Month: November 2021

Oldest preserved woven fabric made of oak, not linen or wool

Ancient

Woven textiles discovered at the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey that were thought to be linen have been identified as bast fiber harvested from local oak trees. Unearthed in the first excavations at the site between 1962 and 1965, the textiles date to between 6700 and 6500 B.C., making them the oldest preserved woven fabrics in the world.

Today Çatalhöyük is famous for its unique construction — there are 18 successive archaeological layers extending down 70 feet of tightly clustered domestic dwellings built between 7100 and 5600 B.C. but no known public buildings — which straddles the transition between mobile hunter-gatherer communities and settled farming communities. The large site (13 hectares) is rich in art and artifacts, including wall paintings, ceramics and figurines. Organic objects like cords, baskets, mats and textiles have been found primarily in funerary bundles, used to wrap the tightly flexed bodies before burial under the floors of the habitation structures.

Archaeologists and experts who examined the textile finds in the 1960s thought they were made of either wool or linen. James Mellaart, the archaeologist who first excavated Çatalhöyük (he was later booted out of Turkey under suspicion of involvement with the illicit trade in antiquities and after his death was discovered to have been a full-on forger of “ancient” art as well) thought it was wool because the remains of sheep and rams had been found at the site. Researchers in 1988 concluded the textiles were plant-based, coming down on the flax side of the debate.

If it was linen, however, it could not have been locally produced. Only a dozen flax seeds have ever been found at Çatalhöyük, and only in layers from the early phase of Neolithic occupation whereas the textiles were found in layers from the middle phase of Çatalhöyük’s Neolithic occupation. Nor is there any evidence that flax or linen was imported to the site.

Excavations resumed again in 1993 and since then, additional textile finds have been made. The new discoveries spurred a reexamination of the old ones. Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) archaeological textile specialist Bender Jørgensen teamed up with University of Bern fiber specialist Antoinette Rast-Eicher, visiting the excavation in person to examine the new finds and looking with fresh new eyes (and technology) upon the textiles recovered in 1960s.

“In the past, researchers largely neglected the possibility that the fabric fibers could be anything other than wool or linen, but lately another material has received more attention,” Bender Jørgensen says.

People in Çatalhöyük used assorted varieties of exactly this material.

“Bast fibers were used for thousands of years to make rope, thread, and in turn also yarn and cloth,” says Bender Jørgensen.

A fiber sample from a basket turned out to be made of grass, but several of the textiles are clearly made of bast fiber from oak trees. […]

Bast fiber is found between the bark and the wood in trees such as willow, oak or linden. The people from Catalhöyük used oak bark, and thus fashioned their clothes from the bark of trees that they found in their surroundings. They also used oak timber as a building material for their homes, and people undoubtedly harvested the bast fibers when trees were felled.

The study has been published in the journal Antiquity.

Gallo-Roman mosaic floors found under château stable

Ancient

An archaeological survey at the Château de Marigny in Fleurville, eastern France, has revealed the remains of luxurious mosaic floors from a Gallo-Roman villa underneath the stable.

The archaeological intervention brought to light a set of service rooms (hypocaust room, antechamber, corridor, etc.) and reception rooms, two of which have mosaics. The first is located in the central room undoubtedly corresponding to a large reception and / or ceremonial room of 136 m². The geometric decoration in black and white duotone represents a checkerboard of interlocking squares with a central cross for the entrance mat. The borders of the room, for their part, consist of a grid of boxes surrounded by a black net and loaded with squares alternately straight and on the tip. Among the neighboring rooms, another mosaic floor or opus tessellatum has been observed, associated with a wall decorated with painted imitation of opus sectile (marble inlay) preserved to a height of 60 cm. Perhaps belonging to a cubiculum-type space (chamber), this mosaic presents a composition of intersecting circles drawing spindle petals of four white leaves and black curvilinear squares. These are loaded with white tesserae at the four angles and a central white chevron giving the whole a very refined style. According to their style, these decorated floors could be dated to the end of the 1st century.

Mosaics of this high quality from this period are rare finds in northern France. Only the wealthiest homeowners could afford them.

The presence of a Roman country villa at the site was first discovered during construction of the Paris to Lyon railway in the 1850s. It was a massive estate. The pars urbana, the residential wing where the family lived, alone occupied an area of more than 16,000 square feet.

The château was built in the late 16th century, but the farmhouse, which is being renovated for use as a visitor’s center, dates to the 19th century. The workers cleared the demolition layers of the ruins until they reached the surviving structures. They integrated the walls and floors into the new construction, using them as foundations or subfloors. The south wall of the Gallo-Roman’s villa main reception room was reused as the base of the stable.

Wooden bird revealed to be Anne Boleyn’s falcon

Museums, Renaissance

A carved wooden falcon that sold at auction in 2019 for  £75 ($100) has been identified as a 16th century heraldic badge of Anne Boleyn that once adorned Hampton Court Palace. With this updated provenance, the oak falcon’s market value has skyrocketed to an estimated £200,000 ($270,000).

The falcon was one of the new architectural features King Henry VIII ordered be added to Hampton Court Palace before his marriage to Anne. The white falcon was on the crest of the Butler family who had held the title of Earls of Ormond. Anne’s father Thomas Boleyn was related to the Butlers through his mother, and in 1529 Henry browbeat the legitimate Butler claimant to the Ormond earldom to settle for another title so he could give this one to the father of his inamorata.

Anne took the white falcon as the centerpiece of her own heraldic emblem shortly before her wedding. It stands on a tree stump (representing Henry’s Plantagenet ancestry) from which red and white roses grow. These aren’t Tudor roses with red petals on the outside and white ones on the inside, but individual red roses alternating with white roses, symbolic of Henry’s dual claim to the throne through his Lancastrian father, Henry of Richmond, and his mother Elizabeth of York.

The bird wears an imperial crown and carries a heavy scepter in its talon, an unmistakable message Henry was sending that his power was absolute inside his realm, even overriding that of the pope, and that Anne would be his queen. Three years, one tumultuous marriage, several spurious charges of adultery and a decapitation later, Henry ordered all traces of Anne Boleyn obliterated from his palaces as a kind of Tudor damnatio memoriae.

Today there are two royal falcons surviving on the ceiling of Hampton Court’s Great Hall. This example was in a more accessible location, likely in her private apartments, and may have been salvaged by a supporter who wanted to preserve the memory Henry sought to eradicate.

Tudor historian and curator for Historic Royal Palaces Tracy Borman says:

“What’s really interesting about it is that – unlike the Great Hall examples – this one wears an imperial crown. That was an absolute nod to the fact that Henry by now had got imperial ambitions. He was trying to supplant the pope’s authority, promoting himself as some kind of emperor rather than just a king. There are other crowned falcons that we know about, that were used for example at Anne’s coronation in the pageant. But there’s no mention of imperial crowns, so this is very much Henry and Anne doing their very best for a kind of PR stunt. The decoration of Hampton Court was all about their ambitions and their defiance of the pope.”

The falcon was acquired by Paul Fitzsimmons, founder of Marhamchurch Antiques, which specializes in oak furniture from the 15th through 17th centuries. It was described in the auction catalogue as a “antique carved wood bird,” but Fitzimmons recognized its quality and its likely connection to royalty given the crown and scepter, but didn’t initially realize it was one of Anne Boleyn’s badges. After careful restoration removed the coating of black soot, the falcon was revealed to be in impeccable condition, complete with original gilding and polychrome paint.

Fitzsimmons has arranged a long-term loan of the falcon to Hampton Court Palace so the antique carved wood bird will come home to roost.

1300-year-old homicide found in looter’s shaft

Ancient, Medieval

A skeleton found in a shaft dug by grave robbers of an ancient tomb at Shiyanzi cemetery in Shiyanzi village, Ningxia region, northwest China, has been revealed to be a murder victim whose body was thrown down the shaft. Similar finds of human remains in the looter’s shafts of ancient Chinese tombs have been made before, but they all showed evidence of having been the actual looters who died by misadventure during the act. This young man was not involved in the robbery, but rather a victim of a violent assault whose body was disposed of in a convenient and well-camouflaged hiding place.

The cemetery was discovered in 2002 and excavated between 2009 and 2011. Of the 12 tombs found, 10 date  to the Han Dynasty (202 B.C. – 220 A.D.), with the remaining two dating much later to the Song (960–1279 A.D.) or Yuan (1271–1368 A.D.) dynasties. One of the Han tombs, M12, was a large wooden chamber tomb 194 square feet in area. A downwards passage lef to a burial chamber containing the remains of three individuals, likely family members. The tomb belonged to people with wealth, and the large mound that originally topped it was basically a neon sign to tomb raiders that there was valuable stuff to be found inside. Most of its grave goods were robbed more than a thousand years ago, but archaeologists did find bronze, iron, lead and jade artifacts, pottery and 57 Wu Zhu coins.

The shaft dug by the tomb raiders was unusually large and more than 20 feet long from the surface to the burial chamber directly below. It was partially filled in by sediments from the surface when the tomb collapsed. A complete human skeleton was found slumped on the fill about 6.5 feet below the surface, his right hand still raised in a protective gesture over the right side of his face. Radiocarbon analysis of a bone sample from the skeleton in the shaft dates him to the early Tang Dynasty, 640–680 A.D. A bone sample taken from one of the occupants of the tomb returned a radiocarbon date of 155–135 A.D., the middle of the East Han Dynasty.

Osteological examination and CT scans of the M12 robbery shaft skeleton found 13 sharp-force marks, eight on the skull, four on the ribs and one on the forearm. They were inflicted from the front and from the back of him, suggesting there may have been more than one attacker slashing at the victim at the same time. Most of the wounds are v-shaped in cross-section, so inflicted by a double-edged bladed weapon. A rusted sword blade missing its handle was found two feet above the skeleton in the shaft. It is unclear if this weapon is related to the assault.

There are no other signs of trauma, illness or pathology that could have caused sudden death. There is no bone regeneration at the injury sites, indicating they were all suffered at or just before the time of death. The fatal blow was likely one of the ones that resulted in the rib injuries, penetrating his heart and/or lungs.

“The skeleton belongs to a young and healthy individual,” says anatomist and anthropologist Qian Wang, professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University College of Dentistry in the US, and lead author of the study. […]

“We conclude with confidence that the assault victim was not part of the original robbery team based on the fact that the filling of the vertical robbery shaft had accumulated naturally, and the victim was found about 4.5m above the floor of the burial chamber—which means it should be a significant long time after the robbery,” Wang says. […]

“This discovery is one of a kind. All links to this homicide case have been lost to history,” Wang says. He adds that when describing the trauma and picturing the crime scene, he thought that though the research team can’t bring the murdered man justice, they will prove him innocent of grave robbery. “In this regard, I think we did a good job that brings peace of mind.”

The study has been published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences and can be read here.

Slave bedroom/store room found at Pompeii

Ancient

A small chamber used to store goods and sleep at least three people, almost certainly slaves, has been discovered in the excavation of a luxury villa in Civita Giuliana, a suburb of ancient Pompeii half a mile northwest of the city walls. The 170-square foot room has one tiny high window and opens onto the portico where the exceptional ceremonial chariot was discovered early this year parked in front of the room’s door, and is just one room over from the stall where the remains of Pompeii’s first confirmed horse were unearthed.

Excavations at the villa began in 2017 in response to the discovery that looters had been tunneling into the ancient estate to plunder it of its treasures. The tunnels cause severe damage to the remains of two of the three equines found in the stall but thankfully disturbed the large horse the least so archaeologists were able to make a plaster cast of it.

The newly-discovered room is in excellent condition. Looters never reached it, and the team was able to make perfectly detailed casts of organic materials that left their imprint in the volcanic ash that covered the ancient city. Casts were taken of three beds and a rudder shaft from a chariot that was leaning on one of the beds when it was immortalized by Vesuvius. Under the beds were chamber pots and other vessels that may have contained the meager personal effects of the persons who slept there. Near the beds was a wooden chest that held metal objects and fabrics believed to have been part of a horse harness. Eight large storage amphorae found in the corner of the room confirm that this space was used to keep gear and supplies as well as house three people.

The beds were made of rough-hewn wood planking with woven cord bases. The impression of the wood, the corded bed bases and even of the blankets on top of the beds have all been cast in plaster. The beds length could be adjusted for sleepers of different heights. Two of them are 1.7 meters (5’7″) long. The other is just 1.4 meters (4’7″) long, suggesting it was occupied by either a very petite adult or a child. It’s possible this tiny room was home for a family of three.

 “This is a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts,” – declared Director General Gabriel Zuchtriegel – “It is a case in which archaeology helps us to discover a part of the ancient world which we would otherwise know little about, but which is nonetheless extremely important. What is most striking is the cramped and precarious nature of this room, which was something between a dormitory and a storage room of just 16 sqm, which we can now reconstruct thanks to the exceptional state of preservation created by the eruption of AD 79. It is certainly one of the most exciting discoveries during my life as an archaeologist, even without the presence of great ‘treasures’ – the true treasure here is  the human experience, in this case of the most vulnerable members of ancient society, to which this room is a unique testimony.”