The History Blog

A new multidisciplinary study of a rare surviving life-sized Etruscan bronze statue has found that the black patina was intentionally created in antiquity, not the result of natural aging or a later coating. Very little is known about Etruscan art foundry methods, so this discovery advances our understanding of how ancient large bronze statues were produced.

Discovered in 1567, the hollow-cast bronze statue is now in Florence’s National Museum of Archaeology. It is known as the Arringatore (Orator) or the portrait of Aule Metli, an Etruscan senator of the Roman Republic in the late 2nd or early 1st century. He is depicted wearing a toga, calcei senatorii shoes and his right arm raised in an oratory gesture. An Etruscan language inscription on the toga names Aule Metli as the donor of this votive sculpture.

Researchers analyzed the metal composition, stratified mineral and organic material, microfragments and the manufacturing processes of the sculpture. They utilized X-ray diffraction and polarized light microscopy to examine the samples and investigate how the bronze was cast and assembled.

Tests identified a dark copper oxide called tenorite lying above a red layer of another copper oxide, cuprite. The structure appeared across several preserved areas, not merely a single stain.

The arrangement points to heating. Copper alloys typically form the reddish layer first, while the darker mineral develops under more strongly oxidizing conditions. The authors described it as “a blackish intentional patina” and said the paired layers were unlikely to form through burial alone. […]

The study also brings new details to the figure’s construction. X-ray images indicate the bronze was assembled from eight separately cast sections. Most of its hollow walls were only a few millimeters thick, evidence of considerable skill in making such a large figure.

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

A pair of polyhedral gold earrings and a 3rd century Roman coin have been discovered in a child’s grave in Stara Zagora, central Bulgaria.

The child’s grave is oriented with the head pointing west and the feet east. The pair of gold earrings and one coin were the only grave goods. The coin in an Antoninian of Emperor Aurelian, minted in Serdica in 274-275 A.D. The grave dates to this time.

The child’s identity and circumstances of death remain unknown. The presence of gold jewelry suggests that valuable personal possessions accompanied the burial, although it is not enough to establish the family’s social standing.

The coin raises another interesting possibility. The coin may also have held a meaning beyond its monetary value. In ancient Greek and Roman funerary traditions, coins were sometimes placed with the deceased as payment to Charon, the mythical ferryman who carried souls to the underworld. Although its purpose in this particular burial remains unknown, the coin may reflect beliefs surrounding death and the journey into the afterlife.

Evidence of human settlements in the Stara Zagora area go back 8,000 years, but the first town was founded by Philip II of Macedon in the 5th-4th century B.C. The necropolis where the child’s grave was found was in use from the late 2nd through the 5th centuries. It contains 135 burials of several different types of graves: burial pits with cremated remains, covered with tegulae (roof tiles), covered with bricks, covered with stone slabs, uncovered and more. Most of them are inhumation burials.

An underwater excavation at Kekova island on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey has uncovered amphorae between 4,400 to 4,700 years old, dating back to the Early Bronze Age. Maritime archaeologists believe this is the surviving cargo of the world’s oldest shipwreck.

The wooden ship has not survived in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, but 30 of the large storage containers that held its cargo have. Some of them still contain traces of what was inside of them. The pattern of spread indicates the ship was about 10 meters (33 feet) long. Three stone anchors were also found.

Analysis of the clay in the amphorae revealed that they were manufactured in the Jordan Valley. Comparable examples have been found in Egypt, Troy and Crete, artifacts of the impressive range of the trade networks in the eastern Mediterranean.

One of the amphorae is notable for its design. The vessel has nine markings and two holes on its body. Archaeologists hypothesize that it may have been used to make cheese or churn butter. If that’s true, it suggests sailors may have made food on board ship, not just transported the finished consumer goods.

Dr Karin Sowada, an archaeologist from Macquarie University, Australia, examined the amphorae after they were recovered. Some were intact and she was surprised to see they still contained a viscous, glossy residue.

“I looked inside and nearly fainted. I could not believe how much [residue] was visible. It wasn’t just like spots…. a lot of this material was still remaining,” she said.

The team is now working to find out exactly what was being carried in the amphorae.

“It could be olive oil, it could be wine, it could be tree resins,” Sowada said.

“It’s possible that [the residue] could actually be the result of reuse of the jars. I mean, these jars are huge – they’re not things that you just ship away and then never see again. People would have emptied these jars on arrival and potentially used them for many, many, many years.”

The artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck site are now being studies and conserved. They will eventually be put on display at the new Mediterranean Underwater Archaeology Museum in Antalya which is scheduled to open to the public over the next few months.

A farmer in the Nile Delta found an inscribed granite block when digging land in front of his home which led to the discovery two heads of Ramesses II from colossal statues.

The farmer uncovered the pink granite block with hieroglyphic inscriptions at his property in Behbeit El Hagar, in the Gharbia Governorate. He reported the find and after local heritage officials confirmed it was of archaeological significance, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities arranged an emergency excavation.

The first artifact unearthed was a colossal head of Ramesses II. The pharaoh wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, but explicit confirmation of his identity came from a fragment of the dorsal pillar which was inscribed with the pharaoh’s Horus name “Horus Ka Nakht Mery Maat.” The head is 5.25 feet high, which suggests the full statue was approximately 28 feet high.

The second major discovery was a royal statue head and torso approximately 8 feet high. The pharaoh wears the traditional royal nemes headdress (the striped head cloth with front flaps and a long pony tail), symbol of pharaonic power. It is missing the legs and base and no fragments from the statue were found, but the faces of the two statues are very similar. Another block of pink granite found nearby is inscribed with hieroglyphic inscriptions naming Ramesses II as King of Upper and Lower Egypt and Son of Ra.

The finds are still being studied, and excavations are continuing. Archaeologists say further work could help establish how the statues relate to one another and to the site’s ancient buildings.

Behbeit El Hagar is already known for the remains of a major temple dedicated to Isis, as well as granite architectural blocks. The new discoveries add to evidence of the area’s importance in ancient Egypt, and began with one resident choosing to report a stone rather than leave it unnoticed.

Two rare deer antler axes dating to the Bronze Age have been unearthed outside Löddeköpinge in Skåne, Sweden. Similar finds have been made in Denmark, where 155 Bronze Age axes have been found mostly as deposits in wetlands and bogs, but only a handful are known from Sweden.

The antler axes were found in excavation pits that have been preliminarily dated to between 1700 and 500 A.D. One of them is heavily worn with broken pieces, but the other is in good enough condition to make it immediately clear that it was worked and designed. It has a pierced hole in the center where a wooden shaft went through and a carved, ground-down cutting edge.

While deer antler axes were common in Sweden during the Mesolithic era (ca. 10,000–4000 B.C.), they disappear from the archaeological record during the Neolithic period as nascent farming settlements developed new tools and used different materials. They reemerged in an altered form in the Bronze Age. It’s not clear what their function was, but researchers at the Lejre experimental archaeology center in Denmark with newly manufactured deer antler axes found that they are extremely effective at cutting down trees, chopping dry wood and splitting wood.

Archaeologists also hypothesize that Bronze Age antler axes in Denmark had ritual or ceremonial purposes. Of the 155 known examples in Denmark, 59 of them were decorated with motifs including dotted circles, wheel crosses and spirals. It’s possible the ornamented examples had symbolic meaning beyond the practical use of the tool.