Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Dark Age Kings of Britain Confirmed by Archaeology


Early Dark Age Britain is notorious for being poorly recorded. Most of our information about the era comes from much later records, written centuries after the events they allegedly describe. There is endless debate from scholars, based on the literary evidence, surrounding the historicity of the kings of Britain of this era. However, there are a few cases where we do not need to rely on the later medieval records to know whether a given king really existed or not. There are about 200 stone inscriptions from Dark Age Britain. These inscriptions provide us with contemporary or near-contemporary insights into the kings of Britain at that time.

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Monday, March 04, 2024

Magnet fisherman pulls a 1,200-year-old Viking sword out of a river

Trevor Penny found a Viking sword while magnet fishing in Oxfordshire
(Picture: Trevor Penny/Triangle News)

A magnet fisherman was shocked to learn a rusty sword he had pulled from a river was a 1,200-year-old Viking weapon.

Trevor Penny was using a powerful magnet to look for metal objects in the River Cherwell near Enslow in Oxfordshire when he made the fascinating find.

Excited, he notified his local finds liaison officer and gave the sword to experts to verify.

They have now dated the weapon to around 850 AD and say it would have once belonged to a Viking.

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Thursday, February 29, 2024

7 Scientific Tools Archaeologists Use to Uncover the Viking World


Science loves the Vikings. NASA’s 1970s mission to Mars paid homage to the Vikings, and Bluetooth wireless technology takes its name from the Viking king of Denmark and Norway, Harald Bluetooth. The Bluetooth symbol on phones and computers also hails from Viking runes. Science has become essential to uncovering Viking archaeology, and new archaeological tools have allowed us to better understand the Viking world.

1. Strontium Isotope Analysis and Viking Archaeology

The Trelleborg Fortress located in Zealand, Denmark is a circular fortification divided into four quadrants. Inside each quadrant are longhouses. On its own, the fortress is an archaeological marvel, but the more archaeologists dig into the fortress, the more exceptional the monument proves to be.

King Harald Bluetooth organized defensive fortifications across the Viking world to maintain power during the 10th century. Excavations in Zealand from 1938-1940 revealed a fortification associated with Bluetooth’s reign and 157 buried individuals. But who were these people?

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Seeing the wood for the trees: How archaeologists use hazelnuts to reconstruct ancient woodlands


If we could stand in a landscape that our Mesolithic ancestors called home, what would we see around us? Scientists have devised a method of analyzing preserved hazelnut shells to tell us whether the microhabitats around archaeological sites were heavily forested or open and pasture-like. This could help us understand not only what a local environment looked like thousands of years ago, but how humans have impacted their habitats over time.

"By analyzing the carbon in hazelnuts recovered from archaeological sites in southern Sweden, from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer campsites through to one of the largest and richest Iron Age settlements in northern Europe, we show that hazelnuts were harvested from progressively more open environments," said Dr. Amy Styring of the University of Oxford, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

Archaeologists decode the secrets held within Scotland's oldest manuscript


In a major archaeological discovery, the ancient monastery associated with the creation of the Book of Deer, Scotland's oldest surviving manuscript, has finally been unearthed. This remarkable discovery comes after centuries of speculation and uncertainty surrounding the precise location of this historical treasure. 

The Book of Deer, dating back to the 10th century, holds a significant place in Scotland's cultural and religious heritage, serving as a remarkable window into the early church, culture, and society of the time. Alongside its historical significance, the manuscript is renowned for featuring the earliest surviving Gaelic writing in Scotland, making this discovery a pivotal moment for the country's heritage and historical understanding.

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Researchers create method to detect cases of anemia in archaeological remains

Original micro-CT resolution(a) versus adjusted resolution for comparison to CT images(b) for the same individual. Sagittal micro-CT (a) and CT (b) reconstructions.
Credit: Journal of Archaeological Science (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2024.105942

Diagnosing anemia in living people is typically a matter of a routine blood test. Retrospectively diagnosing anemia in people who died decades or even centuries ago is much more challenging since there is no blood left to test.

Anthropologists at McMaster University and the University of Montreal, working with a hematologist colleague, have overcome that obstacle by developing a way to detect anemia through patterns in the structures of bones.

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Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Excavations at the medieval Beaumont Abbey in France have revealed nearly 800 years of history before the French Revolution shut it down.

Excavation of the servants' cemetery at Beaumont Abbey.
(Image credit: Copyright Jean Demerliac, Inrap)

The excavation of a medieval French abbey has revealed more than 1,000 burials, including those of plague victims, in its cemetery as well as the remains of a nearly 1,200-year-old village underneath the building.

The dig at Beaumont Abbey reveals almost eight centuries of use before the events of the French Revolution shut it down. This is the first time a European abbey has been fully excavated, producing new information about the evolution of the Catholic convent.

Located outside of Tours in the Loire Valley of France, roughly 110 miles (178 kilometers) southwest of Paris, Beaumont Abbey was founded in 1002 on a site that had already been occupied by the village of Belmons since at least 845. Historical records show that the abbey grew quickly, becoming the largest community of nuns in the province.

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Kyivan Rus: The First East Slavic State


Long before Russia or Ukraine existed, there was Kyivan Rus.

Centuries before Russia or Ukraine raised arms against each other, Scandinavians made their way to Novgorod before moving on to Kyiv.

Kyivan Rus rose up during the 9th century and laid the foundations for the development of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

The city of Kyiv was the heart of Kyivan Rus, a loosely bound federation of principalities, each under the governance of its individual prince.

The state reached its pinnacle in the late 10th century when it adopted Christianity from Byzantium, marking the conversion of Kyivan Rus into Orthodox Christianity.

It also was a crucial hub for trade between the Baltic and Black Seas, helping foster growth and cultural exchange. This fusion of Slavic and Byzantine aesthetics in art, architecture, and political rule emerged. While it was taking in and absorbing influences around it, it was truly becoming a culture of its own. 

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Up to 50,000 coins from the 4th century discovered off of Sardinia


Archaeologists exploring the waters off the Italian island of Sardinia have discovered a cache of between 30,000 and 50,000 coins dating back to the first half of the 4th century.

The Italian Ministry of Culture announced the find, which were initially made by a diver swimming just off the north-eastern coast of Sardinia. They quickly reported the discovery to officials, including the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Sardinia, and a larger search was organized.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2024

The Vinland Map: How a Mysterious Forgery Fooled Experts for Decades


The Vinland Map courted controversy from the moment its discovery was announced. / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University // Public Domain (map); wilatlak villette/Moment/Getty Images (background)

In 1965, Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Michael A. Musmanno traveled to Yale University to look at a map that, until recently, had been kept a closely guarded secret.

The document, dubbed the Vinland Map, was said to date back to 1440. It was inscribed with a phrase alternately deciphered as Vinlanda Insula, Vimlanda Insula, or Vinilanda Insula, and depicted a version of North America that included Greenland as an island as well as part of what appears to be the North American coast. When translated, text on the map seemed to corroborate the events of what are known as the Vinland Sagas, two 13th-century Icelandic texts that speak of legendary explorer Leif Erikson arriving in North America—likely present-day Newfoundland, Canada—by way of Greenland around 1000. If legit, as the university claimed it was, the map was the earliest representation of North America and provided more evidence that Vikings had made it to the continent nearly 500 years ahead of Christopher Columbus—who, although he sailed for Spain, was Genoese by birth and was later embraced by Italian Americans as a hero.

In a blow to their pride, the map’s existence was announced in a splashy press conference just before the holiday honoring the explorer. With it came a book written by scholars who had worked in secret for seven years to verify the map’s authenticity. “Cartographic Scholarship Turns Over New Leif,” the Los Angeles Times punned.

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Bones Reveal Bog Man's Secret Life Before His Violent End in a Foreign Land

Vittrup man's teeth reveal his maritime origins.
Arnold Mikkelsen/Fischer et al., PLOS One, 2024)

Violently bludgeoned to death and left in a Danish bog, the Stone Age individual known as 'Vittrup man' was discovered in 1915 by peat cutters in the midst of harvest.

His murder – thought to have been part of a ritualized sacrifice – occurred sometime between 3300 and 3100 BCE, during the height of the local Funnelbeaker culture.

Archeologists now have the strongest evidence yet that this is not where his life began.

The first hint that Vittrup man was a foreigner in Denmark came from a study investigating Mesolithic and Neolithic gene pools of Eurasia.

This revealed that Vittrup man's DNA was distinct from the other skeletons from this time found in the area, which prompted archeologist Anders Fischer from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues to investigate further.

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11,000-year-old Stone Age structure discovered underwater


Researchers have found a prehistoric man-made stone wall that could be dating back some 11,000 years just off the coast of modern-day Germany. Jacob Geersen, a marine geologist now at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, found the wall during a night lecture with his students who were mapping with echosounders a swath of seafloor off the coast of Germany. “The idea would be to create an artificial bottleneck with a second wall or with the lake shore,” Geersen told the Guardian. According to experts, the stone wall is more than half a mile long and dates back to the Stone Age.

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4,000-year-old copper dagger found in Poland


A rare copper dagger dating back more than 4,000 years has been discovered in a forest near Jarosław, southeastern Poland. Shaped like a flint dagger from the period, it is just over four inches long, but that is actually a large dagger compared to similar such finds because the metal was hard to come by and very valuable. This is the oldest dagger ever discovered in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (province).

The blade was discovered last November by metal detectorist Piotr Gorlach from the Historical and Exploration Association Grupa JarosÅ‚aw, an organization of local history enthusiasts who search for archaeological materials with the permission of government heritage officials. Gorlach was looking for military objects from the World Wars that day without success. He had given up and was heading towards his car when his detector signaled the presence of metal under the forest floor. He saw the metal piece aged with a green patina and quickly realized it was much older than shrapnel from World War I. He alerted the voivodeship’s conservator of monuments and archaeologists from the Orsetti House Museum in JarosÅ‚aw were deployed to examine the find.

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A 2,000-Year-Old Rune-Inscribed Knife Sheds Light on Denmark’s Past

The knife engraved with runes believed to be Denmark's oldest.
Photo: Rógvi N. Johansen, Museum Odense.

Archaeologists from the Museum Odense in Denmark recently unearthed a significant historical artifact: a small, 2,000-year-old knife bearing an exceptionally rare runic inscription.

The text, composed of five runes concluding with three depressions engraved into the knife, uses the oldest known runic alphabet. The runes represent the word “hirila,” interpreted to mean “Little Sword” in Old Norse. While it remains uncertain whether “hirila” refers to the knife itself or its owner, archaeologists affirm its status as a cherished possession interred in a grave almost two millennia ago. The relic was found under the remnants of an urn in a small burial ground east of Odense.

Speaking on the national significance of the discovery, museum inspector and archaeologist Jakob Bonde was thrilled. “It is a unique experience to stand with such an old and finished written language,” he said. “A runic inscription is like finding a message from ancient people.”

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Danish Unknown Royal Family Discovered Thanks to Ring

Courtesy National Museum of Denmark.
 

The Merovingian line ruled the Franks from the middle of the fifth century until 751. The Merovingians play a prominent role in French historiography and national identity. When it comes to the ring, 39-year-old Lars Nielsen extracted it from the earth. After that, he gave it to the Museum Sønderjylland, in Haderslev. Afterwards, the institution gave the ring to Copenhagen’s National Museum of Denmark.

Kirstine Pommergaard of the National Museum examined the ring and found that its design is similar to those of rings worn by influential Merovingians. She goes on to say that the ring not only announces the arrival of a new family. Additionally, it links Emmerlev to one of the biggest European power centres throughout the Iron Age. The ring possibly belonged to a princess who wed a different prince in the area.

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Gold Ring Possibly Linked to Royal Family Discovered by Metal Detectorist


Lars Nielsen was casually using his metal detector while exploring the Emmerlev area in Denmark when he made quite the surprising discovery: a large and luxurious-looking gold ring set with a red semiprecious stone. It turns out it's much more than just a nice piece of jewelry that someone might have left behind. 

Researchers have been looking into the ring's origins and believe that it dates back to the 5th or 6th century. According to the Danish news site Via Ritzau, the discovery seemingly points to the long-ago presence of an unknown royal family in the area with close ties to the Merovingians, a royal family that once ruled the Kingdom of France. 

Kirstine Pommergaard, a curator and archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, explained what she found and how the ring's unique build connects it to the Merovingian elite. 

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Rare Merovingian gold ring found in Jutland


A metal detectorist has discovered a rare Merovingian gold ring dating to 500-600 A.D. in Emmerlev, Southwest Jutland, Denmark. The ring is made of 22-carat gold and is set with an oval cabochon almandine garnet, a red semi-precious stone prized among Germanic peoples as a symbol of power. The mount has four spirals on the underside and trefoil knobs where the band meets the bezel. The spirals and knobs are characteristic of the highest quality of Frankish manufacture, and rings of this type were worn by the elite of the Merovingian dynasty.

National Museum of Denmark curator Kirstine Pommergaard believes the quality and construction of the ring suggests there may have been an unknown noble family in the Emmerlev area with close connections to Merovingian royalty.

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Monday, February 19, 2024

Possible Viking-Age Marketplace Found in Norway


STAVANGER, NORWAY—According to a statement released by the University of Stavanger, a ground-penetrating radar survey conducted on Klosterøy, an island off Norway’s southwestern coast, has detected traces of possible pit houses, cooking pits, and pier or boathouse foundations that may have been part of a Viking Age marketplace. Investigation of this area of private farmland around the medieval Utstein Monastery over the years with metal detectors has also revealed coins and weights usually associated with trade, explained archaeologist HÃ¥kon Reiersen of the University of Stavanger Museum of Archaeology. “While many indicators suggest that this may be a marketplace, we cannot be 100 percent certain until further investigations are conducted in the area to verify the findings,” added archaeologist Grethe Moéll Pedersen of the Museum of Archaeology. To read about possible evidence for the Vikings' long-distance trading activity, go to "Viking Trading or Raiding?"

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These Ancient Remains and Relics Reveal Poland’s Bronze Age Rituals

Though the lake near Papowo Biskupie is now drained and dry, nearby lakes (including Lake Starogrodzkie in Poland’s CheÅ‚mno County) provide a picture of what the ancient waters could’ve looked like when bodies and bronze treasures were deposited beneath the surface.
(Credit: Mrugas PHOTOgraphy/Shutterstock)

There’s no better place to put bodies and bronze treasures than in the bed of a small, shallow lake. At least, that’s what the Bronze Age people of Poland believed, according to a new article in Antiquity.

Published in the journal in January, the article reports that researchers recently found a stash of Bronze Age remains and relics that trace as far back as 1000 B.C.E. Recovered from an ancient, long-lost lake in an archaeological area near Papowo Biskupie in Poland, the stash challenges common conceptions about Poland’s past and suggests that the site possessed some sort of ancient, sacrificial significance.

Stone Age 'megastructure' under Baltic Sea sheds light on strategy used by Paleolithic hunters over 10,000 years ago


Northern and Central Europe in the Late Upper Palaeolithic (white areas = ice-co

Archaeologists have identified what may be Europe's oldest human-made megastructure, submerged 21 meters below the Baltic Sea in the Bay of Mecklenburg, Germany. This structure—which has been named the Blinkerwall—is a continuous low wall made from over 1,500 granite stones that runs for almost a kilometer. The evidence suggests it was constructed by Paleolithic people between 11,700 and 9,900 years ago, probably as an aid for hunting reindeer.

The archaeologists investigating the Bay of Mecklenburg used a range of submarine equipment, sampling methods and modeling techniques to reconstruct the ancient lake bed and its surrounding landscape. This revealed that the Blinkerwall stands on a ridge running east to west, with a 5km-wide lake basin a few meters below the ridge to the south.

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New Medieval Books: Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings


Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings

By Tom Shippey

Arc Humanities Press
ISBN: 9781802700138

How much history is there in the story of Beowulf? The author argues that we can learn more about the people and places mentioned in the poem than has been commonly accepted, and it also sheds light on the Viking raids that began at the end of the eighth century.
Excerpt:

Beowulf’s anti-historical critics do of course have a point. If you believe that history cannot be written without dates and documents, then Beowulf offers neither. On the other hand, students of prehistory are accustomed to making what they can of other kinds of evidence, like legends and late traditions. And there is in addition the solid and ever-increasing evidence of archaeology, the “open frontier” of Beowulf-studies and of early history. As Ulf Näsman, Professor of Archaeology at Linnaeus University in Sweden, puts it: “archaeologists can write history.” Moreover, and as it happens, even for Beowulf we do have some surprising documentary evidence, which also gives us a date.

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