EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed

A vest of chain mail, which is more than 800 years old, has been handed into the Knights and Conquests Heritage Centre in Granard, Co Longford.

‘Extraordinary’ 800-year-old chain mail discovered in Co Longford shed
It is understood the chain mail dates back to 1172 shortly after the Normans arrived in Ireland.

At an event last weekend, a member of the public disclosed that they had a hauberk, or coat of chain mail, in their garden shed.

The centre’s general manager Bartle D’Arcy said he was astonished when a member of the public brought in the artefact, which is in excellent condition.

“We had a Norman heritage day as part of [national] heritage week. I was walking around wearing a chain mail coif when people came up to me and said that they had ‘some of that’ in their shed. I said ‘What do you mean you have some of that in your shed?’

“They brought it to me two days ago and it is a full hauberk, 800 years old. They took it out of a drain a few years ago with a digger and just had it in their shed. It is extraordinary.”

Mr D’Arcy brought the chain mail to the National Museum of Ireland on Thursday. Officers there said that they were amazed to see an intact hauberk, having only ever seen fragments of chain mail.

“It is an amazing, extraordinary find. This all happened because of a chance encounter. They didn’t know what it was because it got stuck in the digger bucket. Unless you knew your history you wouldn’t really know what it was.

“It wasn’t discovered in Granard but it was discovered locally, but we are protecting the identity of the person. We are doing everything by the book and have declared it to the museum and so on,” he said.

Plans are afoot to put the chain mail on display in Longford. Mr D’Arcy said the museum would take the chain mail away to carry out some work on it.

Mr D’Arcy said the chain mail was in such good condition because it was in the water for so many years.

“It only rusts if you have water and air and if it’s only in water it survives. When the digger brought it up it was in peat.”

It is understood the chain mail dates back to 1172 shortly after the Normans arrived in Ireland. It will be restored and preserved before it goes on display.

ASIA, EUROPE, RUSSIA, WORLD

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub

Scientists say the remains of a lion cub, named Sparta and found in Siberia in 2018, are 28,000 years old and in excellent condition.

Meet Sparta, the 28,000 Year Old Perfectly Preserved Lion Cub
A cave lion cub named Sparta, which was found preserved in Siberia’s permafrost. Cave lions have been extinct for thousands of years. Photograph: Reuters

They say the lion cu, may still hold some of its mother’s milk inside it.

The cub was a female cave lion that researchers named Sparta. Her remains were discovered in the permanently frozen ground at the Semyuelyakh River in Russia’s Yakutia area.

The findings were part of a study published in the journal Quaternary.

According to the study, the cubs were found fifteen meters away from each other. However, scientists claim many generations separated them. The research showed that Boris lived around 43,448 years ago.

Boris, a male cave lion cub, lived and died about 15,000 years before Sparta. Photograph: Reuters

Cave lions died out thousands of years ago. The two cubs, aged one to two months old, were found by mammoth tusk collectors. Mammoths were large, hairy prehistoric elephants with very long tusks.

“To my knowledge, this is the best-preserved frozen specimen from the last Ice Age ever found,” study author Love Dalén, an evolutionary geneticist at Stockholm University’s Centre for Palaeogenetics, tells NBC News. “Sparta is in near-perfect condition.”

Cave lions coexisted with early humans for thousands of years, according to the study. For example, the Chauvet Cave in France depicts cave lions drawn on walls. The early cave paintings are estimated to be more than 30,000 years old.

The coloration of cub fur appears different than that of mature cave lions, requiring further study to determine if aging causes changes. Researchers also noted similarities in the fur between the big cats and lions of the Ice Age that still roam the savannas of Africa.

The species is thought to have smaller manes than African lions while adapting to colder climates.

Other lion cubs found in Siberia

Two other lion cubs have also been found in Siberia’s Yakutia area in recent years.

Valery Plotnikov is one of the study’s writers. He told Reuters that Sparta was so well-preserved that her fur, organs, and skeleton were still intact.

“The find itself is unique; there was not any other such find in Yakutia,” he said.

Plotnikov added that the scientists hope to find evidence of mother’s milk inside Sparta in order to learn about the diet of cave lions.

There have been numerous other similar discoveries in Russia’s larger Siberian area in recent years.

Climate change is warming the Arctic faster than the rest of the world. That increase in temperature has melted the ground in some areas that were permanently frozen.

NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Men hunt and women gather? A large analysis says the long-held idea is flat-out wrong

Men hunt and women gather? A large analysis says the long-held idea is flat-out wrong

Men hunt and women gather? A large analysis says the long-held idea is flat-out wrong
The research compiled evidence from around the world to show that women participate in subsistence hunting in the majority of cultures. (Image credit: Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay, CC0)

It’s long been assumed that men were hunters and women were gatherers, but a new study reveals that both sexes have been equally adept at hunting in hunter-gatherer cultures.

An international team of scientists made the finding after examining data culled from dozens of academic papers, published over the past 100 years, that focused on 63 hunter-gatherer societies and burials of female hunters from around the world, including groups in North America, Africa, Australia, and Asia, according to a study published Wednesday (June 28) in the journal PLOS One.

“We were reading papers written by people who had lived with these groups and had studied their behavior,” study co-author Cara Wall-Scheffler, a professor and co-chair of biology at Seattle Pacific University, told Live Science. “They were looking at people and recording what they did.”

Of the foraging communities assessed, 79% contained women who were hunters,  and their hunting status didn’t shift once they became mothers. 

“The women would go out with many different tools — they had a very diverse tool kit all around the world — and if they saw an animal, they would kill it,” Wall-Scheffler said. “We were surprised by how the majority of groups showed women hunting, and there was no explicit taboo against that.” 

The researchers also noted that more than 70% of female hunting expeditions were classified as “intentional,” meaning the women purposefully went out seeking meat, as opposed to engaging in opportunistic killings, in which they encountered animals while doing other tasks, such as foraging for plants, according to the study.

Most of these female hunters were “purposely hunting and going out to expressly hunt animals,” Wall-Scheffler said. “We were surprised that it wasn’t just opportunistic. Everyone in their community knew they would go hunting, and that was their job.”

Furthermore, female hunters weren’t hunting and trapping only small game, such as birds and rabbits. Rather, they were equal to male hunters when it came to big-game hunting in the Americas, making up roughly 50% of hunters targeting large animals such as deer and moose, according to the study.

“We reanalyzed the big-game burials from North and South America [in which people were buried with tools or animal bones], and prehistorically showed that women and men were 50/50 big-game hunters,” Wall-Scheffler said.

So, who’s to blame for the erroneous idea that men were hunters and women were gatherers?

Wall-Scheffler mentioned two books that likely helped solidify the idea: “Man the Hunter” (Aldine, 1968), based on a symposium of ethnographers, and a second book released 15 years later, titled “Woman The Gatherer” (Yale University Press, 1983).

“The purpose of [the second] book was to say, ‘Fine, men are hunting, but actually, hunting is not a great way to bring in calories because it’s very inconsistent,'” Wall-Scheffler said. “Because it’s so inconsistent, males may be doing it — but they’re not actually providing for the females, since females were bringing in their own food and they’re totally fine because they were also always gathering.

But the books ended up creating “more rigid gender roles in which men were hunting and women were gathering and never the twain shall meet — and that has stuck around,” she added.

“It doesn’t make sense that if something like hunting for animals would help feed their community, women would ignore it. Having these rigid divisions of labor wouldn’t make sense.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

A gigantic Roman mosaic was discovered in a farmer’s field in the United Kingdom

A gigantic Roman mosaic was discovered in a farmer’s field in the United Kingdom

The first ever mosaic illustrating scenes from Homer’s Iliad, it would have decorated an imposing dining and entertainment space within a major villa complex

This drone photograph captures the scale of the newly discovered Rutland mosaic and surrounding villa, with Historic England staff and team members from ULAS/University of Leicester during the excavations

A battered but magnificent Roman mosaic—the first ever found in the UK illustrating scenes from Homer’s Iliad, has been discovered under ploughed fields in Rutland.

The mosaic depicting the Greek hero Achilles would have cost a fortune and would have flattered a wealthy owner who could have boasted to guests of his knowledge of classical literature.

It must have decorated an imposing dining and entertainment space within a major villa complex, and is regarded as the most important find of its kind in a century. The site is today given official protection by the government on the advice of Historic England.

The bottom panel of the mosaic showing Achilles (left) and Hector duelling on chariots

The mosaic has been damaged by later building work and has scorch marks from fires, which with human remains found in the rubble layer over it suggest that at a very late Roman or early medieval date the site lost its original opulent character and was repurposed.

Further study of the bones and other finds should yield more clues to its later history, and the much debated later life of the villa site as Roman wealth and power shrank back from the edges of the empire.

The top panel of the mosaic, shows the body of Hector being returned to his father King Priam (right) in exchange for his weight in gold.

The mosaic, measuring 7m by 11m, lies close beneath the surface, and was discovered at the height of last year’s lockdown by Jim Irvine, the son of the landowner Brian Naylor, who was out for a walk with his family when he spotted some broken pottery in a field of wheat. “Later, looking at the satellite imagery, I spotted a very clear crop mark, as if someone had drawn on my computer screen with a piece of chalk. This really was the ‘oh wow’ moment, and the beginning of the story.”

The middle panel of the mosaic, where the defeated Hector is dragged by Achilles in his chariot.

Recognizing its potential significance he contacted archaeologists at Leicestershire County Council. Historic England secured urgent funding to send in a team of excavators in August 2020, and further work followed in September 2021 by students and staff from the University of Leicester’s School of Archaeology and Ancient History.

A member of the team from ULAS/University of Leicester during the excavations of the large mosaic.

John Thomas, the deputy director of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services and project manager of the excavations, called it the most exciting mosaic find in the UK in a century, and hugely significant because the entire surrounding villa site appears to survive.

“It gives us fresh perspectives on the attitudes of people at the time, their links to classical literature, and it also tells us an enormous amount about the individual who commissioned this piece,” he says. “This is someone with a knowledge of the classics, who had the money to commission a piece of such detail, and it’s the very first depiction of these stories that we’ve ever found in Britain.”

A member of the team from ULAS/University of Leicester during the excavations of a mosaic pavement.

The room was the centerpiece of a large villa complex dating from the late 3rd or early 4th century AD.

Most of the site has not been excavated but geophysical surveys that reveal underlying structures show a complex of buildings including aisled barns, circular structures, which may be grain stores, and a possible bath house.

Jim Irvine and Brian Naylor pictured first discovering the Roman mosaic in their field during the 2020 lockdown

Further excavation is planned for next year, and while work continues on the finds, including a study by David Neal—internationally recognized as a leading expert on Roman mosaics—the floor has been re-buried to protect it. The archaeologists also hope to create an off-site display with support from the Lottery Heritage Fund.

The scheduled monument status granted to the site today is intended to protect it from illegal metal detectors and other disturbances.

The site had been damaged in the past by ploughing, and Historic England is working with the landowners to return the field to gentler use.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

A Hidden Underground Chamber Has Been Found in The Palace of Emperor Nero

A Hidden Underground Chamber Has Been Found in The Palace of Emperor Nero

The grand, sprawling palace built by the Roman Emperor Nero nearly 2,000 years ago has been kept a secret. While working on restorations in 2019, archaeologists found a secret chamber – a large underground room decorated with murals depicting both real and mythical creatures.

In red and ochre hues, with traces of gilding, centaurs dance across the walls with depictions of the goat-legged god Pan, some bearing musical instruments.

Birds and aquatic creatures, including hippocampi, are also depicted, and a warrior armed with a bow, shield, and sword fighting off a panther, all framed by plant elements, and arabesque figures.

And the creature for which the room is named – a “silent and solitary sphinx” above what seems to be a Baetylus, a type of sacred stone.

The Sphinx. 

The so-called Sphinx Room was discovered quite by accident as part of the ongoing restoration of the palace, named the Domus Aurea, or “Golden House”.

Built after the Great Fire of Rome that ravaged the city over the course of nine days in 64 CE, the palace was an opulent building consisting of 300 rooms that sprawled across the Palatine, Esquiline, Oppian, and Caelian Hills, covering up to over 300 acres.

Nero was not well-loved in his lifetime. He was cruel and tyrannical with those around him, yet lived extravagantly. His ostentatious palace was, therefore, something of an embarrassment to his successors following his death by assisted suicide in 68 CE, after his people revolted.

A centaur (left) and Pan (right). (Parco archeologico del Colosseo)

Significant pains were made to obliterate any traces of the Domus Aurea. Parts of it were built over – one of these structures is the famous Colosseum – others are filled with dirt.

Excavating and restoring it has been an ongoing project by the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo – the Palatine Hill section was just opened to the public for the first time ever earlier this year.

The archaeologists were working in an adjoining room in the section on Oppian Hill when they found the Sphinx Room.

A hidden vault — filled with dirt and adorned with vivid paintings such as a centaur, a sphinx and an attacking panther — has been discovered in the ruins of Emperor Nero’s ancient Roman palace.

They had mounted the scaffolding and turned on the bright lights they need to work – which flooded into an opening in the corner of the room, through which “appeared the entire barrel vault of a completely frescoed room,” according to a statement from the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo.

Much of the room is still filled with dirt, covering parts of the walls and very likely sections of the mural. However, there are no plans to excavate it at this time, since removing the dirt could destabilize the entire complex.

But, even under the rubble, the room is a valuable snapshot of the days of one of Rome’s most hated rulers.

“In the darkness for almost twenty centuries,” said Parco director Alfonsina Russo, “the Sphinx Room … tells us about the atmosphere from the years of the principality of Nero.”

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

Archaeological Sites Identified Off Australia’s Coast

Archaeological Sites Identified Off Australia’s Coast

Researchers say the discovery of more stone artifacts at an underwater location in WA’s north has confirmed its status as Australia’s deepest known ancient Aboriginal site.

In 2019, scientists from Flinders University discovered hundreds of ancient stone tools and grinding stones at the underwater site of Cape Bruguieres, off the Pilbara coast.

A second underwater site was also discovered at the nearby Flying Foam Passage, but only one artifact was found at the 8,500-year-old fresh spring.

But the recent discovery of four more ancient stone artifacts in the passage has given scientists the confidence to confirm its status as an ancient site. 

Potentially ‘thousands’ of undiscovered sites

Chelsea Wiseman says this discovery confirms an archaeological site 14 meters below sea level.

Archaeologist Chelsea Wiseman said it was a significant and rare discovery.

“It confirms that we have an archaeological site located 14 meters below the sea,” she said.

“This is evidence that people were living on a land surface that’s now underwater, so that’s really critical.”

Researchers collected samples from the Pilbara coast in 2019.

Dr. Wiseman is part of a team of scientists who have been studying the region. Their latest findings, confirming the underwater site as an ancient site, have been published in the Quaternary Science Reviews journal.

“It’s a difficult thing to locate an archaeological site underwater and it’s a bit like finding a needle in the haystack,” she said.

“But you can make a haystack a little bit smaller.

“We start with techniques to actually map the seabed, then look for features that might be culturally perspective, features in the landscape, and from there we then test this directly with divers and the divers will then investigate for potential artifacts.”

Scientists found two ancient Aboriginal sites off the Pilbara coast.

Dr. Wiseman said this was just the beginning of submerged landscape archaeology in Australia.

“I think there has the potential to be maybe even thousands of these sites located offshore,” she said.

“It’s a very exciting time in Australian archaeology. I think there’s a lot more to be discovered.”

The research paper found the artifacts were at least 9,000 years old because of how deep they were underwater.

Scientists from Flinders University are looking for ancient Aboriginal artifacts in Murujuga.

A piece of history

Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation declined an interview, but in a pre-recorded video, corporation deputy chair Vincent Adams said the discovery went back to songlines and stories from elders.

MAC deputy chair Vincent Adams at an event for the submission of Murujuga for a World Heritage Nomination.

“The artifacts that we see today are similar, if not the same, as the artifacts that we discovered underwater,” he said.

“It goes to show that our culture and our connection to this country hasn’t been severed and we still got it today.”

Mr Adams said this was one of the biggest discoveries and it was only a matter of time before more sites were found across the country.

“Not only artifacts under water but the stories that have come far and wide … about how significant water was to our people off the coast,” he said.

“We still lived here and we still got the story today to tell you.”

Push for greater protection

Archaeological Sites Identified Off Australia’s Coast
Scientists are advocating for better protection of the Aboriginal archaeological site.

Under Australia’s Underwater Cultural Heritage Act, shipwrecks older than 75 years are granted automatic protection.

Dr. Wiseman said this law did not adequately protect ancient Indigenous sites.

“They have the potential to contribute a vast wealth of knowledge about the past, so it’s absolutely critical that these sites should be protected,” she said.

“Sites, such as the ones that we found in Murujuga, can only be protected with ministerial approval.

“The call would be to extend a more balanced level of protection to the underwater cultural heritage.”

EUROPE, WORLD

Bronze Age metal hoard discovered in the Swiss Alps at the Roman battle site

Bronze Age metal hoard discovered in the Swiss Alps at the Roman battle site

Bronze Age metal hoard discovered in the Swiss Alps at the Roman battle site

Archaeologists excavating the Switzerland Oberhalbstein valley have discovered a metal hoard containing more than 80 bronze artifacts dating from 1200 BC to 1000 BC or the late Bronze Age.

Oberhalbstein is in Graubünden canton, the easternmost region of Switzerland, and about 100 miles southeast of Zurich.

In 2021, the Archaeological Service of Graubünden (ADG) launched a new research project to systematically examine the landscape for the remains of the conflict between Rome and the Suanetes. The Bronze Age hoard was discovered as part of this project.

The hoard, which was discovered in a field south of an ancient settlement on a transalpine trade route, dates to the 12th or 11th century B.C. It is the largest and most important Bronze Age hoard ever discovered in the canton of Graubünden.

Aerial view of the Salouf-Vostga site, with the village of Salouf in the background, Oberhalbstein/Surses Photo: Archaeological Service of Graubünden

The Archaeological Service of Graubünden (ADG) unearthed the hoard in October 2022 after a volunteer metal detectorist surveying the site alerted the team to its presence. The artifacts were found last fall but only recently announced.

The items had been intentionally damaged to be unusable, placed in a wooden box, wrapped in leather, and buried in the valley.

Photo: Archaeological Service of Graubünden

Most of the buried treasures were metal objects, possibly linked to metal production in the Alps, archaeologists said. The collection included several pieces of raw copper, sickles, axes, part of a saw, and jewelry pieces. They were damaged deliberately, and “killed” before being buried as an offering.

“The comprehensive scientific investigation that will now follow this find, which is unique in our area, will certainly provide far-reaching insights into late Bronze Age cultural, economic, and landscape history,” says Thomas Reitmaier, an archaeologist for the Graubünden canton.

Photo: Archaeological Service of Graubünden

The buried treasure will provide more insight into the culture and economy of the late Bronze Age, he said in the release.

Since 2003, hundreds of Roman sling bullets, hobnails, a dagger with elaborate decoration, and other pieces of military hardware have been discovered at the site close to the present-day municipality of Surses.

The sheer volume of projectiles, weapons, and equipment from the Augustan era indicates that it was the scene of a significant military engagement between three Roman legions under the command of future emperor Tiberius and his brother Drusus and the local Suanetes tribe in 15 B.C.

The only known Roman battleground in Switzerland is this one. In 2008, the ruins of the Roman military camp that had been built during the summer to guard the crucial Septimer Pass were found.

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Well-Preserved 3,000-Year-Old Pre-Viking Sword Unearthed in Denmark is Still Sharp

Well-Preserved 3,000-Year-Old Pre-Viking Sword Unearthed in Denmark is Still Sharp

The Pre-Viking sword was found by metal detectorists in eastern Denmark.

On the large island of Zealand, located in eastern Denmark, two amateur archaeologists fortuitously decided to bring their metal detectors along with them on a stroll through a field one evening.

While on their walk, the metal detector’s alarm sounded, and the pair from the small town of Svebølle, Ernst Christiansen and Lis Therkelsen, made a startling discovery: They dug into the earth, about a foot underground, and uncovered what appeared to be one end of a sword.

Ernst Christiansen and Lis Therkelsen with the 3,000-year-old sword they discovered.

Believing that it might be a discovery of considerable significance, they decided to get ahold of someone with more expertise before extracting the find. So, they reburied it, and the next morning they contacted the Museum Vestsjælland to report the discovery.

A Remarkably Well-Preserved Pre-Viking Sword

The museum’s inspector, Arne Hedegaard Andersen, went out with them the next day, and together they unearthed “an incredibly well-preserved sword,” dating back approximately 3,000 years—to a time that predates the Vikings by about 1,000 years.

Examining the pre-Viking sword.

The weapon is 82 centimeters in length, and although the leather hilt had long since rotted away, still, it was in remarkably good condition, considering its age.

“The sword is so well-preserved that you can clearly see the fine details. And it is even sharp,” stated the museum in a press release. It is also believed that the artifact had remained untouched since the Nordic Bronze Age , between 1,100 to 900 BC.

The sword comes from the Nordic Bronze Age.

Incredibly Rare and Ornamental

Although it is hardly unheard of for people in Scandinavia and northern Europe to uncover ancient relics such as jewelry or coins under the soil, swords such as this one are incredibly rare.

This sword in particular seems to have been more of a status symbol for its owner rather than a weapon.

The intricate bronze work likely required great skill to fashion. Used more commonly in those days were clubs and axes as a means for actual fighting.

The sword is one of many that has been unearthed in the last few years, and the Danish National Museum currently has a backlog of ancient finds still waiting to be properly studied and cataloged. In the meantime, though, this sword will be displayed in Kalundborg Museum, where sightseers may enjoy its splendor, while it waits its turn.

Viking Swords.

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