A prehistoric hoard that is unique on the European archaeological record has been unearthed near Oradea in western Romania. Archaeologists discovered the Copper Age grave of a woman during construction of a new highway connector this spring. It contained 160 gold rings, two gold beads, 800 bone beads and a multi-spiral copper bracelet. Before this discovery, the total number of gold artifacts found in the entire Carpathian Basin (consisting of large parts of modern Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria) was only 150 pieces. That figure has now more than doubled in one fell swoop.
The remains are currently undergoing radiocarbon dating, but the objects mark the woman as member of the local Tiszapolgár culture which flourished in Eastern and Central Europe between 4500 and 4000 B.C. Given the exceptional luxury of her funerary jewelry, she must have been someone of very high status.
The gold rings were found at the head of the burial and would have adorned her hair. Their total weight exceeds 200 grams (.44 pounds), which is an enormous amount considering it was alluvial gold, ie, painstakingly separated from the sand of a river via a washing process rather than mined in large quantities from veins of ore.
The gold, beads and bracelet are in the process of being cleaned and conserved. Researchers are hoping to be able to determine the geographic origin of the gold, to pinpoint if it was local or imported. Scientists in Romania and the Netherlands will help perform further analyses including DNA extraction. When studies and conservation are completed, the hoard will be exhibited to the public at the Ţării Crisurilor Museum in Oradea.
Fishermen casting their nets off the coast of the Wadden Islands, Texel, the Netherlands, hauled in not the delicious shellfish they expected, but a carved wooden head in exceptional condition. The crew of the shrimp cutter Wieringer 22 caught the sculpture on Tuesday, August 2. They named the head Barry and posted him on social media where he garnered an instant following.
Acting on advice from archaeologists, the crew placed the head in an eel tub filled with sea water to keep the wood from drying out and deteriorating while the ship was still out shrimping. On Thursday, August 4, the Wieringer 22 came into port where it was greeted by excited archaeologists.
The head is made of oak, which would under normal circumstances be susceptible to the depredations of shipworm, but the sculpture managed to avoid this fate by embedding itself in the sea floor after the wreck. The sediment prevented marine organisms from making a meal of the figurehead and kept it from rotting away. That coincidence is the only reason it is in such impeccable condition.
Michiel Bartels, a municipal archaeologist for that region of the Netherlands, told the Leeuwarder Courant that he believed the “very special discovery” came from a warship, possibly during the Eighty Years’ War, which stretched from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s.
Bartels told the outlet that the man in the carving was wearing a specific kind of headgear called a Phrygian cap. “This hat symbolizes freedom and independence,” he said. “The Phyrigians were enslaved by the Romans. Slaves were shaved bald. When released from slavery, [Phyrigians] wore a cap to hide their baldness and signify their freedom. During the Eighty Years’ War, the symbol came back as a sign of independence.”
Experts believe that Barry – as the crew members called the figure – adorned the stern of the 17th-century ship. “The most important thing is to conserve the sculpture and examine it,” says Ad Geerdink, director of the Westfries Museum. – Many ships from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) rest at the bottom of the Wadden Sea. It is too early to say what kind of unit the sculpture is from. Figures of this type, placed at the stern of ships, were to impress and speak about the origin of the vessel. It was such a frenzy at sea. And this figure fits well with this habit.
The hat could lead researchers in another direction, away from the political symbolism of the 80 Years’ War and towards a profession: whaling. The Rijksmuseum has a similar woolen cap in its collection. It was one of many discovered in the graves of 185 Dutch whalers and whale oil workers in the Spitsbergen archipelago in Norway. The caps not only kept the sailors and workers warm in the frigid climate, but were markers of identity, each knitted in different colors and patterns. The connection between man and hat was so pronounced not even death could sever it, and many of the Dutchmen were buried wearing their hats.
Just a few months after an extremely rare Rebuplican-era Roman bridge was discovered over the Fosso di Pratolungo tributary of the Aniene River in northeastern Rome, a second, much later bridge has been found less than 100 feet away. Archaeologists have been excavating the route of a planned enlargement of the Via Tiburtina within the municipality of Rome. They found the recently-discovered bridge on the opposite bank of the tributary from the Republican bridge. Its precise date is unknown, but it is from the Imperial era.
The bridge on the ancient Via Tiburtina crossed the Fosso di Pratolungo right before its confluence with the Aniene. Excavations brought to light the central span of the bridge, a rounded arch made out of massive blocks of travertine. They were laid dry, using no mortar, joined together by rectangular projections on one block fitted into matching rectangular grooves on the adjacent block. The exterior was then reinforced with a layer of concrete.
The arch is missing its keystone. Archaeologists believe it was likely cadged in the Middle Ages when the bridge was partially demolished and enclosed by two walls 10 feet high coated with a layer of plaster on the exterior. The walls appear to have supported a ramp used to cross the tributary.
Researchers are investigating the connection between this bridge and the earlier one from the 2nd or 3rd century B.C.
The analysis of the historical cartography of this area highlights the convergence of several branches of the Fosso and of small tributaries, the course of which varied according to the eras. The stratigraphy then highlighted the remarkable alluvial layers that attest that the bridge crossed the Fosso at a critical point, subject since Roman times to frequent flooding and swamping phenomena.
The remains of the bridge will be protected and reburied as they are 13 feet below street level inside an aquifer and therefore cannot be moved. The expansion of the highway will not damage the archaeological material.
Maritime archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 17th century trading vessel on the bed of the Trave River near the Baltic port city of Lübeck, Germany. The ship’s remains were first spotted in February 2020 during a routine survey of the Trave’s shipping channels when sonars detected an anomaly on the riverbed at a depth of 36 feet. Divers were finally able to explore the site in August 2021, and they alerted Lübeck cultural heritage authorities that they’d identified a likely shipwreck. Archaeologists from the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University were commissioned to examine the wreck site in detail in November 2021.
Over the last eight months, archaeologists have made 13 dives for a total of 464 minutes, photographing, filming and mapping all of the site. There were no cannons, so researchers were able to eliminate the possibility that it was a warship. They determined it was a sailing vessel carrying at least 150 large barrels of cargo. About 70 of them were found in their original location on the ship. The other 80 were adjacent to them. That means the ship sank straight down and stayed upright. It never listed or capsized.
The wooden planking was dated to around 1650, the late Hanseatic period when Lübeck was a center of maritime trade in northern Europe. This type of medium-sized sailing ship was a workhorse of the Baltic Sea trade network, but equivalent wrecks have only been found in the eastern Baltic Sea region. This is the first one found in the western Baltic.
The wood of the cargo barrels has rotted away, but happy archaeological coincidence, we know what they contained: lime, because it hardens to a rock-hard solid in contact with water, so while the barrels disintegrated, the cargo has survived for centuries. Lime was a key building material used to produce mortar and plaster in the Middle Ages and Early Modern era. The ship was probably loaded up with lime at a Scandinavian point of origin and then sailed for Lübeck but didn’t quite make it.
The wreck was found in the middle of the canal at a bend in the river which was notoriously challenging to navigate. It’s not clear what caused the vessel to sink. Archaeologists believe it may have run aground at the ben and sprang a leak. It sank on an even keel (probably thanks to being so effectively ballasted by its heavy lime cargo) and landed upright on the riverbed.
The remains of the ship and cargo are under threat today from erosion and shipworm. It is only a matter of time before it disappears completely, so Kiel University researchers are working the City of Lübeck to protect the wreck. The default posture is in situ preservation whenever possible, but with the rapid deterioration of this wreck, experts are looking at the possibility of salvaging the timbers and cargo and preserving them on terra firma.
Raising the ship from the riverbed will give archaeologists a chance to fully investigate the hull and its construction, and perhaps identify its origin. “The salvage will probably also uncover previously unknown parts of the wreck that are still hidden in the sediment,” [the head of Lübeck’s archaeology department Manfred] Schneider said, such as rooms for the ship’s crew in the stern that may still hold everyday objects from the 17th century.
Although Lübeck was a center for Baltic trade during the Hanseatic period, very few authentic maritime objects from that time had survived, Schneider said, so the discovery of almost an entire ship from this era is remarkable. “We have something like a time capsule that transmits everything that was on board at that moment,” he said. “It throws a spotlight on the trade routes and transport options at the end of the Hanseatic period.”
Here is raw video taken of the wreck during a dive:
Archaeologists have discovered two carved reliefs from the late Olmec period (900-400 B.C.) in Villahermosa, Tabasco, southeastern Mexico. The reliefs are carved from large round slabs of limestone 4.6 feet in diameter and weigh more than 1,500 pounds apiece. Each relief features a man wearing a headdress formed out of four corncobs, his face contorted in a grimace — mouths open and turned down, eyes wide. In the center of the headdress is an “Olmec cross,” a glyph of a jaguar that was a marker of elite status. The faces take up almost all of the real estate, bordered by footprints on the sides and arms crossed underneath.
The Olmecs are the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. They held sway over what is now Mexico’s southern Gulf Coast region from around 1600 B.C. until their extinction (for reasons unknown) in 400 B.C. Olmec culture is most famously associated with the colossal helmeted heads carved out of massive basalt boulders. The recently-discovered reliefs have features in common with the iconic heads.
Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) was alerted to the existence of the reliefs in June 2019 by an anonymous tipster. They were in a private home in Villahermosa. After examination, INAH experts confirmed their authenticity. The homeowner said he had found them while leveling agricultural land on his farm in Tenosique. (A very similar circular relief was found in Tenosique in 2000.) Archaeologists plan to survey the find site in hopes of narrowing down the date of the carvings.
Among the reliefs known from the late Olmec horizon (all from informal excavations), when La Venta emerged as the guiding center of the nuclear area of this civilization, five of them represent figures of “contortionists”, one of which comes from Balancán and is exposed in the Regional Museum of Anthropology, in Villahermosa; another one, from Ejido Emiliano Zapata, and is in the Museum of the Archaeological Site of Pomoná; and three, from Tenosique, including the one registered in 2000 and these last two.
“The five monuments have in common the representation of large faces, possibly of local rulers, who also practiced contortionism not in a playful sense, but ritual. By adopting the position in which they appear portrayed –which reduces the irrigation and oxygenation of the blood to the brain–, the characters reached trance states in divinatory ceremonies, and that conferred powers on them.
“It is possible that these faces evolved and derived in the Mayan ajaw altars , such as those of the Caracol site, in Belize, which tells us about the permanence of this theme for more than three centuries, already for the Early Classic and Late Classic periods. (495 to 790 AD). The word ajaw means ‘he who shouts’, ‘he who commands’, ‘he who orders’; and in these Mayan monuments the mouth stands out, a feature that must come from Olmec times, especially from these circular reliefs of ‘contortionists’ that are portraits of local chiefs”.
The reliefs will be transferred to the Museum of the Archaeological Site of Pomoná in Tenosique, which will then become home to the lion’s share of Olmec “contortionist” reliefs.
A prehistoric hoard that is unique on the European archaeological record has been unearthed near Oradea in western Romania. Archaeologists discovered the Copper Age grave of a woman during construction of a new highway connector this spring. It contained 160 gold rings, two gold beads, 800 bone beads and a multi-spiral copper bracelet. Before this discovery, the total number of gold artifacts found in the entire Carpathian Basin (consisting of large parts of modern Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria) was only 150 pieces. That figure has now more than doubled in one fell swoop.
The remains are currently undergoing radiocarbon dating, but the objects mark the woman as member of the local Tiszapolgár culture which flourished in Eastern and Central Europe between 4500 and 4000 B.C. Given the exceptional luxury of her funerary jewelry, she must have been someone of very high status.
The gold, beads and bracelet are in the process of being cleaned and conserved. Researchers are hoping to be able to determine the geographic origin of the gold, to pinpoint if it was local or imported. Scientists in Romania and the Netherlands will help perform further analyses including DNA extraction. When studies and conservation are completed, the hoard will be exhibited to the public at the Ţării Crisurilor Museum in Oradea.
