Old Tools

In Abric Romaní Spain, a cache of hard to preserve Neanderthal wooden have been found.

Given the ephemeral nature of wood, this is remarkable.

The Stone Age owes its name to tools that survived to our time. The material early humans worked with most, though, was probably wood because it is so much easier to process. Unfortunately, we know very little about Paleolithic woodwork because wood rots relatively quickly. But at Abric Romaní, a rock shelter in Capellades, west of Barcelona, mineral-rich water coated wooden Neanderthal tools in a limestone-like crust. When wood rotted away, it left behind hollow molds that faithfully reflect its shape.

In a recent Science Advances study, a team of Spanish archaeologists has cataloged 597 wooden remains from Neanderthal living areas dating from 62,000 to 40,000 years ago. They found spears, digging sticks, bark trays, parts of shelters, and a club unlike anything seen before, suggesting Neanderthals were likely much more than just Homo sapiens’ dumber cousins.

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The spears mostly give us information about how Neanderthals hunted. The findings at Abric Romaní are different because the finds come from a place where Neanderthals lived, slept, cooked, and made tools over the course of some 20,000 years.

“We have a sample of wooden tools for different subsistence activities, not only hunting,” says M. Gema Chacón, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) and co-author of the study. Because wood turns up in level after level, it shows that woodworking was routine for Neanderthals rather than an occasional one-off. 

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The shelter sits at the foot of a cliff of travertine, a limestone laid down by calcium-rich spring water. As that water dripped across the shelter floor, calcium carbonate settled on anything lying around—logs, leaves, pine cones, and Neanderthal tools. Sealed inside the crust, the wood slowly decomposed, leaving hollow molds. These are perfect negatives of the original objects, sometimes so detailed that the outlines of wood cells are visible under a microscope. 

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Four shallow trays made of juniper bark, the largest 55 by 20 centimeters, were found near hearths. They may have been used to carry food or scoop embers, much like the bark dishes called coolamons used by Aboriginal Australians. Crossed poles over a thick hearth may be the remains of a tripod, possibly for processing food. A branchless pole more than five meters long was found in the innermost part of the shelter. 

………

The choice of materials suggests Neanderthals knew their wood. Scots pine is easy to work and dries quickly, so tools were cheap to make and replace. Juniper’s fibrous bark suited the trays. Firewood tended to be dry wood, while tools were made from fresh wood. “When they went to look for wood, it was like when they went to look for stone; they knew exactly what they wanted to make,” says Chacón. “This implies not only planning, but a bit of complexity in the brain to organize your activities.”

………

Science Advances, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh2287

This is cool.

Today in Experimental Archeology

Specifically, archeologists at the University of Tokyo demonstrated long distance canoe travel across the Pacific Ocean, which demonstrates how the Austronesian people could have spread throughout the region.

Long-standing questions about the migration of early modern humans in East Asia may finally be answered, thanks to a rare and remarkable journey made in a dugout canoe.

The timing and destinations of the earliest modern human migrations into East Asia are fairly well established. What remains unclear is how these early populations managed to travel between islands separated by dangerous ocean passages.

To address this gap, a research team from Japan and Taiwan, led by Professor Yousuke Kaifu of the University of Tokyo, explored the types of methods ancient people might have used. They also recreated the journey themselves, building canoes with replicas of the tools available at the time.

Archaeological and environmental evidence indicates that roughly 30,000 years ago, humans completed a sea voyage from what is now Taiwan to islands in southern Japan, such as Okinawa—without the aid of maps, metal tools or modern seafaring vessels. To better understand how this journey could have taken place, Kaifu’s team conducted both experimental reconstructions and computer-based simulations.

One of their two recent studies used digital modeling to test how a vessel could cross the powerful Kuroshio Current, one of the world’s most forceful ocean flows. The results demonstrated that a craft built with Paleolithic-era tools and navigational knowledge could indeed manage the crossing. The second study focused on building and trialing an actual canoe, which the team used to paddle more than 100 kilometers between islands, successfully replicating the hypothesized ancient route.

Once again, we see that our ancestors were far more capable than was previously thought.

Today in Paleo-Cuisine

And I do not mean the folks who subsist on uncooked food.

This refers to recreating northern and eastern European cuisines from 6,000 to 3,000 BCE. (Original journal article here)

They did detailed analysis of food residues in and an pottery and then attempted to cook some dishes.

I gotta see if there are some good recipes there.

 

This is Literally Peak Cat

Domestic cats, the European Tour!

The Chinese TourThere is an article in Science where it is claimed that the genetic evidence shows that domestic cats did not make it to Europe until about 0 CE, about 7,000 years later previously believed.

There is archeological evidence that domestic cats, Felis catus, made it to Cyprus around 7000 BCE, but they never made the jump to Europe. 

While are references to cats in Greek and Roman documents before the common era, this now appears to be commensalism (basically hanging out) by local wild cat populations because of the large number of rodents and other prey animals near ancient granaries rather than domestication.

It appears that something very similar occurred in China, albeit at a later time. 

Around 730 CE, F. catus made it to China via the Silk Road. 

Before that, the Leopard Cat, Prionailurus bengalensis, hung out with the locals in the Far East as far back as 4000 BCE, as evidenced by archeological finds.

If you look closely, you will note that there is a 600 year gap, from about 150 CE to 730 CE where neither cat is present in the record:

………

Interestingly, the disappearance of leopard cats coincides with the turbulent era following the Han Dynasty’s collapse and preceding the Tang Dynasty’s rise. This period experienced colder, drier conditions, declining agricultural yields, social unrest, and a population contraction lasting 400 years. These factors likely disrupted the human niche that had supported leopard cats. A parallel can be seen in Europe, where black rat populations declined with the fall of the Roman Empire only to re-emerge with economic recovery. In both cases, the decline of major civilizations may have led to the disappearance of commensal animals dependent on human-driven ecosystems.

Six centuries after the disappearance of small felids, domestic cat remains began to appear in China and at another Silk Road trade hub in Central Asia.  The arrival of domestic cats may have hindered the re-establishment of leopard cats in human settlements, as both species occupy similar ecological niches. Additionally, the rise of poultry farming in ancient China after the Han Dynasty may have contributed to human-leopard cat conflict, given their tendency to prey on chickens, further preventing the return of leopard cats to anthropogenic environments.

The short version of this is:

• Human society develops agriculture in China.
• Large granaries lead to rodent heavy spaces, and P. bengalensis decides to hang out at the all you can eat rodent buffet.
• Social unrest in China leads to famine and population falling.
• Cats realize that the aforementioned buffet is over, and what's more the big dumb apes get upset when they eat the yummy birds.
• Cats decide, "Fuck this shit, I'm out of here."

That last bit is totally peak cat. 

This is Cool

While excavating an ancient smelter site in Georgia, they came across hematite (iron oxide, basically black rust) and slag, and thought that they had found a very early iron smelting facility,

They had not.  The hematite was used as a flux to improve copper extraction.

If this is not how iron smelting was discovered, it is at the very least incredibly adjacent to the discovery of iron smelting:

Research from Cranfield University sheds new light onto the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, showing how experimentation with iron-rich rocks by copper smelters may have sparked the invention of iron.

The work reanalyzed metallurgical remains from a site in southern Georgia: a 3000-year-old smelting workshop called Kvemo Bolnisi. During the original analysis in the 1950s, piles of hematite (an iron oxide mineral) and slag (a waste product of the metal production) were found in the workshop. Finding those iron oxides, the original excavators thought the workshop was an early iron smelting site.

However, new research shows that those assumptions were wrong. Rather than iron, workers at Kvemo Bolnisi were smelting copper using iron oxide as a flux -- a substance added into the furnace to increase the resulting copper yield.

These discoveries give weight to a long-discussed theory that iron was invented by copper smelters. This evidence shows that ancient copper metalworkers experimented with iron-bearing materials in a metallurgical furnace, which was a crucial step towards iron smelting. 

This made my day.

I love ancient tools and ancient technology. 

How About a Vacation in Iraq?

They have restored the ancient city of Babylon.

Now that's a good way to get your archeology freak on.

Mentioned in the sacred texts of all three Abrahamic faiths, the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon, in modern-day Iraq, is today undergoing a revival. Two World Monuments Fund (WMF) projects are nearing completion and much-needed cultural tourism is returning.

One project mitigates groundwater damage to the north retaining wall of the Ishtar Gate. The second is a restoration of the Temple of Ninmakh, dedicated to the Sumerian mother goddess. The team hopes there will be an official reopening for the temple this autumn, after which it will be available for gatherings such as weddings and concerts, as well as for the Babylon Festival, a celebration of international cultures that takes place every spring.

Largely funded by the US embassy in Baghdad, the restoration of the temple and the north retaining wall are part of the Future of Babylon Project, initiated 15 years ago, which aims to document, waterproof and stabilise structures throughout the 2,500-acre site. (The US embassy cancelled funding for a planned walkway spanning the site of the Ishtar Gate in July due to budget cuts.)

Toilets, It's Always the Toilets

It appears that archeological excavations have revealed a toilet that indicates the exact location of Harold II's home.

It is where is he shown as partying on the Bayeaux Tapestry before losing the Battle of Hastings , and England, to William the Conqueror. 

The Bayeux Tapestry famously depicts the events leading up to the 1066 Norman Conquest of England, in which William the Conqueror defeated Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, at the Battle of Hastings. Two scenes in particular show King Harold feasting in an extravagant hall in a village called Bosham. Archaeologists think they have now located the site of that feast, concluding that it was the king's own home, according to a new paper published in The Antiquaries Journal.

“The Norman Conquest saw a new ruling class supplant an English aristocracy that has left little in the way of physical remains, which makes the discovery at Bosham hugely significant," said co-author Oliver Creighton of the University of Exeter. "We have found an Anglo-Saxon show-home.” The findings are part of an ongoing project called "Where Power Lies," intended to assess archaeological evidence for aristocratic centers across England from the pre-Norman period.

Scholars believe the Bayeux Tapestry dates back to the 11th century and was likely created just a few years after the Battle of Hastings, mostly likely commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux (although there is still considerable debate over alternative theories). It's technically not a tapestry, since it's not woven but embroidered on linen using wool yarn of various colors. There are 58 individual scenes spanning 230 feet (nearly 70 meters) in length and 20 inches (50 cm) in height. Latin text provides context for the imagery. Among the historical events depicted is the appearance of what is now known as Halley's Comet, used here as a harbinger of the coming Norman invasion.

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According to Creighton and his co-authors, there has been quite a lot of research on castles, which dominated aristocratic sites in England after the Norman Conquest. That event "persists as a deep schism that continues to be seen as the watershed moment after which elites finally tapped into the European mainstream of castle construction," they wrote. The study of residences (or "lordly enclaves") has been more peripheral, yet the authors argue that up until 1066, aristocrats and rulers like King Harold invested heavily in residences, often co-located with churches and chapels. 

………

It has long been suspected that one particular manor house in Bosham (now a private residence) stands on the site of what was once King Harold's residence. Per the authors, the original residence was clearly connected with Holy Trinity Church just to the south, parts of which date back to the 11th century, as evidenced by the posthole remains of what was once a bridge or causeway. More evidence can be found in a structure known as the "garden ruin," little of which survives above ground—and even that was heavily overgrown. GPR data showed buried features that would have been the eastern wall of King Harold's lordly enclave.

The biggest clue was the discovery in 2006 of a latrine within the remains of a large timber building. Its significance was not recognized at the time, but archaeologists have since determined that high-status homes began integrating latrines in the 10th century, so the structure was most likely part of King Harold's residence. Co-author Duncan Wright of Newcastle University believes this "Anglo-Saxon en suite," along with all the other evidence, proves "beyond all reasonable doubt that we have here the location of Harold Godwinson's private power center, the one famously depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry."

DOI: The Antiquaries Journal, 2025. 10.1017/S0003581524000350 (About DOIs).

Reminds me of the quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Large Man with Dead Body: Who's that then?

The Dead Collector: I dunno, must be a king.

Large Man with Dead Body: Why?

The Dead Collector: He hasn't got sh%$ all over him.

He, "hasn't got sh%$ all over him," because of the fancy bathroom.

And Then There is SERIOUSLY Old School

Such as refining the recipe for an 8,600 year old loaf of bread.

Turkish chef Ulaş Tekerkaya has done so, and it's pretty good according to reports:

In Konya, central Türkiye, inspired by the "8,600-year-old bread" found in the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, where the grains were identified through scientific analysis, chef Ulaş Tekerkaya baked bread made from peas, barley, wheat and faba beans.

In the excavation conducted two years ago at Çatalhöyük, located in the Çumra district, a charred spongy find was analyzed at Necmettin Erbakan University's Science and Technology Research and Application Center (BITAM). The analysis revealed that this find, dating back to approximately 6,600 years before Christ, was "leavened bread."

After this exciting discovery, both in Türkiye and internationally, chef Ulaş Tekerkaya, who was curious about the taste of the "8,600-year-old bread," wanted to bring it back to life today.

Previously, Tekerkaya, with the support of the excavation team and academics from Necmettin Erbakan University, published a work titled "Neolithic Age: 9,000-Year-Old Culinary Culture," where he collected the majority of the grains from the region to recreate the bread.

………

According to the analysis published by the excavation team in the "Çatalhöyük Area 66 Neolithic Period Bread Findings Analysis and Evaluation," Tekerkaya worked to produce the bread containing various grains. He conducted numerous trials to recreate the form of bread from 9,000 years ago.

Using a volcanic grinding stone called a hand mill to grind the grains, Tekerkaya baked the dough (dough balls) over a wood fire at the Meram City and Culture Museum.

In an interview with Anadolu Agency (AA), Tekerkaya stated that his work on Çatalhöyük's cuisine had earned a global award in gastronomy. Reflecting on the preparation of a menu aimed at bringing the region's 9,000-year-old culinary culture to life, Tekerkaya said, "After the discovery of the bread, I was excited to make it. After about a year of trials, the bread's final form is like this. Initially, it was too hard and had a bitter taste, but after many trials, I adjusted the recipe and baked a tasty product. It's very delicious and filling."

 I so want this recipe.

Getting Your Archeology and Literature Freak On

Researchers at the University of Colorado have concluded that papyrus fragments that appear to be a previously unknown sections of a tragedy by Euripides.

This is awesome:

After months of intense scrutiny, two University of Colorado Boulder scholars have deciphered and interpreted what they believe to be the most significant new fragments of works by classical Greek tragedian Euripides in more than half a century.

In November 2022, Basem Gehad, an archaeologist with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, sent a papyrus unearthed at the ancient site of Philadelphia in Egypt to Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, assistant professor of classics. The two scholars have also recently discovered the upper half of a colossal statue of the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II in their joint excavation project at Hermopolis Magna.

She began to pore over the high-resolution photo of the papyrus (Egyptian law prohibits physically removing any artifact from the country), scrutinizing its 98 lines.

“It was very clearly tragedy,” she says.

Using the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a comprehensive, digitized database of ancient Greek texts maintained by the University of California, Irvine, Trnka-Amrhein confirmed she was looking at previously unknown excerpts from mostly lost Euripidean plays.

………

Working together, Trnka-Amrhein and renowned classics Professor John Gibert embarked on many months of grueling work, meticulously poring over a high-resolution photo of the 10.5-square-inch papyrus. They made out words and ensured that the words they thought they were seeing fit the norms of tragic style and meter.

Eventually, they became confident that they were working with new material from two fragmentary Euripides plays, Polyidus and Ino. Twenty-two of the lines were previously known in slightly varied versions, but “80 percent was brand-new stuff,” Gibert says.

I can hear Mickey Rooney saying, "Hey, my dad found some lost papyri, let's put on a musical!"

Today In Experimental Archeology

A relatively rare bronze armor has been shown to be effective in combat.

It had been thought to be purely ceremonial, but this (admittedly quite expensive) looks to be quite effective:

The Dendra armor, one of the oldest suits of bronze armor ever found, had been considered a purely ceremonial piece. It seemed impossible to use in battle due to its cumbersome design.

It took over a decade of research, elaborate numerical models, and 13 Greek marines fighting in it from dawn till dusk to prove it was surprisingly good at its job, despite its odd appearance. “This made the Mycenaean warriors some of the best equipped in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age,” says professor Andreas Flouris, a researcher at the University of Thessaly, who led the study.

………

“The Mycenaeans were an ancient Greek civilization that flourished during the late Bronze Age, roughly from 1600 BC to 1100 BC,” explains Ken Wardle, an archeologist at the University of Birmingham and co-author of the study. With their power centered around major cities like Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns, and Pylos, the Mycenaeans peaked between 1400 BCE and 1200 BCE, when they occupied much of mainland Greece and gained influence over Aegean islands and Asia Minor.

The Dendra armor, a full-body bronze plate suit made by the Mycenaeans in 1450 BCE, was found in a tomb in the early 1960s in the village of Dendra, in southern Greece, just a few kilometers from the ancient city of Mycenae. Right off the bat, it caused a lot of turmoil in the research community.

 

The first step Flouris’ team took to design an experiment was to figure out what the daily ordeal of Greek soldiers fighting in the Trojan War looked like. Here, Homeric epics, properly filtered, proved quite helpful. “We analyzed Homer’s Iliad and combined the information that we extracted with physiological and biometeorological knowledge to create an 11-hour combat simulation replicating activities performed by elite warriors in the Late Bronze Age,” Flouris explains.

His team assumed the Trojan War happened in June between 1300 BCE and 1200 BCE, south of the southwest mouth of the Dardanelles Strait and northwest of Mount Ida. Given that, it was possible to figure out the conditions in which it was fought: sunrise was at 4:37 am, and the sunset was at 7:37 pm. The temperature ranged from 23.8° to 29.1° Celsius, and the humidity fell between 69.6 and 85.1 percent. The armies moved out of their camps after breakfast, performed weapons checks, and held commanders’ meetings, being ready for battle by roughly 2.5 hours after sunrise. Then, the Greeks marched roughly four kilometers to reach the walls of Troy, where the fighting happened.

The battle formations included the “promachoi”—the foremost fighters who formed the first line—and the “plithos,” men that were staying in the rear. The warriors took turns in the first line and then retreated to the rear to rest. Toward the end of the day, the armies disengaged and returned to their camps. The army operations lasted 11 hours each day.

During those 11 hours, a typical warrior in Homeric tales would go through 31 one-versus-one duels, 10 encounters with the enemy on a chariot, two chariot-versus-chariot engagements, and one chariot-versus-warrior-on-ship encounter (a ranged battle where the warrior defended beached ships from charging chariots). The composition of this ordeal was inferred from statistical analysis of fights in The Iliad. Each of those scenarios included a fair share of spear throws, sword strikes, shooting arrows, and spear strikes, all performed in full body armor. Overall, the whole day was effectively a long, high-intensity interval exercise.

“So, we asked a group of special-armed forces personnel wearing a replica of the Dendra armor to complete this protocol,” says Flouris. The 13 marines who volunteered were trained in historical combat, fitted with sensors that monitored their performance, and fed roughly 4,500 calories worth of goat cheese, roasted meat, olives, bread, water, wine, and other Bronze Age culinary delicacies. And then they had a go at it. 

………

All 13 soldiers were able to complete the protocol. They found it exhausting but doable. Their heart rates remained normal; their blood glucose concentration, blood lactate levels, reaction times to visual and auditory stimuli, core body temperatures, and other metrics all turned out okay. The armor did not hinder their performance too much, and it did a good job of protecting vital body parts. The research team also did numerical modeling that simulated heat dissipation at fighting intensities that were impossible to do with human participants due to safety reasons; this also confirmed the Dendra armor worked.

“We demonstrated that armor of this type was suitable for use in battle, not just purely ceremonial. The efficacy and variety of Mycenaean swords and spears have long been recognized. The addition of heavy armor [would have] given elite Mycenaean warriors considerable advantage over those with a shield only for defense or with the lighter scale armor in use in the Middle East,” Flouris says. Moreover, the elite fighting force wearing Dendra-style armor would have been brought to the front lines on chariots, which meant they were coming in well-rested.

Seriously neat.

Getting Your Archeology Geek On

This is a nice summary of the excavations at Must Farm, which are arguably the best preserved Bronze Age settlements in the British Isles.

It appears that it all burnt down in a fire, but its unique location resulted in an extremely preserved site:

A half-eaten bowl of porridge complete with wooden spoon, communal rubbish bins, and a decorative necklace made with amber and glass beads are just a handful of the extraordinarily well-preserved remnants of a late Bronze Age hamlet unearthed in eastern England that’s been dubbed “Britain’s Pompeii” and a “time capsule” into village life almost 3,000 years ago.

The findings from the site, excavated in 2015 to 2016, are now the subject of two reports, complete with previously unseen photos, published this week by University of Cambridge archaeologists, who said they cast light onto the “cosy domesticity” of ancient settlement life.

“It might be the best prehistoric settlement that we’ve found in Britain,” Mark Knight, the excavation director and a co-author of the reports, said in an interview Thursday. “We took the roofs off and inside was pretty much the contents,” he said. “It’s so comprehensive and so coherent.”

The reason for the rare preservation: disaster.

The settlement, thought to have originally consisted of several large roundhouses made of wood and constructed on stilts above a slow-moving river, was engulfed by a fire less than a year after being built.

During the blaze, the buildings and much of their contents collapsed into a muddy river below that “cushioned the scorched remains where they fell,” the university said of the findings. This combination of charring from the fire and waterlogging led to “exceptional preservation,” the researchers found. 

Definitely on my list of places to visit in the UK.

Getting Your Historical Freak On

Arabic and Hebrew lettters


Front and back, assembled


Another close up view


This is meticulous and beautiful work


Verifying its authenticityThere are two areas that I find most interesting, linguistic development, because it provides insights in how societies and peoples moved in ways that are far more accurate than the written record, and ancient tools. 

I loves me some ancient tools, and the more precise and more extreme, the better.

Astrolabes fit the bill, and they are also beautiful, even if you don't know how they work.

Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante just verified that an 11th-century astrolabe at the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo is real.

Kewl:

Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante is an expert on Islamic astrolabes. So naturally she was intrigued when the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy, uploaded an image of just such an astrolabe to its website. The museum thought it might be a fake, but when Gigante visited to see the astrolabe firsthand, she realized it was not only an authentic 11th-century instrument—one of the oldest yet discovered—it had engravings in both Arabic and Hebrew.

“This isn’t just an incredibly rare object. It’s a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, and Christians over hundreds of years,” Gigante said. “The Verona astrolabe underwent many modifications, additions, and adaptations as it changed hands. At least three separate users felt the need to add translations and corrections to this object, two using Hebrew and one using a Western language.” She described her findings in a new paper published in the journal Nuncius.

As previously reported, astrolabes are actually very ancient instruments—possibly dating as far back as the second century BCE—for determining the time and position of the stars in the sky by measuring a celestial body's altitude above the horizon. Before the emergence of the sextant, astrolabes were mostly used for astronomical and astrological studies, although they also proved useful for navigation on land, as well as for tracking the seasons, tide tables, and time of day. The latter was especially useful for religious functions, such as tracking daily Islamic prayer times, the direction of Mecca, or the feast of Ramadan, among others.

………

The Verona astrolabe is meant for astronomical use, and while it has a mater, a rete, and two plates (one of which is a later replacement), it is missing the alidade. It's also undated, according to Gigante, but she was able to estimate a likely date based on the instrument's design, construction, and calligraphy. She concluded it was Andalusian, dating back to the 11th century when the region was a Muslim-ruled area of Spain.

For instance, one side of the original plate bears an Arabic inscription "for the latitude of Cordoba, 38° 30'," and another Arabic inscription on the other side reads "for the latitude of Toledo, 40°." The second plate (added at some later date) was for North African latitudes, so at some point, the astrolabe might have found its way to Morocco or Egypt. There are engraved lines from Muslim prayers, indicating it was probably originally used for daily prayers.

There is also a signature on the back in Arabic script: "for Isḥāq [...]/the work of Yūnus.” Gigante believes this was added by a later owner. Since the two names translate to Isaac and Jonah, respectively, in English, it's possible that a later owner was an Arab-speaking member of a Sephardi Jewish community. In addition to the Arabic script, Gigante noticed later Hebrew inscriptions translating the Arabic names for certain astrological signs, in keeping with the earliest surviving treatise in Hebrew on astrolabes, written by Abraham Ibn Ezra in Verona in 1146.

“These Hebrew additions and translations suggest that at a certain point the object left Spain or North Africa and circulated amongst the Jewish diaspora community in Italy, where Arabic was not understood, and Hebrew was used instead,” said Gigante. “This object is Islamic, Jewish, and European, they can’t be separated."

They don't make tools like this any more.

Getting Your Archeology Geek On

The gauntlet and its partially intact mate


AssembledArcheologists in Switzerland have found a completely intact 14th century gauntlet.

These are not common finds.

Given the necessarily finer nature of the work required to accommodate the motions of a human hand, very few have survived to this day, and far fewer fully intact:

A press conference by the Canton of Zurich has announced the discovery of an intact medieval gauntlet dated to the 14th century.

The object was found during excavations to the southeast of Kyburg Castle, located in Kyburg in the district of Pfäffikon, Switzerland.

………

Excavations adjacent to the castle have found a medieval weaving cellar which was destroyed by fire during the 14th century, and traces of forging which is evidenced by the discovery of a mold and over 50 metal objects associated with smithing.

Archaeologists also found a hammer, tweezers, pliers, keys, knives, bullet points, and a completely preserved 14th century gauntlet, in addition to fragments of its counterpart worn on the other hand.

The intact gauntlet is a four-fold finger glove worn on the right hand, which has individual iron plates stacked like scales and linked together through side rivets. The individual glove components were fixed to the interior using supplementary rivets on a leather or textile base, which in turn was stitched onto the fabric.

Kewl.

Getting Your Archeology On

It appears that from 2600 BCE through 1900 BCE, there was a sophisticated and complex Indus Valley society which shows no sign of the class stratification typical of the time.

There are no palaces, no massive temples, just well laid out communities with good homes all of a similar size.

Little more than a century ago, British and Indian archaeologists began excavating the remains of what they soon realized was a previously unknown civilization in the Indus Valley. Straddling parts of Pakistan and India and reaching into Afghanistan, the culture these explorers unearthed had existed at the same time as those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and covered a much larger area. It was also astonishingly advanced: sophisticated and complex, boasting large, carefully laid out cities, a relatively affluent population, writing, plumbing and baths, wide trade connections, and even standardized weights and measures.

What kind of a society was the Indus Valley Civilization, as it came to be known? Who lived there and how did they organize themselves? Archaeologists and other experts ask these questions to this day, but the first explorers were already noticing some unique features.

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, “much money and thought were lavished on the building of magnificent temples for the gods and on palaces and tombs of kings,” observed Sir John Marshall, who supervised the excavation of two of the five main cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, “but the rest of the people seemingly had to content themselves with insignificant dwellings of mud.” In the Indus Valley, “the picture is reversed and the finest structures were those erected for the convenience of the citizens. Temples, palaces, and tombs there may of course have been, but if so, they are either still undiscovered or so like other edifices as not to be readily distinguishable from them.”

In its heyday, from about BC 2600 to BC 1900, the Indus Valley Civilization created what may have been the world’s most egalitarian early complex society, defying long-held presumptions about the relationship between urbanization and inequality in the past. Its large cities were expansive, planned, and boasted large-scale architecture, including roomy residential houses, and smaller settlements in the surrounding areas appeared to support a similar culture with a similar standard of living.

The most tantalizing feature of the ancient Indus Valley remains is what they appear to lack: any trace of a ruling class or managerial elite. This defies the longtime theoretical assumption that any complex society must have stratified social relations: that collective action, urbanization, and economic specialization only develop in a very unequal culture that takes direction from the top, and that all social trajectories evolve toward a common and universal outcome, the state. Yet, here was a stable, prosperous civilization that appeared to remain that way for centuries without a state, without priest-kings or merchant oligarchs, and without a rigid caste system or warrior class. How did they manage it?

I don't claim to have much in the way of vision, but I cannot understand how such a society would function.

I can see it in hunter-gatherer tribes, but for a complex civilization, you need complex intensive agriculture, sophisticated infrastructure, etc.

It appears that these peoples were more imaginative than I am:

………

In the late 1990s, Indus archaeologists started to consider a new concept that seemed to better fit the facts. Heterarchy asserts that complex political organization, including cities, can emerge through the interaction of many different, unranked social groups, rather than from top-down decisions by an elite: that cooperation, not domination, can produce collective action. It’s now widely argued that multiple social groups contributed to the construction of Indus cities and the economic activities that took place in them, and that none seemed to dominate the others.

Bolstering this argument, no evidence exists that any group of Indus producers was excluded from the use of scarce materials that craftspeople had to obtain from long distances away, or that particular groups limited access to those materials to seize a higher position for themselves in Indus society. One of the most distinctive and technically dazzling products of the Indus culture are stamped seals engraved with imagery and text; over 2,500 have been found at Mohenjo-daro alone. But the seals were produced by many different groups of artisans in many locations, and there is no evidence that a ruling class controlled production. Technological styles tended to cross-cut different groups of artisans, indicating a great deal of openness and knowledge sharing.

Indus city-dwellers built large- and small-scale public buildings; the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro is a massive structure that contained a large paved bath assembled from tightly fitted baked bricks, waterproofed with bitumen and supplied with pipes and drains that would have allowed control over water flow and temperature. At Mohenjo-daro, nonresidential structures were built atop brick platforms that were as substantial as the structures erected on top of them, and would have required a great deal of coordinated action. It’s been calculated that just one of the foundation platforms would have required 4 million days of labor, or 10,000 builders working for more than a year.

Yet, at both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, these large nonresidential structures were relatively accessible, suggesting that they were “public,” as opposed to palaces or administrative centers restricted to a privileged class. Some of these may have served as specialized spaces for exchange, negotiation, and interaction between different groups clustered in neighborhoods or along important streets and roads. These spaces may have helped the city-dwellers maintain a high degree of consensus on planning and policy and ensured that no one group was able to accumulate wealth at the expense of the rest.

This sounds an awful lot like Marx's definition of true Communism, which was to follow the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  (Spoiler, no Communist regime got past the dictatorship part)

I wish that we knew how they did it. 

It might not have any application to today, or it might have application to today, but either way, I would love to know how this was done.

The Technical Term is Goniff

The term is Yiddish, and it means thief.  It originated from the Hebrew word Ganav (גַנָב), and in this case, I am referring to Donald Trump, and I am using the Yiddish because he is referring to return items lent to him from Israel's Antiques Authority for a White House party.

They were supposed to be at the White House for a day, and they are now somewhere in Mar-a-Lago.

Antiquities belonging to Israel have been kept for the past several months at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and senior Israeli figures have unsuccessfully tried to have them returned to Israel.

Among the antiquities are ancient ceramic oil lamps which are part of Israel's national treasures collection. They were sent to the U.S. in 2019 with the approval of then-Director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson, on the condition that they be returned within weeks, yet almost four years later, they have yet to be returned.

The archeological items were shipped from Israel to the United States for a Hanukkah event attended by Trump, then in office, and major Jewish-American donor to the Antiquities Authority Saul Fox. Over the years, Fox has donated to the establishment of a national center for antique coins, as well as to the creation of an archeological garden at the Knesset.

………

The oil lamps were eventually not displayed in the White House, due to a bureaucratic difficulty raised by the Americans. But according to Israeli sources who dealt with the matter, instead of being returned to Israel, they got “stuck” in the United States.

Hasson, then-Director of the Antiquities Authority, told Haaretz that the Authority did not wish to send the items back by regular flight or shipping company, for fear of damage. Instead, he explained, “We wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then COVID broke out, and everything got stuck.” The Antiquities Authority, Hasson added, asked Fox to keep the items in his possession for a limited time, until they could be returned to Israel safely.

………

Several months ago, Israeli authorities learned that the antiquities eventually ended up at former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where they still remain.

………

Mar-a-Lago was previously in the news this year following an FBI raid of its premises, which yielded multiple boxes of classified documents taken from the White House. Photographs from the raid disseminated in American media show crates full of documents stored in a bathroom and in a storage space in the estate. A source updated on the affair told Haaretz that he wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom there.”

 In addition to being a petty human being, it appears that Donald Trump is a petty thief as well.

Not surprised.

Failing the Test: Getting Nailed on the Boards

That is a lead in to an archeological find in Cambridgeshire, where they have found found evidence of a crucifixion using spikes.

It is not generally known, but most crucifixions were done with rope:  The death comes from suffocation being driven by hanging from one's arms collapsing the chests:

Found at the site of a future housing development in Cambridgeshire, the near 1,900-year-old skeleton at first did not seem particularly remarkable.

Aged 25 to 35 at the time of death, the man had been buried with his arms across his chest in a grave with a wooden structure, possibly a bier, at one of five cemeteries around a newly discovered Roman settlement at Fenstanton, between Roman Cambridge and Godmanchester.

But once his remains were removed to a laboratory in Bedford, a grisly discovery was made – a nail through the heel bone that experts now say is the best physical evidence of a crucifixion in the Roman world.

Nails used for crucifixion – the method of capital punishment by which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden beam and left to hang until death – are a rare find, most likely because the victims would not often have received proper burial and, contrary to popular views, it was commonly carried out using rope.

But after prolonged analysis crucifixion was established as the only likely explanation, and the first details of the extraordinary find are reported on Wednesday in British Archaeology magazine.

This is kind of cool.  Creepy as hell, but cool, at least if you are into archeology.

Get Your Archeology Geek On

Archeologist have unearthed a remarkable Mycenaean royal tomb:

Archaeologists recently discovered two magnificent 3,500-year-old royal tombs in the shadow of the palace of the legendary King Nestor of Pylos. It's not clear exactly who the tombs' owners were, but their contents—gold and bronze, amber from the Baltic, amethyst from Egypt, and carnelian from the Arabian Peninsula and India—suggest wealth, power, and far-flung trade connections in the Bronze Age world. And the images engraved on many of those artifacts may eventually help us better understand the Mycenaean culture that preceded classical Greece.

Tombs fit for royalty

The larger tomb is 12m (36 feet) wide and 4.5 meters (15 feet) deep, and stone walls would once have stood that height again above ground. Domes once covered the underground chambers, but the roofs and upper walls have long since collapsed, burying the tombs beneath thousands of melon-sized stones and a tangle of grape vines. University of Cincinnati archaeologists Jack Davis, Sharon Stocker, and their colleagues had to clear away vegetation and then remove the stones by hand.

"It was like going back to the Mycenaean period," Stocker said. "They had placed them by hand in the walls of the tomb, and we were taking them out by hand. It was a lot of work."

Beneath the rubble, gold leaf litters the burial pits' floors in gleaming flakes; once, it lined the walls and floors of the chambers. The tombs don't appear to have contained the remains of the their occupants (there's some evidence that the tombs were disturbed in the distant past), but they were interred with jewelry and other opulent artifacts of gold, bronze, and gemstones, as well as a commanding view of the Mediterranean Sea.

Kewl!

Tweet of the Day

Ooh, I'm Indiana Jones, imma ignore this monumental architecture that incorporates moving parts to create ingenious traps that still work after hundreds if not thousands of years and focus on this golden idol that literally any dumbass with a forge could make in a weekend.

— Living Marble (@living_marble) April 1, 2018

I am sure that all of the amateur and professional archeologist out there are cheering this right now, as well they should.

Meet the New Queen of Cornwall

Gotta lead with Monty Python

7 Year old Matilda Jones just pulled a great sword from Dozmary Pool in Cornwall, which is rumored where King Arthur received, and returned, the sword Excalibur.

If I understand the finer points of of British governance, and I probably don't, this means that she is now the ruler of Cornwall:

A seven-year-old school girl had a legendary holiday after pulling a giant four-foot sword from the Cornish Lake where Arthur threw Excalibur.

Matilda Jones was wading through water waist-deep at Dozmary Pool when she stumbled across the blade underwater.

According to local folklore, Dozmary Pool is the spot where King Arthur returned Excalibur after being fatally wounded in the Battle of Camlann.

'She was only waist deep when she said she could see a sword.

'I told her not to be silly and it was probably a bit of fencing, but when I looked down I realised it was a sword. It was just there laying flat on the bottom of the lake.

'The sword is 4ft long - exactly Matilda's height.'

Legend has it that King Arthur first received Excalibur from the Lady of Lake in Dozmary Pool after rowing out to receive it.

After being mortally wounded he asked to be taken there so he could return the sword to her.

After three attempts, his loyal follower Bedivere cast it into the water and the Lady of the Lake's arm rose to receive it.

If you look at the photos, I would argue that the sword is no older than 6 months old. Otherwise, the leather wrapping would have rotted away.

Additionally, it appears to be a cheap mass produced sword cut from sheet steel, there is no fuller (center groove), and the quillions (cross guards) appear to be made from rod and welded ball bearings.

Still a Queen of Cornwall wearing pink Crocs?  That would be truly epic.

Because Grave Robbing is the Christian Thing to Do

It looks like everyone favorite arts and crafts themed band of Talibaptist bigots have expanded their activities into dealing in stolen archaeological artifacts:

This is how it's done. Oligarchs pillage and loot so they can push their own version of history on everyone.

In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.

These tablets, like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by the Green family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant new museum funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the president of the Museum of the Bible.

For their part, Hobby Lobby is claiming it's just screwed-up paperwork. Nothing more than that. Just a customs mix-up that has taken well over 4 years to resolve. Not really.

Here's hoping that there will be a criminal prosecution, and a very pious Muslim cellmate, in their future.