Rare Roman window grill found intact in Mérida

Ancient

The ongoing excavation of the Roman House of the Amphitheater in Mérida, Spain, has made another extraordinary discovery. In the apodyterium (the changing room of a Roman bath) of the suburban villa, archaeologists found an intact iron grate that was once mounted in the window. These are very rare finds, but it is the second one to be discovered at the villa. The first was found in the kitchen of the domus 60 years ago.

The apodyterium window grate was part of the exterior wall of the room. It became dislodged when the wall and ceiling collapsed, which is why bricks and tegulae (roof tiles) were found pinned underneath it.

Roman villas had few external windows. They had open interior spaces — atria, peristyle gardens — to bring light and air to the rooms, so most of the windows were in the interior walls. The exterior windows were either very small or barred with grills to prevent break-ins. Few of these grates have survived, with the most notable examples at Herculaneum where they not only survived, but survived in situ, still embedded in the wooden window casings.

Only in the 1st century did glass blowers figure out how to make panes, but glass windows were prohibitively expensive and only affordable to the wealthiest Romans. A more affordable option was lapis specularis, a translucent selenitic gypsum extracted from mines in Spain, Sicily, Asia Minor and North Africa. Lapis specularis could be easily cut to size and split into thin layers, and it held up remarkably well to the elements, as long it didn’t get broken. According to Pliny, the best and clearest lapis specularis mined in sheets up to five feet wide was found in the area around Segóbriga, central Spain.

The House of the Amphitheater’s window grill was consolidated in situ, painted with plaster to keep the bars, corrosion materials and all, from being damaged in transport. It was lifted and moved to the National Museum of Roman Art where it will be cleaned and restored for eventual display.

1,500-year-old Teotihuacan village found in Mexico City

Ancient

The remains of a 1,500-year-old Teotihuacan occupation village have been discovered in the Tlatelolco area of Mexico City’s historic center. Archaeologists with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have unearthed the remains of water channels, tamped and levelled floors, post holes, an artesian well and large numbers of ceramics. Three human burials, two adults and one child, were found containing sets of bowls with an annular base typical of Teotihuacan production. The style of the ceramics date the village to between 450 and 650 A.D., the Classic period of Teotihuacan.

The Mesoamerican metropolis of Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas at its peak of population and urban development in the mid-5th century A.D. Located about 25 miles northeast of modern-day Mexico City, it was the dominant influence, political, economic and cultural, of the region. Archaeologists believe the ancient village discovered in downtown Mexico City was one of several rural settlements that were self-sufficient subsistence farmers, fishers and gatherers under the sphere of economic influence of Teotihuacan.

The first remains of the village were discovered during construction of the Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco apartment complex between 1960 and 1964. The archaeologist in charge of the excavation at that time, Francisco González Rul, hypothesized that it was a village of fishers and gatherers. This has now been confirmed by the new discoveries, but the recent finds indicate a more complex economic structure than subsistence only. They also fished and hunted surplus to their own requirements, as well as producing ceramics, weapons and carved stone, shell, obsidian and flint artifacts.

Built on an islet of Lake Texcoco, the water channels were part of the embankment system that reclaimed land from the lake. The channels were ultimately blocked off, their canals blocked with ceramic vessels, stone objects and sculptures from the Late Aztec III (1440-1521) and Early Colonial (1521-1620) stages. This appears to have been done deliberately, as the objects were covered with a layer of small stone slabs and volcanic rocks. They blocked the channel in what archaeologists believe was an intentional closing ritual.

The village was likely part of Teotihuacan’s supply and trade network that brought in food from the outlying countryside to supply its enormous population (more than 150,000 at its zenith). The settlement also saw later occupation. All told, the excavation revealed remains from six periods: after Teotihuacan’s collapse, there was a Mexica occupation in the Late Postclassic (1338-1521) and Early Colonial periods (1521-1620) and four occupation layers after that (one in the 18th century, one in the 19th and two in the 20th century).

Post-destruction votive deposit found in Agrigento

Ancient

A rich votive deposit of dozens of statuettes, assorted fragments and human bones has been unearthed in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Sicily. Archaeologists believe the deposit dates to the early 4th century B.C. when the city was putting itself back together after being sacked by Carthage.

Founded as the Greek colony of Akragas, Agrigento was routed by the forces of Carthaginian general Himilko in 406 B.C. Agrigento’s residents fled to nearby Gela when Himilko sacked their city, but then he took Gela too. All of the Greek colonies on Sicily fell to Himilko and were made vassals of Carthage. Punic primacy would not last long, however. Timoleon of Corinth defeated Carthage in Sicily and liberated the Greek cities in 399 B.C.

The votive deposit was discovered in an excavation of the northern hill of the 5th century B.C. Doric Temple of Juno in a room in the western section of an ancient housing complex dubbed House VIIb. The deposit was buried just above the 406 B.C. destruction level of the house. The positioning appears deliberate and likely held a ritual significance or symbolism.

There are at least 60 elements in the deposit, including terracotta statuettes of deities, female busts, protomes (decorative reliefs from buildings), oil lamps, small vases and fragments of bronze artifacts. They were mixed with large numbers of bones and buried in one room of the complex. Archaeologists believe the deposit was made after the Akragantines returned to the city. They collected artifacts and human remains left in fragments by the Carthaginian destruction and buried them all together in this room, perhaps because it had been dedicated to a particular cult purpose before the conquest.

Archaeologists will continue to research the find, focusing on the complex stratigraphy connecting the deposit to the living layers and abandonment layers of the house. The recovered artifacts will be conserved and stabilized for eventual display.

Suffragette card game found in Leicestershire cupboard

Modern(ish)

A 114-year-old card game promoting the suffragist cause was discovered in a cupboard in Castle Donington, Leicestershire. The cards are complete and in their original box. The game is entitled “Panko or Votes for Women,” named after Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the movement for women’s suffrage in the UK. It features illustrations of women activists engaged in the struggle for the franchise and of their opponents in government and the legal system oppressing them.

The box labels it “The Great Card Game Suffragists v. Anti-Suffragists” and the suits of the cards declare the two opposing sides. The Suffragist suits are illustrated in the iconic purple and green of the suffrage movement. The Anti-Suffragists cards are black with red accents. The pack of 48 cards consists of four suits of six cards each on each side. The game was played like gin rummy, with all the cards dealt at the beginning and the aim being to collect a complete suit of six. The suits each have their own catch phrase (eg, “Pank, pank, pank,” for the Suffragist suit and “Gaol, gaol, goal” for the Prisons suit on the other side) the player was to shout out when they won.

Designed by Punch political cartoonist Edward Tennyson Reed, Panko was published in 1909 by Peter Gurney. It sold for two shillings, but the ultimate goal was to advocate for the cause in middle class domestic environments where a more militant approach would have been rejected. The game was first advertised for sale in the December 10, 1909 issue of Votes for Women magazine. The pitch read: “Not only is each picture in itself an interesting memento, but the game produces intense excitement without the slightest taint of bitterness.”

The set was found by a Hanson Auctioneers appraiser in a box with other card and board games during a house clearance. None of the other games in the box were worth anything monetarily or historically, but these playing cards are quite rare, found in the collections of only a handful of libraries and institutions. Other than some basic wear and tear from having been played, the cards are in excellent condition, intact with the box and the instructions.

Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers, said: “This game played a part in history. It reflects life and the development of women in society in the 20th century. It was used to help people learn about the suffrage movement at a time when women were being jailed and persecuted for campaigning for the right to vote.

“The game was distributed by the Women’s Social and Political Union and originally sold for two shillings. It was heart-warming to see the suffragettes’ unmistakable colours of purple and green used on the cards. One illustration shows an activist wearing a Votes for Women sash challenging a line of policemen armed with umbrellas. In contrast, anti-suffragettes cards portrayed the stern faces of men opposing the women’s cause.

“One particularly moving illustration depicts a prison warden offering a meal to a hunger striker, the placard above reads ‘Holloway Restaurant’. Emily Pankhurst famously staged a hunger strike while incarcerated in Holloway Prison. She is now regarded as one of the most influential people of the 20th century.

The Holloway Restaurant card also has another cheeky joke on it. Above the platter of food the jailer is offering to the noble hunger striker is the label “Faim de Siècle,” a punny portmanteau of the French word for hunger (“faim”) and the French phrase for the end of the century (“fin de siècle”).

The Panko game will go under the hammer on August 22nd and has a modest pre-sale estimate of £100 to £150. It is likely to sell for 10 times that.

17th c. “vampire” child buried with padlocked toe

Modern(ish)

The remains of a young child buried face down with a triangular padlock under the left foot have been discovered in the same cemetery in Pień, northern Poland, where the woman buried with a sickle over her neck and a padlock on her toe was found last year. The child’s grave is just five feet away from the woman’s.

A triangular padlock was found first loose in the topsoil. The subsequent excavation of the area revealed the grave of a child around 5-7 years old at time of death. The child had been buried face-down as an anti-revenant ritual that would compel the deceased to “bite into the ground,” and make it impossible for him to rise from the grave to harm the living.

Another padlock was found under his left heel, likely shifted to this location with the decomposition of the soft tissues. It would originally have been locked to his toe. This too was a ritual meant to bind him to the grave and prevent his return from the dead. Unusually, the grave was later desecrated and all the bones removed except the legs. The arrangement of the leg bones is how we know the child was buried with his face in the ground.

It’s possible the bones were scattered near the child’s grave. The skeletal remains of three children were found in a pit nearby, and among them was a jaw fragment with a green stain. The woman buried with the sickle over her neck also had a green stain on her palate. The green in the jaw fragment from the child is likely to have been left by a copper coin. Tests of the composition of the stain on the woman’s palate found it contain trace amounts of gold, potassium permanganate and copper, suggesting it was something else entirely, perhaps a treatment for whatever was ailing her.

These types of burials are colloquially referred to as vampire burials, but they have no connection to the vampire legends as we know them today. The folk beliefs that led to deviant burials long predate the bloodsucker-bat legends. At the core of them all is the idea that the person who died differed dangerously from the norm, either in life — their looks, speech, behavior — or in the nature of their illness. Whatever the reason, they were considered flight risks, as it were, from the grave, and ritual precautions were taken to ensure they stayed put.

The woman with the sickle on her neck and the padlocked child were not the only deviant burials found in the Pień cemetery. In the northern section of the cemetery archaeologists unearthed the grave of a pregnant woman who died in the 24th week of her pregnancy. The fetal bones have survived, which is unusual because they are tiny and very prone to decomposition. A large number of stones, some big enough to be considered small boulders, were in the backfill of the grave pit. Such stones have been found deliberately placed in other graves on the neck, chest and by the skull of the dead. Fragments of ceramic vessels were found placed near the heads of two people in nearby graves, and the bottom of the ceramic vessel was found on the foot of an individual buried in another grave.

Archaeologists believe that the cemetery was a dedicated burial ground for people excluded by society. It was not attached to a church and there is no evidence on the historical record that the cemetery was even consecrated ground. These were likely extra-legal burials.

Samples have been taken from the skeletal remains for DNA and stable isotope analyses. These tests may answer questions about the people buried in the cemetery, their health, their appearance, whether they were local or immigrants, whether any of them are related to each other, etc.