Month: April 2023

North Sea oil rig technology saves Viking ships

Medieval, Modern(ish), Museums

The Gokstad ship, the Oseberg ship and the Tune warship are the three best-preserved Viking ships in the world. They have been housed in Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum for nearly a century, along with hundreds of associated objects recovered from their burial mounds, many of them fragile organic remains (textiles, tapestries, plant material) and intact wooden conveyances like the three elaborately carved sleighs and a four-wheeled cart found in the Oseberg grave.

When the Viking Ship Museum opened in 1926, it was designed to accommodate approximately 40,000 annual visitors. By the time of its closure in 2021, it had become Norway’s most visited museum by far, averaging more than half a million annual visitors. Vibrations from all of those footfalls, temperature and moisture shifts from humans breathing and speaking and coughing and generally being the gross organisms we are put the ships at great peril. The bracing supports keeping the ships standing were also insufficient to keep the planks stable over time.

Clearly a new museum was going to have to be built to house the ships, but after an international commission of experts determined the ships were too fragile to survive the move to a new location, in 2013 the Norwegian government announced a plan to build an extension to the current Viking Ship Museum. The new facility would feature state-of-the-art climate control, supports and three times the space to house and manage the ships and their collection of associated objects. The ships would also only have to be moved a few hundred feet.

An architectural competition ensued, followed by drafts, feasibility studies, analysis on the feasibility studies, quality assurance studies and, of course, arguments about how much money this was all going to cost. Six years passed.

When two large cracks appeared on the Gokstad ship in 2019, conservators realized they were out of time. They had already added additional supports the year before, so when the planks cracked, experts knew there was no band-aid that could be applied to keep the ships from collapse in their current facility. That September, Norway granted the first funds to begin the new museum project.

After delays from budget overruns and the pandemic, construction on the new museum finally began in February of this year and is scheduled to reopen as The Museum of the Viking Age in 2026. There was still a thorny problem in how to keep the ships from falling apart in the interim, however. In fact, noise, movement and vibration from the construction of the annex posed an even greater threat to their stability than the cumulative footsteps of millions of people.

The ships have never been moved since their arrival at the museum. They have to stay put, as do the Oseberg sleighs, for their own safety. There are no other institutions with comparable experience to guide conservators in how to protect the vessels while earthmovers and jackhammers are rumbling about a few hundred feet away. So museum researchers looked a little further afield for relevant expertise, specifically to the North Sea offshore oil industry.

The team in the SGO [safeguarding of objects] project has found the solutions in collaboration with Imenco Smart Solutions, a company that normally produces equipment for the offshore industry in the North Sea.

To reduce vibrations and other impacts from the construction process, the ships are protected in huge, custom-made steel rigs weighing up to 50 tons each. The rigs, which will later serve as moving rigs, now rest on four strong steel beams that are founded in the basement of the former Viking Ship Museum.

“The energy from the building project is captured in these beams and reduced by vibration isolators. That way, the Viking ships are exposed to minimal vibrations and shaking,” explains [SGO conservator David] Hauer.

During the construction work, the Viking ships and sleighs left at the Viking Ship Museum will be closely monitored. Everyone who works on the construction site has an alarm that goes off if the vibrations exceed the permitted value.

You can see the ships in their badass protective steel rigs in this video:

1,000-year-old Native American canoe raised

Ancient

A 1,000-year-old Native American canoe has been raised from Lake Waccamaw in North Carolina two years after it was accidentally discovered by teenagers. The 28-foot-long canoe was brought to the surface by a team of archaeologists, members of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe and neighbors in a complex operation.

Three of the people who pitched in were the finders: Eli Hill, Jackson Holcomb, and Creek Hyatt. They found the canoe while swimming in the summer of 2021. At first they just thought it was a log, and tried lifting it but it wouldn’t budge. They tried to dig it out but as more of it emerged from the lakebed, they realized it was not a log.

Hill’s family reached out to the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology about the canoe. A team then worked to move it closer to the family’s pier. The canoe sat there for nearly two years until it was finally brought to the surface Wednesday.

State Archaeologist John Mintz says the lengthy removal process was worth it in the end.

“This canoe is about 1,000 years old, and it’s a southeastern Indian canoe, and it’s originated from this area,” said Mintz. “So, we wanted the local Indian group to be part of it and share with the agency of it.”

The canoe will be taken to a lab in Greeneville to be preserved, studied, and possibly share its secrets.

“We’re looking forward to examining it, running some tests on it, really finding out and going back to our elders and getting the history of it to where we can teach the truth to our people and know that we’ve got concrete evidence to stand on,” said Jacobs.

The canoe will be conserved and studied at the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Laboratory, the facility created to conserve the flagship of the infamous English pirate Blackbeard and the quarter million objects recovered from the wreck site. The laboratory has the expertise to preserve the canoe that has been underwater for a millennium, and it is also open to the public for free educational tours. The canoe will be on display for visitors during an open house on April 22nd.

Luxury imperial winery found at Villa of the Quintilii

Ancient, Roma, Caput Mundi

A luxury winemaking complex from the reign of the emperor Gordian III (r. 238-244 A.D.) has been discovered at the monumental Villa of the Quintilii on the ancient Via Appia just south of Rome’s Aurelian wall. Its opulent materials, production scale, theatrical arrangement and storage capacity indicate it was an imperial winery where the emperor and his guests would get to witness the production of wine as a spectacle, perhaps even as a sacred rite.

The Villa of the Quintilii is a villa suburbana (country estate) built at the fifth milestone of the Via Appia. It was constructed on a massive scale, with stamps on the bricks dating the earliest monumental construction to 125 A.D. It had its own private aqueduct and three massive cisterns to supply the villa’s vast bathing facility (it’s seriously huge; the walls are stories high like you see in imperial public baths) and its agricultural production and processing concerns. It was so monumental, in fact, that the remains were dubbed “Roma Vecchia” (Old Rome) and believed to be an unknown ancient city.

The first remains of the Villa of the Quintilii came to light in the 15th century, but it was basically treated as a rich mine of ancient statuary for Pope Pius VI’s collection, not archaeologically explored. Actual excavations began in the early 19th century, and in 1828-9, a lead water pipe was discovered stamped with the name Quintilii. This identified the villa as having belonged to brothers Sextus Quintilius Condianus and Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus who were co-consuls of Rome in 151 A.D.

Its enormous dimensions, ultra deluxe appointments and custom infrastructure were so palatial the emperor Commodus (r. 177–192 A.D.) decided the Villa of the Quintilii should be his palace. He had the brothers killed in 182/183 A.D. specifically to confiscate their property. Commodus expanded the villa even further, adding a hippodrome and theater. The villa became the personal possession of emperors from Commodus through at least Gordian III (244 A.D.) It continued to be used as a residence until the 4th century, and even after it was abandoned as a dwelling, the site continued to be put to use (for agriculture, as a lime kiln, etc) through the Middle Ages.

The volcanic soil in the area is very fertile and as the Quintilius brothers are known to have written an agronomical treatise (now lost), their enormous property of at least 24 hectares was certainly used for agricultural purposes. What crops were grown and processed was unclear until excavations in 2017 and 2018 revealed the first remains of the winery over a demolished tower built during the reign of Commodus. Continuing excavation unearthed a large brick complex that had been demolished after the villa’s abandonment.

The winery features a grape treading area, two presses, a vat for settling grape must and a channel connecting these processing areas to the wine cellar with sunken dolia (giant storage amphorae). These industrial structures are commonly found in winemaking facilities around the Roman Mediterranean, but this example is unique in its arrangement and luxurious decorative elements. A stamp in the mortar of a storage vat bears the name of the emperor Gordian, so he either built the winery himself or repaired/improved upon it.

Luxury was clearly a high priority, higher than function. On stairs and floors where standard wineries would have used cocciopesto (concrete with potsherds aggregate), this one uses prized imported marbles. Marble looks great, but it is an extremely slippery surface to carry baskets of juicy grapes.

After being trodden, the crushed grapes were then taken to the two mechanical presses, 2 metres in diameter, that stood nearby. The resulting grape must was then sent into three fountains, which gushed out of semicircular niches set into a courtyard wall. There were in fact five fountains, with two outer spouts producing water.

The grape must, having cascaded out of the fountains, then flowed along open channels into vast ceramic dolia, or storage jars, set into the ground – a standard winemaking technique in ancient Rome, since they created a stable microenvironment in which fermentation would take place.

Covered dining rooms with wide, open entrances were set around three sides of this open courtyard area. [Archaeologist Dr Emlyn] Dodd’s hypothesis is that here the emperor would have feasted and enjoyed the full theatrical spectacle of wine production.

Only one of these dining rooms is excavated – Dodd would like to find funding to uncover them all – and its walls and floors were covered in multicoloured inlaid marble veneers in elaborate geometrical patterns.

The whole facility seems to have been designed with both the practical matter of wine production and the sheer theatre of it in mind.

The discovery of the winery has been published in the journal Antiquity and can be read in its entirety here.

16th c. frescoes found in Palazzo Vecchio’s “secret staircase”

Renaissance

Plaster removal from the vaulted ceilings and walls of an unused “secret” staircase in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio has revealed 500-year-old frescoes in the grotesque style. Surviving records note that the secret staircase was built in the middle of the 16th century to provide a quick escape route to Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Eleonora di Toledo, from the Terrace of Saturn to the ground floor exit on Via dei Leoni. Over the centuries, the barrel vaulted ceilings and walls were covered in multiple layers of plaster. The grotesque paintings emerged after restorers painstakingly removed layer after layer to reach the original plaster. There has been some paint loss and delamination of the plaster from the wall, so as the decorated surfaces are exposed, conservators having been working to restore and stabilize them.

The Palazzo Vecchio, Florence’s town hall built in the early 1300s, became the Medici ducal palace as well as the seat of government in 1540 when Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici moved there. He was the second duke of Tuscany, the first to inherit the title since its establishment as an inherited title. The first duke, Alessandro de’ Medici, was embroiled in scandals and was ultimately assassinated by a family member with a competing claim to the duchy. Alessandro had no legitimate issue, so the dukedom went to Cosimo, a distant relative from a junior branch of the family.

The teenager had never even lived in Florence and was a complete unknown in the city. He was on shaky political ground, and sought to shore up his power by associating his rule with Florence’s (and his family’s) history. Moving into the Palazzo Vecchio conveyed continuity and strength while reinforcing his position as the sole ruler of the duchy. Given the tenuousness of his position, having a secret escape route built so he and his new bride could get out of the building without having to descend the monumental staircase was only prudent.

When conservation is complete, the staircase will be integrated into the emergency exit system for the palace offices, thereby returning it to its original function.

Mini “missing link” Doric temple found at Paestum

Ancient

A previously unknown Greek temple has been discovered along the defensive walls of the ancient city at the Archaeological Park of Paestum. Archaeologists have uncovered the stone foundation of a Doric temple with its entrance steps and the base of the cella, the small interior chamber that held the cult statue of the venerated deity.

Radiocarbon testing of the clay decorative elements of the temple date it to the first quarter of the 5th century B.C., a period when the more imposing monumental structures in the ancient Greek colony of Poseidonia (Paestum’s original name) had already been built. The Temple of Hera was built between 560 and 520 B.C.; the Temple of Athena around 500 B.C; the Temple of Neptune in 460 B.C.

While very similar in design to the Temple of Neptune, this one is on a much smaller scale. It was 51 feet long by 24.6 feet wide and peripteral (having a single row of columns on all sides). There were four columns on the front and seven on the sides.

It is the smallest peripteral Doric temple that we know before the Hellenistic age, the first building in Paestum that fully expresses the Doric canon”, explains Gabriel Zuchtriegel , the former director of Paestum today in charge of Pompeii who has just given the prints a full-bodied study on Doric architecture. “Almost a small model of the great temple of Neptune”, which at the time must have been under construction, “a sort of missing link between the 6th and 5th centuries BC”. Very important, therefore, also because it somehow demonstrates the artistic and cultural autonomy of the community and disavows those who have always believed that in the colonies they limited themselves to copying the productions of the motherland.

An unusually large quantity of objects were found in the area between the front of the building and the altar. Hundreds of votive offerings, many of them terracotta figurines of the person making the offering or of deities, miniature temples, altars and architectural elements have been unearthed. Notable finds include a stone altar with a groove to collect the fluids from sacrifices, as many as 15 votives of Eros riding a dolphin, sections of marble palmette reliefs, a terracotta palmette antefix from the roof connected to a gutter spout decorated as a lion head, and seven exceptional terracotta bull heads placed on the ground around the altar. They were likely deposited in the closing rite when the temple fell into disuse after Rome conquered the city in 273 B.C.

Archaeologists first encountered the remains of the temple on June 12th, 2019, during an excavation along the western walls of the ancient city of Poseidonia. Follow-up excavations were disturbed by COVID but have finally resumed this year. Right now, researchers are documenting the phases of construction of the temple and attempting to explain why the walls on the back of the structure collapsed.