in the same cave is the earliest dated sandal ever found in Europe.

The baskets were found in the Cueva de los Murciélagos (Cave of the Bats) which is 195 feet deep. Its depth makes it extremely arid, and with humidity levels at almost zero, organic artifacts survive in exceptional condition. They were made by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers out of grasses, still used by local craftsmen today to make baskets, shoes and hats. The Mesolithic basket-makers employed closed twining, a weave with no space between the weft elements that creates a tight, high-quality basket. They also made geometric patterns using dyed fibers.

The baskets were left as grave goods. When the cave was first discovered by galena (lead ore) miners in the 19th century, they found dozens of bodies, partially mummified in the arid environment, interred with the baskets, stone tools and boar’s teeth. Unfortunately the finds were not treated with respect back then. The miners used the mummified remains and some of the woven items to fuel their boilers. Later excavations unearthed additional mummified bodies buried alongside baskets, sandals and tools.

A recent study analyzed 76 of the artifacts recovered from the Cave of the Bats that are now in the collection of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional of Madrid. Researchers found that 65 of the objects were made with fibers of the flat-leaved esparto grass. Radiocarbon dating divided the artifacts into two distinct periods: the Mesolithic (7950-7360 B.C.) and the Neolithic (4370-3740 B.C.).

After the Mesolithic phase, the cave was unused for 2,000 years. Then Early Neolithic farmers picked up where the hunter-gatherers had left off, weaving esparto grass with more sophisticated and diverse techniques to make a wide variety of objects, including cords, baskets, sandals, mats and bags. Wear analysis of a wooden mallet found in the cave indicates it was used to crush esparato grass which would have made it softer and more flexible and therefore more comfortable for use in things like the soles of sandals, for example.

Some of the sandals show evidence of wear while others were in pristine, unused condition. Archaeologists believe some of the deceased were buried with the sandals they had used in life, while others had shoes made specifically for burial.

The study has been published in the journal Science Advances and can be read here.

Carver of runes on Jelling Stone identified

Medieval

Researchers at the National Museum of Denmark have identified the carver of the runes on the iconic Jelling Stone. His name was Ravnunge-Tue and his boss was Queen Thyra of Jelling (d. 958 A.D.), wife of King of Denmark Gorm the Old (d. 958-9) and mother of Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark and Norway (ca. 911 – 985 A.D.).

The large Jelling Stone has been dubbed Denmark’s birth/baptismal certificate because the runic inscription uses the name “Denmark” (“Danmǫrk” in Old Norse) and refers to its conversion to Chritianity. Harald Bluetooth had it carved as a memorial monument for his parents, but added his own credits at the end, describing himself as “that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.”

The smaller of the Jelling stones is the earlier of the two. It was erected by Gorm the Old as a memorial to Thyra whom he lovingly describes as “Denmark’s adornment.”

3D scans of runestones enable researchers to gain a close-up view of traces of the carving process. This means they can tell the carving technique of the different rune stones apart. Every experienced stonemason holds his chisel at a certain angle and strikes the hammer with a specific force: this is visible in the angle of the traces of the carving and the distance between them. The motor function developed in such work is individual.

The carving technique on the large Jelling Stone matches that of the runes on the Læborg Stone found in a field near Læborg Church 20 miles southwest of Jelling. The author helpfully signed the inscription on the Læborg Stone. It reads: “Ravnunge-Tue carved these runes in memory of Thyra, his queen.” He also gave himself and his two collaborators credit on the Bække 1 runestone found a mile from Bække Church. That inscription reads: “Ravnunge-Tue and Fundin and Gnyple, these three made Thyra’s mound.”

In total, seven of the runestones in Jutland were 3D scanned for this project: the two Jelling stones, the two Bække stones, the Læborg stone, the Home stone and the Randbøl stone. The runes on the smaller Jelling Stone were too worn for the signature chiseling techniques to be detectable. It’s possible Ravnunge-Tue carved that one too.

This identification answers a long-standing question about whether the Queen Thyra mentioned on the Jelling Stones was the same person as the Thyra mentioned on the Læborg Stone. The fact that Thyra and Gorm’s rune carver made the runes on the large Jelling Stone as well as the Læborg runes strongly suggests this was the same queen, not two people who happened to share a popular name. That means Queen Thyra was on at least four rune stones, more runic mentions than anyone else in Viking era Denmark, twice the number of mentions her husband and son got.

“This means that Queen Thyra was far more important than we previously assumed. She probably came from a nobler, older family than Gorm the Old, whom we usually refer to as the first King of Denmark. This is extremely interesting when it comes to understanding the power structure and the genesis of Denmark as a nation,” says [Denmark National Museum runologist] Lisbeth Imer.

All four rune stones that mention Thyra are located in Southern Jutland, implying that her power was based in this area, while Gorm the Old may have come from elsewhere.