A unique seal incised with stylized bull heads facing each other has been unearthed at the Domuztepe Mound, a Late Neolithic settlement in southeast Turkey. The button-shaped stamp seal features two animal heads mirroring each other on the surface of an oval serpentine stone. Around the edge is a border of radiating straight lines.

Domuztepe is the largest known settlement of the Halaf culture, a farming society that occupied northern Mesopotamia and Syria between around 6100 B.C. and 5100 B.C. They are renown for the unusually high quality of pottery they produced from local clay. Their painted polychrome ceramics were so highly prized they spread throughout the region, likely traded by the elites. The pots were decorated with finely-executed geometric or animal designs in brown, red and/or black (both iron oxide pigments) against a buff background.

The Halaf culture is responsible for the earliest known stamp seals on the archaeological record. Halaf seals were typically simple circles or rectangles incised with intersecting grid lines and chevrons. One example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is notable for having a zoomorphic shape believed to represent a hedgehog, but the surface design is still a simple grid with exes in each cell.

The newly-discovered seal employs a motif previously only found on pottery: the bull or buffalo head. The shape of the horns and head painted on the pottery is different from the design on the seal. It could be that one style is meant to represent domestic cattle and the other water buffalo, but they could also both be domestic bulls with two different, highly stylized designs.

[T]he bullheads visualized on different materials are mostly accepted as the representative of the species known as domestic cattle (Bos Taurus) in the Near East. On the other hand, it is possible that the species in the samples shaped both as a paint decoration on pottery and by scraping on seal impressions is a water buffalo (bos bubalis). Since archaeozoological studies have not been completed yet, it is premature to say that water buffalo was domesticated in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Domuztepe is located, in the 7th-6th millennium BC.

A bas relief of a hefty phallus more than a foot and a half long has been discovered on the wall of a Roman-era structure at the archaeological site of El Higuerón in Nueva Carteya, a town 30 miles southeast of Córdoba, Spain. The symbol, which Romans believed warded off the evil eye, was carved into the front of a massive limestone cornerstone at the base of a tower-like structure. Its impressive endowment makes it one of the largest phalluses known from the Roman world — certainly the largest one measured and documented — which is saying a lot because the Roman world was bristling with phalluses.

Excavations were first carried out at El Higuerón between 1966 and 1968, revealing a walled Iberian town dating to the 5th century B.C. The Iberian settlement was destroyed by the Romans when they defeated Carthage and conquered the area at the conclusion of the Second Punic War in 206 B.C. They built a tall tower-like structure on top of the ruins.

The latest excavation began this month. The team’s goal is to clean the perimeter wall, which is the oldest remnant of the Iberian city, and to excavate the large tower building.

The team of archaeologists refer to the structure at El Higuerón as a “monumental Roman building” with perimeter walls six feet thick (1.8 meters) made of large limestone blocks. Underground storerooms for agricultural products have been discovered, along with various construction materials like fragments of stucco, Roman concrete (opus caementicium), black and white blocks, tiles and storage containers with lids. This year, the archaeologists are focused on excavating an access point through one of the facades to the tower, in addition to cleaning the perimeter wall, “which is one of the more massive features of the site,” according to [Director of the Historical Museum of Nueva Carteya Andrés] Roldán.

The building was abandoned by the Romans during the first century Flavian dynasty, and later renovated by the Moors during their Iberian reign. The Moors eliminated parts of the structure that that were not useful, such as the underground storerooms, and reinforced weak areas like the access door. When the Christians drove out the Moors in the 13th century, the building was abandoned and forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 1960s.

In less than a month of excavations, archaeologists cleared the ancient wall thoroughly enough to reach the Iberian-era foundations. They also unearthed a lime floor inside the tower, a cobblestone floor just outside the tower and evidence of repeated alterations to the access point of the building from the original Roman door to the medieval one that is still extant today.

The site has been known since its rediscovery, but a smattering of walls amidst hills of olive trees did not draw much attention, positive or negative. Now that there’s a giant phallus in the picture, the curious, careless and greedy have come calling. Now the local police and Guarda Civil have had to secure the site, especially at night, to keep the archaeological remains safe.

The municipality of Nueva Carteya has acquired the land to ensure the long-term protection of the structure and its contexts. The ultimate aim is to create an open-air archaeological park accompanied by an on-site museum to display the artifacts recovered there.

An archaeological excavation of the Kopilo burial ground in central Bosnia has discovered new forms of jewelry in several Bronze Age graves.

Kopilo is a hilltop settlement about 40 miles west of Sarajevo that was founded around 1300 B.C. It was a farming community on a plateau 2000 feet above sea level and was occupied continuously for a thousand years. Skeletons of pigs, cattle and goats have been found indicating livestock breeding. The pre-Illyrian Bronze and Iron Age culture that settled the site was known for its network of fortified hilltop settlements and metallurgic skill, but its funerary practices were little known. The Kopilo site has been excavated since 2019, but until 2021, only two tombs had been found.

The settlement’s necropolis was finally discovered in 2021. This year the entire burial ground has been systematically excavated and documented. The tombs were built of stone surrounded by an outer ring of stone. Each contained two to five burials. The necropolis was in continuous use from the 11th to the 5th century B.C. Archaeologists have unearthed 46 graves containing the remains of 53 individuals. They were buried on their sides in the crouch burial position with legs and arms slightly bent. A small vessel was often buried at the head of the deceased. Early examinations of the osteological remains show a disproportionate number of young children indicating a high child mortality rate. Grave goods include pottery, bronze jewelry, glass beads and iron weapons.

The jewelry includes bronze fibulae in never-before-seen shapes. In addition to the new forms of jewelry now introduced for the first time, archaeologists also found some of the earliest worked iron objects in Bosnia, proving iron metallurgy was active at the site as early as the 9th-8th century B.C.

Burials include both cremations and inhumations, which is very unusual in Bronze Age Europe. There is also evidence that the bones were moved over time, likely when graves were reopened for later inhumations as there were a number of double and even triple burials.

The skeletal remains will be subjected to staple isotope analysis and ancient DNA analysis to determine any kinship relationships between the dead, where they were born and raised, what they ate and what diseases they suffered.