Month: May 2024

Unprecedented prehistoric monument found in France

Ancient

A prehistoric monument formed by two horseshoe-shaped enclosures, one of them with an opening at the bottom, interlocked with a central circular enclosure has been discovered in Marliens, 12 miles east of Dijon. The horseshoe-and-circle design, which seen from above looks like a bow tie with one loop unfastened, is unprecedented on the archaeological record. Radiocarbon dating results have not come in yet, but only cut flint objects were found in the ditches, which suggests the monument dates to the Neolithic period (ca. 7,000-2,000 B.C.).

Archaeologists from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) excavated 15 acres of the site to salvage any archaeological material before the extension of a nearby gravel pit. They found the monument with a layer of gravel in the two side enclosures that indicates there was a palisade originally, now gone. The stratigraphy of the site points to the three enclosures having been built at the same time.

Artifacts found just under the topsoil date to the Bell Beaker period (Early Bronze Age, ca. 2800–1800 B.C.). Among them are a bundle of seven flint arrowheads, two archer’s wrist braces, a flint lighter and a copper alloy dagger. Iron oxide residue from fire lighting was found on one of the braces. This is the full gear of an archer, and such kits are typically found in graves, but in this case no surviving evidence of a burial has been found.

Several pits from the Early Bronze Age are the only remaining elements of a settlement from the period. Thick clay layers at the bottom suggest the pits may have been wells, and analysis of pollen, seeds, fruits and other plant materials preserved in the clay may answer questions about the landscape and human usage of the site.

The next stage of occupation dates to the Middle Bronze Age, between 1500 and 1300 B.C. It is a necropolis consisting of five circular enclosures, four open and one closed, covering an area of ​​1.5 acres. No inhumed remains survived the high acidity of the soil, but a smattering of cremation burial and pyre remains were found in the largest of the open enclosures. Five copper alloy pins and a necklaces of 40 amber beads were found in the ditch of this enclosure. Ceramic fragments found in the other four enclosures confirm the date range.

The last evidence of occupation is a second necropolis dating to the Early Iron Age. It is small with only six cremation urn burials found thus far. The urns each contained a single bone deposit, and some also held funerary offerings of jewelry.

Beethoven was full of lead, arsenic and mercury

Modern(ish)

Analysis of authenticated locks clipped from Ludwig von Beethoven’s prodigious head of hair as he lay dying has found astronomically high levels of lead, arsenic and mercury. The poisoning was so severe, it may explain the symptoms that plagued him at the end of his life.

Researchers at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University sampled five locks of hair previously confirmed as Beethoven’s by DNA analysis and subjected them to poison testing. The owner of three of the locks, Australian businessman and Beethoven afficionado Kevin Brown, sent two locks, one collected between 1820 and 1827, the other in April 1826, to a Mayo Clinic lab where they were tested for the presence of heavy metals.

The result, said Paul Jannetto, the lab director, was stunning. One of Beethoven’s locks had 258 micrograms of lead per gram of hair, and the other had 380 micrograms.

A normal level in hair is less than 4 micrograms of lead per gram.

“It definitely shows Beethoven was exposed to high concentrations of lead,” Jannetto said.

“These are the highest values in hair I’ve ever seen,” he added. “We get samples from around the world, and these values are an order of magnitude higher.”

Beethoven’s hair also had arsenic levels 13 times what is normal and mercury levels that were 4 times the normal amount. But the high amounts of lead, in particular, could have caused many of his ailments, Jannetto said.

The composer was famously suffering from hearing loss — he had been functionally deaf since he was 30, 26 years before he died — and he was also afflicted with chronic gastrointestinal problems (painful abdominal cramps, flatulence, diarrhea). High levels of lead damage the human nervous system, which could have caused his deafness, also cause liver and kidney damage. It may also have played a role in some of his other issues, like his notoriously terrible temper, memory lapses, and chronic clumsiness.

This is not an Agatha Christie case. The lead levels were not high enough to be fatal, and there is no reason to believe he was deliberately poisoned, but rather was exposed to the poisons in his daily environment. Lead, arsenic and mercury were in a lot of things people lived with, ate and drank, from food to medicine to wallpaper. He spent decades taking dozens of different types of nostrums in the attempt to cure his deafness and chronic illnesses, and they certainly contained lead, among many other poisons.

One likely source of Beethoven’s high levels of lead was cheap wine. Lead, in the form of lead acetate, also called “lead sugar,” has a sweet taste. In Beethoven’s time it was often added to poor quality wine to make it taste better.

Wine was also fermented in kettles soldered with lead, which would leach out as the wine aged, Nriagu said. And, he added, corks on wine bottles were presoaked in lead salt to improve the seal.

Beethoven drank copious amounts of wine, about a bottle a day, and later in his life even more, believing it was good for his health and also, Meredith said, because he had become addicted to it. In the last few days before his death at age 56 in 1827, his friends gave him wine by the spoonful.

This research fulfills a wish Beethoven expressed in 1802 to his brothers. He asked that after his death, they get his doctor to tell the world about his struggle with progressive hearing loss in the hope that “as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after my death.”

Roman villa with indoor pool found in Albania

Ancient

An excavation in Durrës, Albania, has uncovered the remains of a Roman villa with an indoor plunge pool. It is the first of its kind discovered in Albania. The villa was built and modified in the imperial era, so between the 1st and 4th centuries A.D. The peak of activity at the site appears to have occurred in the 1st-2nd century A.D.

Located on the Adriatic coast 25 miles west of Tirana, Durrës was founded in the 7th century B.C. by Greek colonists from Corinth and Corfu. The Greeks knew it as both Epidamnos and Dyrrhachion, but after the Romans conquered the region in the Illyrian Wars of 229 B.C., they dropped Epidamnos and Latinized the city’s name to Dyrrhachium. The second-to-last battle between Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompey took place there in 48 B.C. Pompey won, but his great victory was short-lived, and Caesar obliterated Pompey’s forces a couple of weeks later at Pharsalus.

In the imperial era, Dyrrhachium grew and prospered as the western end-point of the Via Egnatia, the Roman road that ran east through Thessalonica all the way to Constantinople. It became the capital of the Roman province of Epirus Nova in the 4th century. It was struck by an earthquake in the 5th century, but bounced back strongly thanks to Byzantine investment in repairing its defensive walls.

The villa was built in a part of the city that archaeologists believe was a wealthy residential neighborhood. It has high-end amenities and decorations. The indoor pool was richly decorated on all its surfaces with frescoes on the walls and mosaic flooring in several styles with tiles and inlays of marble, stone, glass and ceramic. Near the pool are a pair of shallow square basins made of brick coated in waterproof mortar, one layered above the other, that are believed to have been a water feature.

In the northern part of the excavation site, a large-sized brick floor was discovered which could be the floor of a thermae [bathhouse], taking into account comparisons to similar buildings of the Mediterranean period. Also, several wall lines connected with the architectural complex discovered in the sector have been identified. The considerable height of their preservation suggests that this monument may have been built on two floors.

Of great interest are the discoveries in the western part, where we separated fragments of the decoration of the walls and ceilings of the villa, made with stucco with various motifs, anthropomorphic and floral. There are also traces of the fresco here. From the excavation also the rainwater drainage channel constructed with ceramic tiles has been identified.

The villa was destroyed in the 5th century earthquake and was not rebuilt.

Happy 1,911th anniversary, Trajan’s Column!

Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums

On May 12th, 113 A.D., Trajan’s Column was inaugurated, a masterpiece of construction and imperial self-promotion that has been broadcasting scenes from the emperor’s conquest of Dacia for 1,911 years. It was the first triumphal pillar, copied by later emperors, and today is the only intact monument remaining in the Forum of Trajan.

Before the first figure of the spiral frieze that winds around his entire height was carved, the column was already a marvel of engineering. Twenty drums of white marble, each 12 feet in diameter and weighing 32 tons, had to be quarried from Carrara, transported over land, sea and river to Rome and stacked on top of each other more than 98 feet high in the Forum of Trajan. Added to the pedestal, the total height of the victory column is 115 feet.

The exterior of the marble drums were carved with a spiral bas relief 620 feet long that wraps around the column shaft 25 times and boasts 155 different scenes populated by 2,662 figures, including Trajan himself who appears no fewer than 58 times. But wait, there’s more! The interior was then hollowed out, the hard marble removed to create a spiral staircase of 185 steps like an Archimedes screw that visitors in antiquity could use to reach the viewing platform at the top of the column. A small doorway in the base allowed access, and the long walk up was lit by 43 small windows.

The Syrian genius Apollodorus of Damascus, who had accompanied Trajan on his Dacian campaign in 105 A.D. as a military architect, was commissioned by Trajan to plan and execute this testament to his conquest. The frieze has a heavier emphasis on Roman military construction than on actual battle scenes, congruent with Apollodorus’ personal experience of the Dacian Wars but probably motivated more by Trajan’s desire to present himself as sober and effective rather than bloodthirsty. The carving is so detailed and realistic that the column is a unique record of Roman and Dacian clothing, weapons, armor, defenses, artillery, vehicles, religious practices and much more.

It is difficult to grasp the density of content on the column with the naked given the height and distance. The best way to get a real look at the narrative relief is through the plaster casts taken of the column. There’s a full set in the Museum of Roman Civilization, made in 1861-2 by order of Napoleon III. They are placed in four rows at eye level. The museum has been closed for renovations for years, and is scheduled to reopen later this year.

I recently discovered there’s another full set of casts in, appropriately enough, the National History Museum of Romania. This set is much more recent, created between 1934 and 1940 by Vatican craftsmen, although wars hot and cold prevented it from getting to Bucharest until 1967. It is visually even closer to the original because it’s not made of plaster. It is reinforced white cement mixed with white marble dust, so it’s basically a match for the look of the Carrara marble. The museum also has an exact replica of the pedestal.

The National History Museum of Romania has a 3D virtual tour of their copy of Trajan’s Column. They also have a VR option that puts you right in the middle of the museum’s Lapidarium where the copy is installed.

Lost Mantegna rediscovered in storage, restored

Museums, Renaissance

A worn and damaged painting in the stores of the Correr Museum in Venice has been restored and identified as a work by the Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. Madonna and Child, St. John and Six Saints has gone on display for the first time in centuries at the Villa Contarini in Mantegna’s hometown of Piazzola sul Brenta. The exhibition runs until October 27th.

The painting on panel depicts the Madonna and Child with the infant John the Baptist and six female saints. It dates to the end of the 15th century and was bequeathed to Venice by Teodoro Correr, abbot, art collector and scion of one of the city’s oldest patrician families, after his death in 1830. Fearing that his brother would sell off his beloved collection before he was cold in the ground, Teodoro wrote a will in January, just a month before he died, stipulating that his collection be kept intact, that it be named the Correr Collection, that it be open to the public and that it become a public institution under the protection of the city. This bequest created the first civic museum in Venice.

The small work, part of the original collection amassed by Teodoro Correr, was rediscovered last December by the museum’s curator who recognized the exceptional pictorial and compositional quality of the underlying work despite its dire condition. It had been neglected in storage for years. The colors were severely faded, there was paint loss on one hand and bad overpainting on the other. The painting needed extensive restoration before it could even be accurately evaluated, never mind attributed.

Conservators from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia took on the project, utilizing X-ray and reflectographic analysis to examine the underdrawing. Meticulous cleaning and repairs revealed the chiaroscuro contrasts of light and dark and accents in pure gold paint. The fine execution and lavish materials marked it as the work of the master.

The newly-revealed painting was the twin of a painting that is now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Conservators compared imaging results of the two works and found the outlines of the underdrawings were identical. They were created by a single cartoon (the composition drawn on cardboard/paper then perforated at guide points so it could be transferred easily onto a panel or canvas or other surface). The two paintings were likely created around the same time by the same workshop. The are only small differences in the details and colors. The Correr version is also unfinished, but just barely. It was a hair’s breadth from completion when the artist stopped. They were both probably commissioned by the same person, perhaps a noblewoman from the Gonzaga family, rulers of Mantua and patrons of Mantegna.