A Bronze Age female figurine discovered in the Tollense River in northern Germany may have been a balance weight, a goddess or both. The figurine was found by Ronald Borgwardt, a truck driver who has been scouting the archaeological and watery depths of the Tollense since the 1990s, on July 20th, 2020. He was snorkeling in the river east of Rostock when he discovered a small bronze figurine in the sediments of the bank. He found a bronze arm ring a few feet away.

Just a hair under six inches tall and weighing 155 grams, the figurine has a flat body, an ovoid shaped head with prominent nose and eyes, looped arms, two bumps for breasts, a shallow vertical cut at the crotch indicating female genitalia and legs with protruding knees. The right leg is strongly bowed, the left straighter. She wears a neck ring and a belt. Typology dates the figurine to the 7th century B.C.

About a dozen similar figurines have been found near the Baltic Sea in Zealand, Scandia and one in northern Germany which was then part of the Nordic Bronze Age culture. The other German figurine was discovered in around 1840 just 20 miles from the most recent find; unfortunately its whereabouts are currently unknown. Most of them have been found near rivers or the Baltic coast. The Tollense is a bit of a double-whammy as it is both a river and direct connection to the Baltic Sea.

Researchers have hypothesized that these statuettes may have been used as balance weights based on a weight unit of 26 grams, but with such a limited number of examples it seemed unlikely they could have been quotidian tools as there would be more widespread evidence of them on the archaeological record. The 155-gram weight of this example, however, is an almost exact multiple of 26 grams, which may or may not be of significance given that this is the heaviest of the figurines. The second heaviest weighs 133 grams, which is another almost-multiple of 26.

The Tollense river valley is famed for the great number of archaeological materials and remains from a violent clash (battle? massacre?) that took place there in the early 13th century B.C. It’s possible that the figurine was deposited in commemoration of the conflict that had taken place there centuries earlier.

The female figures with looped arms are related to distinctive places of the Later Bronze Age landscape, and the recently discovered specimens from the Tollense valley supports their close connection to communication routes. The significance of the lower Oder area for Later Bronze Age trade is reflected in a concentration of bronze hoards around the island of Usedom, c. 50 km to the east. The wetland context supports the notion of a deposition in a transitional sphere between the real and the underworld. The figures have been considered as evidence for worship (as epitome of a goddess), as evidence for trade (as balance weights), or both (‘goddesses of wealth’). The distribution over a relatively small area speaks rather against an interpretation as a Nordic goddess of this time.

Archaeologists have found seven pairs of Anglo-Saxon saucer brooches, one pair in each of seven burials unearthed in an excavation in Gloucestershire. The Cotswolds Archaeology team discovered more than 70 Anglo-Saxon burials at the site, some of them containing luxury grave goods. They date to the 5th or 6th century.

They’re known as saucer brooches after their shape: a circular central body with a raised rim. They are made of gilded copper alloy and were relief-cast (cast from a single piece of sheet metal) with decorative motifs in geometric patterns. The one pictured right features five “running spirals” (meaning they’re connected to each other like they were written in cursive) around a central boss of pellet-in-ring style. This is the most commonly found motif on saucer brooches with geometric patterns.

Ranging in size from 20-70 mm in diameter, saucer brooches were worn in pairs across the chest to fasten garments. Their designs are more simple than, for example, the long square-headed brooches which were so large they offered much more space to create complex, highly sophisticated designs. The saucer brooches are still a high-status signifier for burials from this early period of Anglo-Saxon history in England, often found in tandem with other expensive pieces of jewelry.

Those we uncovered were either positioned one on each shoulder, or two next to each other on the left shoulder with an associated clothing pin, giving a vivid impression of how they once looked on their wearers.

Archaeologists have recovered a 4,000-year-old bitumen boat outside the ancient city of Uruk in southern Iraq. An international team of archaeologists from the Iraqi Ministry of Antiquities and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) salvaged the boat which was under threat from erosion and traffic running nearby.

The boat was first discovered in 2018 in the archaeological buffer zone around Uruk during a program of systematic documentation of the many remains of canals, agricultural fields, settlements and production sites that pepper the environs of the Sumerian capital, which 1,000 years before this boat was built was the largest city in the world with an estimated population of 80,000 living in the metro area. The edges of the boat had been exposed by erosion, and archaeologists have been keeping a close eye on its condition in the years since. Last month, the salvage operation began.

The Iraqi-German research team successively uncovered the very fragile boat and thus documented the unique finding: it is an almost completely preserved boat made of organic material (reed, palm leaves or wood) completely covered with bitumen. It is 7 m long and up to 1.4 m wide. It is not thicker than 1 cm in many places. The organic remains are no longer preserved and are only visible as imprints in the bitumen. During the excavation the boat was documented three-dimensionally by photogrammetry. The archaeological context shows that it sank at the bank of a river that has since silted up, probably about 4000 years ago, and was overlaid by sediments.

The boat was covered with a clay and plaster shell for stabilization directly during the excavation and could thus be recovered largely complete. In accordance with Iraqi antiquities law, it was taken to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad for further scientific study and conservation. It is planned to exhibit the boat and make the knowledge of its construction and context available to the public.