The Cross of the Pelican, a 15th century altar crucifix from the Abbey of St. Eutizio in Piedivalle di Preci, outside Perugia, has been restored after it was all but destroyed in the earthquake that devastated central Italy in 2016.

The tempera-on-wood cross was made by Nicola di Ulisse di Siena in around 1472 for the church of the St. Eutizio Abbey. Its composition, stripped of figures of mourners found in other examples from this time, was inspired as a meditation on the death of Christ. He hangs on a bare wood cross against a monochromatic blue background. The cross has trefoil terminals with the top one, where the INRI sign is usually placed, containing the pelican in piety, tearing her own breast to feed her three nestlings with her blood, a popular symbol of Christ’s sacrifice in the Middle Ages.

The abbey was founded by Syrian monks fleeing persecution in the wake of ecumenical councils in the 5th or 6th century. The travertine spur is peppered with natural caves that appealed to the eremitic style of the cenobitic monks. It began as an oratory dedicated to the Virgin Mary. St. Eutizio expanded it into a cenobitic monastery and became its abbot. After his death in 540 A.D., the church was named after him. The monastery evolved from its ascetic origins to embrace the rule of St. Benedict and grew exponentially. It reached the apex of its regional importance and property holdings in the 12th century.

The church is located on a terrace between the valley and rock spur containing the hermits’ caves. When the earthquake devastated the area in October 2016, the rock spur collapsed and the subsequent landslide crashed into the monastery. The crucifix was hurled to the ground and smashed. The fragments were trapped in rubble for weeks. Fire fighters worked with three dozen conservators from the Vatican Museums to recover every splinter of the altarpiece they could find.

The cross was in a parlous state, broken into more than 30 splintered fragments with areas of total loss. Because of its devotional purpose, the Archdiocese of Spoleto-Norcia and the Superintendency of Umbria decided to attempt a full restoration of the painted image, the figure of Christ and the pelican, instead of conserving only what had survived. In July 2018, experts at the Vatican Museums’ Restoration Laboratories set about puzzling together the jigsaw puzzle. They consolidated the fragments and reconstructed missing parts, mounting the cross to a new wooden backing structure to make it stable enough to take its place above the altar once more. The painted surface was re-adhered and discolored varnish removed. The lost areas were then recreated. Finally, the gilded perimeter frame was restored with pure gold in accordance with the traditional method used in the 15th century.

The restored cross is on display in the Vatican Museums. It will be exhibited in Spoleto at the church of St. Euphemia this fall, and will then return to the high altar of the St. Eutizio Abbey.

This video documents the disaster and the hard work that followed to bring the crucifix back from the brink. There is no commentary, but you don’t miss it because the photographs and film relay the restoration process eloquently on their own. (With a little boost from a score that is two parts Rock Me Amadeus to one part LadyHawke.)

An 11th century Viking bronze die discovered by a metal detectorist in Norfolk earlier this year is going up for auction with a pre-sale estimate of £16,000–£24,000 ($21,000-$31,000). Its size, excellent condition and depth of the relief make it one of the finest examples of a Pressblech die found in England.

The thickness, sturdiness and high reliefs of these objects points to them having been used as dies to produce decorated foils quickly. The die would be placed on a hard surface (like an anvil) face-up, and metal foil put on top of the die. It would then be covered with a flexible buffer and hammered hard to push the foil deep into the relief and stamp the design on it. The gentle curve of the Norfolk die suggests the stamped foil was intended for a curved surface, the cheek guards of a Viking helmet, for example.

Jason Jones discovered the die in January while metal detecting in a field in Norfolk. He had scanned the site before and discovered two silver coins, so returned in the hopes of finding more. Just two inches under the surface, he found the bronze die instead. He didn’t know what it was or what age it might be until he posted a photo on Facebook and he was deluged with suggestions that it might be a Viking artifact. He called it in to the local finds liaison officer of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

It is 5.5 inches long and 1.27 inches wide at the rectangular end which then tapers to a pointed end. There is a slight curve to the die and the back is undecorated. The front is intricately carved with a high-relief design of two stylized animals, one larger that interlaces its body and tendrils, forming an open figure eight with the smaller creature at the base. The relief is bordered by a beaded ridge that runs about two thirds of the way down then flattens into a plain ridge. That angles inwards just before reaching the terminal and the ridges converge to form a fleur-de-lis that fills the pointed end.

The design motif may be a representation of the world tree Yggdrasill with the great serpent Nidhogg weaving around the tree. The smaller creature could represent the squirrel Ratatosk or one of the other serpents who called Yggdrasill home. The features of the enlaced animals — small heads, oval eyes, the open figure eight, the wide, flat ribbon-like bodies — are typical of the Urnes style. Urnes style decoration was produced between around 1030 and 1100 A.D.

The closest comparable example is an 11th century bronze plaque with a foliate animal relief in a hybrid of Urnes and Ringerike styles that was found in the Thames in the early 20th century and is now in the British Museum. The carving is cruder and it is 1.3 inches shorter that the Norfolk Urnes Die.

The Viking warrior grave discovered by homeowners in their backyard in Setesdal, southern Norway, is even richer than it first appeared. When the grave first emerged late last month, a sword, lance, a few gilded glass beads, a fragment of a brooch and pieces of belt buckles were unearthed. Archaeologists from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo called to the site were not expecting to find much more than a few additional beads, maybe human remains if they were lucky.

But it turns out those initial finds weren’t even half the contents of this grave. In the past two weeks, an axe head, a shield and some knives have been discovered, making up a complete set of armature for a Viking warrior. Instead of a few more beads, they found about a hundred more from multiple necklaces. They also found a sickle, an iron oval with an elongated handle that may be a cooking pan, two spindle whorls and fragments of four large oval brooches, one of them almost intact.

Domed oval brooches like these were typically worn in pairs by Viking women to fasten the back straps of their gowns to the front straps at the shoulders. The two highly decorated cast bronze brooches were often joined by strands of beads. Viking men used brooches to fasten their cloaks, but they are not domed ovals, usually, and they don’t come in pairs. This opens up the possibility that two people, a man and a woman, were buried in the grave, either at the same time or one spouse interred in the other’s reopened grave after their death.

The style of the sword hilt dates the grave to the late 9th, early 10th century. A grave with similar contents was discovered at a neighboring farm in the early 20th century, and two or three other area graves contain swords, brooches and glass beads of the exact same type. These wealthy graves are indicators of the area’s prosperity in the Viking Age.

Some of the largest iron extraction sites from this time period are found a bit further north in the valley. Extracting iron was something the farmers could do during the wintertime, and iron was exported by the Vikings in massive quantities to Northern Europe and England.

“These exports were so huge that somebody must have gotten quite wealthy from it. And these finds make it tempting to connect the iron extraction business to Valle,” [Museum of Cultural History archaeologist Jo-Simon Frøshaug] Stokke says.

“It’s a captivating thought to imagine such an aristocracy here in Valle, a group of people that have had a style and identity markers that have shown that they belong to this segment of society. Not simply that they are part of the upper echelons because they own swords and such, but that they actually make up a small aristocracy. They’ve dressed in similar ways and brought the same items with them in the grave.”

Homeowners in Setesdal, southern Norway, have discovered a Viking warrior burial in their backyard. Oddbjørn Holum Heiland was digging a little to get the jump on an addition he and his wife Anne are planning on building when he encountered an oblong stone just under the grass and top soil layers. He kept going, and in his next pail full of top soil, he spotted an iron object that looked a lot like a sword. Because it was a sword blade. When he dumped out the soil from the digging bucket, a sword hilt fell out. A little Googling revealed that the shape of the sword suggests it was of Viking origin.

Heiland stopped digging and alerted the county to his potential find. The next day, county archaeologist Joakim Wintervoll and Jo-Simon Frøshaug Stokke from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, came to view the sword in person. They confirmed it was Viking, and that Heiland had likely excavated a tomb in his own backyard.

The two pieces of the sword that were found make out a 70 cm long sword, and the blade is 5 cm at the broadest point.

“But it’s the hilt that tells us this is a sword from the Viking Age,” Wintervoll explains.

The hilt of a sword is an object of fashion, and the style of the hilt found in Setesdal places it at around the end of the 800s and the beginning of 900.

“We have datings for different styles of hilts from year zero, so we have a pretty good overview of how these hilts have changed from the early Iron Age and into the Middle Ages,” Wintervoll says.

The house dates to 1740 so the grave was lurking under a few inches of sod for a thousand years and by a complete fluke, construction of the house just missed it. The grave also contains a lance, gilded glass beads, a brooch and a belt buckle which was probably also originally gilded. This is an intact, integral assemblage of luxurious grave goods. The person buried must have been someone of high status. There is no evidence that there was ever a mound marking the grave, but the large oblong stone that covered the grave may have been standing originally, only to topple over later. In that case it would have been highly visible in the landscape. If it was deliberately laid horizontally as a headstone, its location would have been significant to the people who lived there at the time.

There used to be a collection of smaller farms just 100-150 metres away from where the grave is located. It is reasonable to assume that these farms existed back at that time, or perhaps even further back in time, according to the archaeologist.

“A pattern that we see is that you bury those who have owned land near the farm, and often in a spot that is easily visible from the nearby roads. People who passed by would then see the grave and know that the people who live here have ancestors who have lived here for a long time. These are our relatives; we lay claim to this land and have done so for generations. This is the function of the visible grave,” Stokke says.

No human remains have been discovered yet, and archaeologists are not optimistic they’ll find any when excavations resume next week, especially since cremation was common at this time, leaving only fragments of charred bone to be found today, if anything.