Category Archives: NORTH AMERICA

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Unpredictable Rainfall May Have Helped Destabilized Ancient Maya Societies

Reduced predictability of seasonal rainfall might have played a significant role in the disintegration of Classic Maya societies about 1,100 years ago. The decline in seasonal predictability potentially destabilized Classic Maya societies in a new study recently published in Communications Earth & Environment.

University of New Mexico archaeologist Keith Prufer is among the authors, along with colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Potsdam University. The findings may have significance for populations in the region facing climate change today. 

The research team studied variations in stable isotope signatures from a stalagmite collected in a cave in Belize near an archaeological site in the former heartland of the Maya. The carbon and oxygen isotope ratios are sensitive recorders of local and regional rainfall dynamics. 

This paper is a continuation of 18 years of research by Prufer, UNM colleagues, and an international team of scientists into the past climate in the Belize tropics.  

Prufer has been a principal investigator for the research program, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alphawood Foundation. 

“The climate record was generated from a cave called Yok Balum, located near the ancient Maya city of Uxbenká. That ancient city figures prominently in this article and is important because it is the closest to the site of the climate data and because of two decades of research there exploring the timing of the collapse,” Prufer explained. 

This paper is a collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany to get advanced time-series modeling to understand the patterning of seasonal variation. The lead at PIK, Tobias Braun, used this study for his dissertation. 

Also included in the research team from UNM are Ph.D. candidate student Erin Ray and Victor Polyak, a senior research scientist in the UNM Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Ray worked to assemble the cultural data, such as the data that records the dynastic history of the Maya from their hieroglyphs, and demographic data. Polyak originally developed the high-precision chronology for the climate and seasonality records. 

“A key ingredient for Maya agriculture was the timely arrival of sufficient rainfall. Farming in subtropical Central America is tough because freshwater is only available during the summer rainy season.

Changes of onset and intensity of the rainy season can have serious repercussions for Central American societies,” Braun noted in a PIK press release about the newly published study. While most scientists agree that repeated intense droughts were one of the key factors that led to the fragmentation of urban centers and population dispersal in lowland Maya societies, evidence at seasonal time scale was so far missing. And this is exactly what the study takes into focus.  

The significance of this record is three-fold, according to Prufer. 

“First, it is a novel climate record for the American tropics with such high resolution – one to seven samples per year over a 1,600-year period − allowing us to look at changes in seasonality from year to year. It is also the first such record to incorporate advanced time series modeling to evaluate seasonal variation in the neotropics and link those changes directly to quantitative cultural records,” Prufer explained. 

Second, the research sheds new light on an enduring question in Maya archaeology: What caused the population decline and disintegration of political institutions at the end of the Classic Period between 250 and 850 CE? 

Prufer and his colleagues found that changes in seasonality would have challenged food production in this region where all agriculture is directly dependent on rainfall by making the timing for planting harvesting much more difficult − or impossible − to predict from year-to-year. 

“The collapse was significant,” he noted. “Over the course of perhaps 100 to 150 years, populations as high as 5 to 10 million people declined by as much as 60 to 70 percent, and a complete form of governance was abandoned.” 

Third, this research has significance for farming today. The past is an indication of what might be expected in a dire future. 

“With modern global climate change, seasonality patterns are again far less predictable than they were only a couple of decades ago,” Prufer pointed out. “This is forcing modern Maya farming communities − and everyone else − to rethink how they produce food and how to achieve food security, considering their dependence on the timing of the rainy season and the seasonal distribution of rainfall, which is no longer predictable.

“This is important because farming requires both traditional knowledges of when to clear fields and plant, as well as a reliable amount of rainfall each season. When this breaks down, it causes food shortages and human suffering. This case study has implications for collective responses to climate change across the global tropics, a region that feeds over 2 billion people.” 

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza

Intact Ball Game Carving Discovered at Chichen Itza
With its complete Mayan hieroglyphic text, a Ball Game marker is discovered at Chichén Itzá.

*** Presents two ball players in the center; It has a diameter of 32.5 centimeters, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight.

*** It must have been attached to an arch that served as access to the Casa Colorada architectural complex

 In the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá, archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) discovered a stone marker of the Ball Game in a circular shape, which presents a bas-relief glyphic band surrounding two attired characters like ball players. 

The relevance of the finding lies in the fact that it is a sculptural element that preserves its complete glyphic text.

With 32.5 centimeters in diameter, 9.5 centimeters thick, and 40 kilograms in weight, the piece was found during archaeological work carried out as part of the Program for the Improvement of Archaeological Zones (Promeza), in charge of the Federal Ministry of Culture.

The piece, named Ball Players Disc, was found by archaeologist Lizbeth Beatriz Mendicuti Pérez, within the Casa Colorada architectural complex (named after the remains of red paint inside) or Chichanchob ─located between the Ossuary and the Observatory─, as part of Structure 3C27, which corresponds to an access arch to the area, informed the archaeologist Francisco Pérez Ruiz, who together with the archaeologist José Osorio León coordinates the execution of the Promise in Chichén Itzá.

“In this Mayan site it is rare to find hieroglyphic writing, let alone a complete text; It hasn’t happened for more than 11 years,” said archaeologist Pérez Ruiz, explaining that the monument found functioned as a marker of some important event related to the Casa Colorada Ball Game, a court much smaller than the Great Game of Chichen Itza ball.

The researcher estimates that this Ball Game marker must correspond to the Terminal Classic or Early Postclassic period, between the end of the 800s and the beginning of 900 AD.

In turn, the archaeologist Mendicuti Pérez explained that the monument was found in an inverted position, 58 centimeters from the surface, which suggests that it was part of the east wall of the aforementioned arch, and its final position was due to its collapse.

He explained that it is a disc composed of rock of sedimentary origin, recognized by the geographer Arlette Herver Santamaría. The glyphic band, present on the front face, measures approximately six centimeters wide, which surrounds an iconographic interior record 20 centimeters in diameter: the iconographic and epigraphic study, headed by the responsible archaeologist, Santiago Alberto Sobrino Fernández, has identified two characters dressed as ball players, standing in front of a ball.

“The character on the left wears a feathered headdress and a sash that features a flower-shaped element, probably a water lily. At the height of his face, a scroll can be distinguished, which can be interpreted as breath or voice. The opponent wears a headdress known as a ‘snake turban’, whose representation is seen on multiple occasions in Chichén Itzá.

The individual wears ballcourt protectors. The epigraphic band consists of 18 cartouches with a short count date of 12 Eb 10 Cumku, which tentatively points to AD 894.

Pérez Ruiz announced that the study of the piece will be carried out within the Promeza; At the moment, its conservation is already being attended to.

Meanwhile, the movable property restorer, Claudia Alejandra Mei Chong Bastidas, desalinated the piece with cellulose fiber compresses and physical-chemical cleaning with distilled water.

In turn, the biologist Luis Alberto Rodríguez Catana has carried out the photogrammetry process, in order to have high-resolution images of the details of the iconography and the glyphic text, to later be studied down to the smallest detail, the researcher concluded. 

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

83 ancient Mexican artifacts returned from Italy, Germany, France

83 ancient Mexican artifacts returned from Italy, Germany, France

A pre-Hispanic carving of a bird recently returned by German authorities to the Mexican government.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has announced the return of 40 historical artifacts from Italy, as well as another 40 from Germany and three from France.

Some of the artifacts are nearly 1,700 years old.

Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto telling reporters about the recovery of 83 pre-Hispanic artifacts returned to Mexico by Italian, German and French authorities.

The artifacts arrived safely back in Mexico thanks to Aeromexico, who collected them in Rome, Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto reported during President López Obrador’s daily press conference on Tuesday.

Frausto traveled to Rome to repatriate the articles in person. 

“There was joy, applause, and a lot of pride,” amongst the team on the return journey, she said. Videos on Twitter showed the group jubilantly celebrating the loading of the items into the aircraft in Rome.

“Not only do we announce the recovery of heritage but also the recovery of dignity in this country,” she told the assembled press.

Forty of the artifacts being repatriated on an Aeromexico flight from Rome.

The artifacts were confiscated in 2021 by the Carabinieri group for the Protection of Cultural Heritage — and Italian enforcement agency tasked with identifying cultural items that may have been removed without permission from their countries of origin. 

Some of the pieces in question were in private hands at the time of the seizure.

It is not the first time Italy has returned missing cultural artifacts to Mexico: as recently as July, it returned 30 artifacts found by Italian authorities being offered for sale online and at auction. At the time, Mexico gave Italy custody of 1,271 documents in its possession that were connected to the Italian sculptor Ettore Ferrari in exchange. 

83 ancient Mexican artifacts returned from Italy, Germany, France
Italy has returned to Mexico at least 70 pre-Hispanic artifacts confiscated in its nation in less than a year. These three were returned to Mexico in July.

The Italian government has been directly advising Mexico on how to create a similar cultural protection enforcement organization that could further recover more missing items and has sent an attaché to Mexico to assist.

The recovery of historical artifacts has been a key element of foreign policy under the López Obrador government, and foreign embassies have been instructed to advertise repatriation services. 

“Binational cooperation is experiencing a happy moment,” said Giorgio Silli, the Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs.

President López Obrador has prioritized the recovery of pre-Hispanic artifacts, and through the Culture Ministry, launched an education campaign aiming at getting owners to repatriate such items. In this tweet, pre-Hispanic items being offered for sale outside Mexico are highlighted.

In addition to the artifacts recovered from Italy, INAH says that a further 40 pieces have been returned by Germany, as well as 3 from France, several of which date from 400 B.C. 

The French pieces were part of a private inheritance that had been delivered to an auction house. According to the newspaper El Pais, the owner delisted and returned the objects to the Mexican embassy in Paris after learning of the government repatriation scheme, according to El País.

The Mexican government is now targeting the return of 83 Olmec artifacts from France that are set to be sold at a private auction on April 3. Frausto has slammed the auction of these pre-Hispanic pieces and at the press event, she challenged people who would buy such artifacts to appreciate works being made by modern artisans throughout Mexico.

“They are put up for sale as if they were a luxury item to decorate a house as if they were merchandise. This is not only illegal but it is also immoral…

“We call for potential buyers to set their eyes on the art in towns today. There are extraordinary pieces that may be adorning the most luxurious houses in the world. Contemporary art in Mexico is also a power. Visit and see this art that is being created right now,” she said. 

INAH reports that a total of 11,505 archaeological pieces have now been repatriated under President López Obrador’s government.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

The secret of the mummy in the Crystal coffin found in a garage in San Francisco

The secret of the mummy in the Crystal coffin found in a garage in San Francisco

The secret of the mummy in the Crystal coffin found in a garage in San Francisco

Mysterious mummies are a symbol of ancient lost times, which we often associate with Egypt and other ancient civilizations. Therefore, the discovery of a coffin made of crystal with the body of a girl come from under the floor of a garage in San Francisco is absolutely shocking.

In 2016, while remodeling an old garage in San Francisco, California, workers found a strange object that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a child’s coffin with an extraordinary design.

Rusted bolts held a metal object together that resembled a large shaped casket, and it was only by unscrewing the bolts that it was possible to identify what it was. Bolts fixed a sheet of metal that covered two windows made of thick glass. Looking inside the box, the workers were taken aback — inside lay the body of a small blonde girl, almost untouched by decay.

The discovery of an old coffin containing the body of a child terrified the people of San Francisco and perplexed scientists. It took them a long time to figure out the mystery of an unusual burial.

Coffin inside lay the body of a blond girl dressed in a lace dress. Her hair was decorated with lavender petals, and on her chest lay a wreath in the form of a cross of blue bindweeds. In her hands, she held a large purple nightshade flower.

There were no details inside the coffin that would help identify the body.  The body was examined, described, and photographed, after which the experts drew up a protocol, placed the metal coffin containing the child in a wooden box, and… handed it over to the garage owner.

According to the law, if the corpse is not a criminal and the relatives are unknown, the burial duties are assigned to the owner of the land where the body was discovered.

During the paperwork, the police gave the deceased the name Eva. And the mistress of the garage, where they found the burial, named the child Miranda.

But how did the coffin with the little dead girl end up under the garage? This was not a surprising occurrence given that the structure stood on the grounds of Odd Fellows Cemetery, San Francisco’s largest cemetery. When the rapidly growing metropolis came close to the extreme graves, a large city churchyard was closed for burials in 1890.

When the cemetery started to negatively impact the neighborhood over time, it was decided to close it down in 1923. Most of the remains were exhumed and buried in common graves, while some of the bodies were taken by relatives for reburial. The coffin with the girl was obviously forgotten in the confusion and remained in the ground, which was handed over to developers.

Tissue and hair samples were taken from the deceased girl for DNA analysis. Erica Karner was busy burying Eva-Miranda while the examination was taking place. The girl’s body began to decompose after the airtight coffin was opened. It was impossible to delay the burial.

Tissue analysis revealed that the baby’s mother was born in the British Isles. Even more interesting were the results of the hair study.

“Hair DNA analysis showed that the child had a protein deficiency and severe malnutrition.

And experts said that most likely this arose due to some kind of illness or due to the amount of medication that the child used,” the lawyer said.

Volunteers explored the city archives. They found a record of the burial of a two-year-old girl who died due to severe exhaustion. Her name is Edith Howard Cook. The child died in October 1876.

The parents’ names were Horatio Nelson and Edith Skaufi Cook. Scientists have even found living relatives of the “girl from the crystal coffin.”

Thus, volunteers and scientists were able to solve the mystery surrounding the mysterious burial and give the girl’s name back who passed away nearly 150 years ago.

Sleeping Beauty.

Parents often embalmed their dead children’s bodies centuries ago. The famous mummy of a child is kept in Palermo’s Capuchin catacombs. Rosalia Lombardo, the daughter of a Sicilian official, died of pneumonia in 1920. The girl’s body was so well preserved that she was nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty”.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Burial Chamber Uncovered at Maya Site of Palenque

Burial Chamber Uncovered at Maya Site of Palenque

Burial Chamber Uncovered at Maya Site of Palenque

The discovery of a burial chamber in the archaeological zone of Palenque with a primary burial, composed of a human skeleton, and a secondary burial, an offering made up of three plates and a niche with various green stone figures, was reported by archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), informed its director Diego Prieto during the morning conference of President López Obrador, from Palenque, Chiapas.

Prieto Hernandez emphasized that the discovery was registered during the salvage of Structure CP3, during the construction works of the Mayan Train.

The head of INAH explained that the skeleton of the individual of the primary burial presents a face-up position and is oriented towards the north, something usual in the ancient funerary customs of Palenque.

The skeletal remains of the second deposit would correspond to a woman, who was probably buried in a different place.

Prieto Hernandez said that there is also another skull, of which the analyses continue for its identification.

The archaeological salvage tasks, said Diego Prieto, are practically concluded, nevertheless, the archaeologists and other professionals continue with the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological information.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Flotsam May Be Wreckage of Historic 19th-Century Ship

Flotsam May Be Wreckage of Historic 19th-Century Ship

 A chunk of weather-beaten flotsam that washed up on a New York shoreline after Tropical Storm Ian last fall has piqued the interest of experts who say it is likely part of the SS Savannah, which ran aground and broke apart in 1821, two years after it became the first vessel to cross the Atlantic Ocean partly under steam power.

Flotsam May Be Wreckage of Historic 19th-Century Ship
This photo shows the 1819 painting of the SS Savannah, by Hunter Wood, LT USMS. A chunk of weatherbeaten flotsam that washed up on a New York shoreline after Tropical Storm Ian last fall has piqued the interest of experts who say it is likely part of the SS Savannah, a famous shipwreck that became the first vessel to cross the Atlantic Ocean partly under steam power in 1819 and then ran aground off Long Island two years later.
Tony Femminella, executive director of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society, and Betsy DeMaria, museum technician with Fire Island National Seashore, stand beside a section of the hull of a ship believed to be the SS Savannah, at the Fire Island lighthouse, Friday, Jan. 27, 2023, in New York. The SS Savannah wrecked in 1821 off Fire Island.

The roughly 13-foot (4-meter) square piece of wreckage was spotted in October off Fire Island, a barrier island that hugs Long Island’s southern shore, and is now in the custody of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society. It will work with National Park Service officials to identify the wreckage and put it on public display.

“It was pretty thrilling to find it,” said Betsy DeMaria, a museum technician at the park service’s Fire Island National Seashore. “We definitely are going to have some subject matter experts take a look at it and help us get a better view of what we have here.”

It may be difficult to identify the wreckage with 100% certainty, but park service officials said the Savannah is a top contender among Fire Island’s known shipwrecks.

Explorers have searched for the Savannah for over two centuries but have not found anything they could definitively link to the famous ship. The newly discovered wreckage, though, “very well could be” a piece of the historic shipwreck, said Ira Breskin, a senior lecturer at the State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx. “It makes perfect sense.”

Evidence includes the 1-to-1.3-inch (2.5-to-3.3-centimeter) wooden pegs holding the wreckage’s planks together, consistent with a 100-foot (30.5-meter) vessel, park service officials said in a news release.

The Savannah was 98 feet, 6 inches (30 meters) long. Additionally, the officials said, the wreckage’s iron spikes suggest a ship built around 1820. The Savannah was built in 1818.

Breskin, author of “The Business of Shipping,” noted that the Savannah’s use of steam power was so advanced for its time that the May 24, 1819, start of its transatlantic voyage is commemorated as National Maritime Day. “It’s important because they were trying to basically show the viability of a steam engine to make it across the pond,” he said.

Breskin said a nautical archaeologist should be able to help identify the Fire Island wreckage, which appears likely to be from the Savannah. “It’s plausible, and it’s important, and it’s living history if the scientists confirm that it is what we think it is,” he said.

The Savannah, a sailing ship outfitted with a 90-horsepower steam engine, traveled mainly under sail across the Atlantic, using steam power for 80 hours of the nearly month-long passage to Liverpool, England.

Crowds cheered as the Savannah sailed from Liverpool to Sweden and Russia and then back to its home port of Savannah, Georgia, but the ship was not a financial success, in part because people were afraid to travel on the hybrid vessel. The Savannah’s steam engine was removed and sold after the ship’s owners suffered losses in the Great Savannah Fire of 1820.

The Savannah was transporting cargo between Savannah and New York when it ran aground off Fire Island. It later broke apart. The crew made it safely to shore and the cargo of cotton was salvaged, but the Augusta Chronicle & Georgia Gazette reported that “Captain Holdridge was considerably hurt by being upset in the boat.”

Explorers have searched for the Savannah over the two centuries since it but have not found anything they could definitively link to the famous ship.

Until now, perhaps.

CANADA, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Swiss Museum Returns Sacred Objects to Canada’s First Nations

Swiss Museum Returns Sacred Objects to Canada’s First Nations

Swiss Museum Returns Sacred Objects to Canada's First Nations
The two representatives of Haudenosaunee Confederation Clayton Logan (Seneca Nation), left, and Brennen Ferguson (Tuscarora Nation), right, hold boxes containing sacred objects during the ceremony of restitution of sacred object to the Haudenosaunee Confederation, at the Museum of Ethnography of Geneva (MEG), in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. The MEG has returned the traditional sacred objects, a mask and a rattle, to the Haudenosaunee after 200 years in Switzerland.

Two artifacts sacred to some of Canada’s Indigenous peoples are now back on home territory after a Swiss museum returned them to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy this month. 

The objects, a medicine mask and turtle rattle, had been in the possession of the Geneva Museum of Ethnography (MEG) for nearly 200 years. 

The museum acknowledged last month that the artifacts were originally acquired without consent, noting in a press release it was taking the unprecedented step of returning them as part of its commitment to ensuring both human remains and sacred objects are restored to their rightful owners.

Mohawk elder and activist Kenneth Deer — one of the three men sent to retrieve the objects — said he was “surprised and thankful” for the museum’s co-operation and called the MEG “progressive” for returning the objects without conditions or complications. 

“It was a very quick turnaround because sometimes it takes years to get objects back from a museum, especially from a foreign country. It was a really good experience, and I think it’s a model for other museums to follow,” Deer said in an interview on Friday. 

Deer said the mask was first spotted back in July by Tuscarora Brennen Ferguson, who, along with Deer, is a member of the Haudenosaunee external relations committee. 

In November, the committee wrote a letter requesting the return of artifacts to Canada. The museum and the city of Geneva, which founded the MEG in 1901, approved the request. 

“The museum was very cooperative, and more than that, they were just respectful,” Ferguson said. “(After I first saw the mask), we met with the director, and we asked her for the mask to be taken off public display, and they did it that very same day. We expressed our wishes, and they worked with us completely.”

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is made up of six nations on both sides of the American and Canadian border: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Tuscarora, and Seneca.

Deer said the MEG offered to ship the artifacts to Canada at the beginning of the year after obtaining a Swiss export permit, but Haudenosaunee elders objected because of the significance of the mask. 

“It is a medicine mask used in ceremonies for healing, and we regard these masks as living entities that have great healing powers,” Deer said.

So, a delegation was formed consisting of Deer, Ferguson, and 87-year-old Seneca elder Clayton Logan. Together the three flew to Switzerland to retrieve the sacred objects.

“There was a ceremony, and it was all very terrific. There was a lot of media attention, and a lot of people came out. The Canadian ambassador to the United Nations was present. And there were representatives from the United States government, Mexico and Guatemala, and the Swiss, of course,” Deer said. 

Deer said Logan was allowed to burn traditional tobacco during the Feb. 7 ceremony. Deer also gave the museum two Mohawk corn husk dolls, one male and one female, made in Akwesasne.

Meg Director Carine Ayélé Durand issued a press release saying she was very pleased to see the city of Geneva playing an active role in favor of the rights of Indigenous peoples.

“This return of sacred objects was made possible thanks to the relationship we have had with the Haudenosaunee,” Ayélé Durand said in the statement.

She went on to thank the administrative council of the city of Geneva, who she said “made this process extremely smooth and quick.,”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Feb. 18, 2023.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Live Civil War Shell Discovered at Pennsylvania Battlefield

Live Civil War Shell Discovered at Pennsylvania Battlefield

Live Civil War Shell Discovered at Pennsylvania Battlefield
Historic ordnance discovered by archaeologists at Little Round Top in Gettysburg.

Archaeologists working at a historic battlefield at Gettysburg recently made an explosive find: a live 160-year-old artillery shell that had to be detonated by a specially trained U.S. Army disposal team.

The shell was found on Feb. 8 at Little Round Top, a hill that offered Union forces a strategic position during the Civil War. On July 2, 1863, the second day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, the North and the South struggled for 90 minutes to control Little Round Top, leaving thousands of soldiers dead.

The rocky hill was not, however, an ideal platform for an artillery offensive, as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee suggested in his 1864 report about the Gettysburg campaign. Lee reported that Confederate Gen. Longstreet was delayed by Union forces firing from Little Round Top, but Longstreet decided to go around them rather than attempt to take the hill.

An 18-month-long rehabilitation project is currently taking place at Little Round Top as the National Park Service works to preserve and protect the battlefield landscape and to add new signage for Gettysburg visitors.

Archaeologist Steven Brann and his team from Stantec, a consultancy company that also performs archaeological work, were sweeping the area with metal detectors when they hit on something nearly 2 feet (0.6 meter) underground. “It is standard procedure to use metal detectors on battlefields,” Brann told Live Science in an email.

The unexploded round they discovered was about 7 inches (18 centimeters) long and weighed about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms). “There are procedures in place in case such objects are found,” Brann explained.

Ultimately, the Army’s 55th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company (EOD) from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was called in to remove the shell and destroy it safely.

“Unexploded ordnance still found on the battlefield is a fairly unique circumstance,” Jason Martz, a spokesperson for Gettysburg National Military Park, told Live Science in an email. “It’s only the fifth found since 1980.” 

“Most of the objects we find are much smaller, such as percussion caps, bullets, and uniform buttons,” Brann said. “Much of what we find turns out to be modern trash or objects that were discarded during the construction of monuments, such as iron straps and nails.” Still, these artifacts are not usually discovered unless excavation is happening. And as evidenced by the current find, excavation at a battlefield can be dangerous.

“Archaeology work is always completed before any ground disturbance takes place, and it’s a federal offense to dig or metal detect for these items by the general public,” Martz said.

Many commenters and history buffs on the Gettysburg National Military Park’s Facebook post lamented the fact that the ordnance — which Capt.

Matthew Booker, commander of the EOD, identified as a 3-inch Dyer or Burton shell for a rifled cannon — had to be destroyed. 

Nonetheless, “this particular shell hasn’t told us its whole story yet,” Martz said. The park is researching the shell and its discovery location in greater detail now, trying to figure out, for example, whether it was fired by Union or Confederate troops, and will release that information to the public when it is available. 

“The fact that this shell was found nearly 160 years after the Battle of Gettysburg is a very powerful and tangible connection to the past,” Martz added. “It also reminds us that the battlefield still has stories to tell.”