Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2015 i ARCHAEOLOGY

Spiked Heels In “Fancy Footwear” (“From the Trenches,” January/February 2015) the author states that the gilded shoes weren’t for daily wear, but rather for burial ritual, but the main proof of this was not mentioned. All these artifacts (17 pairs discovered in tombs) have highly decorated soles with patterns of stylized clouds, fames, lotus rosettes, and interconnected hexagons, and the most unique feature of these shoes is the fact that the soles are studded with spikes—the tips of several of these can be seen in the photograph. The thickness and length of these spikes differ somewhat from one pair to another, but they all have them, and they would clearly make it impossible for a person to actually wear these shoes. Scholars believe that these are “sky-walking” shoes to allow…

While undertaking restoration work at Dublin’s Rathfarnham Castle, archaeologists recently discovered a “treasure trove” that offers a rare glimpse into life in seventeenth-century Ireland. The artifacts include a foldable toothbrush, clay pipes, jewelry, porcelain, coins, chamber pots, intact goblets, and early wine bottles. The items, among 1,700 other objects, had been left inside a wash pit and sealed beneath a stone floor that perfectly preserved them. Exactly how the items got there is still being established. They may have been hidden when the castle was attacked, or placed there for washing and never retrieved. In any case, archaeologists believe that the artifacts belonged to a specific household, most likely that of Adam Loftus, grandson of Archbishop Adam Loftus, who served as Queen Elizabeth’s chief envoy to Ireland and who originally…

Archaeologists separating the contents of the largest known Celtic coin hoard have uncovered a number of gold items mixed in with the coins. The hoard, which was found on Jersey in the British Channel Islands, consists of 70,000 coins estimated to weigh a half ton in all. The researchers have so far removed a shoebox-sized portion of the hoard, revealing one complete gold torque and parts of six others. The hoard is thought to date to around 50 B.C., when the Romans, led by Julius Caesar, were advancing north through France conquering Celtic tribes as they went. “We think they were trying to get their wealth out of the way,” says Neil Mahrer, a museum conservator with Jersey Heritage, “presumably with the idea of coming back for it later.”…

The town of Flers in northwestern France has existed since at least the twelfth century. In the fifteenth century, the small rural village of about 500 inhabitants was centered around the Church of Saint-Germain. French archaeologists excavating the church cemetery in order to understand the building, its history, and changing burial practices over the centuries have recently uncovered hundreds of burials. The majority of these were simple, wooden coffins from the medieval period, but among them were two richer coffins, both made of lead, dating to the eighteenth century. One of them had a lead heart attached to it as well.…

IN AN ANCIENT CITY near Taizhou, at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, two sturdy wooden coffins were placed side by side inside a tomb. To prepare for the burial, a six-foot-deep pit had been dug, wooden panels had been laid down to reinforce the walls and floor, and a slurry of lime and sticky rice, which would dry and harden, was poured in. The coffins were then lowered, porcelain vessels were placed at the heads, more slurry was added, and the hole was filled in with dirt. When archaeologists from the Taizhou Municipal Museum excavated the 500-year-old tomb, they moved the coffins to the museum, where they were carefully opened, exposing their red lacquered interiors. Inside the coffins, which they…

WHEN IRISH ARCHAEOLOGISTS working under Dublin’s South Great George’s Street just over a decade ago excavated the remains of four young men buried with fragments of Viking shields, daggers, and personal ornaments, the discovery appeared to be simply more evidence of the Viking presence in Ireland. At least 77 Viking burials have been discovered across Dublin since the late 1700s, some accidentally by ditch diggers, others by archaeologists working on building sites. All have been dated to the ninth or tenth centuries on the basis of artifacts that accompanied them, and the South Great George’s Street burials seemed to be four more examples. Yet when excavation leader Linzi Simpson of Dublin’s Trinity College sent the remains for carbon dating to determine their age, the results were “quite surprising,” she says.…

THE 116TH JOINT ANNUAL Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the Society for Classical Studies (SCS) brought together more than 2,600 archaeologists, classicists, educators, and exhibitors for a four-day extravaganza of presentations, discussions, and opportunities for networking and socializing. With more than 100 colloquia, workshops, and roundtables, the 2015 meeting featured the largest academic program in the long history of the event. The program was notable for the breadth and diversity of its session topics, ranging from human evolution to the effect of current conflicts on cultural and material heritage. Several sessions and workshops focused on the role of technology in archaeological research, including the opening night public lecture presented by Miriam Stark of the University of Hawaii. Her talk, “Imagining Angkor: Politics, Myths, and Archaeology,” focused…

A team of archaeologists at a 2,000-year-old limestone quarry in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley recently excavated around a megalith weighing approximately 1,000 tons and dubbed Hajjar al-Hibla, or “stone of the pregnant woman.” It was intended for the Temple of Jupiter, which sits on three limestone blocks of similar size at the nearby site of Baalbek. To the team’s shock, they unearthed yet another block, this one weighing an estimated 1,650 tons, making it the largest known megalith. The German Archaeological Institute’s Margarete van Esse says excavation was suspended when the trench became dangerously deep. “Hopefully in a following campaign we can dig down to the bottom of the block,” she adds. The team wants to find clues there that will show how the megaliths were transported.…

Continuing excavations in the House of the Muses at Zeugma in southeastern Turkey have uncovered even more spectacular Roman mosaics, as well as more of the house’s well-preserved architecture. In one of the newly discovered rooms, archaeologists uncovered a mosaic pavement depicting four young women framed by elaborate patterns. Although not identified by any inscriptions, the women may represent heroines from Greek mythology.…

Archaeologists have uncovered a Liao Dynasty (A.D. 907–1125) brick tomb in Datong City in northern China’s Shanxi Province. The tomb had been looted, but only valuable, portable artifacts were taken, which left its remarkable wall paintings intact. The murals cover more than 160 square feet and depict constellations, wooden architecture, travel, and daily life. One panel shows servants standing around an empty bed while a cat plays with a silk ball and a dog, to the right, looks on, perhaps a bit jealously.…

NEW JERSEY: While building a wall to protect coastline hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, workers encountered the remains of what appears to be a 19th-century shipwreck. Authorities have decided not to disturb the site further, but a telling artifact suggests that it might be the remains of Ayrshire, a Scottish brig full of Irish and English immigrants that went down in a storm in 1850. The artifact could be part of a locally invented pulley system—like an old-fashioned clothesline—that was used to rescue almost all the passengers. ENGLAND: In 1981, archaeologists excavating the remains of Mary Rose, the early-16thcentury warship that sank near the Isle of Wight in 1545, found the remains of the ship’s dog, which they nicknamed “Hatch.” Because a penis bone was never found, it was assumed…

AROUND 5,300 YEARS AGO, someone was interred in a sandy grave in the Gerzeh cemetery, 40 miles south of modern Cairo, Egypt. Clearly an important member of the community, he or she was buried with valuable goods, including an ivory pot, a stone palette for grinding cosmetics, a copper harpoon, and beaded jewelry. In among the gold and carnelian beads were some made of iron, a material that, while considered mundane today, must have been regarded as very precious at the time. A total of seven of these tubular iron beads were found in two Gerzeh tombs in 1911 by archaeologist Gerald Wainwright. Iron smelting, the extraction of metal from ore, is thought to have emerged in Egypt around 600 B.C. The beads therefore pose an archaeological conundrum because they…

Crystal-clear water laps the white sands of Wotje Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific Ocean. Up the beach, a line of coconut palms provides much-needed refuge from the blazing sun. It is, by any definition, a tropical paradise. Yet in the sand and scrub of these islands, being slowly revealed by wind, waves, and the daily activities of the Marshallese people, are dozens upon dozens of unwieldy metal cylinders. Many of these objects are breaking down and cracking open, and leak a lurid yellow powder. In the middle of the twentieth century, during World War II, the atolls in the Marshall Islands formed part of the eastern defensive line of the Empire of Japan. The metal objects are unexploded…

Soon after it came to Europe from the Arab world in the twelfth century, chess became immensely popular among the upper classes. Kings, queens, nobles, and monks would pass their leisure time playing the game using finely carved pieces of elephant or walrus ivory that depicted characters from medieval court life. Game pieces used by the less well-of, including these two found recently in Northampton, were fashioned of less lavish materials, such as antler and bone, and were less ornate. “These simple chess pieces followed the basic Arabic forms, where anthropomorphic figures were prohibited,” says archaeologist Andy Chapman of Museum of London Archaeology Northampton, who is studying the artifacts. According to Chapman, single stylized chess pieces, 70 of which have been found in Britain, are usually located in domestic contexts.…

Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest cities, is well-known for its churches, but it also hosts the country’s most significant collection of Jewish monuments and buildings. At the end of the fifteenth century, the city’s Jewish population was driven out of the center and directed to settle in the district of Kazimierz. Known as the Oppidum Iudaeorum, or “Jewish City,” it grew into a religious and cultural center for the region’s Jews. By the 1930s more than 60,000 lived there, but the Nazi occupation rendered the district a virtual ghost town. Recently scholars, historians, and archaeologists have taken a new interest in the area. Dariusz Niemiec of the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University and a team of students are excavating in and around the Old Synagogue, the country’s oldest…

Researchers from the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East have brought renewed attention to an archaeological phenomenon known as “Big Circles.” Spread across parts of Jordan and Syria, these manmade features have received very little archaeological attention and are relatively unknown, even to regional experts. They are thought to be at least 2,000 years old—two of them are cut by later Roman roads—but may date as far back as the Neolithic. Constructed of stone walls rarely rising more than a few feet, they measure about 1,300 feet in diameter, and, puzzlingly, show no evidence of entrances. “The combination of aerial recording of each circle, sites with which it may intersect, its context, and examination on the ground, have helped clarify their character and possible date,” says project…

Herod, king of Judea from 37 to 4 B.C., has long been renowned as an architectural visionary, having overseen such projects as the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, the Masada palace complex, and the harbor and city of Caesarea. Now, archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem excavating the king’s palatial complex at Herodium have uncovered evidence that Herod sometimes sacrificed extensive work on one grand construction plan in favor of another. Researchers discovered a large corridor in the upper palace at Herodium, apparently designed to allow the king and his entourage direct access to the palace courtyard. The corridor was at least 65 feet high and supported by a network of arches, but was left unfinished and partially filled in with rubble when the king decided to turn…

Archaeologists have recently uncovered a large Gallo-Roman necropolis in southwest France. Located just 800 feet from the Roman amphitheater in Saintes, the cemetery may have been the final resting place for many of the arena’s victims. Several hundred graves dating to the first and second centuries A.D. were found, including many double burials, in which two bodies were interred in one trench, lying head to foot. The archaeologists also excavated at least five individuals—four adults and one child—who were still wearing riveted iron shackles around their wrists, necks, or legs. The graves were almost entirely devoid of artifacts, except for that of a young child who was buried with coins on his or her eyes and seven small vases.…

TWENTY MILES SOUTHWEST of Rome, obscured by agricultural fields, woodlands, and the modern infrastructure of one of Europe’s busiest airports, lies what may be ancient Rome’s greatest engineering achievement, and arguably its most important: Portus. Although almost entirely silted in today, at its height, Portus was Rome’s principal maritime harbor, catering to thousands of ships annually. It served as the primary hub for the import, warehousing, and distribution of resources, most importantly grain, that ensured the stability of both Rome and the empire. “For Rome to have worked at capacity, Portus needed to work at capacity,” says archaeologist Simon Keay. “The fortunes of the city are inextricably tied to it. It’s quite hard to overestimate.” Portus was the answer to Rome’s centuries-long search for an efficient deepwater harbor. In the…

ONCE IN A GENERATION—EVERY 18.6 years to be exact—a rare full moon rises above Illinois’ Looking Glass Prairie and casts its pale glow across a carefully arrayed ancient tableau, one that has been there for a thousand years. As the moon, having arrived at the most northerly position of its multiyear cycle, rises above a distant hill, it lines up almost perfectly with a fat-topped earthen pyramid, three parallel rows of small circular mounds, and—beneath the soil—the spot where a young woman was ritually buried sometime around A.D. 1100. Recent excavations suggest that these earthworks, located near present-day Lebanon, Illinois, and known today as Emerald Mound, are one of several sites on the fringes of the ancient city of Cahokia that have a distinctly lunar orientation. It’s a discovery that…

MORE THAN 40 PEOPLE, including museum specialists, K–12 teachers, and federal employees from around the country participated in the AIA-organized conference for archaeology and heritage educators, “Building a Strong Future for Archaeological Outreach and Education.” T e two-day conference was created to allow these dedicated and enthusiastic professionals to evaluate the current state of heritage education and plan for the future. The idea for the educators’ conference emerged out of discussions held at various events, including the meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), meetings of the SAA’s Public Education Committee, and an AIA-organized education summit at Boston University. T e main goals of the conference were to create a network of archaeology and heritage educators who can work in a supportive and collaborative manner to build a strong…