10th c. amulet with early Cyrillic inscription found in Bulgaria

A lead plate amulet discovered in the medieval fortress of Balak Dere near the village of Huhla, in southern Bulgaria, bears one of the earliest known inscriptions in Cyrillic. The amulet was unearthed last autumn in a layer with artifacts dating to the first half of the 10th century. Epigraphic analysis of the inscription confirms the date based on the archaic style of lettering.

It was found folded in half and in dire need of cleaning. The inscription was not initially visible to the naked eye. The photographer documenting the find spotted the writing first, and only after an cleaning and conservation could researchers begin to decipher the inscriptions. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTΙ) photography was used to make out the hard-to-read lettering.

There are seven rows of text on the inside of the folded rectangular plate and four rows on the outside. They contain prayers for the protection of named individuals. The plate was worn as a pendant to protect the wearer.

It was believed that such apotropaic amulets protected their owner from the evil eye, magic spells and disease. Around 50-60 such 10th century artefacts found in Northeastern Bulgaria have so far been studied, but the find in Balak Dere is unique, with no equivalent so far, researchers say.

“The difference is that what we have here is a supplication, even the names of the supplicants are known – Nikola and Pavel,” [excavation leader] Ivaylo Kanev explains. “They are asking St. Dimitar to intercede with God on their behalf and protect them from such-and-such calamities, as, the authors say, and I will quote the last line which is very canonical and astonishing, because we have never seen anything like it before: “…wash his face with grace, exonerate the shame, heal, oh, Saint, because His is the glory, and the honour, and the state, now and forever, Amin!” Very well structured, like a canon, there are no simple wishes here. That is the other novelty.”

Recent excavations at the hilltop site have uncovered evidence that the fortress was in use off and on from the 4th until the early 13th centuries. It was part of a system of fortresses built in the middle of the 4th century to defend the imperial capital of Constantinople. It was burned down at the end of the 5th century but quickly rebuilt.

It was destroyed again by the Avars in the early 7th century and was only reoccupied in the 10th century when troops of Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I the Great (r. 893-927) used it during the king’s wars against the Byzantine Empire. What went around came around in the 12th century when the troops of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081-1118) occupied the fortress. The site was permanently abandoned in the first quarter of the 13th century.

The archaeological layer the lead plate amulet was found in spurred archaeologists to compare the inscription to Cyrillic writing from Tsar Simeon’s rule. Cyrillic was developed in the 890s at the Preslav Literary School in the Bulgarian capital of Pliska. The earliest dateable Cyrillic inscriptions on the record have been found there, with the earliest dating to 921. Simeon’s Bulgarian troops were at Balak Dere between 916 and 927, so this amulet may be THE earliest known Cyrillic inscription, not just one of the earliest.

2,700-year-old petroglyphs found on mossy rock in Sweden

Archaeologists have discovered a group of late Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs hidden under a thick covering of moss in Bohuslän, southwestern Sweden. Forty figures, including 13 ships, nine horses, seven people and four chariots, cover an area fifty feet wide. It is the largest find of Bronze Age petroglyphs made so far in this century.

The rock was found on pastureland at a farm in the parish of Kville. When the figures were carved 2,700 years ago, the site, now 40 feet above sea level, was on the coastline. The rock was on an island and was partially submerged. The artists must have stood on boats to carve the artwork just above the waterline. The petroglyphs would have been highly visible in the seascape.

Some of the individual carvings are notably large. One of the ships is 6.5 feet wide; one of the humans is more than three feet tall. The engravings are deeply carved, exposing the white rock and standing in sharp contrast to the grey of the background, long-since darkened to a charcoal color by the cyanobacteria in the sea water.

Archaeologists from the Foundation for Documentation of Bohuslän Rock Carvings spotted a small piece of one of the ships peering out from the thick moss cover. When they removed the moss, they found a wealth of other petroglyphs carved into the nearly vertical surface of the stone. That’s an unusual alignment; usually the petroglyphs were engraved on flatter slabs that the artists could easily climb and stand on to carve.

This orientation gave archaeologists the ability to date the work with more precision than is usually possible. Because we know what sea level was at different periods, the rock art cannot have been carved before the 8th century B.C. when the stone emerged from the lowering waters. If it was carved after the 7th century, the artists would have had to use ladders to reach the rock face, and carving in straight lines for meters while on a ladder/platform is prohibitively challenging, if not impossible.

The province of Bohuslän on the rocky coast of southwestern Sweden consists of more than 8000 islands and islets. More than 1,500 rock art sites, the largest concentration of Bronze Age rock art in Scandinavia, have been documented there, and that is a fraction of the estimated total. Historically most of the focus has been on the art found on the more grand cliffs and outcroppings as documenting all of the rock carvings was deemed an impossible goal. The Foundation for Documentation of Bohuslän Rock Carvings has been working for more than 20 years to seek out previously unknown petroglyphs and to document them in a systematic way.

Unique relief found in Roman fort in Spain

A carved relief of a face, a horn of plenty and a phallus has been discovered at the Tossal de La Cala archaeological site in modern-day Benidorm on southeastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Dating to the 1st century B.C., the relief is unique with no known parallels in any of the territories occupied by Rome in the Republican era.

The three elements of the relief cover a small area of 57×42 cm (22×16.5 inches). A section on the upper right appears to missing, suggesting it may have been larger originally.

The relief was discovered in January 2020 when it was accidentally exposed by heavy rains. Archaeologists reported it to municipal authorities emphasizing its “exceptional historical significance” and the urgent need to keep the find under wraps for its own protection. They have been working ever since to figure out how best to display this archaeological treasure in a secure manner without removing it from its context. There’s a plan in place now to exhibit it in situ in safe and accessible conditions within the next few months.

Tossal de La Cala was a Roman castellum (military fort) built on the hilltop overlooking the coast by renegade Roman general Quintus Sertorius in 77 B.C. Sertorius and his Iberian allies rebelled against Rome in the Sertorian War (80–72 B.C.). It was one of a network of forts constructed by Sertorius on steep cliffs and in barely accessible coves along the coastline of the Alicante region. They were lookout stations more than heavily garrisoned forts, intended to monitor enemy naval movements.
The foundations and floor plan of the castellum are the only visible remains of the fort at the top of the promontory today.

Pre-Hispanic metal artifact assemblage found in Peru

Archaeologists excavating the Ñusta Hispana archaeological site in Peru’s Vilcabamba district have discovered a group of 38 pre-Hispanic metal artifacts. Four ceremonial vessels, one arm-ring, four bracelets, two ceremonial knives, 18 pendants from a pectoral, a folded pectoral, a headband, six bowls and a headdress were unearthed next to a retaining wall at the foot of the second platform of the Yurac Rumi (“White Rock”), a monumental sculpted rock shrine sacred to the Inca that was used in religious celebrations.

The elaborate pectoral with its trapezoidal pendants, the ceremonial vessels known as aquillas (gifts from the Inca monarchs to loyal courtiers, often interred with nobles as funerary offerings) and other rich furnishings were the personal attire of someone of the Cusco region great importance in Inca society. The culture that produced them is currently unknown.

The objects are in good condition, and archaeologists with the Decentralized Directorate of Culture (DDC) of recovered the vessels intact with the soil still inside of them so that it can be studied for trace materials and organic remains to help determine their origins and the archaeological context of their burial.

Maritza Rosa Candia, director of Culture, confirmed that the pieces will undergo a preventive conservation process in the Office of Sample Elements and Collections of the DDC, as well as analysis in the physical-chemical laboratory for their proper care.

“The specialists are going to carry out the corresponding studies such as the chemical composition of the metal or alloy that they present, the iconography, dating, uses and other aspects to determine their origin and provenance,” he said.

Meanwhile, the excavation of the site is scheduled to continue for another three months, so more artifacts may be found before the work is done.

Full-size 3D reconstruction of Titanic created

The first full-sized 3D reconstruction of the wreck of Titanic has been released, showing the ship in its entirety without the distortion of the water. The view was created by stitching together more than 700,000 scans of the site taken last year by deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd. They used remotely operated submersibles to capture images of the ship and debris field from every angle and covering every square inch of the vast site. The scans show everything from the giant stern and bow sections to individual shoes and Champagne bottles.

Magellan’s Gerhard Seiffert, who led the planning for the expedition, said it was the largest underwater scanning project he’d ever undertaken.

“The depth of it, almost 4,000m, represents a challenge, and you have currents at the site, too – and we’re not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck,” he explained.

“And the other challenge is that you have to map every square centimetre – even uninteresting parts, like on the debris field you have to map mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects.”

The scan shows both the scale of the ship, as well as some minute details, such as the serial number on one of the propellers.

 

The wreck of Titanic was discovered in September 1985 2.5 miles under the surface of the frigid North Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland. A team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution returned to the site in July of 1986 with one manned submersible and one remotely operated vessel to film the interior and exterior of Titanic. Footage from the 1986 expedition was released for the first time earlier this year.

Since then, the wreck has been explored repeatedly by submersibles, including private adventurers, and photographed in high definition. In 2010, when a team of archaeologists and oceanographers from RMS Titanic Inc. and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution returned to map the two main sections of the ship and the full debris field. The inky darkness of the deep water required that all film and photography be narrowly focused on small areas of the wreck. In 2012, the centennial year of the sinking of Titanic, National Geographic published beautiful new pictures of the wreck, composites created by stitching together thousands of photographs, scans and sonar images from the 2010 expedition.