EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

Dozens of bronze ornaments: necklaces, bracelets, greaves, decorative pins, as well as numerous human bones, were discovered in the Chełmno district (Kujawy-Pomerania Province). According to archaeologists, these are the remains of sacrificial rituals from 2,500 years ago.

Today, the site of the discovery is a drained peat bog transformed into a farmland, but in the 6th century BCE it was a lake.

The discovery was made in the Chełmno Lake District by members of the Kujawy-Pomerania History Seekers Group, who conducted searches with metal detectors, with the permission of the Kujawy-Pomerania Province Conservator of Monuments in Toruń.

After being alerted by a group of detectorists, excavations led by Wojciech Sosnowski from the Office of Conservator of Monuments in Toruń began in January. They were carried out by researchers from the Institute of Archaeology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the services of the Wda Landscape Park.

Sosnowski told PAP: “In the 6th century BCE, in the early Iron Age, ritual ceremonies were held here periodically.”

In addition to valuable items lying loosely in the ground, probably displaced as a result of ploughing, the researchers also found three deposits. These accumulations of monuments have remained in the same place since they were deposited 2.5 thousand years ago.

2,500-Year-Old Bronze Items and Bones Recovered in Poland

Sosnowski told PAP: “In the 6th century BCE, in the early Iron Age, ritual ceremonies were held here periodically.”

In addition to valuable items lying loosely in the ground, probably displaced as a result of ploughing, the researchers also found three deposits. These accumulations of monuments have remained in the same place since they were deposited 2.5 thousand years ago.

According to the researchers, most of the items discovered during the research project are whole or damaged ornaments: necklaces, bracelets, greaves, pins with spiral heads, probably made for ceremonial purposes.

Dr. Jacek Gackowski from the Institute of Archaeology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, who analysed the artefacts said: “A particularly impressive object is a necklace consisting of many delicate metal and probably glass elements, decorated with a series of pendants in the shape of fish tails.”

The researchers also discovered metal parts of horse harnesses and a large number of other items. Among them there are very rarely preserved products made of organic raw materials – fabrics, antler tools in bronze sheet fittings and pieces of rope.

Most of the artefacts, according to the researchers, should be associated with the Lusatian culture. Several dozen kilometres further to the south-east, its representatives lived in the now famous fortified settlement in Biskupin. However, there are also objects that are foreign to this area and should be associated with the Scythian civilization and its influences from the area of today’s Ukraine.

Dr. Gackowski said: “This includes temple rings – unique objects of great scientific value, because they are – so far and in such numbers – the northernmost artefacts of this type discovered in Europe.”

The researchers were surprised to find many human bones among dozens of artefacts. This suggests that it was a place where sacrifices were probably made in prehistory, and not only of valuable items.

Why were people sacrificed? According to the researchers, this was related to the period of migrations and, probably, invasions.

Gackowski said: “It was a time of growing unrest related to the penetration of groups of nomads coming from the Pontic Steppe, probably Scythians or the Neuri, into Central and Eastern Europe.

“These people, probably in order to delay the rapid changes associated with the appearance of new neighbours with a completely different organization, appearance and vision of the world, began to practice various rituals treatments. They tried to secure their existence and give ritual resistance to the imminent, as it turned out, inevitable changes.”

To date, archaeologists have collected over a hundred human bone fragments. All the remains were on the surface of a freshly ploughed field.

 “At the moment, it is difficult to estimate how many people we are dealing with. It will be determined by a thorough anthropological analysis,” said Mateusz Sosnowski, an archaeologist from the Wda Landscape Park, who participated in the field work.

For security reasons and fear of robbery, archaeologists have not yet revealed the exact location of the discovery.

The custom of sinking bronze products during that period is known from other areas of Europe. Treasures from the period are also discovered in Poland, but according to scientists analysing the collection, this is the first place in Poland where people were also sacrificed.

The community described by scientists as the Lusatian culture inhabited the Vistula and Oder river basins, as well as the areas of Saxony, Brandenburg, northern Bohemia and Lusatia. Its economy was mainly based on farming and breeding horned cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. 

In the beginning of the Iron Age, in addition to open settlements, forts also appeared (existing from the 8th to the 6th century BCE), considered tribal centres or places of refuge during unrest. The bronze artefacts and offerings discovered by detectorists and archaeologists come from that period.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient Egyptian Embalming Residues Analyzed

Ancient Egyptian Embalming Residues Analyzed

Ancient Egyptian Embalming Residues Analyzed
Vessels from an ancient Egyptian embalming workshop, including these, provided scientists with clues to the ingredients used in various mixtures for preparing the dead for mummification.

Scientists have unwrapped long-sought details of embalming practices that ancient Egyptians used to preserve dead bodies.

Clues came from analyses of chemical residue inside vessels from the only known Egyptian embalming workshop and nearby burial chambers. Mummification specialists who worked there concocted specific mixtures to embalm the head, wash the body, treat the liver and stomach, and prepare bandages that swathed the body, researchers report February 1 in Nature.

“Ancient Egyptian embalmers had extensive chemical knowledge and knew what substances to put on the skin to preserve it, even without knowing about bacteria and other microorganisms,” Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, said at a January 31 news conference.

The findings come courtesy of chemical residue inside 31 vessels found in an Egyptian embalming workshop and four vessels discovered in an adjacent pair of burial chambers. Writing on workshop vessels named embalming substances, provided embalming instructions (such as “to put on his head”) or both. All the artifacts — dating from Egypt’s 26th dynasty which rose to power between 664 B.C. and 525 B.C. — were excavated at a cemetery site called Saqqara in 2016. Archaeologist and study coauthor Ramadan Hussein, who died in 2022, led that project.

Newfound mummy embalming mixtures

Five of the vessels had the label antiu. The substance was thought to have been a fragrant resin called myrrh. The antiu at Saqqara, however, consisted of oil or tar from cedar and juniper or cypress trees mixed with animal fats. Writing on these jars indicates that antiu could have been used alone or combined with another substance called sefet.

Three vessels from the embalming workshop bore the label sefet, which researchers have usually described as an unidentified oil. At Saqqara, sefet was a scented, fat-based ointment with added ingredients from plants. Two sefet pots contained animal fats mixed with oil or tar from juniper or cypress trees. A third container held animal fats and elemi, a fragrant resin from tropical trees.

Clarification of the ingredients in antiu and sefet at Saqqara “takes mummification studies further than before,” says Egyptologist Bob Brier of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., who was not part of the research.

Egyptians may have started mummifying their dead as early as 6,330 years ago (SN: 8/18/14). Mummification procedures and rituals focused on keeping the body fresh so the deceased could enter what was believed to be an eternal afterlife.

Embalming and mummification procedures likely changed over time, says team member Maxime Rageot, a biomolecular archaeologist also at Ludwig Maximilians University. Embalmers’ mixtures at Saqqara may not correspond, say, to those used around 700 years earlier for King Tutankhamun (SN: 11/2/22).

Mummy embalming instructions

Outside surfaces of other vessels from the Saqqara embalming workshop and burial chambers sported labels and, in some cases, instructions for treatment of the head, preparation of linen mummy bandages, washing the body and treating the liver and stomach. Inscriptions on one jar referred to an administrator who performed embalming procedures, mainly on the head.

Chemical residue inside these pots consisted of mixtures specific to each embalming procedure. Ingredients included oils or tars of cedar and juniper or cypress trees, pistachio resin, castor oil, animal fats, heated beeswax, bitumen (a dense, oily substance), elemi and a resin called dammar.

Most of those substances have been identified in earlier studies of chemical residues from Egyptian mummies and embalming vessels in individual tombs, says Egyptologist Margaret Serpico of University College London. But elemi and dammar resins have not previously been linked to ancient Egyptian embalming practices and are “highly unexpected,” notes Serpico, who did not participate in the new study.

Elemi was an ingredient in the workshop mixtures used to treat the head, the liver and bandages wrapped around the body. Chemical signs of dammar appeared in a vessel from one of the burial chambers that included remnants of a range of substances, indicating that the container had been used to blend several different mixtures, the researchers say.

Specific properties of elemi and dammar that aided in preserving dead bodies have yet to be investigated, Stockhammer said.

A far-flung trade network for mummy embalming ingredients

Elemi resin reached Egypt from tropical parts of Africa or Southeast Asia, while dammar originated in Southeast Asia or Indonesia, Rageot says. Other embalming substances detected at Saqqara came from Southwest Asia and parts of southern Europe and northern Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea. These findings provide the first evidence that ancient Egyptian embalmers depended on substances transported across vast trade networks.

Egyptian embalmers at Saqqara took advantage of a trade network that already connected Egypt to sites in Southeast Asia, Stockhammer said. Other Mediterranean and Asian societies also engaged in long-distance trade during ancient Egypt’s heyday (SN: 1/9/23).

It’s no surprise that ancient Egyptians imported embalming ingredients from distant lands, Brier says. “They were great traders, had limited [local] wood products and really wanted these substances to achieve immortality.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles

Researchers Examine Discarded Roman Tiles
A written name and the imprint of a woman’s sandal have been found on tiles recovered from a 3rd Century tile factory at Priors Hall Park, near Corby

Markings found in Roman tiles have shown workers were “more of a mixture” of people than first thought. The imprint of a woman’s sandal and a written name were found on items recovered from a 3rd Century tile factory at Priors Hall Park, Corby.

Experts said they showed workers were not just young male slaves but “literate men and women in nice shoes”.

Nick Gilmour, from Oxford Archaeology, said the marks showed it was “not clear cut” who the Roman workers were. Archaeologists have been working on-and-off at the Northamptonshire site for about 12 years, ahead of a development of more than 5,000 homes.

Several tile kilns were among the items excavated at the Priors Hall Park development in Corby

The Little Weldon Roman villa had first been uncovered in the 18th Century, but in 2011 during a geophysical survey a second Roman villa was revealed.

Oxford Archaeology took on the excavations in 2019 when Urban & Civic took over the development. They uncovered a temple/mausoleum that was turned into a pottery, brick and tile manufacturing centre sometime in the later 3rd to early 4th Century, to make building materials for Roman villas.

The latest findings come from the analysis of recovered material, including six tonnes of discarded tiles which are now being recorded. Mr Gilmour said Romans in the area were producing tonnes of tiles weekly to distribute around a network.

The industrial site was used to make materials for building Roman villas

While many are just basic tiles, “maybe one in 10,000 is really interesting”, including a “big thick tile” in which somebody had used their finger to trace letters in it, he said.

Individual tilers would often mark about one in every few they produced with a signature, so they could get paid for what survived the kiln. But these tile signatures were usually patterns and symbols which showed that workers were not high status.

The latest findings come from the analysis of thousands of recovered tiles

Mr Gilmour said the latest find was “really unusual” because it reads “Potentius fecit”, which translates as “Potentius made me”, or as some linguists would say, “I was made by Potentius”.

“They have actually written their name with their finger,” he said.

“It demonstrates that the tiler was literate – perhaps surprising for someone who was in a role usually carried out by an indentured servant… so they were higher status than we thought.”

He said his team had tried to find other examples of this kind of signature, but had not yet seen one.

“It’s not definitely the only example, but we have asked a lot of experts in the field so we are close to convinced there isn’t another one,” he said.

“The irony is the reason that we have got it is because it failed, it wasn’t even vaguely flat and wasn’t used on a villa or it wouldn’t have been in the tile rubbish tip.

“So he might have been literate, but he was maybe not so good a tiler.”

The indentations on another tile are believed to be the imprint of nails on the bottom of a woman’s sandal

Tilers also used to check every few tiles with their feet by tapping them lightly, to see if they were dry and ready to be fired. A second terra cotta coloured tile with small indentations is believed to be the imprint of nails on the bottom of a woman’s sandal, as it showed a very narrow foot shape.

“It looks like women were working in the tilery as well, so it’s not as clear cut as we thought,” Mr Gilmour said.

“The workers were not just young male slaves – these markings show there were literate men and women in nice shoes as well, so it was more of a mixture.

“There was definitely still a hierarchy… the man in the villa would have been in charge, but who the workers were is not clear cut.”

He added that the footprints of animals and imprints of leaves found in the tiles would also be studied, to find out whether the work was seasonal and what the environment was like.

Items found during excavation give an insight into Roman workers’ lives, archaeologists said

Mr Gilmour added that the finds in Corby showed the “possible scale” of the tile industry. During a second phase of work in 2021, they found an intact Roman road that shows how Corby joined up with surrounding settlements.

“It’s not uncommon to find a kiln next to a villa, but it would be a small one just for making tiles for the one villa,” he said.

“But at Corby they were producing tiles to sell to a wide area, which is a much more modern idea.

“The next step is scientifically examining them under a microscope to look at what’s in the clay, so that longer term we can see where they were moving them to.

“Was it two or three miles or across [the now] county or further?”

Priors Hall Park is a development of more than 5,000 new homes in Corby
AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Evidence of Egypt’s Great Revolt Uncovered

Evidence of Egypt’s Great Revolt Uncovered

Egypt’s “Great Revolt”, which happened from 207 to 184 BC, is detailed on the Rosetta Stone

Rare evidence of a decades-long rebellion against Greek-Macedonian rule, mentioned in the Rosetta Stone, has been found in an ancient Egyptian city.

Excavations at Tell Timai, ancient Thmouis, 102km north of Cairo, revealed extensive destruction that occurred during the Great Revolt, which happened from 207 to 184 BC.

A map of Egypt’s Delta, showing the location of ancient Thmuis, modern Tell Timai

“Archaeological evidence from the [revolt] is quite rare,” says Jay Silverstein of Nottingham Trent University, UK, one of the lead authors of the paper published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

“There are of course a number of decrees and inscriptions, like the Rosetta Stone, some historical accounts, and a few papyri with indirect references, but when it comes to finding the locations where the sword meets the bone, as far as I can tell, this is the first that has been recognized.”

Weapons found at Tell Timai: Ballista stones, a sling pellet, and an arrowhead

Over the course of several years, the team uncovered the remains of burned buildings, weapons, stones thrown by a siege engine, coins hidden beneath the floor of a house, a broken divine statue near a temple, and unburied bodies strewn among the ruins or dumped in mounds of rubble and refuse.

The skeleton of one young man was discovered with his legs sticking out of a large kiln, where he had perhaps hoped to hide from his attackers.

A man in his 50s, whose body displayed earlier healed wounds, appears to have died defending himself. He may have decomposed sitting upright.

Coins and pottery discovered in a destroyed room during the excavations at Tell Timai

By examining the pottery and coins, the team dated the destruction to the Great Revolt, when the Egyptians tried, but failed, to liberate themselves from Ptolemaic rule—the line of Greek-Macedonian kings that began after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and ended with the famous Cleopatra VII.

“We have opened a new door into our understanding of Hellenistic colonialism, indigenous resistance, and the mechanisms of control including the brutality of the Macedonian dynasty’s rule of Egypt,” says Silverstein.

“Many other cities suffered a similar fate to that of Thmouis and I hope that this discovery will help broaden the scope of our archaeological understanding of these events.”

A view of the archaeological site of Tell Timai

The discovery made Silverstein reconsider how decisive the events of the rebellion were in the development of the Western world.

“Hellenistic Egypt played a crucial role in the trajectory of history including its role as a crucible of Christianity and a bulwark of Roman imperial power. Had the Egyptians retaken their land from the Greek occupiers, I suspect the world would look significantly different today.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

Elephant Bones Suggest Neanderthals Gathered in Large Groups

Elephant Bones Suggest Neanderthals Gathered in Large Groups

Large groups of Neanderthals gathered to hunt, butcher, and eat elephants more than 125,000 years ago.

On the muddy shores of a lake in east-central Germany, Neanderthals gathered some 125,000 years ago to butcher massive elephants. With sharp stone tools, they harvested up to 4 tons of flesh from each animal, according to a new study that is casting these ancient human relatives in a new light.

The degree of organization required to carry out the butchery—and the sheer quantity of food it provided—suggests Neanderthals could form much larger social groups than previously thought.

The find comes from a trove of animal bones and stone tools uncovered in the 1980s by coal miners near the town of Neumark-Nord. Beginning in 1985, archaeologists spent a decade observing the mining work, recovering animal bones and stone tools from a sprawling site.

Dating to a relatively warm period in Europe known as the Eemian interglacial, 75,000 years before modern humans arrived in Western Europe, the discoveries include the bones and tusks of more than 70 mostly adult male straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), an extinct species almost twice the size of modern African elephants that stood nearly 4 meters tall at the shoulder. Most had been left in dozens of piles along the ancient lakeshore over the course of about 300 years.

“We wondered, ‘What the hell are 70 elephants doing there?’” says Lutz Kindler, an archaeozoologist at the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center.

To find out, he and his colleague Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, also an archaeozoologist at MONREPOS, spent months examining the 3400 elephant bones, which are now stored in a warehouse. Some weighed dozens of kilograms and required a forklift to move. Under a microscope, Gaudzinski-Windheuser says, nearly every bone showed signs of butchery.

Although scientists have long known Neanderthals were capable hunters, these cutmarks “seem to be the first evidence of large-scale elephant hunting,” says April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria who was not involved with the research.

Gouges and scratches on nearly every bone show the hunters were thorough. “They really went for every scrap of meat and fat,” says University of Leiden archaeologist and study co-author Wil Roebroeks. The bones hadn’t been gnawed by scavengers like wolves or hyenas, suggesting nothing was left for them.

The meat from a single elephant would have been enough to feed 350 people for a week, or 100 people for a month, the researchers calculate. In the past, Neanderthals were thought to live in small, highly mobile groups of about 20 individuals at most, but the elephant bounty suggests far bigger groups—big enough to slaughter and process an entire elephant and big enough to consume it—once lived near the site, the researchers report today in Science Advances.

“This is really hard and time-consuming work,” Kindler says. “Why would you slaughter the whole elephant if you’re going to waste half the portions?”

Archaeozoologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser examines an elephant bone with a portable microscope.

The elephants provided ideal samples for this work, the authors noted. At ancient sites featuring hundreds of slaughtered horses or gazelle, there’s no way to know for sure whether all the animals were killed at the same time. “If you find 100 butchered horses, you don’t know if it was one event or 20,” Roebroeks says. “With an elephant, it’s clear Neanderthals were able to deal with a huge amount of food in one go.”

The researchers “make a good case these huge food packages mean much larger groups,” says University of Reading archaeologist Annemieke Milks, who was not involved in the research. “Maybe it’s a large, seasonal gathering, or they’re storing food—or both.”

Nowell agrees, adding that felling an elephant must have required careful orchestration. The hunters likely singled out adult males, which roam alone without the protection of a female-led herd. “It would necessitate a high level of competence in sequencing and planning out the hunt and coordinating everybody.”

That doesn’t mean Neanderthals always lived and worked in large groups. But the results, like other recent findings, show these human ancestors were more sophisticated than once assumed, capable of adapting their behavior to a wide variety of environments and climates. “If one regional group of Neanderthals was capable of such behavior, other groups elsewhere surely would have been capable, too,” says retired University of Nevada, Reno, archaeologist Gary Haynes. “This lets us imagine Neanderthals as more like modern humans rather than as humanoid brutes, as they once were interpreted.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Research Team Identifies Oldest Bone Spear Point In The Americas

Research Team Identifies Oldest Bone Spear Point In The Americas

A team of researchers has identified the Manis bone projectile point as the oldest weapon made of bone ever found in the Americas at 13,900 years.

Dr. Michael Waters, distinguished professor of anthropology and director of Texas A&M’s Center for the Study of First Americans, led the team whose findings were published this week in Science Advances.

The team studied bone fragments embedded in a mastodon rib bone which was first discovered by Carl Gustafson, who conducted an excavation at the Manis site in Washington state from 1977 to 1979.

Using a CT scan and 3D software, Waters and his team isolated all the bone fragments to show it was the tip of a weapon — a projectile made from the bone of Mastodon, prehistoric relatives of elephants.

“We isolated the bone fragments, printed them out and assembled them,” Waters said. “This clearly showed this was the tip of a bone projectile point. This is this the oldest bone projectile point in the Americas and represents the oldest direct evidence of mastodon hunting in the Americas.”

Ct scan of bone point fragments embedded in the rib. Photo: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

Waters said at 13,900 years old, the Manis point is 900 years older than projectile points found to be associated with the Clovis people, whose stone tools he has also studied. Dating from 13,050 to 12,750 years ago, Clovis spear points have been found in Texas and several other sites across the country.

“What is important about Manis is that it’s the first and only bone tool that dates older than Clovis. At the other pre-Clovis site, only stone tools are found,” Waters said. “This shows that the First Americans made and used bone weapons and likely other types of bone tools.”

He said the only reason the Manis specimen was preserved is because the hunter missed, and the projectile got stuck in the mastodon’s rib.

“We show that the bone used to make the point appears to have come from the leg bone of another mastodon and was intentionally shaped into a projectile point form,” Waters said. “The spear with the bone point was thrown at the mastodon. It penetrated the hide and tissue and eventually came into contact with the rib. The objective of the hunter was to get between the ribs and impair lung function, but the hunter missed and hit the rib.”

Waters studied the rib bone previously, presenting findings in a 2011 paper published in Science, in which radiocarbon dating determined the bone’s age and a genetic study of the bone fragments determined that they were mastodon.

“In our new study, we set out to isolate the bone fragments using CT images and 3D software,” he said. “We were able to create 3D images of each fragment and print them out at six times scale. Then we fit the pieces back together to show what the specimen looked like before it entered and splintered in the rib.”

Researchers identify oldest bone spear point In the Americas.

Not much is known about the people who used the Manis spearpoint other than they were some of the first Indigenous people to enter the Americas. Waters said the Manis site and others are giving archaeologists some insight.

“It is looking like the first people that came to the Americas arrived by boat,” he said. “They took a coastal route along the North Pacific and moved south. They eventually got past the ice sheets that covered Canada and made landfall in the Pacific Northwest.

“It is interesting to note that in Idaho there is the 16,000-year-old Coopers Ferry site, in Oregon is the 14,100-year-old site of Paisley Caves. And here we report on the 13,900-year-old Manis site. So there appears to be a cluster of early sites in the Northwestern part of the United States that date from 16,000 to 14,000 years ago that predate Clovis. These sites likely represent the first people and their descendants that entered the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age.”

EUROPE, GERMANY, WORLD

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

New AI Tool ‘Fragmentarium’ Brings Ancient Babylonian Texts Together

An artificial intelligence (AI) bot was developed by linguists at the Institute for Assyriology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany to assist in putting together and deciphering illegible fragments of ancient Babylonian texts. It’s been dubbed “the Fragmentarium.”

Enrique Jiménez, Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures at the Institute of Assyriology, is leading a team digitizing every surviving Babylonian cuneiform tablet. Since 2018, the team has processed over 22,000 text fragments.

The team created the Fragmentarium, a groundbreaking database that automates the assembly of text fragments. The team worked with the Iraq Museum and the British Museum to photograph thousands of fragments.

This new AI program, which operates on both systematic and automated methods, has already identified hundreds of new manuscripts.

Furthermore, it matches up old text fragments, including pieces from the most recent tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which is considered the first work of literature in the world.

Professor Enrique Jimenez. Photo: Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

This ancient Mesopotamian odyssey was written in the Akkadian language in 130 BC and tells the story of Gilgamesh, a ruler of the Mesopotamian city-state Uruk (Iraq).

According to the researchers, the oldest known version of the epic, which was written in cuneiform characters on clay tablets over 4,000 years ago, is “significantly younger” than this recently discovered version of the ancient Epic. It is very interesting, remarks Jiménez, that people were still copying Gilgamesh at this late period.

“There’s so much work to do in the study of Babylonian literature. The new texts we’re discovering are helping us understand the literature and culture of Babylon as a whole,” said Enrique Jiménez.

He plans to publish the Fragmentarium, along with a digital version of the Epic of Gilgamesh—the first containing all transcriptions of cuneiform fragments that are currently known—In February 2023.

“Everybody will be able to play around with the Fragmentarium. There are thousands of fragments that have not yet been identified,” says Jiménez.

Around 200 academics from around the world have used the online platform for their research projects since the project began.

EUROPE, WORLD

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

Anglo-Saxon monasteries were more resilient to Viking attacks than previously thought, archaeologists have concluded. Lyminge, a monastery in Kent, was on the front line of long-running Viking hostility which ended in the victories of Alfred the Great.

Excavation of Anglo-Saxon Monastery Offers Clues to Viking Raids

The monastery endured repeated attacks, but resisted collapse for almost a century, through effective defensive strategies put in place by ecclesiastical and secular rulers of Kent, University of Reading archaeologists say.

The new evidence is presented after a detailed examination of archaeological and historical evidence by Dr Gabor Thomas, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading.

“The image of ruthless Viking raiders slaughtering helpless monks and nuns is based on written records, but a re-examination of the evidence show the monasteries had more resilience than we might expect,” Dr Thomas said.

Despite being located in a region of Kent which bore the full brunt of Viking raids in the later 8th and early 9th centuries, the evidence suggests that the monastic community at Lyminge not only survived these attacks but recovered more completely than historians previously thought, Dr Thomas concludes in research, published today (30 January 2023) in the journal Archaeologia. 

During archaeological excavations between 2007-15 and 2019, archaeologists uncovered the main elements of the monastery, including the stone chapel at its heart surrounded by a wide swathe of wooden buildings and other structures where the monastic brethren and their dependents lived out their daily lives. Radiocarbon dating of butchered animal bones discarded as rubbish indicates that this occupation persisted for nearly two centuries following the monastery’s establishment in the second half of the 7th century. 

Historical records held at nearby Canterbury Cathedral show that after a raid in 804 CE, the monastic community at Lyminge was granted asylum within the relative safety of the walled refuge of Canterbury, a former Roman town and the administrative and ecclesiastical capital of Anglo-Saxon Kent.

But evidence from Dr Thomas’s dig shows the monks not only returned to re-establish their settlement at Lyminge, but continued living and building for several decades over the course of the 9th century. Dateable artefacts such as silver coins discovered at the site provided Dr Thomas with an insight into the re-establishment of the monastic community.

Dr Thomas said: “This research paints a more complex picture of the experience of monasteries during these troubled times, they were more resilient than the ‘sitting duck’ image portrayed in popular accounts of Viking raiding based on recorded historical events such as the iconic Viking raid on the island monastery of Lindisfarne in AD 793.

“However, the resilience of the monastery was subsequently stretched beyond breaking point. 

“By the end of the 9th century, at a time when Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great was engaged in a widescale conflict with invading Viking armies, the site of the monastery appears to have been completely abandoned. 

“This was most likely due to sustained long-term pressure from Viking armies who are known to have been active in south-eastern Kent in the 880s and 890s. 

“Settled life was only eventually restored in Lyminge during the 10th century, but under the authority of the Archbishops of Canterbury who had acquired the lands formerly belonging to the monastery.”

The latest research article is based on the results of over a decade of archaeological research at Lyminge, directed by Dr Thomas. The village was first established by Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century.

Thomas, G. (2023) In the shadow of saints: the long durée of Lyminge, Kent, as a sacred Christian landscape, is published today (30 January 2023) in the Society of Antiquaries online open access journalArchaeologia: 

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